Title: Never Apart

Author: Crimsonsenya

Beta: Nimlothriel

Pairing: Colin/Jared, Alexander/Hephaestion

Rating: R

Genre: RPS (A/H aren’t fictional characters either...), slight angst

Warnings: too little m/m sex

Summary: Colin’s self-discovery. Nuff said, read for yourself.

Disclaimer: Lies, lies, lies, except for a couple of historical facts about Alexander the Great and the fact that Colin and Jared played the respective persons in a movie.

A/N: A Christmas prezzie for Ana. Jo, thank you very much for helping me! Smoochies.

****************************

There were a couple of things Colin had always thought defined him, until he landed on the role of Alexander. First, he was not a very deep person. He preferred small talk to philosophical ramblings anytime. Second, he did not want to believe in fate. In his opinion, there was no higher power guiding his or anyone else’s life. He was his own man, free to do what the hell he wanted. And third, he loved women even more than partying. But as the filming progressed, he had to admit he had found out a new and most unexpected side of himself.

He and Alexander, they were both partygoers. At least, that was something he could relate to. Otherwise, Colin learned his character was his complete opposite. To pull off his role convincingly, he had to research the guy’s life, and the way he thought. For once, he was playing a true man of flesh and blood, not some mindless two-dimensional cartoon in some one-in-a-dozen action flick. Therefore, Colin dwelled on Alexander’s biography and articles about him. Alexander had been everything Colin was not, and even if Colin would not have admitted it to anyone, the fact somehow disturbed him a lot.

At some point, after the blond hair dye, sword fighting, horseback riding and practicing the lines, Colin started to dream. At first, there were only vague images about a place that reminded him of Morocco, but he knew the setting of his dreams wasn’t the shooting location. Soon the visions cleared; he saw landscapes, mountains and meadows, villages and empty hallways of stone, a place he had never seen before. One night, he started seeing people. To be honest, Colin knew exactly which night it was and why; it was the night he met Jared for the first time.

The first words to enter his mind, when their hands touched for a firm shake, had been glorious, magnificent, exquisite, and for the life of him, Colin couldn’t figure out were they had come from. Colin Farrell did not describe people with such pompous adjectives. He called people cool, beautiful, genius or funny, and if the chick was really special, he might have said “what a gorgeous piece of ass”. The last one never applied to men, not that Jared was unworthy of appraisal. He was, he truly was. In fact, Jared was the first man Colin considered both beautiful and gorgeous, but still unmistakeably male.

Jared played the one person that most obviously had been the closest to Colin’s character. There was a line in the script “It was said that Alexander was only defeated once, and that was by Hephaestion’s thighs.” Colin had caught the innuendo straight away. For some reason, he had glanced at Jared’s legs, right at the spot where they disappeared under the leather skirt. He had instantly regretted his curiosity, because he had been as if spellbound by those lean muscles ever since. Sometimes, after hours of shooting battle scenes and watching Jared’s riding, the constant up and down, the tensing and flexing of his thighs, Colin had to flee to his trailer and wank off to images of golden limbs straddling him in his mind.

It did not help him that Oliver expected the two of them to spend a lot of time together, getting to know each other, building a solid friendship that would show on screen too. Oliver wasn’t even going to give the audience an Alexander & Hephaestion kiss, but there would be no doubt about the nature of their relationship.

Love. The word crept into Colin’s dreams. Alexander had loved the men in his life more than all the women, except his mother. Colin was certain about it. Alexander had loved Bagoas, his Persian eunuch. Colin had seen the man in his dreams, a silent presence in the sleeping quarters ever since he –no Alexander– had entered Babylon. And then there was Hephaestion.

Colin thought it was logical. Alexander had lived in a very unsure world, where the rulers were surrounded by greedy jealous noblemen, ready to poison their king’s wine, or to release scorpions in his bedroom. In a similar situation, Colin too would have kept the few people he could trust close to him. But Colin knew Alexander’s relationship with Hephaistion wasn’t mere friendship or two veterans getting rid of bodily needs on the eve of battle. Their relationship was not even a simple love story about two gay men meeting and falling for each other. No. The truth came to Colin as if a blazing revelation had descended from heaven. The roots of the love between Alexander and Hephaistion were in the mythical past, in the time when the free men of Greece united under one king to attack the unbeatable walls of ancient Troy.

The revelation had come in the form of bright, all too real nightmares, filled with flying arrows, blood, clanging metal, blinding white sand and suffocating dust. The ardent sun god had released the might of his fury and taken his wrathful revenge on Achilles, the hero and demigod of old that in his great folly had desecrated Apollo’s temple. He had held the sword pierced body of his lover Patroklos in his arms. His emerald eyes were glazed and lifeless, his blood smeared the ground and turned Achilles’ blue tunic into a hard purple crust. In that moment, before all the gods of Olympus and all the gods past and to come, he –no, he meant Achilles– had sworn that they would never be apart.

Every night that week, Colin rolled in his bed so fiercely he often fell on the floor. When he awoke, the sheets were soaked with sweat. One more nightmare, and he would have told Oliver he had lost his marbles and gone to meet a shrink. But the truth was, Alexander had believed he and Hephaistion were Achilles and Patroklos reborn. Alexander and Hephaistion had even attended an ancient mystery in honour of Achilles at the ruins of Troy, where they had ran across a cypress grove, naked and oiled.

“Maybe we should run butt naked too and turn this movie into a blockbuster,” Colin joked to Jared while they downed their beers. He had finally asked Jared to join him for a round in the local bars. Colin desperately needed to get pissed, and somewhere deep in the most secret corners of his mind he understood that only by complying with Oliver’s request to spend time with Jared, he could chase away the nightmares.

