Nevermind

"It's the little things men die for," I told you with all my teenage wisdom. "The little things."

You laughed then, filling the room with a joy that was not quite respectful and replied that last you heard yours was not so little. I could not keep you standing for that. With the clumsy grace of a wrestler I flung you to the mattress, knocking the boast right out of you, and you were still laughing when I straddled your hips to keep you down.

I did not begrudge you a laugh. When we were young I hated it; your very smile said I was eight and you were ten and you must stroll into the agora, doing what big boys do while I stayed behind my mother's skirts and tried to ignore the smell of seaweed. But it was different now, when you smiled at me, in a way that didn't make me feel little at all (in any way) and besides, I liked what it did to your face.

You were not laughing when the man came and told us about The Thousand, even though I was wearing a dress and kept trying to catch your eye and a grape got stuck in my bodice. You were not laughing as we lay side by side in our tiny room in Skyros, a sliver of you gleaming silver as a coin in the moonlight (Daedemia was very upset when I suggested we save the bedding ceremony for when I came back) and when I let my hand wander you snapped at me.

"Gods' teeth Achilles give it a rest," you brushed me off and like a wounded spider I scuttled away.

I could see you in the thin silver light, if only half of you. Your mouth was set very hard and you weren't looking at me but at the ceiling, where blue-green dolphins danced on waves of square-cut tiles and orange lobsters were perfect in their symmetry and I knew that at that moment you liked a peeling mosaic more than me.

"Sorry," I said, scowling. "I forgot you aged need more sleep than the rest of us."

"You think this is funny," it was not a question. "This is all one big joke to you."

I looked at my petticoat stuffed into a dark corner and stifled a snigger. "Not all of it," I defended myself. "Some of it. Some of it's a bit funny."

"Gods," you rolled your eyes, oh-so-above me and feeling all of your eighteen years. "You're such a child."

If we hadn't been in bed, and guests in another man's house, I would have hit you. Instead I contented myself with a glare, except your head was at a funny angle and your ear received the best part of my malice. "We'll see," I said spitefully. "When I'm captain of the Myrmidons and best of the Greeks and you're changing bandages or emptying piss pots or being somebody's squire-"

"-Or washing your body or placing the coins on your eyes," you retorted. "And coming home to the son you never knew and explaining exactly why his father died."

And then I understood why you were angry and the absurdity of it both touched and amused me. I did not know whether to hold your hand or laugh in your face. Instead I fixed you with a solemn gaze and spoke very seriously "Patroclus," I said. "They will not let us die. I am Achilles."

I never saw such disgust than in the look you gave me then (except for that one time, later, when they were all dying and I was playing dress-up) and it scared me. "Do you think that means something?" you spat. "Do you think that means a goddamn thing? You don't get it do you? About what going will mean. To me. To your mother. To your wife."

"I don't want to think about her."

"She'll be thinking of you."

"I'm a better husband to her there than I am here," I said and wondered if it was true.

"Do you think that excuse will work nine months from now? Poor and alone and bleeding? And when the child comes, what then? You think she can raise a son, with no one but a senile old man for help? Gods you're so selfish. You don't give a damn, do you? Do you even know another name besides your own?"

"Yes," I said sulkily. "I know yours."

The arrow hit its mark. You turned to look at me. Your eyes were shiny in the dark and swam with the pools that balanced on the precipice of your lower lid, like a cup of water on its side, threatening to spill with a blink. That shocked me more than anything. You never cried, if you could help it. Not even the day the letter came, telling you that your mother lay dead and your father remarried to a girl of twelve. You broke every window in the Great Hall until your knuckles were bloody and useless and you couldn't make a proper fist anymore but not one tear splashed the glass.

"You know mine," you whispered. A single tear trembled on your eyelash, tripped, and slid down your cheek to mark the pillow.

I know I should have said something then but you were crying, really crying and it scared me more than anything else I'd heard that evening, even more than the war and dying and the prospect of fatherhood. So I did the only thing I could think of and pressed my lips against your fingertips. They were cold. I kissed your fingers and your hands and the soft pads of your thumbs that had so often ran over the knotted wood of bows and lyres, I kissed the scarred knuckles where glass and grief had been made permanently etched and your eyes closed as your mouth fell open and issued a little sigh.

"Old man," I breathed your least favourite endearment. "Do not be angry with me."

You shook your head, eyes still closed. "I'm not angry," you said. "I'm scared of losing you."

