Warning: this is a short story that does contain very serious themes like rape. It is not particularly explicit and more implied but still. It's a Greek myth. Also, this is just fanfiction, the research involved was limited and I'm aware that there are multiple different interpretations and telling s of this myth. Thanks.
Ganymede
It was an honor, he thought.
(It didn't feel like an honor).
It was the favor of a god, it was priceless and to be treasured. He was lucky.
(Then why did he feel the opposite?)
It went a little like this:
A prince of Troy had always known he possessed beauty to make men and women alike swoon at the sight of his visage. His hair was the spun gold of the gods, blessed by Lord Apollo and his fire licked touch, face molded by Aphrodite's supple hands, eyes the pale blue of a morning sky covered in clouds. It was what he was known for, this prince, and it mattered not any other attributes he possessed in his youthful grace. He knew quite well of this fact, knew his body alone could bring crowds to their knees, smile kind and glittering and lovely. Beauty, he knew too, won the attention of mortals and immortals alike.
His childhood was filled with sickly spun tales of the fickle gods and goddesses, their wrath, bitter envy, gifts and curses. Do well to appease, to worship and splay thyself for them in whatever they ask of thee.
He knew what happened to the mortals who caught the divine's eyes. And it was for this that he, in the darkest parts of the nights, arms curled around himself, loathed the beauty gifted unto him. That his reflection in the clear water made nausea churn his stomach. They want the favor of a god because they didn't have it. But he could feel the gentle caress of the sun, the lap of the ocean waves tickling his feet, the constricting winds that embraced his unwilling body. It may be hubris, but Ganymede was sure the weighted dread was very real. A prince of such charm, such vision, you must be blessed, and so grateful, yes?
No. No, no, no, no.
He tended to the fields and walked barefoot to feel the grass against his skin. A pity to feel it leave too.
The talons wrapping around him were sharp, slicing gouges into his flesh and he could feel the blood dripping, rivuletting across his ribs and stomach. This was not favor and it was not luck and he could feel terror crawl through his throat until it seized and he could not scream. Movement caused pain, sharp claws digging deeper and so he didn't struggle. His eyes burned but he didn't weep. It was something, he knew, that had been coming. It was dread in his chest suffocating him in the night, the smoke in his dreams. He did not weep, did not cry and thrash because he had already done so million times over before. He had known, it was something that threatened to happen much higher than the other boys running along the halls and fighting with glinting swords.
And so the nymphs bathed him and rinsed the red from his skin as though it had never been there in the first place. He smiled, kind and glittering and lovely, bowed his head, demure, fluttering lashes and pouring nectar in gold gilded cups. Eyes seared him like a brand, and there were bruises mottling his thighs, scratches down his back and it hurt. He smiled, kind and glittering and lovely.
It was an honor, he thought.
(No it was not).