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The marigolds are blooming that morning, the bright orange of their petals a splash of color against the bare wood. The house needs repainting. Peleus doesn’t think his back can take it.
The boy is coming home today, he remembers. Yellowpad paper, hasty handwriting in blue pen. Chicken scratch.
Kids these days. Don't they teach them how to write?
He sits on the porch and waves away flies. It’s too early for a cigarette. But maybe just one. Reunions don’t happen every day, after all. Best to ready himself whatever way he can.
Selene the cat flicks her tail at him, and he gives her a nod. Over the years they’ve formed a reluctant acquaintanceship. He was never one for animals, but … he clears his throat to bring himself back. No use thinking of the past.
---
It’s midafternoon when the taxi pulls into the driveway. He’s nearly fallen asleep, the cigarette half-finished and crumbling into ashes against the arm of his chair. He straightens and wipes it off, tossing the stick into the ashtray and standing up a little.
His stomach gives a little rumble when the door opens.
The boy.
Not a boy any more, he corrects himself. He grimaces as he sees the second person coming out of the cab. Their figures cast long shadows against the earth.
He watches those shadows, contorting and expanding as they approach the front of the house. Gods help him.
He thinks of the letter. Thinks of the past year, all it’s taken to get the engine running on their relationship again.
He can’t fuck it up now. No use. He watches those shadows and realizes how old and alone he is, and he feels his fist curl up at his side.
“Dad.”
Achilles is standing in front of him now. Towering over him. Blonde and green-eyed, like one of those ads for men’s suits at the department store downtown.
Was he ever that handsome? He knows he was, he thinks with a grin.
Next to Achilles, a tentative smile on his face, is the husband. Lover. Live-in partner? Whatever they want to call it. He doesn’t understand how these things can happen, but it’s happening. Kids these days, he scoffs. They take the world and turn it into something unrecognizable.
He doesn’t hug Achilles. Can’t remember the last time he did. They’re not at that point yet. Maybe they’ll never be. But he leads them into the house, and he sees Achilles’ boots stamping all over the floor, and … it settles something inside of him. Like a door left open, creaking in the wind, letting in cold air. It’s finally shut.
He makes them scrambled eggs and toast for dinner because, why not? Breakfast for dinner and dinner for breakfast.
Patroclus, the husband, laughs when he mentions it. Achilles is silent, dragging his fork through the food and eating slowly.
He curses inwardly. Of course. How could he forget?
The last meal they’d had together. He’s a selfish coward. Always has been. Can’t even remember enough to avoid bringing up bad memories.
He opens his mouth, almost to say he’s sorry, but he catches sight of their hands underneath the table.
Patroclus’, thin and brown, reaching over to pat Achilles on the knee. His son grabs onto that hand and squeezes it like it’s the only thing he has to hold on to. Maybe it is.
---
The days turn into weeks, into months, and it almost feels like home. Achilles finds a job at the old coffee factory. Comes home smelling like fresh brew, brings back free bags of grounds sometimes. They sit and drink the coffee in the evenings, and the silences persist.
Achilles was never a chatterbox, but Peleus looks at him now and thinks; how still he’s gotten. That faraway look in his eyes, that ever-roaming mood of being here one minute and gone the next - it’s not there anymore. Achilles sits, and watches the sunset, like there is some deep peace inside him he has already found.
Where had he learned to do that? Nearly seven decades on this earth and Peleus still hasn’t.
Patroclus comes and sits on the porch with them, twirls a length of yarn and laughs as Selene paws at it. Achilles’ lip twitches upwards every time that laugh sounds out.
They’re in love, there’s no doubt about that. Peleus looks at his thumbs. If there’s one thing he’s let go of in time, it’s what that feeling is like.
---
He can hear the bed next door creaking in the middle of the night. Why didn’t he get a new mattress for them? There’s no time to wrap his head around it.
Two men. His mind forms the picture before he can stop it, and he rubs at his eyelids to chase it away. That is not the image of his son he would like to have, thank you.
He hears whispering then, a loud thump, and laughter. The creaking stops.
He closes his eyes and tries to sleep, but their voices come up again. Low murmurs, a conversation in the dark.
He feels like he’s intruding on something, hearing them like this. Sex is one thing, but - moments of intimacy … that’s not something he’s meant to hear.
---
Achilles insists on repainting the house when he finds out what happened the last time.
