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Ross is not a warrior, but he finds himself among those who are. He bandages gashes and resets broken bones (he frowns at blood stained tunics and ear piercing screeches). He makes certain that those who can be rescued are saved from the trip to Hades for the time being (he suspects that they’ll have to face the judgment before the end of the war anyway).
He gets used to the dirty sheets and the small tents and second hand medical tools to work with. He gets so used to it that one day, he looks at his hands when they’re stained in blood; blood that isn’t his (and in dirt, and in things he can’t – won’t – name), and feels no disgust (and no surprise, and no despair) rise up in him.
He gets used to the way people look at him with dead eyes, broken skin, and tired bones. He gets so used to it all that he isn’t terrified anymore when he looks his chief in the eye and sees lost hope and burning hatred, slowly growing with every passing day.
Ross gets so used to the situation that when he arrives it’s even more noticeable than it’d have been before (he stands out and shines like the sun). He doesn’t seem human (he isn’t – cannot be) with his eye crinkling smile, and glowing skin, and smiling eyes. Ross feels unworthy (forgotten, lost, dead) in his presence (in the presence of this man with his curling hair and flawless skin and beauty that seems so natural, but cannot be).
The man looks at him once and the warmth that curls in the pit of his stomach and races through his veins isn’t normal (it isn’t the heat, it isn’t the sickness that has been creeping up on him from weeks, it isn’t anything he can describe – it’s not human). The man looks at him once and leaves him in shreds that he cannot sew together with the string he has for open wounds (he doesn’t want to think about what could – would – happen if the man was to talk to him).
The man (being, not a man – cannot be a man, his mind supplies) dashes past most of them and no one raises a sword (or a dagger, or a fist, or anything) and somehow Ross isn’t surprised. He cannot think of a man (except perhaps those Catullus painted in his poems) who would be able to scratch (damage, destroy) the fair skin and find himself not skinned after (by himself, by his brothers in arms, by the gods).
Ross sees the stranger disappear behind the flap of the chief’s tent. And even if he cannot hear his voice, Ross pretends that he can and he thinks of palaces of gold and silver. There’s something about the stranger, something that makes his fingers tremble and his wrists shake (something that leaves him dizzy at the mere thought of him, something that makes him miss a wounded soldier’s arm three times with his needle).
(Something that leaves him lost, much like Odysseus. The difference between them being that he’s just a medic and Odysseus was a hero – the gods do not favor him).
+
Ross sees the man again and again. He sees him in his dreams and catches glimpses of a blinding smile in the corner of his eye. He tries to find him, attempts to trail after him, but he always finds himself at the gate of their camp, staring at the sea that holds no life, time and time again.
The thing that manages to capture his attention the most however is that his chief smiles at him with all teeth, and sharp edges – so, so wide, so full of life and so full of hope (hope Ross thought he lost).
(If Ross didn’t know better – but he does, he does, really – he would say it was the work of the gods).
+
The soldier beneath Ross’ palms is dying. He is trying (oh, gods, he is trying), but the man’s life is slipping between the cracks of his fingers and away from his control. He’s trying to keep the man breathing, but his lungs seem to have given up and his eyes have been closed for longer than they should have been – longer than Ross said he could give them a rest.
(Ross doesn’t blame him, he can’t really, if it were him, then he could say he wouldn’t want to see his own death approach either).
It doesn’t stop him from trying to wake him up again. He places his free hand on the man’s temple (the other is fiddling with cloth and ‘oh, gods, there is so much blood, where is it coming from, how did this happen, there was no fight today, there should have been no fight today’) and curses at him in every language he has learnt (from too many days spent trying to mend foreign men and put them back together).
The man doesn’t open his eyes and Ross isn’t surprised (just disappointed, so much, that it makes his stomach sink and the back of his throat taste bitter). And it’s a lost cause, he knows, but he doesn’t remove the pressure he has on the soldier’s stomach and he hopes that somehow (anyhow) he can make all the blood return to him.
