Chapter 1: The Cave
Chapter Text
Achaia Journal
Wednesday, July 3, 2012
Boys rescued after nine days trapped in cave
The two boys who were trapped in a cave since last Sunday have been rescued and brought to the hospital, according to the local police. Their condition is said to be serious but not life threatening.
The good news was delivered at the local police’s press conference yesterday, where the mayor of Sparta, Menelaus Atriden, also spoke.
– The dramatic rescue that kept our entire nation up at night has finally come to an end, Atriden told the gathered press. The two brave boys are now reunited with their families. I trust everyone to show them and their families respect during their recovery.
Atriden also expressed his gratitude to everyone who contributed to the rescue.
– I want to thank the brave men and women on the rescue team, the police force, the paramedics, our good friends at the Argos Institute of Geophysics, and everyone else who helped, one way or another, during these nerve wracking times.
Although heavily criticized for being slow, the rescue operation is now being described as the most advanced one in Achain history, engaging national as well as international audience. It was last Sunday that two boys, 11 and 10 years old, got trapped as they played in cavities of a rock, in the forest outside of Sparta. The younger boy was reported missing on Sunday evening when he didn’t come home, and the older one on Monday when he didn’t show up for school.
Because the affected families didn’t have any ties to each other, the police at first suspected that a crime had been committed, and issued a call for observations amongst the townspeople. On Monday evening, a farmer reported that he the day before had seen two boys enter the forest by his property, and as the police managed to track the younger boy’s phone to a mast nearby, the search was soon limited to the forest. With the help of tracker dogs the boys could be traced to the cave entrance, and by Tuesday morning the suspicion of a crime was overruled, as all evidence suggested that the boys had entered the cave willingly.
Exactly how the boys got trapped in the cave is still unclear, but it is likely that their way out was blocked, either by water or collapsed rocks, or that they simply got lost in the dark, narrow and complex tunnel system. Local authorities are now being criticized as documents show that they have known about the cavities for years, but haven’t taken any measures to block them.
To get the boys out of the cave safely turned out to be a race against time. Since the cave system had never been mapped properly, it was impossible for the rescue team to know where to search for the boys. It was also quickly ruled that the cavities were too narrow and unstable for the rescue team to enter. The best option seemed to be to locate the boys from above and try to dig them out. To be able to follow through with this plan, a geophysical mapping of the area had to be done, and a GPR, also known as a ground-penetrating radar, was flown in from The Argos Institute of Geophysics.
The equipment didn’t arrive until late Wednesday evening. To scan an area of one hectare would normally take 20 to 30 hours, but because of heavy rain on both Thursday and Friday, as well as the difficult terrain in the forest, the process was slowed down even further. This delay got questioned by many. One could ask why the people in charge of the mission didn’t send for the equipment needed earlier. As the flight from Argos to Sparta only takes three hours, the GPR could have arrived already on Tuesday if only the call had been made right away, and the mapping could've been complete before the rainfall.
It wasn’t until Saturday evening that the mapping was finally complete. With the GPR the rescue team was able to scan the ground, basically creating a 3D scan of the bedrock. And once the scan had been analyzed, the team had a clue as to where inside the cavities the missing boys could be. A borehole was then made deep into the rock, aiming for the cave most likely to fit the boys. To do this, the team used equipment most often used in mining, or when installing a downhole heat exchanger.
It was a tricky and risky task that had to be done with utmost precision and caution. First of all, no one knew if the bore was aiming for the right cave. Worst case scenario, the team could lose many crucial hours if they ended up choosing the wrong lead. Second, there was uncertainty as to how the rock would react to the vibrations of the drilling, and if the boys were in risk of being harmed. Third, and most important, was the question of the boys’ well-being. At this point in the rescue, it was still highly unclear if the boys were even alive. There had still been no sign of them. Not only had they been trapped in the cave for an entire week, assumingly without anything to eat or drink. The heavy rainfall on Thursday and Friday was also worrying, as there was a risk that the cavities would flood.
It wasn't until Sunday, exactly one week after the disappearance, that the rescue team was able to get in contact with the boys. When the borehole reached the cavity, a camera and a speaker was lowered into the rock, and the team was finally able to confirm that both boys were in the cave, and and that they were both alive.
Once the boys had been located, the actual rescue was commenced. This proved to be the most challenging part of the mission. Oxygen was immediately led down through the borehole, as well as water for the boys to drink. And while the boys’ health was being seen to, another borehole was being prepared. The plan was to make a larger borehole a few meters from the first one, and then the rescue team would be able to lower themselves into the rock and dig the boys out from the side of the cave.
The rescue team and everyone involved worked night and day to get to the boys as soon and as safely as possible, and the once undisturbed forest of Sparta turned into a bizarre construction site unlike anything ever seen in the area. The larger bore was also borrowed from The Argos Institute of Geophysics, as well as a water pump to cool the bore down, and a special hammer drill. An excavator had to be brought on site, to carry away any remains of the rock. There was also a firetruck present, an ambulance, a forestry machine, police cars, service cars, press, local politicians, as well as hundreds of worried Spartans, hovering by the barrier tape.
On Tuesday morning, at approximately 5.30, the two boys were finally rescued from below ground, seeing sunlight again for the first time in almost 210 hours. Both boys were reportedly conscious when brought to the hospital, and their condition was later described as serious but not life threatening. No further information concerning their health has been released since, but according to a paramedic on site it is to be expected that they are frozen and severely dehydrated after having spent 9 days trapped in the cave.
When the boys were being carried away by paramedics, deafening cheers broke out amongst the people gathered in the forest. The relief and happiness of the Spartans were palpable. In the midst of it all, our reporter on site spotted a woman crying silently by the cordon.
– I’m crying because this rescue is a beautiful example of what we people can achieve when we work together, she told the reporter, voice thick with emotion. And I’m crying because I’m so, so happy the boys are alive, and free. I haven’t been able to sleep for days, thinking about them. How they were trapped in the cold, damp and pitch black cave for an entire week, and without knowing what was happening on the outside, without knowing that we were coming for them. One can only imagine how absolutely terrified they must have been.
Chapter 2: The Lake
Chapter Text
Tones muscles.
Arms and legs and torsos. Stretching, grasping, tumbling. Skin glistening with sweat and sunshine.
Their laughter gives me shills. I am seconds away from either running away, or joining them in the game. I have my soles planted on the ground and my hands on the knotty grass, my fingers splayed wide, grasping the warm summer earth. But whenever they pass the ball between them I feel the slick rubber against my palms. Whenever someone jumps to catch it, there is a shock reverberating from my feet to my knees, even though I am sitting on the ground.
I am only a mirror to them. Cool and silent and observing. A confirmation that they are indeed unattainable and unbearable.
Their voices have found their depths by now. None of them is no longer afraid to use it. I cannot hear what they say from where I sit, but the melody is as intriguing as any song. One of the voices stands out, though. The tenor, the lead vocals. Perhaps it is because he makes sure to speak louder than everyone else. Or perhaps, it is because the sound pierces my chest where the others bounce against white bone.
His voice, my flesh absorbs it like a sponge.
Whenever he speaks, I feel as if he lives inside me.
He is the epitome of viability. The epitome of health and youth.
Achilles Peliden.
“Don’t look at him.”
Her words barely reach me. My consciousness is shriveled up someplace deep within my head, swimming in a dense brain fog, as black as the lake. I do not look away.
“Everyone is looking”, I say.
We are at the lake with everyone else, because it is summer, and because this is Sparta. Because we are teenagers now, dreaming of sex, love and attention.
To us they are the same thing, really.
And he is the tallest of them. Achilles. The fastest and strongest, too. Qualities we used to say matter, and now we lie and say that they do not. But Achilles knows the truth. When he towers above all of us, like a monument of soldiers and bloodspill, he knows that no one is unaffected.
The knowledge makes him a decimeter taller.
“Exactly. Don’t feed his ego, you too.”
Our spot is in the shadows, because Briseis does not want to sweat and I do not want to burn. I pull up blades of rough, green grass with a flick of my wrists and think of that old film, the one where a scientist shrinks his kids to the size of ants and their lawn turns into a jungle. It was the only movie we had at home when I grew up, an old VHS tape that I watched over and over – until the tape eventually gave out – to secretly disappear into daydreams of exotic environments in my own backyard.
Back then I found it exciting to imagine a life that small. Now that I know what it feels like, I do not want it anymore.
I finally turn to her. She is a wall. Pitch black sunglasses, square shoulders, mouth a straight line. The corner of my mouth twitch. I poke her exposed ribs, but she does not budge.
“Hey”, I say. “What would you do if he asked you out?”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“But what if?” I pester.
She snickers, and her eyes finally meet mine above the rim of her glasses.
“Why would I want to go on a date with Achilles, and why would he want to go on a date with me?”
I roll my eyes, annoyed that she will not play this game with me.
“You’re right. You’re too boring.” I throw a handful of grass at her.
It is still endearing bicker at this point, so I leave it at that. I do not breach the contract of friendship, I do not tell her what I really think: That her playing hard-to-get is embarrassing and will not work. That trying so hard to be different does not make her unique or independent.
That it makes her pathetic, just like every other teenager who spends their time in this vain dump of a park.
“Would you sleep with him though?” I continue, thoughtlessly, and wonder what that question makes me.
My head inevitably turn to the vigorous bodies, and even Briseis spares them a glance this time. Obnoxious laughter and upbeat music hide our thoughts from one another as we observe them in silence. He darts across the lawn, a flash of gold and wheat and sugar. The others try to hinder him, but his movements are as elusive as his gaze. Like a fish playing in the stream, slick and shiny.
I can see the piercing in his ear sparkle all the way from the shadows.
“I wouldn’t sleep with him if he was the last man on earth.”
Briseis’s tone does to the conversation what a bulldozer would to a rabbits den. The carcasses of my words scatter silently around us.
There is judgement in her silence, but I am not sure it is actually meant for me. I am not sure what she actually thinks of me. If she thinks I am pathetic. If she thinks I am a good actor, or if she simply does not know that she is being fooled.
In the hollow that arises between Briseis and I, the distinct, soft thumping of feet against earth catches my attention. I turn my head towards the sound, wishing for a good distraction.
Two guys from school quickly approach us. I wish then that I would have kept my gaze on the ground, so I did not have to see their vicious grins. I wish, once more, that I was as small as an ant.
They playfully shove each other as they walk by, just in front of our spot. “Did he have a boner?” one of them snickers, throwing another glance my way.
Even though I am in the shadows, my face heats up when I lower my eyes to make sure that I, in fact, do not have a boner.
“Ignore them”, Briseis says.
I nod. But my throat is thick and my heart beats fast.
“Where are you going?” she asks when I stand up.
“To the kiosk”, I mumble.
Gravel prick the soles of my feet as I walk the often traveled path, and I do my best to seem unbothered. The kiosk is nestled between the toilets and the parking lot and it smells like beer, piss and petrol. Nevertheless, I buy myself a soda and linger by the weathered building. The guys who mocked me are nowhere to be seen, and the drink is cool and sweet on my tongue, but every time I take a chug I see my hand shaking.
Even here, even now, surrounded by blaring music and laughter and children screaming, I turn to the sound of his voice. I cannot help myself, it seems. As if I have hope he will one day meet my gaze.
He is still kicking the ball around, still basking in sunlight and attention. And his eyes are still focused solely on the toy, following it like a cat follows a red dot. Never anywhere near my face. But there is something off in the way he angles his head, the way he twists his feet, how he contains his smile … And I wonder what will happen if I grab onto that something, pull at it …
I walk closer to the cliff, under the pretense that I am just strolling, perhaps heading for the water. Like I am not aware that the path I choose brings me closer to the gang playing with the ball. Every step twice as many heartbeats. But they do not acknowledge me as I go to stand just by the ledge. They do not acknowledge me as I pretend not to acknowledge them.
No one is diving from the cliff. Maybe the lake is still too cold. I stick my head out over the edge, knowing that I am acting just like Briseis now – perhaps her judgement is justified after all. The water below looks like oil. Black, thick, shiny. Or like the soda in my hand. I shudder. It looks like it could be bottomless.
The next second I am tumbling face first towards it.
It could have been an accident, but most likely not. The moment it happens it is already too late to care, too late to change.
The echo of the shove to my shoulder quickly fades. But the fall is long. I have time to brace myself, to gasp for air, to close my eyes. The landing is not graceful. I splay my arms and legs wide, trying to make myself as big as possible to break the plunge. It hurts. The water slaps my cheek, my chest, stomach, palms, thighs and calves. It rips me open, it prickles and burns and spreads like wildfire across my skin, as if it really is coca-cola I am bathing in.
Cool darkness quickly engulf me. It fills my ears, slows my movements, drags me down. I have heard that humans, just like cats, have the reflex to always orient themself to an upright position, but I am afraid mine might be broken. I flay wildly with my limbs, kicking and grasping and pushing myself towards what I think is up, up.
The pulse is throbbing in my head when I finally resurface. I sputter and spit and cough, and start swimming for the staircase by the cliff. I cannot see the top of it, not without turning my head. I cannot see who is watching me, laughing at me. At that moment I do not care, I think only about reaching the stairs. If I pay too much attention to the height, or the black surface, I think I might faint.
A hand is there, stretched toward me, when I am about to pull myself out of the water. I stare at it a second too long before I accept it. The disappointment is almost heavy enough to make me sink.
“Are you okay?” Briseis asks, voice wavering.
I touch my chest, gazing down at my trembling body. I am surprised to find that I am not bleeding anywhere, everywhere. Surprised that my intestines are not hanging out of a gash across my stomach.
