𝘔𝘖𝘙𝘛𝘈𝘓 * / 𝘎𝘓𝘖𝘙𝘠.

A questioning look is reserved for the younger man. Not a glance is spared for another. His attention is raptured, brow lowered. Something like confusion passes the atrean’s features, but only for a breath. Impartiality takes hold as swiftly. For half a beat, his gaze slips from Patroclus to the arena below, once smooth sand torn apart by the tracks of wheels and tread of horses. He considers the fall. The impact. 

“Only because I know he has no interest in the prize. Only because he is a sensible man and loyal soldier,” he assured Patroclus. A gentle dip of his head that should be respectful, but perhaps loses that quality along the way. “As long as that remains true, we shall remain friends. I hope that suits you. Thank you, kind sir, for taking the time to clear the air with me.” 

As much is spoken in a level tone. Dry as the sand beneath them, close to monotone, it is followed by a tight lipped smile. Agamemnon does not rise from where he leans.

Dismissal it was, plain as day, though that hardly dawned upon Agamemnon. Mind elsewhere, he was as untroubled by speech as the cries of an animal. It took the impertinence of the young man’s tone to rouse him, to earn another slow turn of his head as he reviewed the soldier. 

“Your man,” he clarified - he is a singularity, in this case - a subtle wrinkling of his nose, intended more in disdain for his misunderstanding than disapproval of his position. This remained entrenched into his features, a lingering betrayal of his own emotion, straying from disinterest into disapproval. 

A hand touched his brow, a lock of flaxen hair smoothed back from his brow. Their countenance could not be more different, he considers. 

By his side, the guard remains, another sceptical eye set upon the myrmidon. There is a tense readiness in his armoured form that is lacking in the king, whose only sharpness remains firmly fixed in his gaze. 

“Are you intent on starting an argument?” the Mycenean inquires, his voice slow, brow lofted. “I do not wish to offend you, Captain. There is no rivalry due between us.”

Just as taken aback is he, but from a different standpoint. This pacifying, accommodating gild on the king is a new color, a new shine altogether. But then, Patroclus has never properly sat down with the man —the battles he fought for him, insignificant skirmishes in the borderlands or shows of force meant to defend the commercial routes — had really been fought for Achilles. He made no mistake: Agamemnon knew that much. There’s a certain penchant for peering in the heart of things, gripping the threads out with your teeth, that any man who fancies himself anax must hold. That includes brutal honesty pointed at the self. So, Agamemnon would likely allot no lies on the matter. The Myrmidons were not his, nor was Patroclus, and if their purposes converged for now, it was not for lack of dissension, but of options.

Something akin to respect arises within him, and he is startled at it, more so than at the initial  discourtesy, more than at the ulterior tact. Patroclus raises both hands at face level, a skewed grin inching onto his mien behind them.

❛ A rivalry ? Never harbored anything similar; offense doesn’t even know my name. ❜

And, as if it was the reasonable, clear-cut conclusion to their parlay, the Captain adds: ❛ So it is settled then: my commander won’t have to listen to discussion on how united we stand, divided we fall —I do believe your brother covers that memento daily. ❜

the cuirass falls unceremoniously to the floor, and achilles’ chest wrenches when shame does not go down with it. he placates himself with the knowledge that patroclus can unlace him from it just as he had done with the armor. 

the warrior closes his eyes and blocks out every part of the world but patroclus’ voice. my life, he calls him. as if he were any excuse for such a thing. the best of the greeks, the songs said, and yet he couldn’t even win a simple chariot race. he had been bred for glory, and he had dropped it in the lap of an athenian and an amazon. 

there is some hope in the familiar feeling of patroclus’ lips against the hard plain of his shoulder. he just about drops the cups merely to feel such small, honest evidence that he is loved as a man, and not a vessel for glory. 

the dark purple colour of the wine reminds achilles of the fat figs they used to eat as boys, and the purple chiton that achilles had been wearing the first day patroclus had kissed him. he longs to see it stain his lover’s bow-shaped lips, and to kiss the strong taste of it off them as a consolation prize. he fits the kylix into patroclus’ hand and turns to face him, setting the amphora down on the table. 