“You can’t do these things by yourself anymore, dad,” he insists.
That stubborn pursing of the lips, the heat in those eyes. Gods, doesn’t that remind him of somebody.
“I’ve managed to cope by myself for over twenty years,” Peleus snaps.
“Maybe that’s why you’ve been by yourself for twenty years,” Achilles replies, tone darkening.
They don’t look at each other.
A moment passes, and they shift their feet, standing awkwardly. They’ve managed to avoid the worst kind of argument so far - the kind where they yell, and he can feel the spit spraying out of his own mouth, how angry he gets … old age has taken away most of the anger, but there’s something about one’s own child that draws all those emotions up when he least expects it.
There are so many things left unsaid. So many sorries. So many I wishes. When he was younger, he could have counted the number of times he wanted to say those things. But now they’ve piled up, and it’s gotten so high that he can do nothing but let the breeze carry them away.
---
Now he’s holding his marigolds so they don’t get splattered as Achilles paints the front porch.
“Don’t step on that,” he warns Patroclus.
Right after he says it, Selene emerges out of nowhere and walks all over the wet paint, leaving neat paw prints behind.
“Fucking cat,” Achilles curses, glaring at Selene as she prances past in her self-satisfied way.
Patroclus watches this with amusement, and catches Achilles’ eye.
“No -” Achilles starts, but Patroclus is already stepping onto the porch, leaving a footprint of his own behind. His smirk almost makes Peleus snort with mirth.
“Now look at what you’ve done,” Achilles complains, gesturing at the wooden boards he’ll have to redo.
“You love me anyway,” Patroclus retorts.
He reaches down and helps Achilles up, until the front porch is a mess of footprints in the paint.
Achilles stares down at Patroclus, both arms coming up around him.
There it is again. That moment of stillness captured in his young face.
“I do.”
His voice is soft as he says it, and Peleus has to look away, at the pots in his hands, at his feet. He feels like he’s intruding again.
---
It’s the summer of ‘72 when Achilles is drafted for the war. It had been hanging over them, the radio turned on in the evenings until Achilles turns it off again, expression resigned. They knew he was going. It was just a matter of when.
They wait for Patroclus to get the call too, but it doesn’t come.
At night he hears those conversations run longer and longer, deep silences in between. As though the two can’t get enough of each other before the inevitable.
---
They stand in front of the porch, wordless, as the truck drives away. It’s a blur of green in the distance, Achilles blending right in with the rest. Peleus knows the feeling, cramped in leg to leg with other men, on the road to chaos. It’s the other side he doesn’t know very much about.
He shares a look with Patroclus. Maybe it’s the first time he can sense what the other man is thinking. Luck can be cruel sometimes.
The door opens again, the cold draft rushing in.
---
Without Achilles, it’s like there’s a stranger in his house. He doesn’t know what to say to Patroclus - and he knows the sentiment is returned. He stays on the porch to avoid crossing paths with the other man in the hallway.
Patroclus comes out one day, and sits next to him.
“My mother used to plant those,” he says, glancing at the marigolds.
Peleus doesn’t say anything for a while. There are so many things he didn’t realize he wanted to know. Why you? seems to be the first. What have you done to my son? is another.
But he knows Achilles would never forgive him. He made a promise, in that letter. And he’s already broken too many in this lifetime. He can’t afford to do it again.
“I sell them at the fair on Sundays. You can come if you want,” he grumbles instead, fiddling with a hole in his pants to keep from reaching for the pack of cigarettes in his back pocket. It had been another thing he and Achilles argued about.
Patroclus looks surprised, but pleased. They sit until the sky turns as orange as the flowers.
---
He thinks he’s getting used to Patroclus. It’s good having someone to carry all the heavy pots when they go to the fair, anyway. He hates the aches and pains, the crick in his back that seems to scream his age at him.
The townspeople like Patroclus. Old ladies in their Sunday best, stopping by to get a look at the new seedlings. Mothers pushing their babies in strollers. Small town life.
It would have been dangerous if the house wasn’t so far away from the town, if anyone had the slightest idea Peleus even had a son. As far as they know, Patroclus is his son.
He has a shotgun stashed away in his cupboard. Replaced the shells when he received Achilles’ letter, actually. They’re unlikely to run into any trouble, with the reclusive way he’s lived his life. But it never hurts to be prepared.
