Suffice it to say, things hadn’t worked out the way you’d planned.
Oh, sure, it was all wine and roses at first, two swinging bachelors bound together by love and faith, with the ear of the emperor, living the high holy life in the big city. A word here, a recommendation there, and bang presto there’s a governorship for you, good sir, think of us kindly when we’re old and gray, you get the idea.
But then ohhhhh suddenly it’s not cool and edgy to be members of the apocalyptic new religion that’s making the rounds, it’s not enough to cough politely and say that boy you’re so stuffed from all the temple feasts you’ve been eating from the sacrifices you make all the time like the good Greek citizen that you are, people are handing you the knife and the lamb and making you demonstrate and just like that the jig is up.
Suddenly you’re nobodies, worse than nobodies, outcasts, and all your old fair-weather friends have been tasked with torturing you to death, and you’ve been made to wear women’s clothing (fun) and run six miles with nails through your feet (less so) and it’s hard not to feel a little ill-used, hard not to feel like you got a little o’erweening and brought this all on yourselves, somehow.
Well. They’ll see, they’ll all see. They can cut off your heads, but you’ll always have each other, and nothing’s sexier than a pair of martyrs. You’re gonna do fantastic up in heaven, you’re both gonna bang it out for centuries, dudes are gonna be hot for you for the next twelve hundred years.
Just you wait.