"Alexander, you must stop your pacing!"

"He should have been back hours ago, Ptolemy. Something must have happened. I must go look for him."

"You must just settle down, is what you must do. You are still getting over your illness, and all this roaming and pacing the camp in the cool night air, is not making you better. Do you wish to be even more ill when he comes home?"

Alexander hung his head. Ptolemy always seemed to be able to lecture him without making him angry. If anyone else would have ordered him about so rudely, he knew he would have not taken it quite so well. "No. I wish to only be sure he is alright."

"He won't arrive in the dead of night, Alexander. He has much more sense than that. Please, go back to your tent and get some rest. I have guards standing watch at every possible entrance to the camp. You will be informed of his arrival even before he rushes madly to your tent."

Giving in to the light that burned in his heart, the light that had been placed there by his beloved upon their first encounter, Alexander smiled at Ptolemy. "You are a very lucky man."

"Me? Whatever for?"

"Because I have not knocked you flying to your arse in the dirt for ordering me about like you so often do as of late."

"It is not my fault that you are being so unreasonable. Hephaistion is your usual voice of reason and in his absence, I have taken over his role."

"He is never quite so harsh."

"And I do not send your heart soaring into the clouds, nor do I warm your bed, Alexander. There are definite differences between the two of us. Off with you now before I drag you there myself."

Patting Ptolemy on the back, Alexander turned and made his way back to his tent, looking over his shoulder once to see his friend still watching him, arms folded over his chest. He was lucky to have such friends, even if they were tyrannical.

"You are fevered, my love."

The voice had to be a dream, or perhaps a hallucination from the fever. Hephaistion had much more sense than to travel in the dead of night.

"You are a dream, a lovely, endearing dream perhaps, but a dream nonetheless."

"Do you always welcome dream men into your bed, my love?"

"Only when they have such sweet voices and hold me as you are."

"I am not holding you, Alexander."

"Then you are surely not the man of my dreams, nor of my waking hours, for that man would know to wrap himself around me when he returned. He would know how worried I have been for his welfare, and how lonely I've been for his touch."

"Would you accept the arms of a lonely dream man tonight?"

"Only if he can assure me he will still be in my arms in the morning."

"He can."