---
They buy dinner on their way back from the town. They eat in silence, and it’s one of those times he wishes he owned a television. Can’t stand the noise of the programmes, but it’s better than the other man’s furtive looks at him across the table.
Three Sundays have passed and he knows three things about Patroclus.
One; his mother used to plant flowers.
Two; he can’t cook for shit.
Three; he can make Achilles’ eyes light up from a single look.
More Sundays pass and the list doesn’t budge. Until Patroclus cleans out the storage cabinet and knocks over the cookie tin.
---
He doesn’t know what exactly washes over him when he sees the piles of cards scattered all over the floor. A mess, like the footprints on wet paint from that hot day.
Is that what his life is now? One giant pile of mess?
He catches the expression on Patroclus’ face and suddenly wants to crouch over, wants to gather all of them into his arms and hide them away forever.
Years and years of postcards, birthday cards, New Year’s. Only had to name it. Each one lined with his gods-damned handwriting. The I’m sorries and I wishes. Not just unspoken, but unsent.
Did he mention he’s a selfish coward?
---
“Mount Pelion. We went there once,” Patroclus says, stroking the picture on the last postcard before placing it back onto its neat pile. He doesn’t say anything further.
“Took him there when he was a kid,” Peleus replies, reluctantly.
He doesn’t have to look at Patroclus to see that he knows. Knows all about that last trip, the last time he’d seen his son as a boy. It occurs to him that Patroclus knows a great deal more about him than he does about Patroclus.
He can’t tell if that irks him or not. He doesn’t want to know more about the man. But what does he want, then?
He’s exhausted all his options with the mistakes his younger self insisted on making. Curse that fucker, he thinks. Now the only piece he has of his son is through this stranger. And that’s the gods-honest truth.
Patroclus hesitates.
“Go ahead, ask,” Peleus mutters.
Patroclus tilts his head to one side, eyes the tin of forgotten wishes.
“Why did you never send them to him?”
All these years, and he still can’t get the answer straight.
“ ‘Cause I spent most of my life lying to myself. Said it wouldn’t matter, that one dumb postcard wouldn’t change a thing.”
“But a hundred could,” Patroclus replies.
His hands hover over them. “If someone sent me a hundred postcards …”
“You’d what? Forgive them? Forget about the past? It’s too late for that,” Peleus snaps.
“It’s been too late for a long time.”
Patroclus doesn’t have anything to say to that. He closes the cookie tin and hands it back to Peleus.
“We could send him one together,” he mutters, after a moment.
---
He rethinks the line again and again. Writes it out on scrap paper, crosses it out until the page turns furry. No matter what he thinks of, it always sounds wrong. Not the kinds of things he’s used to saying to the boy.
In the end he leaves it to Patroclus. Lets him fill in the card. Peleus knew the boy, but Achilles isn’t that boy anymore. Patroclus … he knows the man.
He signs the bottom, gives Patroclus the okay to slot it into the postbox. Imagines it falling into the pile, and there’s something unscrewing in his chest.
Maybe it’ll get lost in the mail. Or maybe Achilles won’t even notice his carefully signed dad at the bottom.
But the days go by, and every time he looks at the postbox, a small part of him hopes.
---
“You shouldn’t be doing that, you know.”
Patroclus takes a seat next to him, eyeing the cigarette in his hand. He’s given in after so many days of going cold turkey.
“You gonna snitch on me?”
Patroclus laughs.
“He told me about your stroke two years ago.”
“It was a ministroke. And what’s the use of living a long time if you can’t enjoy the little things?”
Patroclus seems to consider this. Then, he relaxes.
“Well, hand it over, then.”
Peleus raises an eyebrow and passes it to Patroclus, watching as he takes a drag from it.
“Hypocrite.”
Another laugh, and he finds himself cracking a smile at his sort-of-son-in-law. They pass the cigarette back and forth, like two kids on the bleachers after school.
Selene comes out and rubs her head against Patroclus’ foot.
“Bet your place didn’t allow pets. Those cramped apartments in the city,” Peleus remarks.
Patroclus looks down at Selene, his smile waning a little. He shakes his head.
“We didn’t live together.”
The question comes to Peleus’ mind. He’s never really thought about what it’s like for people like them, in more populated areas, eyes and ears everywhere.
People like them. He should stop seeing it that way. His son is one, after all.
