- "Dear Achilles, I promise you there's a place where everything is okay."

~
[Inspired by writing from a tumblr user, thesandwichincident. I was given permission to use their writing as inspiration, so you will see their writing in some words here! I was greatly inspired by their work to start writing this as a book of one shots.
Thank you so much, Julia! <3]

In which Achilles and Patroclus in modern times, reborn after a time of war and a terrible agony, loss, and heartbreak.

They have been granted a gift from the Gods to live forever in a new world, and live forever they will.

~

In this world, you are just two boys in love. Tangled up in sheets that remain unmade until the evening, with windows open to let curtains billow in the light of sunrise.

Your armor is his worn sweatshirt, threadbare in all the perfect places. His helmet is a cap atop his head that has a sewn-in patch of a sun that is just bright enough, the cap he never lets you wear but never minds if you pull off to admire. Your words are gentle and sweet like the juice of figs, running out of your mouths, and twining together. His lyre is his sweet song, and there is no blood here, no revenge, no secrecy.

Your hands aren't meant to hold a weapon to defend yourself with, not anymore. Instead, they make idle shapes across his skin, braid flowers into his golden hair, and make him know he is loved beyond what your sweet words can tell.

There is something in you that recalls the crashing of an ocean unlike the one outside your window. You can almost hear the call of forbidden love that dragged you to someplace ancient, someplace harsh, with water slapping against rocks as sharp as knives. You can faintly remember days where you felt hardships beyond reason and blood sprayed from the ocean and onto your sun-kissed skin when weapons flew from calloused hands and filthy words flew from mouths like brine, a place that was not safe for you to love him. But here birds alight onto your windowsill between the geraniums in the frame, singing their songs of your new safety, and the breeze from the window skates over his sun-tanned back and ruffles the golden hair that frames his sleeping face.

The room you share smells like coconut oil that glistens on his skin, lavender soap, and of fig that sits in his tea and in the kitchen, cut in half to reveal ripe seeds. You count them sometimes, trying to recall just what figs meant to you in that other world. You cannot quite remember. Perhaps their meaning has never changed throughout the years.

The blood from that place has soaked into the ocean outside your window. The blood that once rushed through your veins and stuttered to a stop is nothing more than the shower switching on and off, always at the same time in the morning when he drags himself out of bed after he gives you his attention and lazily skates his fig-sticky lips across your skin as a form of wordless morning greeting.

In fact, there is no blood anymore, not in this world. There are only empty soda cans and glasses of forgotten tea on the dresser, tea that smells sweet, and the notion stirs something in your heart that you cannot quite name. You never could put a name to it, could you, Patroclus? It did not need a name to mean more to you. It has always meant the world.

The birdsong mixes with his voice as he pours his heart out in the shower, and you listen, sitting up in bed and watching the breeze ruffle the curtains. As you put away cups of tea that were forgotten last night, you hear the shower stop and he traipses out with his pale hair slick and his feet bare. He dislikes shoes. He always has. He dislikes all fabric, you remember, from the days when you frolicked through forests with green leaves, chasing each other until you fell into the ocean froth, laughing, your fingers joined and your bodies fitting together. It was not a secret back then, when you lived in the forests, hearing the thundering of hooves and the plucking of instruments, of the scrape of charcoal against cave walls as you drew him from memory. It is not a secret now.

He walks as if his feet are heavy with sand, his back bent as he wraps his arms around you. He smells like lavender soap, the soap that was yours, but you knew would never just be yours, because you share everything in this house. The soap is just one example of many of the things you got for yourself that he took a liking to and claimed as well. But you do not mind. You never have. If you do mind, he knows it before you say it, and he moves off to claim something else. But he knows he does not need to prove you are his, and he is yours. There is no proof needed.

You wash the cups clean, Patroclus, and you place them on the drying rack. You take the apron from the peg beside the fridge and you pull it over your head, and he helps you tie it across your waist. His fingers are gentle. He presses the kiss to your neck that you wait patiently for every morning. He is still naked, but he does not mind. You were both boys, once, who did not wear clothes, who explored each inch of each other's bodies, who let fingers travel to places never before seen or touched. He leaves as you begin to make breakfast.

He listens as you sing a song to the music player that sits in the corner of the lounge, his eyes closed. He has a towel around him. He is lazy, every morning on a Sunday. But time does not matter to him, he is slow every morning. As are you. Aphrodite has blessed you with the ability to remain slow, to be comfortable, and by gods, you will both take it.

Once he is dressed, you set breakfast out on the outside table. You sit beside him, one hand on his inner thigh, as you eat. It is blissfully calm. You watch the birds fly past your home, your pickup truck just past those trees, and beyond it, a sea not unlike the ocean you once called familiar, back, back, back, far, far, far into your minds. It is there, but it is not your focus. You focus on the now.

Now, he is with you. Now, you take his hand, lead him down to the line of trees. Now, he squeezes your hand and pulls you close as the birds sing, and begins to rock with you, dancing in front of your home in the early morning light. You rock with him, your movements always in tandem. You need not fight or flee anymore, Patroclus. You are home with him, and you will be with him until the world stops turning. So listen to the song of the bird, listen to the beat of his heart. He is alive. You are alive. And what a day to be alive.