(He has the same thoughts every time a light goes out – all the time – and he would’ve guessed that being on the field, seeing the horrors and the hardships of war, would’ve made him less surprised – less disappointed – at the casualties, but).
(But).
+
The stranger is there again, in the corner of his eye, when he goes to lay the golden pieces on the dead man’s eyelids. It’s a quiet affair (because there are too many dead and too little time and this has become part of the routine – no one can care about them all but Ross can’t help but try) and Ross keeps his silence as he mutters the words to send the man’s soul on his way to Hades.
He expects to look up and be faced with empty air, with a silent sea and an empty beach. He expects to return to his own tent to wash his medical tools and no longer grimace at the stains the handles carry. He expects so much, but he receives everything else.
He receives a blinding, white smile and warm hands enclosing around his wrists. He receives a soft kiss on his temple and humming to fill his ears. He receives this man (this man, who cannot be a mortal, cannot be – hopes to be) who opens his arms after days of haunting his mind.
Ross steps in them (and oh, gods, why did he?).
(Why).
+
They say nothing. They exchange nothing but soft open mouth kisses, and low humming, and passionate touches that travel everywhere; across miles and miles of undiscovered skin. Ross takes in the touches, that should not be real, and keeps his moans quiet.
Afterwards, there still are no words, just breathing into the night and soft caresses of long fingers winding into unruly hair. Ross presses himself against the man’s side and wonders about things, which he never thought about before.
He wonders about what if he left (with this man) or what if this cursed war stopped and he left (without this man). It’s silly, he knows, because the man hasn’t even shared his name (but he made his spine tingle and his smile stretch wider than it has in years and –).
Afterwards, Ross wakes up alone in his tent with the flap closed tightly and with the sheets of his bed soaked.
Afterwards, Ross ventures out to bury the ashes of the dead soldier (a body he did not set aflame himself).
+
The man keeps coming to him with wide smiles and twinkling eyes. And Ross keeps saying ‘yes, yes, oh, gods, yes’.
The man keeps his name from him and so Ross doesn’t share his own either (but something tells him that he doesn’t need to say it for him to know).
+
Ross prays, but not every day like he’s supposed to. Not every day, because the war takes up his time and people are dying around him and lives are slipping away and he cannot waste precious minutes to pray to gods that aren’t listening.
But Ross does pray. He prays after a patient of his dies – each and every one of them gets a prayer from him. He prays with his eyes closed and with his back to the wall of a raided temple nearby. He prays, tries to keep his messages polite (but somewhere he wants to scream, scream and yell and throw a tantrum, because don’t the gods see what is happening here? DON’T THEY SEE) when he prays.
Ross prays, not often – not every day, but he thinks that even if he was to pray every sunrise and every sunset, it wouldn’t make a difference.
Gods are only attentive when they want to be.
(Ross wants to raise his fists up to the sky and yell and scream and throw a tantrum, but he doesn’t – he cannot waste precious minutes on gods that aren’t listening).
+
The man shows up again when Ross has almost convinced himself that he has forgotten him.
(Almost).
He shows up with another bright smile, but there’s something else residing in his eyes. It doesn’t suit his otherwise careless expression. There’s something in the way he moves that makes Ross think twice about anything that night (it’s like the man knows something, understands things, that Ross cannot even begin to think about).
The man’s presence doesn’t sooth him that night.
+
One-day Ross looks up at the sky and thinks: the sun right there, that’s him.
+
The man shows up battle ready the next time. He has a bow slung low on his shoulder and his body is clad in armor, that’s made of a material that Ross can’t recognize.
He thinks: ‘oh, gods’ and ‘help me’. He doesn’t know what this means (not exactly – but almost, barely, but), but he understands it cannot be anything good.
The man kneels next to his bed and looks at him for a while. They don’t exchange any words, not just yet, and all Ross can do is watch this man.
This man who can kill him at any given time. This man who hasn’t granted him his name yet. This man.
Then he stands, hands on his bow and Ross holds his breath. But there is no string being drawn and no arrow gets spanned on the bow and no piercing pain travels through his body. Ross lets go of the breath he was holding.
