ACEDIA – neglect to take care of something that one should do.
Thank you so much! This is from a throwaway project about a reincarnation of Hermes (Parys) and his adventures. This is one of them!
There’s something beautiful about his eyes that catches Parys immediately — that sun-drenched driftwood colour wasn’t all that common among mortals, now was it? He’d met the man when he’d waded to where Parys had snuck away from the group of backpackers he’d been hitching along with. The other had on nothing but his trunks and his backpack
“Care if I stay?” he said.
Parys’ eyes flicked down to the two symmetrical lines across the man’s chest, eyes sticking to a slight pucker in the centre which was barely covered with a dusting of chest hair.
The man’s eyes had followed Parys’ eyes, looking down to his chest himself, before flicking them up to Parys’ face again. “Is it a problem?”
Parys beamed. “Not at all.”
Days and nights on the beach with him felt like it should never end. The sun grew and waned with each turn of the earth and Parys was thoroughly enamoured. Was this love? Could it be love?
It can’t be, Parys told himself, I don’t even know his name.
Parys leaned away from the shorter man, and tilted his head to the side, letting his recently cut dark hair play against his cheekbones. Puppy eyes looked to the man with golden skin and driftwood eyes — his own dark hair was glossy with ringlets catching the sunset in each way possible. Parys quirked up one side of his mouth. “So?” he said, expecting the other to know what he wanted.
“So?” The man echoed, a light smile played at his own cupid’s bow mouth. He popped a slice of ripe strawberry into his mouth, the smile growing as he chewed.
“You’re going to tell me your name?” Parys asked, trying to give the question the flavour of a statement. He didn’t like it when mortals had such an influence on him. It made it hard to leave.
The man let out a chime of a laugh. “Would you stay if you knew it?”
Parys flinched at the question. “Ouch,” he said, “Tell me what you really think of me.”
Parys took the man up in a kiss, fingers catching on the other’s salt-soaked curls. He wanted this mortal desperately. There wasn’t enough time. Never enough time, and never enough places. Parys knew he would leave him once he knew his name. He knew himself well enough for that.
“Leo,” he whispered between kisses and hands, “I’m Leo.”
The next morning, Parys woke up to no one.