“I never thanked you,” Patroclus says suddenly.
He looks up at Peleus.
“For letting us - me - stay.”
“Pah.” Peleus waves a hand.
He glances at Patroclus again, sheepish, this time.
“I didn’t want to,” he admits.
Patroclus nods.
“But you love him more than you fear the unknown.”
Love, outweighing fear. The first he’s heard of it applied to himself.
---
They get a letter back from Achilles. He can’t help the thumping in his chest seeing that chicken scratch from afar. It’s not for him, but Patroclus shows him the end.
P.S. Hope dad is doing ok.
He clears his throat at the words. Avoids Patroclus’ eyes.
But there’s a small space inside him, freeing up from years of being bottled in. He thinks of Achilles in a tent, thousands of miles away. Those words preserve that image, lets him know his boy is at least well enough to hold a pen.
---
“Can’t sleep, huh?”
Patroclus starts, the cup of coffee in his hand spilling a little.
“It’s so quiet at night,” the other man says, after a moment.
“Nothing but the cicadas,” Peleus agrees.
Low murmurs in the middle of the night. Nothing but silence, these days.
“Didn’t you get lonely?” Patroclus asks.
“Hmph?”
“Living here by yourself all these years?”
All these questions. Patroclus’ hesitation has gone away, after months spent together.
“There was the cat,” Peleus replies, brusquely.
He catches Patroclus’ smile.
“I hope I’m better company than a cat.”
He snorts.
“Since we’re not getting to sleep any time soon …”
They make breakfast. It’s barely two o’ clock, but the smell of pancakes and sausage wafts through the air. He shows Patroclus how to flip the pancakes until there must be a dozen on the plate.
“I wish he was here right now,” Patroclus says, tucking into his meal.
He grunts. He wishes it, too.
---
They take long drives through the mountains, where the desert stretches out into vast hills, the peaks getting higher and higher. He blasts the radio on as loud as he wants.
The truck is so old it’s starting to get rust on the edges. He remembers Achilles in the passenger seat, singing along to the tunes.
In his place is Patroclus instead, and he has to look twice, because with the sun in his eyes and Patroclus mouthing the lyrics … he almost forgets, for a moment.
“Why don’t we take him here when he gets back?” Patroclus suggests, pointing out the campsite near the mountains.
“Like he’d want to go with an old man,” Peleus replies.
“I’m serious. He’ll love it.”
Patroclus shoots him a look, smirking a little.
“Though I’m not sure your achy bones can take it.”
“That a challenge?”
There’s that laugh again, and he can suddenly see why Achilles fell in love with the man. It can’t be too hard to be happy when you hear that all the time.
It’s getting darker, and he can picture them in his mind, now. Three figures with their camping packs, setting foot out in nature. Sunrises and sunsets, the open air around them. Healing, it could be.
He’s in the middle of planning what supplies they would bring when his leg goes slack.
“Peleus?”
He hears Patroclus’ voice close to his ear, alarmed.
“Hey! Here, try to pull over! Peleus!”
The voice is so clear, yet he can’t seem to move his arm. His foot slips on the gas pedal when he tries to get a hold of it. He flounders, mind a haze, heart beating faster and heat rising to his neck as Patroclus struggles for control next to him.
They see the tree too late.
---
He’s killed his son’s lover, is the first thing he thinks when he wakes up. He wishes he were dead.
It wasn’t a ministroke this time. It was a real one. He tries to speak, but his tongue won’t work. He finds himself tearing up. The right side of his body won’t move.
“Pat -” He swivels his eyes around, scanning the room. The nurse tries to calm him down, but he won’t stop.
How much more has he taken away from his son?
---
He blinks the sleep from his eyes and sees a bruised and battered face staring over him. Nearly sobs in relief. Patroclus has seen better days, but he’s in one piece.
“It was a close one,” he says, softly.
His hand finds Peleus’ and squeezes it.
---
It takes a few days for him to be discharged from the hospital. He doesn’t think he’s ever hated life more.
Achilles is going to come home and find his father in a fucking wheelchair. He won’t even be able to take the boy camping like he and Patroclus talked about. Useless.
He wishes his hand would work so he can cover both ears, but Patroclus won’t stop talking to him. Every evening, when he gets home from his job at the grocery store, dinner in hand.