My legs are numb as I ascend the stairs, my grip on the dry, wooden railing firm. The gaze of a hundred eyes prickles my skin, like the splinters left in my palm. Some people applaud me. Briseis puts an arm around my shoulder and brings me close to her side, to shield me from them. But not before I get a glimpse of Achilles, ball finally still in his hands. He is too far away for me to see the expression on his face.
At least I got what I wished for.
Later that evening, as I examine my abused body in front of my mirror – pressing, pulling, stroking – it does not hurt anymore. But my skin is still red and blotchy. My fingertips leave white dots behind, fading constellations. Blood rushing hot and wild beneath, leaving a tart taste in my mouth.
I have left the window open, letting the lukewarm winds of nightfall act as a balm to my wounds. The shallow ones, at least. But now darkness is seeping into my room, like ink bleeding into a paper, and I cannot unsee the mold-like stains in the corners of the window frame, as if they are really in the corners of my eyes.
The lamp on my desk casts a bright and warm glow across my room when I flick the switch, but it does little to chase my demons away. A moth is quickly there. It flings itself against the lightbulb glowing white, again and again – the quick, thumping sound of its wings is unreasonably loud for something so small. There is sadness and despair in the way the moth flutters. So restless in its search for light. So tragically striving.
I always find them dead in the morning.
I am frozen to the ground, in the middle of my room that is too big and too small at the same time. My feet numb, as if they have yet to warm up after the swim in the lake. Chill creeps up on me, like frostbite, but I know it comes neither from the swim nor the open window. I press my hand to the red, uneven flowers just above my heart, and it is thumping as wildly as the moth’s wings, and I think that it is odd that I can freeze and burn at the same time.
Still, it does not hurt. The impact does not hurt anymore. I do not think about the fall, the shove, nor the teasing before that. I still do not care who it was. Only one thing consumes my mind:
I cannot stop thinking about that bottle of coke.
One minute I held it in my hand, the cool glass clasped steadily between my fingers, the content's fruity sweetness still coating my throat.
Next, it was gone, and I was choking on humic substance.
We took a fall.
And I swam.
I did not pick it up, did I?
No, it must still be there, in the lake.
Forgotten.
And glass does not float, does it?
So I let it sink.
I left it to the abyss.
…
Has it reached the bottom yet?
My fingers are stiff and cramping as I search for the number in my phone, then press it too tight against my ear. Forced to listen to my own breathing, I hear just how strained it is. A wheezing sound. Fizzy. It sounds like my lungs are filled with fluid. It sounds like brown bubbles exploding in my face and in my nose and on my skin. It sounds like coke, mingling with murky lake water.
“Yes?” says the voice on the other end.
The air is hot and thick, and my face is clammy. I feel the sweat like a second skin on top of my frozen expression.
I inhale again, but nothing happens. No words come out. Instead I am stuck with a breath lodged in my throat. The pressure starts to build in my head, behind my eyes, my tongue begins to tingle.
I make the mistake of once more facing myself in the mirror. And I see eyes that are pitch black, dilated. Scary. And I scare myself even more by looking too deeply into them. Instinctively I recoil and scrunch my eyes shut. But behind the lids I am tumbling, once again lost in thick, impenetrable darkness, and the smell of rotten moss and clay is so strong in my nose that I think it has been forever ingrained into my skin.
My lungs finally give out, my chest collapsing. The air bursts out of my mouth and nose in painful spurts. A broken cry follows.
“I’ll be right there”, the voice on the phone says.
Seven minutes later, Achilles Peliden climbs through my window.
Chapter 3: The Home
Notes:
Hi guys! This chapter was a bit fragmented, so it took me longer to finish than I had planned. But hopefully the next one wont take as long. I am really challenging myself with the way I write and post this story, and I am so happy to see that you guys seem to like it! Your kudos and comments mean everything. <3
Chapter Text
The press follow me home from the hospital. The police too. Their movements falter when they see the trailer, as if it is a small rock to be stumbled upon. I watch them from behind the curtains, safe from their scrutinizing gaze. But not safe from their judgement. No longer do I have to wear the dark glasses that protected my eyesight. The disdain on their faces is crystal clear and clearly outlined, easy even for a child like me to fill in.
I flinch every time one of their cameras flashes.
I thought this would be the end of it all. That I would come home and continue life as a lonely, careful boy in the outskirts of Sparta. At first, I think this is what I want. But it turns out the homecoming is just the beginning.
The months following the rescue are hectic, our convalescence killed by curiosity of the people. Everyone wants to hear the story of the cave-boys. Our story. Achilles’s and mine. I do not know why they bothered to rescue us when they will not let us go.
"It's weird", dad says in the car, when we are on our way to the first tv-broadcasted interview. "I don’t know how to be proud of a son who got lost and almost died. But here I am about to show you off to the world, as if what you did is something extraordinary."
Dad volunteered to be my entourage on the travels, now he looks at me as if I am a jigsaw puzzle and he is not sure wether to solve it or discard the pieces. I do not argue with him. I am a living piece of frosty glass about to break from tensile stress, one prick away from exploding in a firework of shards. But I hold myself together the best I can and press my forehead to the window. Somewhere out there in the grey road mist of polluted rain is Achilles and his parents. I have not seen him since we left the hospital. I have not seen him in a city, surrounded by steel and glass and concrete. The white haired boy in the forest.
We meet in the parking lot outside the tv-studio. He is smaller than I remember. His lithe body does not match my memory of the sound of his voice. The weight of his presence. The depth of his stare. It stunnes me into silence, and I lower my gaze to the ground.
A man with a badge and a hundred keys around his neck greets the five of us at the entrance and leads us inside. As we trudge down the long, empty hallway, I am as aware of Achilles eyes on the side of my face as I am of my own two feet and their steps echoing in the vast building. His stare and proximity is like a thought in the back of my mind, knocking at my consciousness, asking to be remembered. I ignore him as I would rain against the window, and hope it does not turn into a downpour.
The crew only leaves us alone for a brief minute, just before the show is about to start. They place my dad and Achilles’s parents in the audience, and me and Achilles on a small sofa backstage. My skin tingles. We sit as close to each other as possible without touching, and still I do not dare to look at him. Do not dare to breach the rift, fill the gaps. Open the dam. I try to focus on unnecessary things. The air is hot and dry and I wet my lips again and again. My mouth tastes like old fabric. Specks of dust fall like snow in the spotlights, and I want to hold my breath, or cough, as I imagine the particles lining the inside of my lungs.
A shift beside me disturbs my concentration, how it stirs the specks in the cone of light. Then there is the ghost of a puff of air against my ear.
“Hi …” Achilles whispers. Just like that first time.
Before I have a chance to respond or even react to hearing his voice again, they cut the lights. My pupils explode, my throat tightens, and my heart falls with an obnoxiously loud hissing sound. Achilles’s thin, warm fingers quickly force their way into my palm. He squeezes my hand so tight his nails leave indents in my skin, brutally cutting across the creases there, the heart line, the life line. His touch seeps right into my bloodstream, like the tranquilizers they gave me before they plucked me from the darkness, and I feel myself sinking deeper into the cushions on the sofa, deeper into his side, into submission.
When they finally call us up on stage, I am leaning heavily against Achilles, our shoulders and arms rubbing against each other with every step.
It feels like the home I never had.
Achilles and I are shipped back and forth across the country like two freaks in a traveling circus. Every weekend is the same story, in a new studio. The torture of the long hours on planes or in cars are tolerable, and so is the stench of dad’s cigarettes and his condescending comments. Because every weekend they put Achilles and me next to each other on a sofa, and every weekend our hands find each other, as darkness finds us.
Why they keep inviting me to these performances, I do not know. I have yet to say more than a couple of words during an interview. Achilles, on the other hand, tells the story better each time. He gives the audience more vivid details, more expression to sympathize with, leaves them with dramatic pauses in just the right places. I sometimes wonder if he was even there with me, in the cave. Every word out of his mouth is detached in a way I cannot fathom, a detailed retelling of a book read long, long ago. Meanwhile, every minute on stage my heart is in my throat and panic is a white slate just behind my eyes. Yet I thirst for it. I drink the sound of Achilles’s billowing voice like ambrose. He could have told me that I was never there, that the days and nights in the cave were merely a nightmare, and I would have believed him.
I know I have no real purpose there, sitting like a statue next to Achilles. But I would not want to be anywhere else. Monday to Friday I am barely functioning, walking around in a haze, my gaze lost in the horizon. I imagine I look like my mother when she is high on Diazepam. My teacher even asks me if I am taking medication, to which I smile secretly. It is a miracle I pass school, because I spend more time watching the clock on the wall than the whiteboard. Maybe they feel sorry for me.
My dad, on the other hand, does not.
"I'm sorry you have to do this on your own, Achilles", he says one day, without subtle disappointment, after an interview where I was unusually unspoken.
Achilles and his parents look at my dad. Then their eyes land on me. Achilles’s mom wrinkles her nose, as if I smell bad. Maybe I do. I swallow. Achilles looks very much like her, and now he wears the same disgusted expression. But he has turned to face my dad. He stares at him. A bold, scrutinizing gaze, trailing from head to toe. I see dad’s hands twitch, and I wonder if he would hit someone else's son in front of their own parents. I swallow again, harder, as if my saliva has clotted from me never speaking up.
But Achilles’s back is straight, straighter than mine ever were. And even though he is shorter and lighter than my stout father, I believe he would be the victor in whatever fight there was between them.
Crew members from the tv-team come to let us out before I get my suspicion confirmed. The grown-ups walk ahead. When it is just me and Achilles again, he puts an arm around my shoulder, and I wonder if he knows what it does to me.
His breath is hot against my ear. "It’s okay, Patroclus", he whispers.
I am not sure it is. I am not sure that I am not wasting anyone’s money or time or reputation. I am not sure I am being fair to Achilles. To his parents, to my parents. On the other hand, I never asked to be placed in the spotlight in front of a camera and a microphone. I never meant to get stuck in a hole in the ground.
I only wanted to get away for a little while …
When we get home that evening, dad grabs my shoulders where Achilles’s small arm has just so tenderly rested, and yells at me that it is fucking time I speak to the fucking journalists. I think he wishes he was the one who got lost and stuck. I think he thinks he would have handled nearly dying better than I do.
I wipe his spit from my face and bite my tongue. I bite my tongue until I taste blood. I have nothing to say. Not to him, not to them.
I was sure I was going to die. Now I do not know how to live.
With all the attention brought to me, it is inevitable that someone notice that something is not quite right. It could have been Achilles’s parents, but I do not think they care enough to see anything but their own problems. No, it was probably the police, or maybe one of the journalists always snooping around.
It is a crystal clear April morning when Child Protective Service come to get me at the trailer. It is -7°C, and I am wearing worn down sneakers, a pair of pants that are too short for my legs, and a hoodie. Two women enter my room and they smile at me, but their eyes are shiny. They look at the plastic bag with the logo from the local supermarket, now containing my things. A pair of shoes, and a few items of clothing. They ask If I do not want to bring anything else from the trailer with me. Some toys maybe, or a teddy bear? I fetch my mother’s old guitar. Not because it has sentimental value to me, but because when the strange women look at me like that, I do not want to leave empty handed.
I do not turn around as I step out of the trailer. The press is waiting outside. Of course. By now I have learned not to flinch when their cameras flashes. Mom cries, quietly. She gives me a pat on the cheek when I pass her, and her dry, skinny fingers are foreign against my skin. Dad observes me in silence, the same look on his face as during our travels together. With a pang in my chest I realize there will be no more tv-studios, no more interviews, no more sofas backstage.
The farewell almost turns bittersweet.
I am sent to live with an older man called Chiron, in a villa in central Sparta. He has cared for many broken and discarded boys in the past, acting as a kind of halfway house while they wait for their foster families to be found.
I spend spring and summer with the pointless shore of settling in. I try to learn where the cutlery goes in the drawers. I try turn the corners without hitting my shoulder. I try to get used to the potent smell of resin in the house, as every surface in Chiron’s house seems to be made out of wood.
He is a professional, Chiron. I can tell. He does not hover, nor does he let me think I am unsupervised or uncared for. He gives me no reason to grow attached, no reason to flee. No reason to long for anywhere or anyone else.
Only one person.
The move to Chiron’s house means I have to change schools, to a more central one, and it feels like the world has been lifted off of my shoulders when I realize I will be in the proximity of Achilles everyday. My savior. My Diazepam. My white haired guardian angel.
The day I go back to school after the long summer is the first time I feel excited. Ever. He is easy enough to spot on the playground, even through the wall of kids surrounding him. His white hair shines like a beacon of light in the warm August sun.
I go up to greet him happily, rucksack bouncing on my back as I elbow my way through his friends like a bowling ball through a bunch of tenpins.
"Hi!" I grin, and already do I feel relief ringing through my bones, like Pavlov's bell. I hope he will throw his arm around my shoulder, inject me, coat my veins with warmth.
He does not greet me back. The smile freeze on my face. For a second I wonder if I have somehow mistaken, approached the wrong person, and I think that maybe Achilles has an unknown twin, because he looks at me like he has absolutely no idea who I am.
The others do.
“Is that the cave boy?” one of them asks. They begin to jump and shout with recognition, but I barely hear them above my own heart beating.
Achilles observes me in stone cold silence. Rakes his eyes over me, from head to toe, just like he did to my dad. My head begins to spin. His voice has been playing on repeat like a broken record in my head since the last time I saw him, in the parking lot outside a tv-studio several months ago. Now, before he has even opened his mouth, I know I will not like his next words.
“So?” Achilles says indifferently.
