Chapter Text
The morning sun over Piraeus rose as a pale, honeyed gold. It illuminated the surface of rocks, lifted herbs lying between the small of the bushes, and smiled at greece. However on Todd's end, it was just the 1,980,000th time he watched the sunrise. Or perhaps it was more—he had lost numbers after outliving the languages used to speak them, and relied solely on calculations.
He had arrived in Greece three years prior; silently slipping off a Phoenician merchant ship with a stolen linen tunic under his olive, uneasily draped cape hooding his golden hair. As well as a name he found carved to a tombstone a few years ago which he decided to carry for the next century.
Patroclus.
It gave him a nostalgic sentence to the 1300s BCE he remembered with particular, sharp memory. Extremely vivid and almost impossible to believe in some days. He had stood on the ports when mountains were unnamed and the only gods were the faces of the bright side of the moon. He's found the current world's name for piety exhausting.
He was never a theist.
It was hard to bow to a creator, having sat across a campfire from the very men who invented folklore and myths. He watched them polish such lies until it sweetly charmed iridescence—clever ways to keep a tribe from killing eachother over a well. He had been shared bread with a nomadic scribe in a dust-glorified Levantine outpost and watched them draft verses they were oblivious to would become a global, worshipping scripture.
Then, when he was trapped in the body of a nine-year-old boy although having walked on earth for some lonely four millenniums, he had stood quietly, making alliances with shadows in the palace at Phthia. Todd was always the silent, golden-haired urchin whom the guards ignored because he looked too tiny to be a threat. He had watched the real Patroclus aging, living, and hurting.
Currently its 500BCE and where everyone was trying to find the gods, Patroclus was the one who had settled for being a companion. Even now, as he watched the priests murmur hymns to a Warrior Saint, Todd knew the truth. Patroclus hadn't been a divine avatar; he was a soft-hearted exile.
Todd, who aged one agonizing year for every five centuries of human slaughter, felt a kinship with that stillness. And so, came his name. And from a tombstone—to justify his outrageous, blasphemous name being after a legend.
He spent his nights in the cramped, thyme-scented hurt of an old widow named Agathe. She was a dim-sighted woman who believed Todd was a refugee from the northern colonies and a boy whose growth had been stunted by the hardships of war. She'd never questioned why the boy she had taken in three years ago hadn't grown an inch taller, or why his eyes were an ancient statue of blue. He was only a pair of hands that could weave baskets and fetch water without compliant.
"Donot be late with the mountain berries, Patroclus." Agathe weakly called out before he left, her voice as thin as parchment as Todd stepped over the stone threshold. "The festival of Dionysus begins at dusk. The juice must be pressed well by noon."
Todd nodded, knowing she couldn't see him. He slung a woven wicker basket over his shoulder and began the trek toward the slopes before him.
His routine was an armor; as much as time passed while he moved with mundane tasks, time spared him loneliness and peace.
He reached the edge of the sacred olive grove, where air was cooler and reeked pleasantly of silver leaves and wild herbs. In silence, his small fingers stained purple as he plucked the berries, making sure to not dwell with the thorns in the way. With nothing in his mind, he held a skill he had perfected over few millennias. Until a sound shattered the stillness.
He froze—then realized it wasn't a pesky critter but a soft laugh.
A laugh like a bright, broze coin hitting the marble floor indicating much richness. Not in wealth perhaps but, the rich one could be incredibly chosen by life on their side. Stealthily, he looked through the silver-green branches of the olden trees and found.. a young boy?
He was dressed in a chuton of fine, bleached wool and his hair a tangled mess of brown splashed ardently. Crouched in the dirt, nose-to-nose with a small, emerald lizard sunning itself on a flat rock. "You see," the boy whispered in an attempt to mimick a great philospher, "the problem with being a prince is that everyone expects you to breathe fire. But what if I just want to sit in the shade and speak to you? My father would call that an act of tragedy. He has no appreciation for small beings."
Todd stared with wide eyes. This was silly. He had lived through the rise and fall of the great pyramids; he had walked through cities where men spoke in tongues long forgotten. And yet, there was a feather in the dark-haired boy's tone that rinsed his skin with breeze on a stagnant afternoon.
His muscle cramped and winced, shifting the position of his leg but a twig snapped under Todd's heel. Snap.
The boy's head carefully whipped around.
Oh boy. His eyes were the color of an Aegean after a terrible storm—deep and shifting. And he did not seem afraid.
