Chapter Text
Now- Earworms
Even bubble gum pop would have retired the tune, but Achilles was set on singing its melody to legacy. Achilles hums the jingle that had played in the television set days ago and Patroclus nudges him in the ribs.
“Quit it with that now”.
Achilles sticks out his tongue in defiance, picking up a branch and balancing in on his arm. The stick balances with ease, of course it does for him, and Achilles swiftly flips it into his palm.
“En Garde”, he announces, pointing the stick into Patroclus’s chest like a sword. Patroclus rolls his eyes, certain that the force he pushes them with will get them stuck in his brain, but he obliges regardless. He could never say no to him, the action physically impossible and absolutely revolting. He finds a punnier branch nearby, and stands like the fencers do in the book on his bookshelf.
“I challenge you to a match. You won’t win, Achi. Now this time”, Patroclus says, and he knows he is lying as the words fly by.
Achilles tilts his head with a curious grin, cat-like with the ferocity of a lion.
“Oh, we’ll see about that”.
Before- The Little Thing
“What’ca doin’ champ?”.
The voice startled Patroclus, who looked up at the dark heralds before him- gangly boys in his grade but surely older by their looks. The metal bench beneath him felt very cold as the sun was blocked by the gigantic monsters and a shame rose in his blood, the inconsequential nature of the predator and the prey.
It must be in his face that the bullies pick him out like hair in the soup.
Patroclus’s hands clamped around the book he had borrowed from Peleus’s study, his only reprise from the bustling merciless recess. He hoped then that this time it would be less painful, and over quickly. But instead of hot heavy breaths down his neck, the prologue to a very jagged punch, he was met with a visceral growl and a clean shove.
He rose his eyes to meet him, Achilles, standing over with his hands out wide.
“Enough of it already”, he snarled. One of the boys picked up the command as an open thought, letting his fingers clench Achilles’s shirt.
“And what will you do about it, squirt?”.
Achilles shooed him away dismissively.
“I’ll make you bleed”.
The boys laughed at it, unaware of Achilles and his temper. And Patroclus was quite unaware of Achilles’s close relationship with bruised knuckles.
But the moment made it very clear for all of them.
When Peleus picked them up after a very serious call Patroclus presumed, he bristled with paternal concern. His eyes flew over to his son, who was rubbing his busted lip absently. When Peleus asked him the reason for the fight, Achilles gave him and Patroclus a hard-set stare, before sulking to the car.
The drive to the house was very quiet, and Patroclus couldn't help but feel that it was his fault. The bringer of the silence.
As soon as they arrived at the house, Achilles stormed to his room, closing the door with a bang. That said, Achilles's shoes were placed properly on the cabinet shelf, leaving enough space for Patroclus to keep his own- something that until that day was told time and time again by Peleus to deaf ears. The dinner that night was very frigid, yet it felt like a thaw somehow.
Somehow.
It didn’t happen again though, not immediately. Achilles defaulted to leaving his shoes haphazardly; Peleus tripped on his sneaker once, letting out a string of curses at his son, to which Achilles gave him nothing in return.
But Patroclus noticed the small things.
That fall, when Peleus harbored large pumpkins and set them on the kitchen island, Achilles uses the painstakingly small knife to cut his gaping version of a smile, leaving the easier tool within Patroclus's grasp.
The gooey sap still stains the creases of his fingers where the skin meets the bone in a ghost of a memory.
When the children across the hill dressed in fanciful costumes and gathered at the school event, Patroclus noticed, eyes peeking behind pages, how Achilles collected handfuls of chocolates from the Aunties but tossed them into an empty bowl at the end. The other children ran to fill their shallow fill at the revelation, but Achilles was gone by then.
And maybe, Patroclus had thought, that a beginning does not need to begin with a start but a change.
Now- Random Thoughts
Achilles smiles, the dust cakes his nose like a brown powder puff. The sticks are somewhere, but the laugher is here within them like a living soul. Achilles pulls Patroclus up, spinning him under his arm in a graceful motion. Patroclus stumbles beneath him, and flays out his hand like a duck.
His eyes flit over to Achilles, cheeks burning with an embarrassment that never quite faded, but Achilles is too lost in his rumbustious thoughts.
“We should make a tree house, Patroclus”, he announces
Patroclus snorts.