After he started hitting bars with his co-star, Colin’s dreams became tranquil again, although the heated visions of him and Jared wriggling and sliding naked on silk and velvet cushions were not exactly soothing. Hephaistion had held Alexander’s wrists on the sides of his head, and Alexander could see the fine carvings in Hephaestion’s ruby and gold bracelets dance in the torchlight, when Hephaistion pushed inside him with one steady thrust, and the familiar sensation of being filled and claimed took over him.

His lines in the scenes with Jared floated away from his mouth of their own volition. Colin knew the words were beautiful and true, but still the script was lacking. What he said was not quite adequate, not quite enough to express what he felt when he stood before his most beloved friend, his soulmate. He and Jared practiced their scenes in their costumes in front of Oliver and the cameras. There were multiple takes, and his heart took over his mind. Colin felt how Alexander’s blood rushed in his veins. His life force was much more passionate, but it pulsed with the same beat as Colin’s own.

“Hephaistion.” His voice was thick with molasses, and his tongue was not his own, even if he wanted to say the words too. “Hephaistion, don’t you see that every night I wake up and look for you by my side, and when I do not find you, it hurts me more than the Persian spears ever could.” His hands had seized his lover, not his shoulder as the script told, but the soft skin and vigorous tendons of his neck. He was so close to him now. Their foreheads almost touching, he could smell the sun in his lover’s hair and the freshness that rivalled the water pools of Eleusinian mysteries. “Come with me, my friend.” The words choked in his throat. “Don’t you see, how much I need you? Lay with me tonight. Let me show you, how my body and my heart sing for you.”

The eyes of his lover embraced the space and eternity in their glimmering green spheres, in the depths he saw the untamed lush jungle he’d striven to explore all his life. His lover’s warm body burrowed against his, and Alexander felt like howling, when their mouths finally connected. Jared had lifted his hands to his face, not to push Colin away, but to keep him close. Smooth lips parted, and their tongues battled. The intensity of their joining overwhelmed them.

“When you kiss me, my body becomes melted wax,” Alexander whispered in Colin’s mind.

“For one look from you, I’d run my sword through all your enemies. For one touch from you, I’d run the sword through myself,” Hephaistion echoed back.

“Cut!” Oliver shouted. Reluctantly, Colin returned to the reality of filming. He did not want to pull back his arm that had snaked behind Jared’s back, and his free hand kept caressing Jared’s hair. Jared was panting, his chest heaved fast under the leather breastplate. Colin was shaken to the bone, unsure whether he would be able to walk to his chair.

*********************************

The shooting ended after what seemed to Colin like one long fevered acid trip. After his last scene Oliver and come to hug and shake his hand. Oliver had complimented him and said he was amazed at Colin’s method acting, surprised and most pleased. Hephaistion had died, and Colin had walked around the set feeling like an iron claw was ripping out the heart from his chest for two weeks, until they had finished shooting Alexander’s death scene.

Colin could not remember the last time he had been as drunk as he was at Jared’s farewell party. He had a huge gap in his memory of the night. The only thing he remembered was Jared pressing against him to speak to his ear over the blasting music. Colin had not heard what he said, but he had felt Jared’s moist lips linger on his earlobe. Slowly, the lips had grazed over to his cheekbone and stayed there for many heartbeats. Colin had turned his head, and their eyes had locked. Suddenly, Colin had sobered up, and a dull ache coiled in the pit of his stomach. Jared’s gaze was dark, dilated and inscrutable. Even if he wasn’t smiling at all, his face was beatific, truly and utterly divine in Colin’s eyes. This face was the one Alexander had loved. No. It was a face Colin loved. He had been about to speak, but they were interrupted by the party and had drifted apart. Colin had gone for another Jameson, and it was the last thing he recalled.

Back in L.A. and his normal life, the dull ache remained. The first months had been the hardest, and even the usual miracle cure of booze and blondes didn’t help him. He was considering a shrink again. Either by madness or magic, whatever it was, Alexander had taken over him, but now he was gone. A man so different from himself, yet he felt too familiar, like something you had been a long time ago, but then the events of your life made you become a new person, very different from what you were before. Colin had toyed with Jared’s phone number. What could have he said to him? Asked Jared, if he believed in reincarnation? Colin was not Alexander, and he most certainly was not in love with Jared, Hephaistion, whatever. He was the shallow, party-going Irish actor, infamous bad boy and womaniser, the master of his own fate. Was that all he was?

He couldn’t help his dreams though. Had he somehow infuriated Morpheus, the god of dreams? So Colin resigned, because he could no longer fight back the inevitable. He let himself actually enjoy the nights he spent with Jared. No matter what age, past or present, they were in, or whatever exotic land, there was one constant. They loved each other, and they never were apart.

Then came the time of the premiere, and Colin sweated it out for two weeks. His dreams seemed to grow in their intensity too, as the feared date approached, and Colin did his best to brace himself for whatever his own reaction would be at the sight of Jared. Finally, Colin spotted him on the red carpet, passing the reporters and other cast members, walking straight towards him. There was a shimmering halo around Jared, an illusion created by the flashing cameras, and he looked lost but determined, only somewhat dazed by all the fussing around him. Then, he seemed to find what he was looking for. The widest smile Colin had ever seen lit Jared’s face, and the emerald eyes sparkled.

Colin was frozen where he stood, cold and hot shivers running along his spine. The whole room and all the people disappeared, and he was just standing there alone, raising his eyes timidly from the tips of his shoes to meet Jared’s eyes. The stubble on Jared’s cheek looked as silky as the loose strands of his hair, and Colin brushed the beard with the back of his hand, fingers rediscovering familiar sensations. It was as if they had met for the first time, but this first time was intricately woven into all the other first times they had had, and the silver thread of time brought all the joy and love of the past encounters to this moment. Colin reached out for Jared’s hand, and their fingers entwined.

The End