When he and his friends leave, it feels as if I have been pummeled to the ground. Like all that is left of me is shards of bone and bloody pulp. Like all I can do is fight to keep breathing, and watch their backs disappear from me.
...
I have barely made it back to Chiron’s house after school, before Achilles shows up on his doorstep. I open the door, and he simply lets himself in like a stray cat, offering his company but holding back any sign of affection. It is more than I expected, so I do not ask for anything else.
I show him the room I am staying in. He strums on my mom’s guitar for a while. Then we drink chocolate milk and watch cartoons all afternoon.
It is the first time Achilles and I are allowed to spend time together as two normal kids. Without the pressure to perform. But the entire time he is there, my skin crawls with how very not normal it feels.
The next day at school, I know better than to approach him.
Chapter 4: The Boy
Notes:
Hi guys! Sorry the chapters are taking so long. I have a lot on my mind at the moment, so I can't guarantee quick updates. But I am not losing interest or motivation in this story, so don't worry. It will be finished.
This story is unlike anything I've written before. It is fragmented, and probably a bit jerky, but I hope the chronology is somewhat clear anyway. If not, feel free to ask me anything in the comments and I will explain.
Now, enjoy chapter 4!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
And she’ll promise you more than the garden of Eden. Then she’ll carelessly cut you and laugh while you’re bleeding. But she’ll bring out the best and the worst you can be. Blame it all on yourself ‘cause she's always a woman to me.
– “She’s always a woman” by Billy Joel
Achilles Peliden is a summer day and a thunderstorm.
He ignores me in school, and I pretend to ignore him back. But his arm is an ever present weight on my shoulders as I lurch in his shadow. I circle around him like a predator hunting for prey, knowing very well that I will never take the lunge. More than a predator, I am a Venus trap. Waiting patiently, eyes and fathom open. Waiting for him to fall, so I can catch him, or kick him.
The time in the cave earned me my peers’ respect as much as it did my dad’s. I think that maybe I should have listened to him. I think that maybe I should have spoken when I was given the chance, before the others shut my mouth for me. But whatever can words change, when children are cruel by heart? I am a mare disease that my classmates are trying to repel, while the boy who sat by my side in the dirt reflects the light of their beaming eyes. My hair is shiny and my clothes are whole and smell of laundry detergent now, but I am still the trailer kid. I just go by a different name now.
Achilles, however, my peers prance around like he is a God. Like he is a God of the old kind, one gifted with skills, beauty, grace and gravity, one who demands sacrifice and terrorizes humankind just for the sake of his own amusement.
One word from his divine lips is enough to summon them. One quirk of his blessed eyebrow can disperse them for good. But the children are foolish, or brave, or simply human enough, to continue to seek his approval. And Achilles looks them in the eyes when they speak to him, in a way that is uncanny for a child. Even the adults grow nervous at the edges of his dark irises. I think he likes to see them fidget under his gaze. I think that is why he does it.
Some people have pretty eyes. Crystalline pools of wonder. Not Achilles. Achilles has the eyes of a snake, and a venomous mouth. He spits his words across the face of those who are careless around him. People who do not know, who do not see, because they do not know how to care. And I watch them retreat as if they have been bitten. When they approach him again the next day, his face is a blank slate, the ancient surface of a rock, and they wonder if they dreamt the whole thing. I know better than any of them that Achilles gives no apologies or explanations. He simply flicks his chin and lets their own demons decide what they did wrong.
I did not know who Achilles was before the cave. I do not think he knew himself either. He is learning now, testing the limits.
He is admired by many, envied by most. Even his own parents resent him sometimes, I think.
He is all of the above to me.
I drink the sight and sound of their rituals like cream, gulp it down like the starving calf that I am, and it leaves a thick, nauseating coat in my throat. It makes me sick the way they all crawl for him. It makes me sicker still, to know that I will throw myself at his feet, skin my knees to the bones, if he only gives me a signal.
And when he is done playing God in the school yard, he comes to play games with me at Chiron’s house.
I am only supposed to stay with Chiron for a a couple of months. But months turn to years. By the time Chiron tells me I have a permanent home with him, I have already unpacked my backpack.
I never question why I was not placed in a foster family like the other boys he cared for. Chiron is kind, and kind of quiet. He gives me clothes. He gives me nutritious food. He gives me toys and games and attention and support.
It is not his fault that I am not happy. He does his best. And I think, that if he knew about the situation at school, he would try to help me.
With the risk of ruining everything.
Achilles comes over to Chiron’s place almost every day, taking shortcuts through gardens and parking lots to enter through the back of the house. To him it seems as if the hours in school do not count. As if our friendship could only exist in a confined containment.
Only in the dark hallways of a tv-studio.
In the large, empty rooms of Chiron’s house.
In a cave in the forest.
One day Achilles comes over, and the moment I spot him in the yard I know something is off. He crosses the lawn with decisive, elegant strides, but tension is rolling off of him in waves. He cuts through the crisp autumn air with sharp edges.
I let him inside without questions. He enters without answers.
We end up next to each other on the sofa in the living room, playing video games. He is quiet, dull, and I press myself as close to him as I dare. Our jean clad knees touch, he does not retract, and hubris erupts like a spring in my chest, bubbling up in my throat. The video game in front of us turns louder, brighter, bolder. It is dazzling, and I barely know what I am doing with the controller in my hands.
That is why it is so surprising when I suddenly cross the finish line and hear the fanfares.
"Ha, I won", I say.
Achilles is a vocal winner, and an even louder loser. But now he does not even look at the screen. His chin is turned downward. His eyelashes curl towards his eyebrows, unmoving, and the protruding orbs of his eyes gleam like glass with the vivid colours of the TV.
I swallow hard to get rid of the sudden sour taste in my mouth. "What is it?" I whisper, the controller falling like dead weight into my lap.
Achilles throat bobs. The rest of him is stone.
I endure long seconds of silence before I speak again. "What is it?" I ask, louder this time, pretending he had not heard me before.
The tip of his pink tongue darts out to wet his lips, and my pulse sounds like sluggish goo in my ears.
"My parents are getting a divorce", he finally says, voice terrifyingly low.
The relief almost makes me collapse. I do not care about his parents. I just want us to be okay.
I press my knee harder against his, to calm myself down, I think, rather than to comfort him. He does not move now either, and I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from smiling.
"What does that mean?” Achilles whispers, looking down at the place of contact between our bodies. “They made me. I am made of them, and now they discover they can’t coexist? What will happen to me?"
I gape at him. It is not the first time he leaves me speechless. It is not the first time I feel childish around him. Not the first time I feel dense for not keeping up with his speeding train of thought.
"You will be okay", I say and my voice is so mousy I wish I had not spoken at all.
Achilles sighs. "I hate them", he says. "I wish Chiron would adopt me too."
My heart skips a beat. "Then we would be brothers", I quip.
He is quiet after that.
I cannot imagine Achilles with siblings. He is too much, too bright, just him alone. Too grand. A boy like that needs to be an only child, like explosives need to be kept away from fire. But I can see myself smiling for the camera in a stuffy family portrait. A mom and a dad. A big sister who looks after me. A baby brother for me to protect.
I wonder if I would have been different if I had siblings. I wonder if I would have met Achilles if they existed. If the framed picture was real and not just a figment of twisted imagination. If my mom and dad had loved each other, had loved me, had loved us.
My birth parents were never really parents to me, only parents on paper. Chiron is more of a parent than they ever were, but still, our only tie is his name written in ink on a piece of paper. I only have paper parents, and it makes sense, I think, because I often feel like a paper child. Thin and translucent. Easy to tear apart. To scrunch up and toss away.
And when Achilles is with me I want to hand over the scissors and let him cut me into a fucking garland.
"You will be okay", I say again, a whisper this time, into his hair, his flesh, hoping it will reach his heart and the future.
When the divorce is finalized, Achilles’s mom moves to Skyros. Achilles stays with his dad. He eventually remarries and has more children, twin boys.
After that, Achilles spends ever more time on the sofa in Chiron’s house.
By the time I turn fourteen, I have not slept through a night in three years. I was rescued from the cave, but to what point I wonder. I am hollow now. I am the cave. Whenever I try to close my eyes I lose my footing, my sense of place. Fear grips me, crushes me in its fist, so hard I cannot even tell the ends of my own body. My own breath hits me in the face and I cannot tell if it is wooden walls or sharp rock in front of me. As if reason does not work or exist in the dark.
I try to leave the lights on, but reason will still not stay with me.
Achilles and I lived and died in that cave, and he aged. He grew older with every hour spent in the stale, cold, pitch black pit. The last thing I saw before his phone died and we lost our sight, was the white of his eyes gleaming from the blue light, and the look on his face that he had come to terms with his fate.
He had accepted death, and I cried.
There are nights when I cannot breathe properly, because I cannot wash that face from my retina. Nights when I lie in bed and cannot move, because my limbs and lungs are petrified with the cold fear of dying, of losing him.
There are nights when my pulse grows loud in my ears, like a drum … drum … drip … drip … drip of my life trickling away. Nights when the winds scrape my windows, echoing the whine escaping my throat, echoing the howling from within the mountain. Nights when it is impossible to stay warm, because all I feel is Achilles’s hands getting colder, while I hold him tighter, while my will to live grow stronger, my chances to survive getting smaller, my panic turning wilder.
I am made of paper. I am made of memories. And I often wish I had taken my mom’s pills with me from the trailer, instead of that fucking guitar.
When I finally tell Achilles about my inability to sleep, about my waken nightmares, he does what I least expect him to do.
It is a rainy evening, and we are sitting in my room listening to the pitter patter on the roof. Every drop prolongs the silence following my words. Achilles looks at my tired, bloodshot eyes, then he looks at the time. Then gets up to leave.
I follow him by instinct.
“Thanks again for the supper, Chiron”, he tells my guardian, who is currently reading by the fireplace. “Dad wants me home now. Bye.”
“Bye, Achilles”, Chiron’s deep voice rumbles. I hear it as if through water.
Before I can find my own vocal cords in the thick porridge that is filling my mouth and throat, before I can even take control over my muscles enough to wave Achilles good bye, he has left the house and been swallowed by the misty darkness of the garden.
He left .
I return to my room on numb feet, my stomach heavy with his lie. I know he does not have a curfew.
So when I enter my room and see the white figure hovering outside the window, my first thought is that it is death himself who has come to claim me.
I barely have a chance to swallow past the lump in my throat before he knocks at the window, signaling for me to open it.
Achilles swiftly climbs into my room, back into my life, like only he can, and then into the bed with me. It is not broad enough to comfortably fit us both. He clings to me like a wet rag. He curves his lanky body around mine, wraps his wet arms around my waist, presses his rain streaked cheek against my shoulder. I grab his hands and hug them to me, warming them between my palms. He smells like sweet, wet soil. It is almost like we are back in the cave again, and I should not be feeling this content, I think, as his heart knocks at the planes of my back.
My eyelids are soon drooping and my mouth falling open with the soft breaths of sleep, when Achilles suddenly stirs, sitting up next to me.
I blink, and my chest seizes with disappointment.
As if he can tell, he places a hand on my head, as if to keep me down on the pillow. “Wait”, he says, and the mattress moves as he reaches for something far away.
He returns with my mom's guitar. He runs his fingertips over the cords, soft as the fluttering of a moth’s wings, and the instrument hums with contentedness.
“Mom sang this to me when I was little”, Achilles murmurs. Then he begins to sing.
If I was not awake before, I certainly am now. He is merely breathing the words, but it is loud as an earthquake in my ears, and I wonder what Chiron will do if he finds us. The butt of the guitar presses against my elbow, and I lay stiff and hollow. But Achilles keeps singing and playing, combining the legacy of our mothers in a dark, haunting and melancholic tune. It is weird, uncomfortable even, for a minute or two. I fight to remain calm, to keep my teeth from chattering with tension. Then I take a shaky breath and let my brain flood with new oxygen. And after that, it is as natural as sunrise and sunset.
Of course Achilles Peliden should sing me to sleep, with the soft, prepubescent voice of his.
I never regret taking the guitar ever again.
A new girl starts in my class. She speaks funnily, her walk is a bit strange and she has weird clothes, and it is inevitable that we end up together.
It feels better to be lonely when you are two.
I do not know if Briseis knows about me and the cave. About me and Achilles. I never tell her, and she never asks.
In a way, I would feel better if she knew. Then she would understand why I cannot give her all of me. I am made of paper, and she and Achilles will have to tear me apart if they both want to keep me.
Briseis makes my days tolerable, as Achilles makes my nights bearable. And like night and day, is my friendship to them. If Briseis asks me if I want to hang out after school, I tell her that I cannot, that Chiron does not allow me to have friends over. Then I go home and wait for Achilles to sneak his way over. And when Achilles’s friends shoves me in the corridors and whispers faggot in my ear, I let Briseis console me and tell me that they are idiots, while I silently wonder what they would say if they knew that their God spends almost every night in my room.
I almost tell them, even Briseis, just to see their faces. But I would not be able to sleep if I did. For multiple reasons. So I continue to keep secrets from my friend. I continue to watch Achilles from afar at school. In quiet.
I watch as he lures our classmates in with a cat’s grin, sinks his claws into their plump skin.
I watch as he breezes through his days like a feathery cloud, and throws spears of white hot rage at those who cross him.
I watch, as the rage inside him builds and builds with every passing day, and how he fights harder and harder to control it.
I am sixteen when Achilles comes home from a weekend at his mom's. By the pyre simmering under his skin I can tell he did not have a good time. He shows up at Chiron’s house with a needle from a sewing machine and one of his mom's gold hoops.
“She wouldn’t let me get my ear pierced”, he says and slams my bedroom door shut. “You will have to do it.” He hands the items over to me.