“You? With a hammer and a saw? In the four years I’ve been here, I’ve never seen you pick a nail”.
Achilles huffs indignantly. “Doesn’t mean I can’t do it”.
Patroclus shakes his head, preparing a counter. But Achilles is already bouncing onto the next plot. He pulls Patroclus to the line of Fig trees by the road, another asset of the Pelidies estate. Patroclus lets himself get tugged forth; his stomach rumbles momentarily and Achilles gives him a lopsided smile.
“I know”.
Before- Wishes for Snow
When Christmas came that first year, Peleus intended it to be grand although Patroclus didn't know if this was regularity. Standing by the fireplace, he dragged a large tattered carboard box with the word Christmas scrawled on top in uneven black letters.
Patroclus saw him pull two stockings, a third one buried deep into the mess on starched colored bulbs. Achilles kneeled down, pulling random glass trinkets and it was one of the many times Patroclus didn’t know what to do with his hands. Peleus hung the two stockings, and Patroclus feels his heart drops though the feeling is mutually unknown. He had never cared for Christmas, another day in an endless toll of dullness. Perhaps the most wonderful thing about it was his mother. Patroclus remembers it well, one of his few fond memories of her. She would pull him onto the kitchen counter, her fingers dancing across the dough. My little moon, she would call, and she would let him pick out the shapes out of the four cookie cutters they owned, although they were all quite rusted.
He always chose snowman then, and his mother would give him a smile that wrinkled her crow’s feet and a bit of her nose.
It’s snowing, isn’t it baby?
It never snowed in Texas.
When Myrto was born, she joined their tiny escapade, her babbles joining whatever Patroclus would ramble on about. The weather, the tiny crayons at school, the wrinkly orange under the lunch tables. It was always meaningless things, and maybe that was why it was such. When thunder rang in the house, his mother thought of the rain. His father, and most others, said she was simple. But was it not genius to be simple like that.
Patroclus thinks now that he was not so quiet after all. Perhaps the sound was taken out of him. Regardless, it was gone was it not?
Patroclus shifted uncomfortably, rubbing the balm of his foot against the lush carpet. It felt odd, the feeling of not belonging somewhere yet having no other place to go. It puts strange thoughts in your mind, moments like those when the world feels quite hopeless. Achilles looked up at him, but his eyes looked strangely similar to the first time he saw them that night.
And then, Achilles ran to the foyer and pulled out another stocking for his father to hand.
And the moment passed.
That year, for the first time, Patroclus enjoyed himself, let himself indulge. His suitcase still sat in the closet. Though the room became furnished, he couldn't bring himself to stow it in the attic. When Peleus lit a cigar, a Christmas movie on the faulty antique television (quite unnatural for a mansion, if Patroclus had to say), Achilles leaned close unconsciously. His golden hair furled, and Patroclus could feel a heat rising, distinctly within and partly from the fire. On Christmas day, Patroclus received nothing much. To most, it was materialistic. A book, a pen, and a couple of sweaters.
But to Patroclus, a boy who had nothing, it felt like everything.
Later that night, when the carols had ceased their singing and the world had gone quiet, Achilles had come to his room. Achilles stood by the doorway, and Patroclus, who was watching the first snow drift down, looked at him in surprise.
"Come outside. I'll unlock the door".
His little oh painted a smudge on the cold glass, beside the imprint of his palm. Patroclus didn't know what to expect; what should one expect when someone pulls you outside to the snow. But despite the anxiety curling his heart, his blood thrummed with an excitement for what was snow like to touch?
Was it cold? Would it melt on your fingers or feel like clouds drifting in cold haze?
Achilles was huffing rings into the frosty air when Patroclus finally goes outside to meet him. He looks at him with an expression that is uniquely his own, a slate and a one-sided window. It was hard to know him, to feel him.
"You've never seen snow, haven't you?".
Patroclus nodded quietly.
"Well, Patroclus", Achilles spoke. "This is my Christmas gift to you. Merry Christmas, Patroclus". He turned to Patroclus, and his eyes crinkled with a warmth that is strangely familiar but absent till that day.
"I hope to many more to come, yes", he concluded, turning to the snowflakes coating the tips of their hairs. His fingers wrapped around Patroclus's, like a silent promise.
And a very happy holiday to you too, Achilles. I hope for more too.