“agamemnon would be much happier to see mycenae victorious.” he thought about menelaus, and that desperate look of love and hope in his eyes. he had promised to aid his win, and yet he could not even assure his own. “i said i’d help him - for a price. menelaus is set on helen like a bloodhound.” he pressed the flat of his nose against patroclus’ and hummed into a smile.

a calloused thumb brushes at patroclus’ cheek, more at home here than on the well-worn reigns of a chariot. the lines where the leather has rubbed his palms raw feel all but healed where they are brushed by the errant dark curls he distracts himself brushing aside. “but you are the diplomat between us. a sharp tongue like yours could placate even the atreides, no matter what i do.”

His lips catch the fingertip when Achilles turns to touch him. They graze over the spirals embedded in its print, beyond callouses and telluric wounds, beyond the world-heavy scent of wine and leather and ammonia-oil. He has to wonder, lulled by a languid wave, by a cradle of sunlight: what had the Fates encrypted there, in the imprint they proclaim to be unique to each man ? His lover’s future ? The makeshift to his soul ?

Patroclus laughs quietly into the caress.

❛ If you could hear my thoughts. Gods, you send me rambling with a single touch. You appear, and nature scatters. The very laws of it. ❜ His hands begin to rake themselves through the other’s curls, but it happens in such instinctive stages, so visceral the impulse, that it touches his sight before it does his mind. He cannot even remember where he put the kylix, which is proper enough, considering that often it’s his name that goes. it’s as though the golden downpour has swallowed the world. What remains: the warmth of the curls spilling into his palms, the saccharine acid of the alcohol on his tongue. He must’ve drained it all — that’s how it usually went. He would lay hands on Achilles and get drunk twice over.

A pause follows the demigod’s words. Diastem, they call it in music. In sports and warfare, they called it: losing focus. Yet he is at that limn between too liquored up to discuss politics and nowhere near liquored enough. He had seen what his placation could do, just about the fair measure of it — it was only a few hours ago that he tried to sit down with Agamemnon. He’d caught the ruler around the arena, just in the span of time between the spectators starting to mince their ways home, and the contenders escorted to the changing rooms and stables. Their very lengthy tete-a-tete had two chief conclusions: one, that Patroclus' diplomacy, drawn out over the years, was only a little streamlined and a lot unendurable. Two, that Agamemnon might’ve learned ten different ways to stage a siege, but he only knew one way to say fuck you.

❛ The Atreides can go eat one. Might not be what Menelaus ‘s hunting for, but likely what he needs. As for the high-king, oh, he could do with two. ❜

His eyes are set ablaze with laughter, even as his mouth remains a careful slant, an apse sustaining Achille’s touch. But as they grow brighter, so too they grow blacker, full with intent. At once, Patroclus curls his lips around the finger — out with the Fates, out with flesh-stitched messages; he would have folly, and closeness, and unheeding bliss.

21. 04. 2020.

replies — 20 points.

starters — 40 points.

character development — 15 points.

𝙛𝙧𝙤𝙢 𝙗𝙚𝙜𝙞𝙣𝙣𝙞𝙣𝙜, 𝙩𝙤𝙬𝙖𝙧𝙙𝙨 𝙯𝙚𝙣𝙞𝙩𝙝, 𝙩𝙤 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙚𝙣𝙙 — 𝙘𝙤𝙡𝙡𝙚𝙘𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝙤𝙛 𝙤𝙙𝙚𝙨 & 𝙚𝙡𝙚𝙜𝙞𝙚𝙨.

He was feeling wary. Restlessness. That’s why he was up early. It was an everyday occurrence at this point. If he didn’t know better, It seems like Apollo was shining the sun on his face as a warning. Like to rise up to the challenge. 

Machon groaned to himself as he was walking. Why was this his cycle? Just go to the armory, maybe make small talk. Perhaps maybe someone had yet another amusing injury-and by amusing he means utterly ridiculous. 

Occupied and meandering thoughts prevented him from opening the doors in a normal fashion. When he realized what had happened it was too late. The shaking echoed as he opened it. Which surprised him, he wasn’t that strong. 

There was a scowl on his face as he kicked the door with his hind legs. It was Patroclus, a man he didn’t think about often but was familiar enough with him. He wasn’t his enemy, he just didn’t enjoy the vulgar language. 