I stare at the shiny objects. My eyes grow large with how small they are. The needle is so thin. It is already hard to grasp with my sweaty fingers.
“It will hurt” I warn, my voice trembling with the weight of the moment. "It might get infected."
"Good", Achilles says, staring at the wall in front of him. "I hope I end up in the hospital."
I hold an ice cube to his earlobe until my fingers are numb, cradle his ear like a baby bird in a tender gesture. He is so close. So close. Warmth oozes from him, and I think he must be able to smell my sweat soon. The only scent I feel is that of his conditioner. It is dizzying, almost painful. Hypnotized by his beauty, his strong profile, I cannot look away. I see every pore in his unblemished skin, and the translucent fuzz on his cheeks. The bow of his red lips, the curve of his cheekbone. The powerful brow, and the straight line of his nose. His piercing, icy eyes, still staring straight ahead. I want to play those long ebony eyelashes like he plays my mom's guitar.
“That’s enough”, Achilles says.
I freeze, thinking that he means my ogling. But then he swats my hand away. The ice cube clatters to the floor and disappears underneath my bed.
“Let’s go”, he commands.
It feels like my heart is trying to escape from my chest, but I pinch the needle between my fingers, and lean closer. There is a crunching sound when the needle pierces his skin, his flesh, and the resistance shoots up my arm like an earthquake. I almost drop it. But then it suddenly glides smoothly. With a rush I realize it went all the way through.
Achilles tears away, shouting and cursing, the needle sticking out of his earlobe like a flashing stud. I swallow the lump of unshed tears in my throat, and run my tongue along the smooth surface of my teeth. My mouth is as dry as dust. When he turns to the mirror on the wall I hide my arms behind my back, so he will not see the tremors of my hands.
I will end up a puddle on the floor, I think, just like the ice cube melting in the corner.
I watch the trickle of blood run down his neck as he struggles to get the hoop in place. The hemoglobin is a stark contrast against his pale, blonde features, and I wonder how something so violent can also be so pretty. How Achilles can be so brutal and at the same time so wonderful.
“What do you think?” He turns to me at last, grinning like the Cheshire cat. The small hoop dangles from his ear, twinkling faintly in the golden light of the afternoon.
I think I want to hide my face in his neck, run my lips agains his earlobe, feel the warm metal where my skin is the thinnest, where his blood will be closest to mine.
“It looks cool”, I answer.
We stay in my room all night. I lie underneath the thick blanket on my bed, to hide my brittle body. Achilles will lie down beside me later, and I have until then to get my muscles under control. But for now, I get to watch him again, as he curls up in a chair with the guitar in his arms. His earlobe is glowing red, the golden hoop stained with dried blood, and if I concentrate hard enough I can smell the iron from across the room. But if he is in pain, he hides it well behind soft features and fingers. It seems to me almost as if he needed to hurt to be at peace.
He strikes accord after accord on the guitar, and my heart clench with the haunting voice of his when he begins to sing. He could be famous for it, I think, if he wants. Yet he does not post videos of himself online, like other kids our age do. It surprises me, considering how vain he is. But more than anything, it pleases me to no end that I am the only one who gets to hear it, to hear him.
And he asked me to help him. To hurt him.
I will never admit to anyone how much I want him, how I am willing to lock him up just so I can keep him to myself.
Least of all will I admit it to him.
Notes:
Thank you to everyone who has read this, and left kudos and comments so far. It means a lot! Oh, and if anyone wonders what tune Achilles played for Pat, it was the folk song "David of the white rock." I don't know if that works well with a guitar, but it just has the exact ambiance I am going for with this story.
Chapter 5: The Cut
Notes:
I know it's been long, sorry. I don't know what happened, I just couldn't stop writing. Soooo enjoy this mastodon chapter of 5000 words. :)
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
His hair is in my mouth. The strands tickle my lips, but more distracting is the tingling in my hand. His head is on my shoulder, and my arm is asleep.
It should be weird, the way we lie in bed with our limbs intertwined like a post-coital couple. But it is not weird. It is trauma, and survival, and coping. My body is curled around his and has stayed like that for hours, soaking up the warmth of his skin like a sponge. Achilles is a world of his own, and earth with gravity and a burning core. He smells like sun kissed skin and lake water. He breathes like an ocean, resting in my fathom.
It is a lively summer night. Crickets and traffic and exuberant people wreaking havoc outside in the luminous air. Sparta does not sleep, and neither do I. For once, it does not matter. We are part of the season from the comfort of my bed. I revel in the soft fabrics surrounding me, the ghosts of laughter, and the feeling of being safe and sound.
Those hours are numbered, after all.
When I try to retract my arm, Achilles stirs. By the sudden jerk of his head I can tell that he had, in fact, been sleeping.
"What?" he grunts, shuffling around on the pillow.
I hide a tight lipped smile against the back of his head. "Nothing. You can sleep."
He twists awkwardly, never turning around but reaching backwards, over both our bodies, to grab my wrist. The long fingers of his curl around my flesh like the claws of a hawk. Tense and possessive. I see the veins in his arm pop, and I think that, to a bystander, we must look like a Gordian knot of flesh and bones and suppressed feelings.
"Are you alright?" he asks, voice low and tentative.
"Yeah."
"Are you worried?"
"No", I answer. Truthfully. I am empty.
In a few hours I will leave for university. A new city. A new life.
"Call me or text me whenever you need me", Achilles says, and it sounds like he believes that I will never be able to stand on my own. His hold on my wrist tightens. "Call me anytime."
I never do.
I move to a city three hours away and let the distance cut our knot in half.
It is liberating.
It is terrifying.
The first night in my dorm I do not sleep at all. I lay upon the bed like it is a pyre, suffocating slowly, my chest burning without oxygen. I get through the night imagining scenarios where I go home, begging Achilles to take me into his arms. In the morning I am nothing but a dry lump of charcoal, pulverized by the tiniest pressure.
I drown myself in the big city-buzz of Itacha. As I walk down the busy streets I think I catch glimpses of my 11-year old self in the windows and in the pools of water on the ground. I see hollowed black eyes and slouching posture. I see judgmental journalists in every passing person.
It takes months before I learn how to swim.
No one in Itacha talks about the cave. And why would they? Talk about an incident that happened almost 10 year ago, almost 300 kilometers away? Only occasionally will the memory sweep through their minds like a draft sweeps through a house, leaving the floors looking clean and polished for one second in time, before the dust settles once more. Perhaps they say things like: “Oh, remember that incident, two boys who got stuck in a cave?”
Perhaps they do not remember at all. And suddenly it is all I can think of.
It is ironic, I think, that Briseis is there by my side. My choice not to tell her about the cave has both of us stuck in limbo. I often wonder if it would not be better had she stayed behind in Sparta. She is a wonderful person and I want her in my life, but she reminds me of home. Of secrets. Of all the things I want to – but cannot – express. Because of her, because of me, it is impossible for me to start over on a clean slate.
University is a good distraction. But I soon realize that that is all it is. A distraction. A fidget toy that I picked up just to keep my hands busy.
I like my classes well enough. Some of them are really interesting even, and I find myself enjoying the flying motion of my pen when I fill page after page with cursive blue letters. Some classes, though, seem like they are being taught in a different language, and I strain myself to pick up just enough to pass. My grades do not matter to me. I do not know what to do with a degree.
I do not know what to do.
I do not know what I want.
I cannot say that I want a normal life, simply because I do not believe they exist. What is normal in a world of eight billion people and just as many destinies? I do not want to not work, but I do not know what my calling is. I am stoic, feeling no inclination towards anything, and green with envy of Briseis and my friends at the dorm who have their paths laying clear before them. I get a job at a small shop near campus, another distraction, and instantly hate it. I quit long before the trial period is over, telling myself I do not need the money anyway. Because of the compensation I received from the council of Sparta – the economic band-aid, money to pay for their neglect of safety precautions at the cave system – I can probably live a long and comfortable life without even lifting a finger. But I think Chiron would be disappointed in me if I did not at least try to make something meaningful for myself. If I ended up living a life out of spite against the authorities for the suffering they caused – I do not blame them, though, for what happened to me, to us. No signs of warning would have been enough to stop me from getting lost with Achilles. For a short while, between being sick of my job and tired of my classes, I think about traveling, perhaps, exploring countries and cultures. But it does not seem right. The world is burning, and I am just bored.
Am I bored? I do not know. I am drifting. Drifting on a raft on the vast ocean, dressed in an itchy sweater that I cannot seem take off.
I do not know if I want to remember, to talk about it, or if I just want to forget.
I do not go home for the Christmas holiday. It is too soon, and I fear I am not stable enough. But there is a knot of homesickness in my chest when I speak to Chiron on the phone on Christmas morning.
“I miss you sulking around the house”, he tells me, and I laugh guiltily.
I see him before me now, sitting in his armchair by the fireplace with his feet crossed on the padded stool. The newspaper with crosswords will be resting on his lap, so that his hands are free. With his right one, he will pick up a walnut from the class bowl on the side table, and with his left he will wrap the nutcracker around it. The shells fall silent as snow onto the newspaper. He eats them slowly, lost in thought. The crunching sound, and the rustling of the paper, is drowned out by the quiet roaring of the fire. And when Chiron is done, when the bowl is empty and the crosswords solved – he never put any letters down, he simply reads the keys and keeps the answers to himself – he will crumble up the paper with the crumbs and throw it all into the fire.
That used to be my favorite part. To sit close and watch the red tongues of the fire lick the paper, first the edges, carefully, then the core, voraciously, until all that is left is grey, fluttering ash. All the while the dry warmth made my eyes sting and water.
On the phone, Chiron clears his throat. “Achilles came by yesterday.”
The warmth in me is extinguished, he might as well have dumped a bucket of ice water over me.
“What did he say?”
“He told me he will be moving to Troy. He got in excepted to the university there.”
My eyes well up. Not because I feel any sense of pride towards Achilles’s accomplishments or whatever, but because he is finally slipping through my fingers, and I am letting it happen. I will be in Itacha and he will be in Troy, we will be 500 kilometers apart, but it already feels like 10 years to me. Maybe it has always been that far between us, I think. Maybe I have fooled myself with physical proximity that we are close. Were close.
“Did he come over just to tell you that?” I ask.
“He asked about you, too.”
A lone tear escapes the confine of my eye. I focus on the feeling as it runs down the apple of my cheek, over the edge of my jaw, down my throat.
“Patroclus”, Chiron says then, almost chiding, and his voice hits a lower note that feels like a warm blanket. “I know Achilles spent most nights in your bedroom.”
I do not know what I feel most then. Embarrassed, shameful, foolish, or immature. In the end, though, there is a smile on my lips. All this time, I held Chiron for a fool. Poor, stupid man, I thought, thinking he could make something out of poor, stupid me, thinking I would behave, thinking I would be a good boy, thinking I would respect his home and his rules and not sneak a friend into my room at night. Now I know that it is me who have been the fool. Chiron could have thrown Achilles out the very first time he came over, but instead, he welcomed him with open arms, just like he had welcomed me.
Out of all the things Chiron has done for me, given me, this is his best gift, I think. The understanding.
I smile through my tears.
“I hope you two sort out whatever is going on between you”, Chiron says.
I stay in Itacha during summer as well. It would be bad, I think, if I go home, and he is there.
And it would be even worse, if I go home, and he does not.
When Achilles eventually calls me, a year and a half since we last saw each other, I am almost too scared to answer. His digits flash across my screen like a fever dream, and the seconds before I pick up the phone and hold it to my ear have me dizzy and out of breath.
I thought I had forgotten the sound of his voice. But when he speaks he warps time like he warps his vowels, and I am once again the cave boy, the Patroclus who has a complicated history with a guy named Achilles. The past, it seems, is never farther away from me than my own shadow, no matter how far I run. He is always present, no matter the distance between us. I did not have to worry about Troy after all.
“Hi”, Achilles says, the low sound crackling like a carefully controlled fire.
Hearing his voice feels like opening a novel I have not read for a great while, and realizing the places I visited there have never left me. Through passages of descriptions I reenter rooms where the wallpapers are the same and where it is still autumn outside the window. How vast is not the brain, the soul, I wonder, to carry all these empty, locked away rooms? And with the key to each one, a string of words in a certain order, a password. What else can be stored in there without one noticing?
Achilles speaks, and it is familiar, a warm arm around my shoulder, but also new, uncertain. A key to the attic.
“Can I come visit you?” he asks.
I want to ask, so so badly. My skin itches with my craving for answers and explanations. Maybe he hears all the questions in my silence, because I can hear his defiance. I can see his expression, his hard eyes and tight mouth.
My mind is quiet, waiting for my thumping heart to speak.
“Okay.”
I tell Briseis about the phone call, because it is special somehow, startling, even though I do not know the hows and the whys yet. Like a lightning from a clear sky, it needs to be talked about, needs to be shared.
“Achilles is coming to visit you?”
I nod.
“Achilles Peliden? The guy who bullied you?”
She reacts just like I expects her to, and it pleases and comforts me that there is at least some predictability left in my world on end.
“He didn’t bully me”, I say, but I am not actually sure that it is not true. Within the walls of Chiron’s house he was a valuable friend to me. But at school, he was that cool and unattainable stranger. What should I hold him accountable for? He did not shout slurs at me, like his entourage did. He did not shove me in the corridors. Neither did he speak to me, nor did he bother to even look at me at all. So do I define our relationship by the things he did or did not do for me?
“What on earth does he want?” Briseis asks. “Is he going to apologize?”
