#vasileios

The door creaked open. And there he was.

Odysseus.

The first thing Vasileios noticed, to his shame, was how frighteningly small his husband was. He looked as though he'd been hungry for a very long time. His beard, though roughened by sea salt and a few days longer than usual, was neatly trimmed. Where had he found himself, Vasileios wondered, that he would care for his appearance but not for his health?

His eyes were hard, framed by dark circles, and angry in a way that had never been aimed towards his love.

"Who are you," Odysseus demanded, a hand clenching the bow at his hip as the other hovered over the quiver at his other side. "What have you done with her? Where is my wife?"

A lump formed in Vasileios' throat.

"I remember once," he said softly in lieu of an answer, "beneath a certain olive tree, that you made me a promise. Do you recall what it was?"

Odysseus' hand lowered slowly from the bow, confusion furrowing his brow.

"We promised to love one another, then and always, no matter... no matter..." Vasileios blinked rapidly.

"No matter how life changed us," Odysseus finished. His body slackened as the tension left him in a rush. "Penelope? Is that... are you...?"

"Vasileios, now," the king's consort explained with a watery smile. "I know it's... rather a bit more literal than we meant it then, but I hope you can still see that I am me."

Odysseus dropped the bow. It clattered to the floor, echoing his footsteps as he crossed the room. He raised a hand, slowly, gently, as though afraid to frighten him.

"...there is a lightness in your eyes I can't recall ever seeing," he said, brushing a hand over Vasileios' clean-shaven cheek and down the well-groomed beard at his chin, "although I dreamt of them every night."

Those gentle fingers brushed a tear from Vasileios' cheekbone.

"You look different," Vasileios noted, before chuckling in embarrassment. "Though, I suppose I'm not one to talk, am I?"

Odysseus smiled, soft and small, as if the expression were afraid to show itself. "I am not the man you fell in love with," he admitted quietly. "It would be remiss of me as a husband to renounce my love simply because you are no longer the woman I married. But I ask, Vasileios, could you fall in love with me a second time, if you knew what terrible things I've done to return to you?"

Vasileios couldn't suppress a sob of mixed relief and empathy. "W-what sort of things did you do?" he asked, fighting to regain his composure. The hand retreated from his cheek.

"Reddened the sea across every island I landed upon," Odysseus declared in a dead voice, his eyes betraying the depths of pain he truly felt. "Sacrificed men I loved with all my heart, because the love I held for them could never compare to that which I hold for you."

Vasileios' hand was lifted softly, clasped between two worn with unfamiliar scars.

"The atrocities I've committed cannot be undone," Odysseus whispered. "Could you still love me as the man I've become, even if I am not your kind and gentle husband?"

Ah, this foolish man. Vasileios stood, pulling away from his touch and pretending it didn't burn behind his eyes to do so.

"If it's true that you have changed so irrevocably," he said, "can you do something for me? A simple task, just to bring me peace of mind?"

Odysseus looked at him quizzically, but with naked hope in his eyes.

"Will you move our wedding bed from this room, so that we might enjoy each others' company in greater comfort?"

The change was stark as the question visibly settled in Odysseus' mind. His gaze darkened with hurt, then with anger. His fists clenched at his sides.

"How could you ask this of me," he asked, the devastation in his voice nearly shaking Vasileios' resolve. "I built this wedding bed with my own hands, a monument to my love for you. I built a home around my love for you!" He was shouting now, anger boiling from the sea of sorrow. "A symbol of our love, our vows, to be as steadfast and everlasting as its very roots in the soil. And you ask me to cut it from those roots?"

Vasileios crossed the distance between them fearlessly, cradling the face of a man who still wore the blood of a hundred others as he stared into his fury with an anger to match.

"Only my husband would know this, or care for its preservation," he shouted in return, tears streaming down his face, "and you dare to try and convince me that you are no longer that man?"

The anger drained from Odysseus so quickly that Vasileios worried for a moment that he may faint. He tucked his king's face into his neck, burying his nose into curls crusted in blood and sea salt.

"I would fall in love with you a thousand times," Vasileios declared, anger at the loss of time turning to wetness on his face and in his husband's hair. "I will fall in love with the man you have become, and every man you've been for twenty years, and every man you will be until we both embrace the shroud of death."

Odysseus' shoulders shook.

"And I ask, husband," Vasileios continued, pulling himself away to meet the king's red-rimmed eyes, "can I ask the same of you? I am not the woman you loved. I am not your sweet and soft Penelope. I have changed much to keep this household safe, to bring myself some happiness in the face of my grief. I will never be her again, and I do not wish to be. Can you love me as I am, and for every man I will be?"

Odysseus pulled Vasileios' hands into his own once again.

"Vasileios," he said seriously, "if I am still the man you love, you cannot tell me you are not the person I married." He turned their hands over, tracing his partner's fingers. "These callouses from your weaving, I know them. I had memorized them a thousand times, so well I could follow a map of them more closely than any of Ithaca." His hand slid up Vasileios' arm to a spot on his wrist. "This scar from the knife you learned to wield in secret as a child, I know it too. This strength," he caressed his upper arms, "from decades of working the loom, I know how these arms have held me, and will again. These things are you, my love, and I know them."

Hands cradled Vasileios' face. Two thumbs traced the dark circles beneath his eyes, wiping away fresh tears. "I do not know this tiredness to your face, nor the wrinkles that adorn it. I do not know this grayness to your hair." Odysseus drew a tentative hand through the softness of his lover's mane. "But I want nothing more in the world than to know them as I know all the rest of you, my love."

Vasileios sobbed, finally caving to his desire to cling to Odysseus like a child. His husband's arms wrapped around him just as tightly, as though afraid he would disappear the moment he let go.