“A please would suffice.” He started leaning against a wall, his hair covering one eye. “Don’t speak of Hades’ hounds so early in the morning, it’s a bad omen.” He chided again. There was a twitch on his lips. “Please tell me someone else is here?” 

A chuckle broke through the tautness, in that boisterous & brusque manner of his, more alarm cry than laughter — the strike of a gong. He shakes his head several times before replying.

❛ We have omens enough to flip with a shovel, and you’re concerned ‘bout mine ?  ❜

The soldier’s chin scratches against his shoulder, to shy away an itch, just as well as conceal the increasing amusement. His arms, dunk into a lekanis of polish and greased to the bone, only allow him a half-body turn towards Macheon.

He’d known the physician for a year or two, ever since enlisting in full swing into Agamemnon’s army, and he could probably build him a dozen shrines by now. When Achilles’ injury were too serious for Patroclus to tend to ( or when he’d been inspired enough to get himself knocked unconscious as well, full package deal and all that ) they resorted to Macheon. How many clean scars did he owe the young man; how many unblemished patches of skin ? Were it up to Patroclus, he would have Achilles any way he came, scarred head to toe if it came without pain — but he knew his lover was of a very different mind. For all his military upbringing, his austere congruity of thought and deed, Achilles had his vanities. He was, above all, besotted with beauty, with clear, untarnished things. He had a taste for simplicity, so long as it came gilded: pure foods, decorous pavilions, lofty bed-covers. Even as kids he had teased the other for it.

It is a measure of his respect, and doubtlessly his gratefulness, that Patroclus reins his tongue. Curses were as trite among his friends as candles in a temple. But he laughs once more, placating, conciliatory: ❛ Alright, so be it, I spit for good-luck. I’d scatter salt, too, only my hands are full. And as there’s no one else around — do find a rag and throw it my way. If we’re at it... why are you up so bloody early ? ❜ 

deathless sentences

Dread & sickness mingle together, swirling like paint inside a bowl. They form an oily sheen that settles on the surface of his mind and shadows every thought. Mouth, too, clamps around half-shaped words. Patroclus steels himself against it — but what tool can you devise to weather the unspeakable ? What chant to ward off the Lord of Mice ?

❛ If you are who you say you are ❜, he answers after a hollow silence, ❛ what your nature screams to reveal, you would know it by now: there is no happiness in cowardice. No cowardice more dire than to abandon what you love. And you will find more than love between me and him; you will find eternity. In this life I am by his side, happy or sorrowful or maddened by grief. ❜

A sharp inhale, painful with need. For a moment, he is debased before the God, emptied out on the scales of his eyes. A forlorn, desperate look dawns over his face. He is there, at the threshold of begging, his knees almost scraping the ground, his arms burrowed in it: a child pleading for his friend to be saved, as he did not do all those years ago, as he did ever since. Then it is washed away. The groundswell overtakes it, the soldier’s tide.

❛ You would have me run away and seek a new lover, a safer lover, a lover who did not cross you the wrong way ? You would forgive a man that, yet you would not forgive pride ? ❜

Laughter is plied from him like a whiplash: rough and shrill at once. ❛ Sounds like you need to get your priorities in order. ❜

deathless sentences

❛ And nothing in me can exist beyond you, αληθινή αγάπη. The poets say: half my soul. I think: seamless. There is no line past which you end and I begin. ❜  

deathless sentences

She lends advice as freely as she lends favor ? Patroclus’s blood stirs, hair standing on ends as if they’re dutiful heralds announcing a ritual’s peak. He knows a looming rage by now, has dined with its tell-tale signs. He swallows it down in mouthfuls.

❛ When I ask what happened, Your Highness, I expect either lordly dismissal or a fair account. ❜ The root of his teeth is aching with the effort it takes to remain congenial, and he knows he’ll pay for this restraint later on, knows it will come up like a creditor and demand swift release. Hours in the gymnasium, a good-natured brawl, a contest with his men — anything to blunt the edge, the furor. 

