paigian
Fandoms
Recent works
-
bury the sea by paigian
Fandoms: EPIC - Jorge Rivera-Herrans (Albums), The Odyssey - Homer
09 Jun 2025
Tags
Summary
The wind comes early, salt-laced and restless, tugging at the sails before the sun has fully risen. The sea is silver in the half-light, gleaming like a blade. A dozen black ships line the shore, each a beast of burden groaning under the weight of war—of spears and shields, of men too young and men already weary, six hundred in all. Horses stamp and snort. Armour glints faintly. The world smells of brine and bronze and things left unsaid.
And there is the horizon, wide and unblinking, where the gods keep their secrets.
Already, Ares drums his fingers against his shield. Athena watches from behind a veil of cloud, sharp-eyed and silent. Apollo cords his bow in the east. Even the Fates lean in, breathless. The heavens tilt toward bloodshed.
But the dawn stretches her fingers across the sky, rosy and pale, as though the morning itself hesitates—softening what must be done.
Odysseus steps forward. His cloak hangs from his shoulders, sword glinting beneath it at his hip. He looks impossibly far away already, though he hasn’t left yet.
But his eyes—his eyes are on her.
A dual-timeline look at Odysseus and Penelope—memory and absence side by side.
Series
- Part 2 of tell me about a complicated man
-
split the earth by paigian
Fandoms: EPIC - Jorge Rivera-Herrans (Albums), The Odyssey - Homer
13 May 2025
Tags
Summary
The sword clattered from his hand; his knees hit dirt, breath knocked out of him. He lay still, stunned.
The shame bloomed fast and hot. His face flushed, eyes stinging. He didn’t want to look up.
But then a large hand reached down to him.
“Easy,” Diomedes said, soft and warm. “You’ll get it. Everyone falls at first.”
Telemachus let himself be pulled up, his small fingers swallowed by the roughness of Diomedes’s grip.
His eyes prickled. He blinked hard and fast, trying to keep it in. But something had cracked, quiet and deep. The warmth in Diomedes’s voice was too much, too kind, and the grief he didn’t understand yet had nowhere else to go.
“I just—” he started, but the words twisted. “I wanted to be good.”
“You’re ten,” Diomedes said gently. "You're not meant to be anything but ten just yet."
Telemachus scrubbed his face quickly. "I'm almost twelve, actually," he muttered.
Diomedes raised an eyebrow, then gave a quiet laugh. "Ah. My mistake. That changes everything."
5 times Telemachus lost a fight, plus 1 time he didn't.
Series
- Part 3 of tell me about a complicated man
-
find the beginning by paigian
Fandoms: EPIC - Jorge Rivera-Herrans (Albums), The Odyssey - Homer, Ancient Greek Religion & Lore
31 Mar 2025
Tags
Summary
She trails her fingers over his arms, soothing skin that has known too much salt and sun. Then down to his chest, over the ribs that strained with hunger in foreign lands, down further, until she reaches the scar on his thigh.
She lingers there.
Her thumb brushes the raised seam of it, the mark left behind by a boy too eager for the hunt, a boy on the cusp of legend. He remembers the first time she touched it, years ago—how she'd laughed at the foolishness of joining the hunt for the boar, at the recklessness that had nearly cost him his life before someone else’s war took him from her instead, before years upon years were lost to the sea, to gods and monsters, to the slow erosion of himself.
Now, she says nothing, only traces the line of it with deliberate familiarity. The water ripples with her movements, lapping against his skin, the warmth a contrast to the cool press of her fingers.
He exhales. Catches her hand, steady and knowing.
“I would say I could pick you out of a thousand men,” she murmurs, still eyeing the old wound, “but I imagine half the world could do the same by now.”
An Epilogue.
Series
- Part 1 of tell me about a complicated man
-
christ, hold me like a knife by paigian for yusufsmoon
Fandoms: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
03 Jul 2024
Tags
Summary
“Why did you do that?”
It’s not a question Nicolo had been expecting, mostly because the answer seemed so obvious to him, the reasoning so sacrosanct, that having to put it into words felt somewhat ridiculous.
“He touched you. You did not want him to.” The tilt of his head makes the blood on his face run down to his jaw.
“Of course I didn’t want him to but— Nicolo.”
His name, a blow. The rest of Yusuf’s sentence is lost to the ringing in Nicolo’s ears as he tries to recover from it. What would it take for him to understand that Nicolo would do anything — endure every injury, bury any body, cross the desert a thousand times — for him?
-
Tags
Summary
"The voice on the overhead speaker announces that the train will arrive in two minutes. Joe closes his phone and scratches at his beard, looking around the cool blue morning. Joe could sleep in for another hour and take the express train, but he’d rather sit for a longer, quieter commute than stand in a packed carriage.
It’s definitely not because this is the same train that the hot dad with his adorable baby takes a few days a week. No matter what Booker and Nile say. It really is a nicer commute, even if pre-crush Joe would rather die than get up earlier than he needs to."
Or, Joe is a library tech with a long commute, and Nicky is a permanently tired single dad.
Recent series
-
tell me about a complicated man by paigian
Fandom: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, EPIC - Jorge Rivera-Herrans (Albums), The Odyssey - Homer
09 Jun 2025
- Words:
- 90,191
- Works:
- 3
- Bookmarks:
- 14
-
- Words:
- 29,846
- Works:
- 2
- Bookmarks:
- 15
-
ain't it exciting you, the rumble where you lay? by paigian
Fandom: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
24 Oct 2022
- Words:
- 77,346
- Works:
- 3
- Bookmarks:
- 32
-
sense made intimate and aching by orphan_account, paigian
Fandom: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
24 May 2022
- Words:
- 4,034
- Works:
- 2
- Bookmarks:
- 11
-
- Words:
- 10,004
- Works:
- 3
- Bookmarks:
- 25