I shrug and clench my jaw to stop the eerie smile from showing on my face. This proves she does not know him at all, does not understand him, the concept of thunder. The smugness seeps through my veins, black, sluggish poison. It was a long time since I felt the snakelike body of it slither. Now, it takes me by surprise how potent it is, and how badly I want to succumb to the feeling. To revel in the knowledge that Achilles is mine to decode.
Briseis frowns at me. One day I will tell everything, I decide. I will tell her all there is to know about me and Achilles, starting from the very beginning. It might just be the end of our friendship, though, Briseis's and mine. She will be hurt by my double life. After all, I am not the only one who was tormented at school by obnoxious boys. And Achilles treated Briseis with the same indifference as he did with me. The betrayal will sting. It would to me, I think, had our roles been reversed. I have, after all, quite literally, been sleeping with the enemy for years behind her back.
However, none of this stops me from going to the train station one early Friday morning. The walk from my dorm takes 30 minutes, and I do not remember one single step of the way. When I come to, I find myself standing at the platform, and all I know is that my heart beats loud and the air tastes like rain kisses.
I watch the hands of time turn on the large clockwork above. The lower half of my body is numb. I have not been this scared in 10 years. The sick part is that I enjoy it. I cannot tell if it is because my fear is so tightly intertwined with him , or if it is simply a feeling to feel. A raw, honest feeling.
The train rolls in slowly, cart after cart crammed with dull faces. They all looks so lost, I note, as if they had no idea this was the end station. I wonder if I will recognize him among them. And how will I look to him? When I consider my own reflection, I do not think it has changed that much in 18 months. A bit slimmer, maybe, rougher around the edges.
The doors open, and people well out like fluid overflowing. Some bump into me with their shoulders – I’m like a rock in the middle of the stream. If I try to move my stiff legs, I think I might fall, so I stay put, and wait. Soon I see the top of his blond head above the others, moving towards me like a shark fin.
His walk is the same, the straight back, quick pace and sharp, sturdy movements. But it is not the 18 year old boy who comes up to greet me. It is a man, soon to be 20 years old, tall and broad, and I wonder how I could ever have considered him grown when I last saw him. Up close I note that his hair is a bit longer, framing a face that is a bit thinner, paler, and more chiseled. His clothes are also different, more young adult now than obnoxious adolescent.
He approaches, and his face breaks into a tentative smile. It feels like staring straight into the sun.
“How are you?” he asks.
It is not like him to ask, not like him to show that he cares. I am too stunned to speak, and still blinded by the smile that crinkles his eyes and shows off the straight line of his upper teeth. The numbness of my legs seem to have spread to my brain. I can only absorb the perception of the familiar yet strange man in front of me. And then I feel like trash because I have not seen him for over a year, and all I focus on his his looks.
Too many seconds have already passed by the time I comprehend his question and realize that this is how people talk to each other, how they talk to acquaintances. And I have already in the span of a mere minute fucked up and exposed myself to him, thinking that we had was different, special. Are we in fact normal now? I wonder, and cringe internally.
His smile falters slowly, like a dying flame, as if he can see the disgust on my face. And even though I can picture myself blowing on the fire for the rest of my days just to be able keep his blazing expression before me, I breathe a sigh of relief in the darkness that follows.
The dark, I am used to.
“I’m good”, I mumble.
As we walk out of the train station side by side, I think of the fact that this is the first time we see each other outside for many, many years. Like we are two ancient vampires walking in the sunlight without frying for the first time in a century – that is how strange it feels. He is carrying a backpack slung over one broad shoulder, and the chafing sound accompanies us all the way home. I am not sure if the silence between us is awkward, or if it is in fact solace. Anyway, there is an odd feeling in my gut about all these changes.
“Do you still hang out with those guys?” I say those guys even though I remember their names. I know who their siblings are, who their parents are, where they live and where they work.
“No”, Achilles answers. “I haven’t seen them since graduation.”
I feel relief at first. The fact that he liked them always made me like him less. But then I cannot help but frown, because this is also something new – Achilles without his entourage of worshippers. Something I do not understand.
In fact, I do not understand myself, either. I expect Achilles to surprise me, but when he do, I cannot fathom it?
“Do you still hang out with Briseis?” he asks, and it makes me happy that he is not playing the same silly game as me.
“Yes.”
Two of my dorm mates, Antilochus and Automedon, approach us when we enter the dorm building, and I kind of miss the old secrecy. I fear that with Achilles present, Antilochus and Automedon will see the truth. They will see that I am not the independent, suave guy I parade myself as, but the misfit and traumatized child from Sparta that I harbor deep within.
Then, when I shift focus from myself and my insecurities long enough, I notice the change happening in the room. Achilles presents himself as my childhood friend. True enough, I guess. His voice is smooth and deep, and I see the immediate effect it has on my friends. Their backs straighten and curiosity lit up their eyes like fireworks, Achilles's divine presence already working its magic.
He does not need the Spartan fools.
I realize then that I will always have to compete for his attention. Even now. I have always presumed it was his reputation from the cave-interviews that made him so alluring back in Sparta. But it was never what he did, or said. It is what he is .
Stiffness seeps through my bloodstream, like rigor mortis.
“Let me show you my room”, I cut in, ushering Achilles away from the hallway. As I glance to my left to make sure he is following, I spot the piercing in his earlobe. It is a small hoop this time, similar to the one he once stole from his mom.
I did that, I remind myself. He asked me to do that.
Achilles looks like a giant in my small room. He puts his bag in the corner, makes a slow pirouette, and then he has seen it all. The desk in front of the window, the love-seat against the wall, next to the wardrobe, and the narrow bed on the far end.
“Nice”, he says, sounding earnest. But I do not care if he likes it or not. I am as attached to the room as I would be to any rock I happen to stumble upon on the pavement.
“Couch or bed?” I immediately wish I had not given him options. His eyes glide between the two sleeping solutions. I can hear him thinking, wondering what what the right answer would be. What I want. What he should want.
Resistance and desire and possessiveness is tangled up in a knot in my chest. I have already let him into my room, but now something tells me I should keep the door slightly ajar for him. What will inviting him into my bed, and my arms, mean? Since my first awful night in Itacha I have learnt how to fall asleep without him. Even if the nightmares never leave me alone for long, I have learnt how to cope.
Am I risking a relapse by having him here, I wonder?
“I don’t mind sharing, if that’s alright with you?” he finally says, eyes darting between me and the bed.
The way my heart clenches, hearing him say that, scares the living fuck out of me. And that is how I once again find myself in bed, cuddled by my friend/bully Achilles Peliden.
None of us move to turn off the lamp on the bedside table.
Something normal at last.
I would be lying if I said I have not missed his warm body next to mine, his hot breath on my face, the scent of his hair in my nose. I have missed the feeling of comfort for so long that I forgot what it feels like all together. I had forgotten what it feels like to be deeply asleep.
Not that I get much of it this night either. Not because of repetitive nightmares or anxiety, but because my thoughts are too loud, a mess of incoherent, slippery strings. Achilles does not sleep much either. I listen to his breathing long into the hazy night, and not until the wee hours do they slow down, turn deep and even.
The morning after is … weird. But it might just be me projecting my own confused and sleep deprived feelings on the entire situation. We detangle ourselves without any fuss, then get dressed in silence. Just like we did every morning back at Chirons’s house.
Except …
We have breakfast together with Automedon and Antilochus in the communal kitchen, and I wonder if I will ever get used to being friendly with Achilles amongst others. Perhaps it will be best if I never try. I watch my … friends, having a calm, somewhat pleasant morning together, and it feels like I am hallucinating. I choked snort escape my lips, and three pair of curious eyes turn towards me. I play it off as a cough.
Achilles gaze linger a bit longer, and I think about all the times back at school, back in Sparta, when I would have bled out in the yard if it meant I got to have his eyes on me.
It is then I decide that I can be Patroclus, the childhood friend to him. Or something like it. At least during his stay. And I act my part perfectly, if I may say so myself. But it is as if our roles have been reversed over night, and the Achilles who spent all of yesterday playing charades, acting unnaturally normal, does not want to play anymore. He is pensive. Careful with what he says and shares in expressions. I basically bend over backwards trying to engage him in small talk, and he barely responds. Maybe he is simply tired, I think. Yet he smacks his tongue all day long, as if he actually has something to say, as if there are words lodged deep down in the back of his throat, refusing to spill.
It all but drives me crazy. After hours of trying to be a normal friend to him, dragging him around to every commonplace tourist attraction Itacha has to offer, talking about school and the weather and other nonsense until my mouth is dry as sand, I am about to give up.
By the time we make it back to my room, it is twilight.
“How long do you plan to stay?” I ask him, thinking it is a casual question. But a dark cloud suddenly flashes across his face, breaking his carefully controlled mask. “What is it?” I frown, smelling his fear from across the room.
He swallows and smacks his tongue again, soundly, and now even I can feel the lump in his throat.
"What's wrong?" I ask again, after a silence that drained me of all blood. Begging him for answers is against my principles, but my heart tells me that we are beyond silly things like that now.
"I can't go back", he whispers.
"Why not?"
He looks up at the roof, giving me a clear view of the shaky breath entering and leaving his windpipe, before he meets my gaze again.
“I don’t know what to do, Patroclus”, he chokes, and the damm finally breaks. “I feel as if I shouldn’t be alive. As if I was supposed to die in that cave, and that I’ve cheated fate.” He looks pale and clammy – feverish. Speaks like it too. I have a feeling I look exactly the same. His words flow fast, they tangle together like branches in a stream. “And now I’m being repelled”, he continues, spitting a little as he do so. “I hate school. I hate Troy. My parents want nothing to do with me. I hate them. I hate myself . There’s nothing left for me here, or … anywhere. I’m like a fucking piece of paper, and I’m just … just pieces, there’s nothing left. I have nothing, do you understand?”
I kneel to the floor, no bones left in my body to hold me up. Just like that, Achilles has put into words every single thought I have had, every doubt, fear and question, during the last year and a half. Just like that, he has brought into light the very darkness I have been trying to quell.
He crouches in front of me, desperation pale as the moon on his face. “I miss you so fucking much, Patroclus, because you’re the only one who understands. The only one in this miserable fucking place who knows. You know what I mean, don’t you?” he frowns at me, eyebrows falling deep over his glassy eyes. “You’ve always known. It’s supposed to be you and me. But you never called. Why did you never call me? I thought you needed me?”
It is like watching a car crash. I saw one once, a long time ago. It was when dad and I were on our way home from one of the tv-studios. One moment I am watching the dusk settle upon the brown fields and grey highway, and the next I see tail lights flying as the car right in front of us is rammed from the side. Dad smashes the brakes and I jerk forward, ending up with my eyes and ears closer to the inferno. All around me is the sound of screeching tires and metal bending and breaking, as tons of steel tumbles through the air like it weighs nothing more than a small rubber ball. It takes less than three seconds for the car to end up in the dirt next to the road. It should be too fast to comprehend, but it feels like a three hour movie on replay.
I am left with bruises from the seatbelt and a surreal memory of speed and force the scent of warm metal. Now, as I sit on the floor submerged in Achilles’s pleading posture and frantic ramble, I feel the ghost of the ache in my chest and collarbone. Like I am once more being sent head first into an inferno.
I want to put a hand on his shoulder, tell him to slow down, tell him that we have all the time in the world to talk.
But then, he leans in to kiss me.
Suddenly the earth stops spinning and my gut turns from the lack of gravity. Achilles grows like an exploding star, filling my vision, swallowing me whole with his fair skin and doe eyes.
His lips are cold, is the only thing I feel, except surprise.
I recoil.
Achilles withdraws as if burned.
The air in the room vibrates with my every heart beat, the deep sloshing sound of a nightmare. I sit frozen on the ground, shellshocked, as he quickly rises and scurries about the room. He moves like a whirlwind, anxious and uncontrolled. Clothes are flying, backpack rustling, he stumbles into my desk and sends books and pens and miscellaneous items clattering to the floor. The sounds are deafening, making me flinch. But before I come to, before he gives me the chance to say something or do something, he is gone, slamming the door shut behind him with a bang echoing with harm.
And I am left in the deathly quiet with falling debris.
It all happens in less than three seconds.
Just like a car crash.
Notes:
What is going on in the head of these boys, does anyone know?
Chapter 6: The Mend
Chapter Text
Days go by.
Then weeks.
At first I think that, perhaps, it will be like last time. That I will grow accustomed to Achilles’s absence, adapt to it. But with every passing hour, I grow colder. Winter blooms in my chest, slowly but surely, like the shifting seasons outside my window, and it is not the same at all.
It is much worse.
Maybe if he had been nasty when he came to see me, I would have been able to shun him easily. Out of spite. Not as it is now, when he caught me with my guard down. He waited til I thawed. I cannot even care if it was cunning of him to do so. Not when he perched before me as a gaping wound, bleeding and pulsating.
I realize now that he has always been searching, since long before we even met. He was lost, even before we entered the cave. He was lost, even when I and everyone around him thought that he was exactly where he wanted to be. That is why he clung so hard to the image of the cave-boy – the brave, uncaring, tough boy, who forcefully wrapped everyone around his finger. That is why he rejected my friendship in public.
And it is one of the reasons why I have yet to reach out to him, even though I think about doing so constantly.
I am so ashamed, it feels like something slick and oily is coating all my organs. I have failed him. Just like everyone else failed him. I am no better than his hollow worshippers. I am, in fact, not special after all, and no matter how many times I swallow I cannot get rid of the bitter taste in my mouth.
Our eyes were always on him, but we never saw his loneliness. It is as if we were all staring into a mirror. We only saw what we projected. We never tried to understand his anger, his hurt. We were always striving to caress him, whatever part of him we could reach, never realizing we were only polishing the surface.