❛ I sit beside you, pay due salute, and inquire what Menelaus told you before the race: a simple enough exchange, no ? So you could tell me to scram. It’s within your prerogatives, after all. What I don’t take kindly to is this lofty sort of phlegm. You’re no less nonchalant than a maelstrom, Princess. I’d know it soon enough. ❜

meme roast supreme

❛ Oh. Oh. He is… uh, flawed ? Rash ? Yeah, no, sod it — I can’t do this. ❜

with patroclus’ presence comes a veil of calm. the raw, visceral rage that was brewing at odds with the delicate glassware and expensive furnishings that decorated the room fades to something more akin to humiliation, disappointment and quiet, seething irritation.

a weighted sigh pulls out of him, and he turns to face patroclus with his eyes down-turned. “there is no victory to celebrate.” third was not a victory worth celebrating. his mind raced with possibilities - if he’d had his own chariot, if his horses had been his own, if it had been a race for two charioteers, if he had thrust a javelin between the spokes of theseus’ wheel - then the victory would have been his. 

“i’m sorry for being in a foul mood, ἀγαπητέ. i’m just…” he balled his fists tight. once, twice, a third. “frustrated.” they knew each other well enough that he knew he didn’t need to waste words explaining himself. it was so hard to remember, these days, where he ended and patroclus began, so in sync as they had become. on the battlefield, in a two-man chariot, in their bed, side by side at the counsel table; they understood each other innately, the way a seasoned sailor understands the waves even in a storm that would shake the knees of a novice at the same helm.

perhaps the only draw of a feast would be wine, and when achilles’ eyes had drunk their fill of patroclus’ face they trained themselves on the amphora dangling from their fingers. a curve of a smile lifted to think that patroclus had preempted his state of low spirits, and had come with a cure in the form of that seed-sweet smile and an amphora brimming with wine. it was all he could do but offer them that semblance of a smile, and to retrieve the two blown-glass cups that had been left on the table by the window before padding back over where he belonged by patroclus’ side. “could you untie my cuirass - i can’t reach.“ he took the amphora from their hand and turned his back on them so they could free him from the dusty leather confines that so represented his loss, pouring the blood-red wine as he did so.

He lets it unfurl, spiral, coil like the spokes on a wheel —that great machinery of thought & foresight that is his lover’s mind. Every other second, Patroclus fancies he can hear its whir. What it doled out was always new ; it often proved the difference between life and death on the battlefield, on the thin-sliced cusp before a naval skirmish. Most times, it has the intonation of a torment. Only rarely did he hear the timid half-notes issued by it, those tuneless fragments. Like a man in the dark, besieged by fire sparks he cannot latch onto: you watch their flashing apparition, these flakes of godhood, and then close your eyes to the night.

In a volatile whisper, his fingers latch on the clasp of the cuirass. They drift across Achille’s skin, warmed by hidden suns, still flush with effort, and swiftly advance through the laces. When the plate is removed entirely ( lowered unto the floor like a dormant sea-monster ), as if that ritualic action gave him leave to, he answers the unspoken.

❛  Zoi mou  ❜, Patroclus murmurs, my life, once, twice, three times, a symmetry to the litany he holds. ❛  Do not torture yourself, hm ?  ❜

His lips are pressed taut against the other’s shoulder. Even now, a shiver courses through him, jarring against the heat: his vision blurs on the constellation of freckles and he thinks, as he had since the first time they’ve done this, squire and prince —so this is the shape of eternity, then, the weight of it on my tongue.

The wine, a costly pillage from Demian soil and harsh with resin, swirls in dark ellipses. The dusk filters through it and casts specters on both their wrists. Patroclus snakes his way through Achilles’ arm, and his fingers make to grab the decorated kylix.

❛ There were a hundred racers, an untrained course, an unpredictable favor. Who could’ve heard about Theseus, save for some cow-eyed girls poring over love fables. And what if you had won first crown for Mycenae, ἀγαπητέ ? Would you leave it to me to appease our ever-humble anax ? ❜

Chaos blooms inside Sparta like nettles on a riverbed, like the weeds him & Achilles would gather in childhood, wolf-wild and defiant under Chiron's watchful gaze. Such chaos allows unassuming men to let their roles slip, their duties sputtering at uneven ends, robbed of both weight and meaning. These gaps carved by disarray is where Patroclus' function resides — where his job actually begins, rather than on the race-course or at a ship's wind-bitten helm.