"Aha! A witness!" He cried, springing to his feet with the grace of a young deer. He abandoned the lizard and hopped toward the bushes, his chiton snagging on to the thorns. Though, he couldn't care less of the royal fabric. Todd blushed in embarrassment as the other boy stopped a mere foot from Todd, squinting at his appearance. "Are you a dryad? You were incredibly still, I thought you were a part of the bark." He giggled.
"I-I'm.. I'm just picking berries." His face warmed furthermore.
"Berries?" He made a face as if Todd created gravel as a dish, "It is much too hot for labor," he reached out and snatched the basket from Todd's hand, setting it decisively on a stump.
"Come. The berries will be there when the moon rises. I need someone to help rehearse the Medea."
Todd blinked. "I have errands—" he protested, through uphis feet were moving, led by the boy's relentless pull around his small wrist.
"I am Neilos." He interrupted with a sweet grin that Todd swore could have lit up the underworld, "But my peers call me Achilles. The boys at the palaestra, because I am the fastest and my mother believes I am spun from gold. And you are?"
Patroclus stumbled over a gnarled olive root.
To Neil, Achilles was a title, a gleaming ideal of this century's perfection. But to Todd, the name had him shivering. He remembered the real Achilles that people worshipped today—a teenager he looked up to with sun-cracked lips and under his fingernails rested dirt.
He braced for the skepticism, "...M..My name is Patroclus." He said.
Neil stopped in his tracks. His hand, which had been pulling Todd along went eerily still in suspicion. "..You are mocking me." He frowned, "You heard me say Achilles and you thought you'd play the fool. No one is actually named Patroclus. Unless they are a preist or a ghost. My father says heroes are for temples and not dirt on knees. Who are you, really?"
Todd felt a hot, defensive flush creep up his cheeks. "I- I'm not." He stammered under the high note of a child's panic, "I d-didn't know you would say that. I picked.. I mean, it really is my name. A name I've had long before Patroclus was widely known about.."
Neilos searched Todd's face. He looked for the tell-tale smirk of a petty liar, but he found trembles in the other boy who appeared to long for bolting into the trees at any second. His suspicion melted and a slow, delighted smile spread across his face.
"Patroclus," He whispered, "Achilles and Patroclus. Do you know the stories? The bards say they were never apart. Not even when the world tried to break them."
Todd looked down at their joined hands and followed him as he resumed walking, "I know the stories."
Probably better than the bards.
"Very well!" Neilos chirped, yanking Todd towards a hidden clearing, "Then that means you have to stay. You are my Patroclus now. I must protect you from everything. It's a rule.. I just made it." He giggled.
—୨୧—
Todd had only known Neilos or three weeks, but out of all his years of living, it was the first set of weeks he ever felt alive. In the tangled limbs together on the grass, in the sticky fingertips after having stolen figs, and the way the world gained slow colors as Neilos turned to him.
Sharing a single, bruised pomegranate Todd 'borrowed' from the market, Neilos would crack it open and stain his palms purple.
"They say Persephone had to stay in the dark because she ate these seeds. If I eat half and you eat half, do we get to stay together? Even in the underworld?" Neilos held out a seed to Todd, his eyes shimmering.
"I dont think the gods could keep us apart at all," Todd said.
He found Neilos' longing to stay together forever endearing. Todd quickly found that Neilos had gotten attached to his dear friend, and Todd reciprocated delightfully. It was long since he had found himself a companion and Neilos was more than lovely to be around with. Sometimes, Todd felt as if he did not deserve the breathe the same air Neil did when he was with him.
Currently, the sun was dipping low, turning the marble temples on the distant hills into embers. In the meadow of wild asphodels, they had escaped Piraeus, where the air smelled like dried grass and the beginning of the world.
"Look," Neilos whispered, pulling Todd down into the thicket of tall flowers, "If we stay very still, time will forget we are here." He grinned.
They lay on their backs, side-by-side. At the youth of eleven, their world was small and immense and caving in. Todd turned to his side, finding the way a single, brown curl sat on Neilos's nose, and the sight made him feel a strange, soaring ache.
"Pat?" Neilos murmured.
"Yes?"
"Do you believe people posess only one soul? Or perhaps it is like.. a puzzle? I could have a piece of yours, and you could have a piece of mine, and it could fall into place."
"I think.. I think I didn't have a soul at all until I heard your laugh before I could see the person behind that sound. I think I was a hollow jar without anyone to pour wine into it." Todd reached out, his small, calloused hand brushing against Neilos'.
Neilos fluttered open his eyes. They were darkly coloured, but reflecting the sky and bright. Without a word or a breath exchanged between them, he rolled onto his side and pressed his forehead against Todd's. The simplest point of contact, warm, and steady.