Never reaching the cold stone core.
I hate myself. I fell for the oldest trick in the book. I only saw the shiny shell, and judged accordingly. And now, the stupidity of my ways resonates like a hammer through my bones with every heartbeat. I did not realize he was fighting loudly. Like a moth drawn to a flame.
Or a bedside lamp.
When I blink, I see flashes of wide, icy eyes. They are etched into the inside of my eyelids. It is ironic, that he flees from me yet leaves a piece of himself behind. It is a sign, I want to think, that we cannot possibly part, even when one of us tries to. Wether we like it or not, we belong together.
I do not even know where he went.
I reach for him in the night, and find him, finally, in unconsciousness. I have wet dreams of him, saturated and sunshine-hot dreams where he fucks me in my bed and tells me he miss me, over and over again, that he needs me, that it is me and him, me and him, and I wake up sweaty and sticky and panting.
Then I have nightmares. Nightmares of impenetrable blackness, and the thick smell of damp rock, and the hollow sound of Achilles singing me his mother’s lullaby. In the dream, I search for him boldly and endlessly, following the sound of his voice through the thick canopy of dark threes. I wake up breathless from the painfully vivid image of him swinging from a rope in the forest where we met.
One time, a ghostly pale morning, I do not even make it to the bathroom before I vomit. With gurgling, feral sounds I empty all of myself on the floor, every blood vessel in my eyes bursting in the process.
It feels wonderful, being completely void. Being so light I could levitate. But it only lasts for a second or two. Then the acidic smell fills my room, and I remember. I look at my bloodshot eyes in the mirror, and I look at the mess I have created, and I swallow hard to keep myself from vomiting again.
I cannot throw up enough times to get all the ugly shame out of my system, nor the white, illuminated fear. It has me chilled to the bone.
I do not think Achilles has killed himself. I have a feeling I would know if he was dead.
I think, that my heart will stop beating when his does.
But I also know better than anyone, that fear is seldom rational. Nowadays I feel as if I am about to dissolve. Like an effervescent tablet dropped in a glass of water. My academic work is suffering, because how can I concentrate on the professor’s monologue when a flaring rash has my skin itching on the inside?
I scratch myself until I draw blood, meanwhile creating scenarios where Achilles contacts me again. He caved once, I reflect. He could do it again. I hope he does.
I highly doubt it, though.
He kissed me.
I rejected him.
Achilles Peliden kissed me. I am reminded of it time to time. The kiss. No matter how profound it was in the grand scheme of things, it keeps getting lost in the dirty haze that is my realm. It drowns in the arctic water of Achilles’s irises. But it is till there, though, the indent of his lips on mine. In just the right light and angle, I can catch the shadow of it. Like a fingerprint, left there as evidence that it actually happened.
It is not fair, I think, the way it happened. I am mad at him. I am mad at myself. I have wanted to feel those lips on mine since I was a hormonal teenager. Now I did not even get to enjoy it, savor it.
My mind circles around the kiss, then his expression when I pulled away. Then all those things he said and the fact that I have no idea where he is come rushing down again like an avalanche, and I am left blinded, suffocated and immobilized by a thick layer of sharp ice chrystals.
Briseis can tell that I am off. It makes my gut coil to think that she is hurt by my silence. I see accusation in her raised eyebrow, and I feel alarm rolling off of her. And even though I was planning on coming clean to her, I am too embarrassed to tell her anything now. Too scared to hear what she has to say about it. I know for a fact that she will try to talk me out of seeing Achilles again. I just do not know exactly how persuasive she will be.
And I do not want to be persuaded.
Is it arrogant of me to think that I can help Achilles? To think that I can somehow fit myself into the gaping hole inside him? In the scenarios I create, I always place myself so that I will be the first thing he finds when he stumbles out of the darkness and into the light. I make myself his reason. Am I pathetic for wanting to be?
I want to be his everything. And a part of me is ashamed of that, too.
In the end, though, it is the all consuming, irrational fear that gets me to finally pick up the phone.
With every signal that is allowed to pass, I uncover more of myself. What I really want, what I truly need. What I hope for, in the depth of my bruised core. It feels as if layers are peeled off of me, exposing my nerve endings to the raw surroundings. I do not know what I will say if he picks up, but I hope he does. I do not know what I will do if otherwise. He always answered.
That is when I realize I only ever call him when I want something from him.
How can I ever face him again, I wonder. This must the last time, I tell myself. If he does not answer, I will have to give him up. Set him free. Ban him from my existence. I do not know what is the best metaphor. The right one.
If he does not answer, I will have to accept it.
If he does answers, I will …
“Yes?”
The jolt almost make me drop the phone. My pulse is so loud it all but drowns out the low greeting. But it was a greeting. He answered to my call.
He is alive.
He answered.
I take a deep breath. The first one since he kissed me, it feels like. My lips are dry and chapped, and the gust of air curves around them like wind blowing over a steppe. I lick them as if that will act as lubricant to my voice.
“Will you come back?”
I hope my voice comes across as steady. I cannot give Achilles any reason to doubt.
"Why?" he asks. The emptiness in his tone reaches through the phone to grip my heart in its fist. Makes me all the more desperate.
I say the words I think he wants to hear.
"I need you."
The silence that follows is crackling. Like a bonfire in the woods. And even though I have no way of seeing him, it feels as if I am watching his face through flames licking at a dark sky. Like a hunter at rest, having just caught a prey in its flight.
Now I am the one who waver. Maybe I put too much trust in him, after all. In myself. Maybe this was a bad idea. Maybe he would be fine without me.
Out of the two of us, who has the most to lose?
Who will hurt the most?
“Okay”, Achilles says at last.
I guess we will not find out. Not right away, at least.
I once again meet him at the train station. He stands on the platform looking all forlorn when I arrive. His posture is like the weather, stiff and gloomy. Or maybe it is the weather that caters to his mood. He is as pale as the overcast sun and they both throw long shadows across the paving. But just having him in the same vicinity makes everything around feel bleak.
"Hi", I say, but it sounds like nails on a chalkboard.
Achilles simply gives me a stare in return. His black pupils pierce me, searching. I stare right back at him, unblinking. I feel like an open book already, and I want him to read me. Where trains roll in and out and people come and go, fickle as spring blossom, I am finally able to say that I am nothing but happy that he is here.
Something quiet and simmering is dancing under his lashes. To me, his gaze is life, and his stare will haunt me forever. His eyes are the last thing I saw before two children were forever swallowed by darkness. His breath is what kept me sane, his touch is what made me bear the uncertainty of our fate. His are the hands I held when I did not know if I would starve to death, or freeze or suffocate or drown.
The boy who saved my life, then had me killed daily for almost ten years.
Once upon a time, long ago, I took a fall. And he was etched into my skin, my palms. Dirt and heat. What a fool I have been, to think I could wash my hands free of him.
Him him him. It has always been him.
I take him back to my dorm. He carries the same backpack as last time, and the chafing sound is there again, accompanying our steps across the paving. There is no small talk this time.
His walk seems almost aimless, as if he does not care where I am taking him. I miss the fervor I am used to seeing in him. Even the anger. I wonder if it burnt up or faded away. This man next to me is shy and uncomfortable, and I hate it. It forces me to be bold and brave.
I cannot reject him twice.
We go straight to my room, and he dumps the backpack in the corner, just like last time. I wonder what he brought with him. If he expects to stay the night. He then leans against the wall, and his shoulders are tense like he is waiting to take a beating. A facade of boredom on his face. I try to piece him together with the ghost in my mind, the one I feared would take his own life. His eyes meet mine. They are glossy and pale, and they are trying to tell me that he is already dead. Just like in the cave. It is a scary look on his angelic face.
I take a step closer to him, and the air around him, or if it is me, or us, vibrates. I take another one, and hear him swallow. With the next step I am so close I can smell his cool breath. He trembles.
I finally allow myself to touch. After a lifetime of yearning. I stroke pieces of silk hair from his temple. I trace the curve of his eyebrow, down to his flushing cheek, along the edge of his jaw. I touch his trembling lips with my fingertips, reading the quivers like morse code. I place a hand on top of his erratic heart.
He seems alive to me.
"If this is your pity", he grumbles, the vibrations from his chest reverberating into my palm, "I don’t want it."
But I feel his want, and I press my own against his hip, clothes rustling, eliciting a gasp from him. The possessiveness shows up out of nowhere, but I guess I should not be surprised. A hungry for violence monster, hurling through my body at a nauseating pace. I want to grab Achilles harder, grid our bones together, taste the aftermath of our explosion.
I do not tell him there is a little bit of pity in the touch.
I lean my forehead against his, my nose touching his. Nail him to the wall with every centimeter of my body. “Why did you come here?” I then ask, my hot breath evaporating against his skin.
His eyes grow large, a kaleidoscope of black and icy blue’s completely filling vision. Had he not been trapped against the wall, he would have wretched himself out of my grip in panic.
“You asked me to!”
“No”, I shake my head while holding him steady with my gaze, “I asked if you would . Why did you?”
He just blinks at me, bottom lip trembling. Fear slowly drains from his face, like murky bath water being drained from a tub, uncovering smooth and pristine porcelain.
“You said …” he begins, but falters. “You said you …”
"I need you", I say, finishing the sentence for him. I drag my lips across his cheek. The surface is smooth and plumb like a fruit, the smell makes my mouth water. "I am going to stop fighting. I have wanted you for so long."
A choked sound emerges from his throat. My lips are immediately by his mouth, desperate to catch it.
“I wanted you too”, he whispers, just before I silence him with a kiss.
This time, I do not give him any options on the sleeping arrangement. This time, I take him to my bed and gather him in my arms and hold him like only I know how to hold him. First, I cradle his head between my hands, and kiss him. Again and again. One kiss for every time I secretly wanted to. One for every time that could have been, but never were. And a few more, wet and loud, just for the possessive monster nestled somewhere around my ribs.
Achilles clings to me like a baby monkey. My skin stings where he grips too hard. He intertwines our limbs the same way he used to do in my bed back at Chirons’s, allowing no rift of the cold world surrounding us to pass through. His chest against my chest, our hearts finally beating in tandem. My fingers weave through his hair, my palm cupping the back of his skull. His head fits perfectly underneath my chin. A jigsaw puzzle finally complete. I hold him to the crook of my neck, let him nuzzle there, reveling in the sound and feeling of his raspy breath fanning over my skin. The ocean is calm, at last.
"What did you say, last time”, I ask him, careful not to speak too loudly to disrupt the surface. “About your parents?"
The light from the bedside lamp casts a warm glow across his cheek. He is softness and sharp edges in a magnetic mix. And when he speaks, the shadows on his face move like a billowing mirage.
"Mom moved to Aulis. I haven’t spoken to her in three years.” After seconds of silence: “We had a fallout.”
“About what?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know. Everything. Our differences.”
“And your dad?”
“He still lives in Sparta”, Achilles sighs. He sounds uninterested, exasperated, as if the subject is boring him already. “But he only has time for his new family.“
Behind his stoic facade and dull voice I pick up the bitter lining. It is the scorned child speaking, and I wish more than anything that I could open him up, and wash his insides clean from all the hurt. But what can I tell him? That I wish things were different? That he should have come to me? Apparently he could not. He tried. For that, though, I do not feel like apologizing. Am I not a scorned child, too? Have I not a right to be angry, too? Hurt and injustice have been my nourishment for years, as it have been for him. And Achilles and I have been feeding of each other.
The fact that I now know why he acted the way he did, can never change why I acted the way I did. We both had our reasons, and both of them reasonable, from a certain point of view.
It will not change anything, but I say it anyway. “I wish things were different. I wish you and I …”
“I’m tired”, Achilles says, voice small.
His reluctance to talk speaks volumes of his regret.
“You can sleep” I say, stoking his hair. “I’ll be right here.”
He closes his eyes, and let out a deep breath. It makes his shoulders sink, his chest deflate, and I am able to pull him even closer.
Clouds of sleep eventually sweeps over his face, relaxing his features. I continue to stoke silky strands of his hair, trace the straight bridge of his nose, the cupid’s bow of his upper lip. The thin, pink and almost translucent skin of his eyelids. I watch him in awe, like a parent admiring their newborn. The thought of it brings a small smile to my face.
Just when I think he has fallen asleep, he speaks again.
“I need to tell you something.”
My first thought is, that I do not want to hear. Nothing good can come from that tone of voice. It sends a shot of alarm through my limbs, and I tense up to keep from jerking. I wish we could have stayed in that quiet and blissful moment forever.
Achilles slowly opens his eyes. “It was me who told the police about you dad.”
I hear his words, but I cannot wrap my mind around them. They do not mean anything to me. He told the police about Chiron? Told them what?
Then, realization hits me hard. Lands like a sock straight through my gut. Achilles is not talking about Chiron. No. He is talking about the man in the trailer. My biological father.
Achilles was the one who exposed the abuse. It is a grand revelation, indeed. One I would not have dared to guess, even though it was plausible.
But more palpable than anything else in that moment, is my own reaction to the revelation. I am lost in the feeling of just having recognized Chiron as my father. It feels like I am tumbling from the sky. Like I am falling from the cliff by the lake once more. But it is not as horrible as I remember it at all, the feeling of soaring. Rather than being pushed towards the ground below, I have been freed of a ball and chain I did not even know I was carrying.
I am suddenly struck by how much I miss him, Chiron.
My dad.
Achilles stares at me, swallowing every miniscule movement in my expression.
“Do you hate me?” he asks.
“No.” It is the truth, but my voice is weak and hesitant, and tears well up in my eyes, and he notices. He curls in on himself, hiding his face in his palm.