The cadence sets off in the armory, up at the first crow: he oversees requisitions, prepares the men, mingles with Trojans and foreign sellswords. Most importantly, he guards each cuirass and girdle-plate that bears the tawny hue of Myrmidon battlegarb, the emblem they have come to embody, as they're polished for the next day. When one thinks Thessaly, it's no longer the gaoled bride that springs to mind, the wedding feast that nursed perdition. Nor is it the fugitive mother, fingers marroon with crusted blood, half-ready to consume their son as Titans had. By Achilles' side, the two of them effaced all dishonor from the maps of thought and rumor, cleansed the names in fire. When people say Thessaly, now, they say: rebirth. They say: harrowing, luminous order. They say: a glory that defies piety.

And it starts on days like these, in places such as these. The slates are erased anew each morning. At times, the best he can do is hope he can uphold the rhythm, the unrelenting standard they have imposed years ago. More often, he takes it all in stride, no feat too small — no feat too paltry to prove himself worthy of his position, his lover, the symbols they carved, basiliskos, imperial, faultless.

The doors swing open. Rickety hinges, unoiled, creak with a baleful wail. An inching sign not all is gold-plated in Sparta, not if you bend an ear to it. Hissing through his teeth, Patroclus flaps a hand at the sound without turning to regard the newcomer. ❛ By blessed fuck, kick that sodden thing closed or they'll come to arrest us for disorder. Shrieks like Hades' hounds. ❜

Bitter feeling had replaced the blood in his veins for many years of his life. Such was better left in youth, in adolescent angst. In this day and age, stirrings of resentment made better kindling to a flame. Indeed, he could not deny a disappointment in the race’s result, but these were early days. They could portent, they could be fluke. It hardly mattered at this stage. 

Familiarity kept the guard at Agamemnon’s back rather than in Patroclus’ face. Quietly, the heads of soldier and king both turned to regard them, the former’s with only passing curiosity, the latter’s with more pressing regard. It was so clearly study, disapproval, without the usual glaze of performative warmth. 

“Have you come to gloat?” Scepticism brought a cold tone to an otherwise smooth voice. 

“You waste your breath, soldier. I am not at odds with any of these men, least of all your own.” Elbows rested on the wooden frame of the stands, his back slouched over them. Lackadaisical.

This was the truth. There was no begrudgement for Achilles or any other. Indeed, if there had been, he was less than inclined to speak to Patroclus on the matter. Not when stronger messages could be delivered in the dead of night. Yet, they were a far shot from such things as of yet. 

Surprise washes over him, not so much a downpour but a light drizzle. He feels its droplets heavy on his brow, sneaking past his lips with a scalding sensation. They don’t taste like anything particular; they don’t taste like anything he hasn’t felt before.

Scorn ? No, rather its lesser counterpart, its unborn twin: dismissal. At the present moment of their covenant, Patroclus is no less than a footman for the Mycenaen king. Well, that is only a little galling. He’s heard worse ; he heard paiderastês. He heard hetairos. Things one cannot bite their tongue at, cannot withhold the blow— a man lets them go unanswered once, and then answers forever on their altar of shame.

The crux of the matter is this: Patroclus is schooled in underestimation like prodromoi are trained into hunger, into thoughtless obeisance. He knows how it arises, how it settles in place, the snug manner of habit; he knows how it can be uprooted, or culled, or demolished in its entirety, leaving only the cadaver of a man’s last mistake. Like an archer’s thumbprint, his soul is calloused to it. He brushes over Agamemnon’s veiled disdain.

 For now, there is no need for such choices, even if their precarious balance teeters and shakes. Underneath, the word yet rears its timely head.

To their left, a goat is bleating something fierce. It catches him off-guard, once more forgetting that the whole reality is divided on this precipice, cleaved in half: one realm for the brunt of mortals, another for those entrapped in divine games. How odd, to think that only an arm’s breadth away, farmhands gather their herds, merchants sharpen the adzes, and history moves still ; but oh, how quiet the steps. In their reality, it is thunderous.

The captain’s temples twitch. Neck arches to better regard Agamemon, curbing off-kilter to one side. With a patience as burning as passion, and just as hardly endured, he unclenches his jaw — no, he prevents it from locking in the first place. ❛  If by my men you mean Achilles, I’d object to the term. But it’s comforting, really, to hear of your disinterest, your noble impartiality. Not something I’d have wagered on, from what I heard; from what we heard, my men and all. ❜