Work Text:
They spend a lot of days like this- Sparta on Athens’ balcony, staring out over the city mournfully while Athens pages quietly through the latest translation of some trashy American novel, snacking on halva. Most of the days where they have no meetings, no business, nothing to attend to- and those days only seem to get more frequent as time passes.
They're bound to spend hours like this, silent as the noises of Plaka pass them by, the occasional cats coming up to Sparta's side on the balcony, only to be swatted away angrily, with some muted shouts of 'freaking fleabag’ as Athens looks on, vaguely amused. Eventually Sparta will give up and let the thing sit on his lap, but it's good to know that even after all these years he refuses to give up without a fight.
Today, today is different, though. Athens can't figure out why, but Sparta seems to be bored of his contemplation- he keeps fidgeting, twitching, to the point where the cat escaped his lap with a hiss. He even tried to steal a piece of Athens’ halva, which they both know is the final straw to a declaration of war.
Eventually, Athens gets sick of it. So he puts down the book, the spine white, and turns to Sparta, picking up a stray almond and tossing it at him.
“Hey,” he starts off with, and then when that still doesn't jerk Sparta out of it, tosses another almond. “Contemplating listlessly is supposed to be my forte, you know.” He says, and that finally grabs Sparta's attention.
“And threatening violence is supposed to be mine, but here we are.” He says, pausing.
“I was just thinking,” he says.
Athens snorts. “That's new.”
Sparta glares. “Ah yes, tell me again all the intellectual merits of Nora Roberts?”
It's Athens’ turn to glare.
Sparta smiles, every bit as smug as he was three thousand years ago while shoving a javelin through Athens’ ribcage.
But his smile fades as he stands up, his dark eyes going glazed over as he looks over at Athens. He'd always been like that- so regimented, so militaristic- but what the history books forgot that there had been times where he'd sat and contemplated enough to make Athens jealous. In fact, he could recall at least a few wars that had stemmed from that.
“Here,” he says, taking a few steps forwards, shoving a hand into his pocket and scrounging until he finds something. “You win,” Sparta says, and tosses Athens a thousand-or-so-year-old bottle of olive oil. “I think, at least.” He shrugs.
Athens peers up at him, framed by the faltering sunlight. “What do you mean?” He says, although he has the most sneaking suspicion that he already knows.
“All those wars we fought, those competitions, our bickering, our fights- well, you win, now. It's been three thousand years and we're both still standing, but you win.”
Athens considers the bottle of olive oil. It looks old enough to have already grown mold, and he checks- yep, that's mold. He makes a face, raises his eyebrows at Sparta.
“Quite a fantastic reward.”
“There's not much left to win at this point. I can throw you in a few free admissions to the History of Olive Oil museum, if you're interested.”
“That sounds fantastic,” Athens says, even though he's already been. It's an old habit, doing anything to empty Sparta's pockets, and he thinks he'll only be rid of it when he's dead.
Sparta sighs, swatting a mosquito and crushing it midair. “I should have known you'd say that.” He says, and sits down across the table from Athens, a spot usually reserved for whatever stray cat decides to wander in and not sit on Sparta's lap. He steals a bit of halva, and Athens smacks his hand. Sparta punches him in the side.
As is a general rule with them, it escalates, until Athens has Sparta pinned by both hands on his living room floor, bits of halva scattered in his hair.
“I hate that,” Sparta pants out, eyes wild. “That you always beat me. Nobody can hold a candle to you today, beat you in for being the stubborn prick that you are.”
Athens wants to laugh. “You miss the days when one of my main priorities was keeping you from driving a spear through my throat?”
“Like Orpheus missed his shot.”
Athens glares. “Stop referencing my myths.”
Under his grip, Sparta shrugs. “You think most of the world can tell the difference between the two? I can barely, anymore.” And I was there, he doesn't say, but Athens knows him well enough to hear the words anyways.
Sparta pushes Athens off him, more gently than usual. He's wearing an expression that, had it been on anyone ( anyone ) else, Athens would have read as pain.
“I miss fighting you,” he says, pushing a stray lock of hair behind his ear, and at Athens’ grin, continues, “You were an intolerable ass then, make no mistake, but back then you were… interesting. Now you're just kind of lazy.”
Athens raises an eyebrow. “And out of the two of us, who would you say has fallen further?” Because he can remember a time where Sparta could stand toe to toe with him and hold his own, no matter if his population was a fraction of Athens. He remembers that it was Sparta who first held off the Persians (one of the only times they'd ever fought side by side, and it had been somehow more exhilarating than fighting against him). He remembers Sparta, his enemy, ruthless and ambitious and ready to kill Athens for a fewdrachmas and do it with a smile.
Sparta smiles. “Touché,” he says, and does not elaborate, but Athens can easily fit in the words he knows his oldest enemy would say, if he'd ever been one for words. Everyone knows me for who I was. Nobody knows me for who I am, nobody likes that- hell, I don't even like present me.
Athens gets up, making the horrific mistake of leaving Sparta with the halva as he heads for his bookcase. He picks a book off at random, and chucks it at Sparta, stopping him mid- halva crusade.
“Ow,” Sparta bitches, rubbing his head before picking the book off the floor. “ The Republic? Really?”
Athens just grins. “Would you rather Nora Roberts?”
Sparta eyes him disgustedly, but doesn't throw the book at him. No, Sparta pulls out a knife (the one he always keeps in his lower left pocket, Athens knows) and aims it at Athens. It nails him right in the middle of his palm, showing blood and tendon and bone.
Athens laughs, pulling it out of his hand without so much as a wince and heading to the sink to wash it of blood.
When he's back, he sits down and asks. “So, now that your mandatory once-every-thousand-or-so years contemplation is over, what are we to do?”
Sparta shrugs. “We could see how long I can drag out killing you.”
“We could see how long you can drag out killing me without getting blood all over my bookshelf, yes.”
“You're no fun.”
“And you're not important enough for me to care.”
“Fuck you, all your entire population does is sit on their asses and smoke all day.”
“Same with yours.”
“-But mine's smaller, so therefore it counts as a lesser sin.”
“Sin? So we're going to Byzantine times now?”
There's a pause, then,
"Tourist town." Sparta says.
"Total dump." Athens replies.
Sparta grins. Athens grins back.
So the day goes.