I am not grateful. Not yet, not while confusion still makes my blood run cloudy. But I can already tell it will turn to gratitude, in due time.
He saved me. Twice.
“Don’t be scared”, I tell him and grab his wrists, peeling his hands away. My heart hammers in my chest so loudly I am sure he can hear it. “I do not hate you.”
Nothing he says or does can make me hate him more than I already have. Nothing he says or does will ever make me love him any less. He is in every fibre of my being, since our time in the cave, when the pressure of death and darkness fused us together.
"I hurt you a lot." He says it matter of factly.
"Yes, you did."
"If it is any consolidation", he continues, "I hurt myself, too."
I nod, my chin rubbing against his head. A lone tear escapes my eye, runs swiftly down my temple, and hides in my hair. My lips tremble, but I smile. I smile, and wrap my arms around Achilles again. My skin against his skin. He smells like sun and earthy water, just as I remember.
“I was a coward”, he whispers, just above my ear. “Still am.”
It is the closest thing to an apology I will get, I think.
He cries when it is time for him to go back to Troy. It is only to gather his things – as it turns out, his backpack did not contain that much. He will be back with me in a day or two. Still, I hold him tightly in my arms as he sobs wet and uncontrollably against my neck. People on the platform stare at us. I put on a defensive mask and meet their gaze. I have been scrutinized by people’s ugly and judgmental curiosity all my life, and there was never anyone there to shield me from them, or comfort me in the cold. Not until Briseis, at least. But I refuse to let anyone dampen the force of Achilles’s feelings. I think he has waited his entire life to cry like this, and I will stand by him until his tears run dry. When I reflect on it now, I know I have seen the longing in his eyes since way back. A childish longing to cry and to be held. In that moment he reminds me so much of little Patroclus, living in the beat up trailer. My heart aches when I think about that boy, and I want to cry too, and hold him, too. Hold all of us together.
“It will be summer soon”, I say, directed to all three of us.
Summer will mend us, as it once broke us.
Notes:
Thank you for reading! I am so grateful for all your comments and kudos <3 I hope you enjoyed this chapter, as I have a feeling some of you have been waiting for this ;) The boys are reunited - but things are not all fine and dandy just yet ... Only one chapter left! :O
Chapter 7: The Future
Notes:
Thank you to everyone who tuned in to read this experimental piece of mine! Generally, I am more of a more-fluff-less-angst kind of person, but I felt inspired to try something different, and here is the completed result. This story came to be because I wanted write about a secret friendship, and in some way explore the terms of unconditional love and friendship. It probably has a lot of flaws, but even so it has been a pleasure sharing it with you, guys. Thanks for all your kudos and lovely comments. <3
Here's to a happy new year, and the last chapter! Enjoy!
TW: Vague mentions of depression ahead.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Achilles moves into the dorm. I am not allowed to have anyone living with me in my tiny room. Because of fire safety-reasons, or something like that. But I figure that as long as no one catches us, and nothing catches fire, we are safe.
That is all I want. For him to be safe, with me.
During the first few weeks, he barely leaves the bed. He sleeps when I get ready for school in the morning, and he sleeps when I get home in the afternoon. When I open the door to my room I am greeted by a wall of hot, humid air and artificial dusk. Achilles has left the blinds shut to keep out the daylight, but the lamp on my desk is still lit and casts its soft glow over his form in the bed. It is like the inside of a heart in there, warm and red and vibrating with thick silence.
I long for it all day, to submerge myself in us, get lost in the deepest cavities of our hearts. I long for him all day, for the moment when I climb underneath the covers and press myself against his warm back. He does not move or say anything. Just sighs to acknowledge my presence. Nor does he protest when I start stroking his hair. I press my lips to the back of his head, and my chest is heavy with something thick and sickly sweet. Both pleasant and painful.
A part of me wants to keep him there, in my room, in my bed. Tuck him under my skin so that I can care for him for eternity. It would satisfy the gruesome need I have to always be close to him, as well as quench the guilt I harbor for missing his suffering. It is not that I feel obliged to nurse him back to health. It is not my fault, what happened to him, nor is it my responsibility to fix. Still, I am happy to consider it my duty. My duty as a human being, perhaps, more than simply Patroclus. I have been selfish before. Selfish and ignorant. So has he. But what kind of person would I be, if I now, after everything, turned my back to an outstretched hand? How could I live with myself?
How could I live?
I brush the hair back from his milky white forehead, inhale his sweet scent, and wonder what is going on inside that blond head of his. I wonder what he dreams about, when he sleeps the days away. I wonder if he dreams about the cave. The day we met. The first time he saved me. The first time we got lost together.
Does he think about it at all?
I do.
All the time.
A part of me is afraid he will leave as soon as he gets better. That him coming here was just a symptom of depression. I torture myself thinking that he was lonely and desperate, and that he simply needed someone, anyone, to care. A person who was easy and gullible.
A part of me notices the blurry edges. Notice how the image of Achilles on his knees on the floor, bleeds together with the one of myself, 11 years old in the forest, and I torture myself thinking that I am the one who has fooled him . That we are simply relying on the concept of the person we have created of each other. That we are, still, blindly fumbling in the dark.
The cold doubt usually seeps into my bones around noon, when we have been apart for hours, and when it is still hours til I will hold him again. But when he sleeps in my arms, his face squished against the pillow, his lashes resting softly against his cheek, his red lips pouting, it is impossible to look at him, at the pair we have become, with any doubt or malice. The future is not set in stone, but the past is, and the lost boy is a marble statue hidden beneath hard muscles. Yet he is warm to the touch and melts the frost around my organs. The doubt trickles and flows until I am but a puddle at his feet.
I know right then and there, that I will do anything for him.
I will do everything.
Achilles does get better. Slowly. We take every day as it comes. Come sunrise, we grab them by the horns and hang on for dear life. We sleep them away. We spend them like golden coins. And when the sun sets on yet another day of us being alive, together and safe, and frost, darkness and nightmares creep upon us like the tide, I hook my arm around his, lean my head against his shoulder, and tell him: “Let’s go somewhere warm.”
His clothes slowly move into my wardrobe, piece by piece. His necessities find their way into the cabinet in the bathroom. He even buys his own favourite brand of tea to keep in my cupboard in the communal kitchen. The backpack he came with now lies empty in the corner of the room, a gray, punctured lump. A fitting simile for where he used to be.
Achilles falls into me, and my life, with such grace it stuns me. He is timid and cautious at first, but he never turns around. Soon he is back to being the moody and playful boy I used to adore in secret.
He stays with me, and I want so badly to believe that everything is going to be alright. But there is still that crystaline, sugary concentration in my blood. An uneasy inkling deep deep down in my gut. It chafes and pokes me when I twist and turn in bed, when I lose his gaze to something in the distance, or whenever I happen to feel too safe, too blissful.
I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop.
One day I come home from school and am greeted by his laugh ringing like bells from the communal kitchen. I find him there, sitting with Automedon, Antilochus …
… and Briseis.
My stomach churns, and cold sweat emerges at my temples, because during the past weeks I have deliberately failed to mention to Briseis that I have Achilles fucking Peliden living with me. I have been too content with the sheltered life we have been leading, and too precocious with the brittle situation. Now, I feel it softly crash like eggshells beneath my soles.
Achilles observes me with a curious, challenging gaze. He has told Briseis everything, there is no doubt about it, and I barely dare to meet her eyes. All this time I have been worried about losing Achilles, when in reality, I should have been worried about losing my best friend.
But the shoe does not drop then either.
Briseis stares at me, pierces me with her eyes. She then takes me aside, and I hold my breath as she places a maternal hand on my arm.
"I don’t understand why you never told me", she says bluntly. "But I forgive you."
That night I feel like a sky full of stars. Dark, sexy and mysterious. Sizzling, ethereal, eternal.
Like I could eat the world raw.
I lose myself in Achilles’s pitch black pupils. His weight on top of me makes me soar, holds me down to earth better than gravity. I do not know where I am, and I love it more than anything.
I savor his salty skin as his fluids mix with mine. Our hearts beating loud and in sync has me regret all the years we could have done just this, but did not. We tiptoed and tricked ourselves, when we could have devoured and depraved each other.
But if we had had this back then, I remind myself, it would not taste as sweet as it does now.
Achilles chants my name and I devour every syllable until I do not know who Patroclus is anymore.
“You were always on my mind”, he breathes with his entire face glistening with sweat.
And how ironic is it not, that with his hands roaming all over my body, I feel the most untouchable.
Come summer, we go back to Sparta. A crash landing.
For the first time ever, Achilles and I enter Chiron’s house side by side. The house still smells so much like a pine forest it makes me want to go hiking. I tremble slightly as we cross the threshold, struck by the small, inconspicuous symbol of great passages like new beginnings, of things overcome.
Chiron is happy and not at all surprised by our union. He takes both of us into his enormous fathom. Perhaps it was obvious how much we needed that hug. All the guilt I have felt for not visiting Chiron more often, for not calling him enough, flares up when I smell the sharp scent of his aftershave. But then his large hand comes to rest steadily upon my shoulder, a gesture of trust and pride, and just as quickly as the feeling rose, it subsides. “Don’t worry about it, son”, the hand seems to tell me.
There is something there, something to latch onto. Soil to plant in.
And I cannot wait to get this growth starting.
“Welcome home, boys”, Chiron says, and it reverberate through my chest, rolls like thunder through my core, and settles deep, deep within my bones. I think, my head all giddy with joy and gravity, that if someone were to ever examine my remains, they might find his words engraved in my skeleton.
We celebrate our homecoming in the garden that evening, swept in the heavy scent of freshly cut grass.
"Did you know?" I ask him, when the air has turned soft to breathe and the sky is velvety blue. "Did you know it was Achilles who told the police about my parents?"
Chirons’s gaze slowly turns to the boy in question. Achilles is looming on the edge of the lawn, his neck bent backwards in a bone crushing angle as he observes heaven. Perhaps he is thinking of his mother in Aulis. Or his father, just a couple of blocks away and still as far as the moon. It is impossible to tell. He looks like an otherworldly creature in the dusk. Standing perfectly still, arms hanging limp at his sides, fair skin and hair illuminating, head craned to the stars. As if he is staring directly into that other dimension.
"No", Chiron says at last. "Did he confess to you?"
"Yes."
"Are you angry with him?"
"No."
Chiron’s question sends a pang to my heart. In the years I have known him he has never appeared nervous to me. But I know for a fact that people are not always as tough or nonchalant as they seem, and I do not want him to ever doubt me.
I decide that I should to tell him about how I found out. About the misconception I made. I think he would be pleased to hear it. Our eyes lock, his dark, calm eyes swimming in the dusk. But suddenly my throat is too dry to form any sound, as all moisture seems to have migrated to the corners of my eyes.
Perhaps I am not used to the clean atmosphere, after having been living in the grand, dirty city for some years now. Perhaps it is the situation, of having found a home, physical as well as emotional, after years on the run. Or perhaps it is the pure beauty of the starry sky itself that makes me choke up, the knowledge of being infinitesimal in an astronomical universe. Whatever the reason, I take a shuddering breath and let the words fall back slowly, floating to the bottom like snowflakes.
Another time, I think and relax. I will tell him another time.
A plant needs nurturing and patience, after all.
Meanwhile, Chiron searches for something in my expression. If he finds it or not, I cannot tell. He reclines in his chair, his lips pressed together in a secretive smile. Then he turns to Achilles again.
"He was a brave boy", he murmurs.
"Is", I correct him quietly, having found my voice again. "He is brave."
It is a cloudy day, the sky overcast by a thick, luminous shroud. My fingers are weaved through Achilles’. We walk the dirt road just at the outskirts of town, lined by short, dainty threes so identical they look copy-pasted. Our steps falls slowly, almost languidly, and smells like warm earth and grass. Blackbirds and starlings sing for us as we stroll. Out here, the rush on the highway is but a hum in the background. And across the green fields is the skyline of Sparta, small and picturesque in the distance. Our home.
It feels like the carefree days of childhood. Of dirty feet on gravel, grass stains, freckles and sun bleached hair. It is not a feeling I should remember, though, as it is not a feeling I have ever experienced.
Phantom memory or not, I revel in it, smile to myself, and clasp Achilles’ hand tighter.
Then my breathing is suddenly cut short, as If I have been punched in the stomach. There, on the other side of one field not far from us, I spot one of his goons. A burly boy, now a man, who used to harass me at school. He is strolling casually, having not a care in this world.
As if nothing ever happened.
As if he does not remember the shoves and shouts and name calling and threats and spit and glares. As if I do not remember everything he did and said, and everything Achilles saw and heard but never acknowledged.
A surge of nausea rushes through me, like a waterfall from my throat down to the deepest pit of my gut, and the whiplash stings like acid on bare skin when I learn that everything is not fine, and I am not untouchable nor unbreakable.
The goon has not yet detected Achilles and I. Still, I drop his hand like I have been scolded.
Beside me, Achilles sighs, annoyed. He has also noticed the familiar presence, but if he remembers, if he remembers anything at all from that time, he hides it like the dirty secret it is. He forcefully grabs onto my clammy palm again.
“Patroclus, everyone here already know you’re queer”, he says, voice exasperated.
And there it is. The other shoe.
I rip my hand from his, my blood boiling In my veins. It spits and crackles within me like a roaring fire, and if I did not want the other man to notice us before, there is no room left in me anymore to care about who’s attention I will rouse.
“Why do you get to dictate the terms of our relationship?” I spit at Achilles. “You avoided me for eight years, and now you want to be seen with me all of a sudden?”
He immediately stops in his track.