He shrivels in embarrassment the first time Patroclus has to carry him into the tub for his bath. All these years he’s wasted, a constant absence from his son’s life. And it’s the one person who has been there for Achilles, who ends up cleaning up his mess as well. Irony at its finest.
“Wh -” He slaps a hand down when the word won’t come out.
“Why?”
Patroclus could up and leave. Could find someplace else and wait for Achilles there. Leave him, he thinks. Nobody’s burden.
But the other man only frowns at him. It’s the first time he’s seen Patroclus upset.
“Why?” Patroclus repeats.
“Why did Achilles come back in the first place? Family has to mean something, right?”
It hasn’t for a long time, not the way he’s treated things. If he could take it all back, he would. If he could grab hold of the hands on the clock and twist, twisting and twisting until time has rewound itself. But that’s an idle fantasy.
There’s no one in the house but him and Patroclus. And when nothing’s left behind, what else is there to do but start over again?
---
He gets some of his words back. He can say Patroclus’ name. Is practicing saying Achilles’.
He wants to get it right, needs to get it right, for when the boy comes home.
Not boy, he corrects himself again. For when his son comes home.
“Hey,” Patroclus says, one day. He’s clutching the cookie tin in his hand.
“Don’t get mad at me, okay? But I have an idea.”
He opens the tin and takes out the postcards. Words are what Peleus needs. He knows that. His body has failed him, and his mind, too.
But the words are already there. He just needs to relearn how to say them.
He looks at the postcards, at those neatly written lines he meant to say over the years. Can’t stand the thought of Achilles leaning over him in his wheelchair, as he struggles to read them, retrieving the pain of the past.
But where else would he get the words? His younger self knew them, and he allowed them to be forgotten with fear.
It’s a different kind of courage he needs, now.
“Just pick one.”
He points at the one with the picture of Mount Pelion.
Patroclus smiles. “He’ll like that.”
They practice together, in the evenings. He’s slower than a schoolchild, slaps down his good hand in frustration every time he messes up. But Patroclus’ patience never wanes. It’s slow, but he hears himself speak. Maybe there’s hope after all.
---
Achilles comes back in the fall of ‘73. Peleus can hear him before he can see him.
The moments of silence when his son and Patroclus meet speak louder than any greeting. He hears Achilles chuckle, catches the edges of their shadows intertwining on the front porch.
He shrinks into himself. He’s been longing and dreading for this day. The look in Achilles’ eyes. Will he be able to stand it?
He hears Achilles’ boots thumping on the floorboards, sees the green of his fatigues from the corner of his eye. He clutches the postcard in his hand and thinks it will tear in half, the way his fingers are straining over it.
“I’m home, dad,” Achilles says.
He pauses in front of Peleus. Leans over a little, unsure if he should embrace him.
Peleus bends over the postcard and starts reading. He curses himself, because the words come even slower with nerves. He isn’t saying them right. He slurs over a few syllables. It’s hard to read without Patroclus guiding him at every line. Doesn’t matter that they must have practiced it a thousand times by now.
There’s a long silence.
He doesn’t look up, keeps his eyes on the outline of Achilles’ shadow, as it wavers. When he finally does, Achilles’ face is turned away.
There’s a slow rise and fall of his shoulders.
“I know,” he says then, voice thick and cramped up.
He takes another deep breath, and then he takes a chair and sits in front of Peleus.
“I know, dad.”
It’s like a sigh of relief, a great rush of wind through open shutters, as they lock gazes.
He remembers that look. A little boy, with his kitten, a late birthday present. Everything he had done, that made that look disappear over the years. All him.
It’s not going to happen again, he thinks.
He was chasing mountains, at one point. Too long in the desert, and he stumbled over and fell.
But if he dusts himself off and stops for a moment, he can see the first of the hills. It’s a long way to get there, but the distance will get covered, if he can only keep his eyes on them.
---
Breakfast for dinner and dinner for breakfast. Why not?
He and Achilles still argue, not so many words on his end these days, but he makes up for it with zeal.
Selene the cat eventually dies, and they bury her in a shoebox in the backyard.
He starts getting well enough to use a walking stick, and thumps it against the wall when he can hear them in the next room. The entire house is surrounded with marigolds now, because he hasn’t been able to make it to the fair.
He and Patroclus will go next year. And maybe the next - they’ll make it as far as the mountains. Who knows?