I smiled and rubbed your knuckles fondly. "The war's to last ten years," I reasoned. "Time enough to look for loopholes. All prophecies have them. Besides, they probably won't kill me. Mother says the Gods don't like to get rid of heroes, it reflects badly on them and Apollo doesn't like me but I think the others do, the women at least. They probably won't kill me."

"Achilles," you whispered like a prayer. "I'm not talking about you dying."

Your eyes fluttered open, light as bats' wings. We looked at each other, your brown eyes locked to my blue-green. Earth and water, always. And I so desperately wanted to know what you were talking about, felt that my confusion had let you down somehow and I almost asked you "What then?" But I didn't because right then you kissed me and all questions evaporated into the air like water on the mosaic tiles and Nevermind, I thought. Nevermind.

That night I let you take me and I knew you'd lied when you'd said you weren't angry. I felt the anger pulsing through you, felt it in the bruising grip of your hands round my wrists and the harsh, almost punishing way you claimed my mouth. Your teeth grazed my neck, left marks on the soft skin between shoulder and collar bone where you claimed my flesh with the purple trademark that might as well have been your name. You drew blood and I tasted it in your kiss, violent and unforgiving as bronze at the back of my throat. It was almost funny seeing you like this, you who were always so gentle, tender to the point that I teased you for effeminacy. But I suppose you had a point to prove. And after months of Daedemia's breathy little sighs and girlish embraces I think I needed it rough. More than anything I needed a reminder of you.

I heard the rush of the tide as you arched against me, the wind through the Cyprus trees and the creaking of the wood under the window, made weak from damp and too many mornings. You whispered my name, like a song, like a prayer against my slickened skin and I closed my eyes, imagining we were somewhere else doing this; on the cobbled steps of a burning city perhaps, with the fire licking our thighs. You shuddered against me and my mouth fell open, just as the walls in my head came crumbling down.

Afterwards you held me to you, your arm clutching my waist as a drowning man seizes a raft. I could still feel you trembling against me and I turned to look at you. "Ten years is a lot of nights," I said, trying to make you smile.

It worked. "You always have an answer for everything, don't you?"

I grinned. "It is one of my favourite things about me."

"One of your favourite?"

"One of many."

You laughed and I felt as if I'd just vanquished the hydra. "You're mad," you said, nuzzling my neck.

You'd told me once that madness had never become a man so well. Thrilled, I'd stowed it away as a tremendous compliment. I nestled into the blankets, suddenly sleepy. The sheets of Skyros felt rough compared to your hands and lips, despite your obvious…irritation. I fingered my wrist where a bracelet of purple bruises snaked, like hyacinths. I felt you flinch as you stroked them. "I'm sorry," you said sheepishly. "I don't know what came over me."

I shook my head. "Don't apologise," I replied. "I needed it."

We were silent for a while, listening to the sound of the rushing waves outside our window and our own steady breathing. The moon splashed across the room, making me look all silvery and molten. I felt your arm tighten around my torso.

"You have to promise," you whispered. "When we go to Troy…you will not go looking for Hector."

"Of course I won't, I'm not retarded for Gods' sake."

"Could have fooled me. But promise."

"Alright, I promise."

"There was a lack of conviction in your promise."

"I double promiseokay? I double, triple, times a hundred promise. Ow, Patroclus, I can't breathe."

"Oops. Sorry."

You loosened your hold, allowing me to twist round in the circle of your limbs so that we were facing. You looked embarrassed. I've always loved that expression on you. It makes me feel so superior. So much so that I had to kiss you, long and slow with a tender affection that I don't generally care to exhibit. Your mouth opened beneath mine and moonlight came pouring out.

oOo

Later your body lies on the pyramid of twigs and another rots in the coverlets of my tent and there's a knife in my fist. The afternoon hits the silver blade, splaying light like the moon's rays on a mirror bouncing from the serrated edge and I think of that night and how I woke up, gasping, with your arms squeezing the air from my stomach. I had to kick you to get you to release me and again when you would not stop apologising. The memory makes me want to laugh and I grin at the Trojan boy, twitching like a new-born calf in his bonds. He does not smile back.

It occurs to me briefly, stepping forward with the knife and running the blade's edge across the boy's jugular, that this might have been exactly what you meant. There are many ways to lose oneself, (we tried most of them out that night I got my new shield) and in doing so you might find you become something quite different. I always thought that was okay as long as I was able to find myself again in a piece of you. But the knife trails a thin line of shining scarlet and massive drops slip from the brown flesh to splatter onto the sand and you're not here anymore.

The boy collapses into the sand, like a limp puppet. His blood spreads from his throat, an eternally blossoming flower. You told me once that madness never became a man so well.

It works both ways.