“I was a kid!” His voice is all loud and wrong, creating a rift in the still air. Even the birds stop singing.
“Were you a kid a year ago?” I challenge. “Two years ago?”
“I’ve told you that I was a coward” he says. “I’ve told you that I never meant to hurt you.”
“Well guess what", I howl and push at his chest. "You fucking did! You fucking hurt me worse that any one of them ever did!”
He stares at me, eyes wide and dejected. An ant beneath a magnifying glass. He knows I can stomp him to death any second, or burn him to ash with my rage. For the first time in my life, I am the giant, and he trembles beneath my will.
“What do you want me to do?”
For a second, I want to ask him for a real apology. For him to say out loud that he is sorry, once and for all. But I feel it in the cold, vacant heart of mine that it will not be enough. They are just words, after all. Not some magic spell that erases all the hurt.
As if he can read my mind, shadow fall upon his now pale face.
“Why are you with me if you’ll never forgive me?” he asks, voice thick and quiet.
I ask myself the very same question.
He waits patiently for a few seconds, maybe minutes, before he storms off without an answer. I do not have one. All I can do is stare at his back until it merges with the surroundings.
I do not deserve the shame seeping into my blood, I think as I stomp away in the opposite direction, my body stiff and sore as if I have not made a move in ages. Yet my feet hit the ground hard and decisive. Why do I even bother with him, I ask myself. My heart pounds with the same pace as my angry strides.
In my head, I write a list of all his bad qualities. It is easy. I write about his pride, his wrath and his impatience. I write with capital letters and a permanent black marker to make sure I really see. I imagine telling him exactly what I think, shouting to his face. You are this and this and this.
I stop when the world starts to blur around me, when I can no longer see the path I am on. I stop when I notice that nothing I tell myself sticks. The letters I have written bleed on the mental piece of paper. A part of me is angry that I cannot seem to stay angry with him, even when I want nothing more.
I wipe my face with the back of my hand. The skin there smells like him.
I watch the zebra stripes in my head like a child would watch their ruined drawing. Did I really think I could hold Achilles down like a stencil to a paper, coat him with paint to make the shape of him stay? And what would I even do with it? Throw it on the fire? Frame it and hang it on the wall? Can I, can anyone, really capture the essence of a human being with a description? Do we not become ourselves in the meeting with others?
He is Achilles because I am Patroclus. He is the most vain and selfish person I have ever met, but he has also given me the greatest gifts of all – family – friendship – life – love. He is petulant and childish, but when he smiles I know he is honest. He is neither logical nor stagnant. He is entirely his own, a wonderful, exasperating, exhilarating mystery of a man.
And I am Patroclus, because he is Achilles.
When I turn around, the field and the dirt road is empty and wistfull. But I know exactly where he went.
For so long, I have wanted to blame him. For the cave, and for everything that happened after that. But the truth is this: I saw him enter, and I followed him. Into the dark and unknown.
I followed him.
I will follow him everywhere. Even in death.
I pick up the pace, the gravel crunching beneath my soles.
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror, Rielke once wrote. No feeling is final . I will do that from now on, I decide. I will let myself feel. Those years made of stone, our inner statues, will always be just that, and they will hurt and chafe against the flesh that is living and changing. I will have my grudge. He will have years of quilt.
But most importantly, we will have each other.
And we will have our untainted future.
I feel powerful at first, as I approach the forest. It looks like a black wall, and I briefly reflect that a child has to be crazy to dare breach its dark density. But the second I leave the road, the second I cross the line and I am enveloped by the dim foliage, my legs start to tremble.
It is the 2nd of July today, I remind myself and stubbornly trudge forward.
It is the 2nd of July, and exactly ten years since Achilles and I were plucked from our tomb. I have not set my foot anywhere near the cave since the paramedics lifted me onto a stretcher and carried me away. I was far from lucid then, and had a cloth covering – protecting, they said – my eyes. But although ten years have passed, I find my way through the shrubbery without hesitance. As if I know it like the palm of my hand. It is not really that strange, though, considering every tree, root, and secret path has played a role in my nightmares for a decade now.
The air under the canopy of trees is heavy with moisture and honeysuckle, and the scent – sweet and heavy and slightly spicy – makes my chest clench, is led in my lungs. A telltale sign that the cave is near.
I am panting and sweating by the time I see the face of the rock towering before me. The area around the cave is the only place in the forest I for certain can tell has changed. To start with, everything seems smaller than I remember. But that is to be expected, as I am no longer viewing the scene from a child’s perspective. The terrain still shows signs of the rescue operation – tree stumps, broad grooves in the ground and demolished pieces of rock.
And last but not least, the hole that leads deep into the small mountain is now closed off by a thick iron gate, adorned by a sign with bold, blood red letters.
DANGER. DO NOT ENTER.
My heart pounds so hard it aches. So the child within me is still watching, after all.
I can taste the dampness on my tongue as I get closer and try not to stare too deeply into void. As if just looking could get me lost again. The smell is the worst part, though, the taste, of wet moss, cold stone and stale water. The cool draft coming from the cave, the deadly breath of the mountain, almost has me turn around.
I find Achilles on the forest floor just in front of the gated entrance, almost entirely obscured by bushes. I fall to my knees next to him, all but collapsing on top of him. I want to. I want to curl up into a ball and have him hold me until someone comes to get us away from there.
He is not looking at the cave, for which I am glad. But he does not look at me either when I try to grab his attention. He keeps his gaze steady on the moss-covered rock wall a few meters away. Even as I stroke his hair, tug at his t-shirt, or grasp his shoulder. I reach for his hand, but he balls it into an uninviting fist.
“Achilles”, I plead, my voice sounding watery thin. I would rather crawl into the cave alone than be invisible to him once again.
He blinks, and I see my own uncanny face reflect in the shiny surface of his orbs.
"Do you really love me, or are you only with me because you’re afraid to be alone?" he whispers into the thick air between the two of us and the rock.
"What makes you think I would be lonely without you?" I ask just as quietly, and think of Chiron. And Briseis. Antilochus and Automedon. All the friends I have yet to meet.
Achilles bends his neck, jaw clenched. I sigh, and lean close to him again.
"Be patient with me", I say, and bring his tense fist to my lips. "I will not abandon you. Never."
He inhales, perhaps savoring the honeysuckle scent. I watch his chest expand and deflate, while his cold fingers grows warm from my breath. The hand slowly relax.
"You're the only person who’s ever loved me'', he mumbles, and finally meet my gaze.
"You, Achilles”, I say and quickly captures him, bore my eyes through the black holes of his pupils, into the abandoned cave he carries with him in the deepest pit of his soul. The only darkness I am not scared of. “You are the only person I have ever loved."
There is a thunder storm in Sparta that night. Achilles and I sit on the sofa, shoulder to shoulder. His head gently rest against mine. The TV is running on low volume, but neither of us seem to be watching. I look at the bright colours flashing by, but more than anything, I am listing for the rolls of thunder, coming in like waves to the shore. Every now and then Achilles hums – I feel the vibrations of the sound, on the spot where our heads touch. If he is actually enjoying whatever show is on the TV, or if it is a response to the wrath of the gods above us, I cannot tell. Still, it makes me smile.
Chiron sits in his armchair, occupied with his crosswords. The fireplace is dark. It is too hot and humid for a fire tonight. It is really too hot and humid for Achilles and I to be sitting so close as well – our arms are plastered together by a sheen of sweat. But I cannot find it in myself to mind, even when droplets of salty water starts to gather in the nape of my neck.
Suddenly a bright flash light up the entire living room, closely followed by a deep and threatening rumble. The TV and light fixtures in the house stutters. Then they die completely with a faint, clicking sound, leaving us stranded in a shapeless darkness.
“Power failure”, Chiron mutters and rise from the chair. He waddles towards the kitchen, perhaps to find a torch, or some matches. I barely register him leaving.
Achilles and I remain frozen on the sofa. He does not hum this time. I blink and blink, trying to discern anything familiar in the pitch black room, but even distinguishing the living room from the inside of my eyelids is difficult. My head turn towards the window, hoping to find a source of light there. But all the street lights have gone out, as have the neighbour's power, and beyond their house the summer sky is shrouded in impervious thunderheads. My throat seize, and drops of sweat start to run down my neck, into the collar of my shirt. Achilles ragged breathing is close to my ear, and think that my own probably sounds something alike.
As if on cue, our clammy hands find each other in the tight space between our bodies.
Will that ever not be a reflex?
It was only nine days.
It was two hundred sixteen hours.
It was only nine days, yet the hours and minutes and seconds weaved together to create a lifetime. One lifetime. The Moirae intertwined our faiths and decided that either we die together, or we live with each other.
And fuck, I want to live.
I want to live, and feel everything, beauty and terror, even if it means spending the next eighty years searching, worrying – maybe even doubting, sometimes. It does not matter.
It is less terrifying to drift, when his hand clasps mine.
“It’s our ten years anniversary”, I whispered to Achilles that afternoon in the gloom forest, as we trudged away from the cave, back to civilization. My lips touched the shell of his ear. “We made it out. We actually made it out.”
“So where do we go now?” he whispered back, and laced his fingers with mine.
“I don’t know. But I think we can find a path.”
Notes:
Thank you, again, for reading, leaving kudos and comments. <3
Pages Navigation
ritzkiel on Chapter 1 Thu 08 Sep 2022 03:08AM UTC
Comment Actions
Kaprifol on Chapter 1 Thu 08 Sep 2022 07:20PM UTC
Comment Actions
Ying_Yang on Chapter 1 Fri 09 Sep 2022 08:38PM UTC
Comment Actions
Kaprifol on Chapter 1 Sun 11 Sep 2022 07:48PM UTC
Comment Actions
thiefylilelf on Chapter 1 Mon 13 Nov 2023 07:10PM UTC
Comment Actions
Kaprifol on Chapter 1 Fri 17 Nov 2023 07:10PM UTC
Comment Actions
Missat0 (Guest) on Chapter 2 Sun 11 Sep 2022 08:53PM UTC
Comment Actions
Kaprifol on Chapter 2 Fri 16 Sep 2022 07:22PM UTC
Comment Actions
delphiadh on Chapter 2 Mon 12 Sep 2022 04:07AM UTC
Comment Actions
Kaprifol on Chapter 2 Fri 16 Sep 2022 07:19PM UTC
Comment Actions
Account Deleted on Chapter 2 Mon 12 Sep 2022 05:28AM UTC
Comment Actions
Kaprifol on Chapter 2 Fri 16 Sep 2022 07:18PM UTC
Comment Actions
ToBeLonely on Chapter 2 Mon 12 Sep 2022 06:12AM UTC
Comment Actions
Kaprifol on Chapter 2 Fri 16 Sep 2022 07:17PM UTC
Comment Actions
Ying_Yang on Chapter 2 Tue 13 Sep 2022 09:04PM UTC
Comment Actions
Kaprifol on Chapter 2 Fri 16 Sep 2022 07:16PM UTC
Comment Actions
IndigoEdgley on Chapter 2 Tue 03 Jan 2023 02:08AM UTC
Comment Actions
Kaprifol on Chapter 2 Tue 03 Jan 2023 07:40PM UTC
Comment Actions
thiefylilelf on Chapter 2 Mon 13 Nov 2023 07:28PM UTC
Last Edited Mon 13 Nov 2023 07:29PM UTC
Comment Actions
Kaprifol on Chapter 2 Fri 17 Nov 2023 07:12PM UTC
Comment Actions
Slayalldayeveryday (Guest) on Chapter 2 Sat 18 Jan 2025 03:59AM UTC
Comment Actions
Kaprifol on Chapter 2 Sat 22 Mar 2025 05:28PM UTC
Comment Actions
Mikasa506 (Guest) on Chapter 3 Fri 23 Sep 2022 12:51AM UTC
Comment Actions
Kaprifol on Chapter 3 Sun 02 Oct 2022 08:06PM UTC
Comment Actions
d000lve on Chapter 3 Sat 24 Sep 2022 03:43AM UTC
Comment Actions
Kaprifol on Chapter 3 Sun 02 Oct 2022 08:07PM UTC
Comment Actions
becca_king02 on Chapter 3 Sat 24 Sep 2022 09:03PM UTC
Comment Actions
Kaprifol on Chapter 3 Sun 02 Oct 2022 08:09PM UTC
Comment Actions
Ying_Yang on Chapter 3 Sun 25 Sep 2022 12:26PM UTC
Comment Actions
Kaprifol on Chapter 3 Sun 02 Oct 2022 08:10PM UTC
Comment Actions
thiefylilelf on Chapter 3 Mon 13 Nov 2023 07:56PM UTC
Comment Actions
Kaprifol on Chapter 3 Fri 17 Nov 2023 07:14PM UTC
Comment Actions
Slayalldayeveryday (Guest) on Chapter 3 Sat 18 Jan 2025 04:22AM UTC
Comment Actions
Kaprifol on Chapter 3 Sat 22 Mar 2025 05:54PM UTC
Comment Actions
thiefylilelf on Chapter 4 Mon 13 Nov 2023 08:28PM UTC
Comment Actions
Kaprifol on Chapter 4 Fri 17 Nov 2023 07:18PM UTC
Comment Actions
Slayalldayeveryday (Guest) on Chapter 4 Sat 18 Jan 2025 04:45AM UTC
Comment Actions
Kaprifol on Chapter 4 Sat 22 Mar 2025 06:04PM UTC
Comment Actions
Ying_Yang on Chapter 5 Sun 13 Nov 2022 12:40AM UTC
Comment Actions
Kaprifol on Chapter 5 Sun 13 Nov 2022 08:26PM UTC
Comment Actions
Pages Navigation