"You are my favorite person in all of Greece," Neilos smiled softly, "More than the actors. More than the poets. If I could, I would take a needle and thread and sew our shadows to forever. In that moment, even when the sun would go down, we would still be touching."
Todd reached up and gently tucked a stray brown strand behind Neilos' ear. His fingers lingered there, feeling the soft heat of the boy's skin on his fingertips. "I would never pull away."
Neilos smiled again, reaching into the fold of his tunic and pulled out a small, woven ring made of dried sweetgrass. He'd spent all morning clumsily braiding it just for his Patroclus.
"Here," Neilos said, sliding it onto Todd's finger. It was too big and scratchy, but to Todd, it was heavier than a crown of solid gold. "Now we are promised."
They stayed that way as the stars began to poke through the velvet blue of the sky. Neilos eventually fell into a light doze, his head tucked into the crook of Todd's neck. However, Todd felt wide awake, watching the constellations he had known since the day of his birth. He knew the how the patterns of the stars formed and where they navigated by the back his hand. "Did you know?" He inhaled deeply, "I could recognize how the sunlight seeps on the trace of your face, than the many centuries I have spent with these stars?" Neilos with his warm heart, did not respond in his sleep, but Todd continued. "I could recognize you by touch alone, by the way your breaths steadily draw in your sleep, by the sound of your bare feet on earth. I could know you in total darkness were you mute and I deaf, in a different lifetime."
The stars were the witnesses to the only thing that really mattered.
—୨୧—
They were sitting in the ruins of a forgotten shrine tucked into the limstone cliffs. Todd had led them there, he would come here every so often to cache his wealth and dig them up again a few centuries later when he needed them for travelling and such. Under their feet, Todd couldn't remeber, probably stood some gold he stole from a mine years ago, but that did not matter. Nothing really mattered; the air would leave hairs on their arms standing, smelling of the sea and the wild jasmine that climbed the chipped off spaces in the pillars.
Neilos was fidgeting. He had been mostly quiet all evening, Achilles was dampened by soft and nervous tension running. He glanced at Todd, pink hue dusting over its way to find his face in a flush. "Pat." He said suddenly, "I've been thinking of the stories where gods fall in love with mortals."
He bit his lip gently, digging his toes into the sand. "People say love is a weakness. They say it is something you do to have sons and keep a house. But Pat, I dont feel like a house-keeper when I sit beside you. I.. I feel like I am flying."
Todd tilted his head, genuinely confused. "Flying is for the birds, Neilos. We are only sitting here."
Neilos let out a frustrated, affectionate huff. He crawled closer on his knees until he was inches from Todd. "You're so silly for a boy who acts so old. I mean, here." Neilos interlocked his fingers with Todd's, pulling Todd's fist to his own chest where his heart would be, "It thumps when you walk into the grove. It thumps so loud, I fear the heavens can hear it too."
Todd went very still, absorbing the rapid, frantic thudding of Neilos' heart, "I-Is it sick? I have seen fevers do this. I can get some willow bark from the tanner—"
"It is not a fever, Patroclus," Neilos murmured quietly, "I think.. I love you. Not like a brother. Nor a teammate would. I love you... like the flowers for leaning in for the sun. I don't want to be anywhere but where you are."
Love.
He had discovered it from the poets speak of it like it were holy in the marketplaces, had seen the tragedies written of it. But he had never experienced the physical weight of it. It felt like a light, golden thread threw itself around the soul buried deep in his skull and yanked him toward the boy infront of him.
"I don't know how to do.. that." He blinked.
"You don't have to do anything." Slowly, Neilos leaned forward. It was soft, clumsy, and hesitant—almost childlike. He pressed his lips against Todd's. Nothing it was grand or cinematic, but Todd could feel the sensations of it all at once in a slow, stiff manner. The attempt on silence from Neilos as he tried to exhale but it came out as a huff, the politeness of his thumbprints leaving stains on his cheeks, but most of all, the softness he had come to venture Neilos' lips.
He was just a boy, being loved by another boy.
When Neilos pulled back, his face flushed with shyness but still grinned, "Th-there," he wispered, "Now you know.."
Todd touched his own lips with a trembling hand. He looked at Neilos—his Neilos—and felt more of a loved being than an immortal curse.
"...It is very warm," He managed to murmur, his heart finally caught up to the pace of how Neilos' was.
"We will keep it forever." Neilos smiled softly.
Todd did want to believe in forever. He wanted to believe such small, warm, and blooming love could protect them both from the how harsh the world could roll for lifetimes. This kiss—he would carry as a memory for the next 2000 years—tasted of salt and of the first time he ever felt human on his merciless land.