There’s something in the man’s smile, something so broken – so fragile, that makes Ross shiver before it gets stilled by the warmth the man spreads through his body when long fingers wind around his wrists and pull him up.
‘’We need to go.’’ They’re the first words he has ever said to him and Ross thinks of palaces of gold and silver.
+
Ross doesn’t know what they’re running from. The only thing he does know is: that one moment he is in the camp surrounded by soldiers he swore to aid and the next he is in a palace that is bigger than anything he has ever seen.
It stands like a mountain, like something made by a god and – it clicks.
+
There’s no smile on the man’s face when he approaches him inside the palace he’s brought him to. There’s concern and… something else on his face and shining in his eyes. Ross has never seen that expression on a man.
He holds out his hand, all slender fingers and pale skin. ‘’Alexandros.’’ He says and it sounds like a lie. A lie that both of them are not ready to admit to, even when it’s spoken out loud.
Ross wants to laugh or scream or cry or anything but accept the other’s hand, but he does exactly that. Their hands mold together like they were made for each other, like Zeus created them together and then ripped them apart because two heads and four arms cannot be (Ross doesn’t know if he believes the myth, but somehow he wants to – just a little).
‘’Is that your name?’’ Ross asks because everything else is already falling apart around him. Ross asks because he needs to know something for certain because at this point he isn’t even sure if this is real and if he is alive.
The man, Alexandros, smiles at him but somehow it has lost its touch. Ross thinks he looks like the sun trying to shine bright and break through the clouds that obscure it from the earth.
‘’Please, call me Alexandros.’’
And so he does.
‘’Alexandros.’’
+
It’s all just a slur of things from there. It’s a haze of sex, sleep and stares that hold more questions than answers. It’s a haze of ‘oh, gods, yes, please’ and ‘I need to know, answer me, answer me’. It’s a haze of ‘don’t worry, I’m here’ and ‘I might not be able to answer you now, but I will, trust me, this once, I will’.
Alexandros leaves the palace in the morning (a place that Ross cannot name because answers aren’t given and he has never seen the rich landscape around the building before – all he’s used to is desserts and hills and hills and hills) and at dusk.
He always leaves dressed in white and comes back in black or the other way around. Ross counts the sunsets and the sunrises and knows by the third week what he already suspected – he doesn’t say a thing.
+
Alexandros isn’t the man he tries to pretend to be (for himself as an escape, for Ross as a comfort).
And it’s not like Ross isn’t aware, doesn’t know, because he does (he does, he does, he does, he’s oh so aware – he wishes he wasn’t) that this man is anything but a mortal. It’s just that he wants the mist to make him forget. He wants it to conceal his sight, twist his mind and fill his heart (turn it heavy, fill every inch, every space, so he can pretend it’s love when it’s not).
Ross wonders how long they will keep this act up.
+
It goes like this: like the river finding the ocean; going one way because it should and not because it wants to reach the sea.
+
Ross lies to himself (murmuring against his own palms at night until he dreams about them – until he starts believing them himself). He wraps himself around a man who isn’t who he says he is and tries to forget (hopes to forget) that his life has become entangled with a web of lies, has become nothing more than a carefully crafted illusion that should be able to fool any mortal (but not a god – never a god).
He buries his head into pillows lined with gold, keeps his hands from touching the cold air by pulling the silk of his newly made clothes over his palms and tries to keep himself busy by reading book after book, but after days (months, he’ll find out later) filled with poetry and beautifully woven stories, he can’t keep pretending (not even when he wants to – needs to).
His thoughts trail off and away from fallen heroes with no futures, to his own. To what is. To the war, to questions that have no answer for as long as he’s stuck in a palace not built by any man.
It’s then that he can finally identify the feeling gripping his bones and freezing his veins. Trapped – and when he attempts the front door for the first time and realizes it doesn’t open, he realizes that is exactly what he is.
(Ross thinks this all is like a long fall and that now – now he has finally hit the ground).
+
This is how it is when Ross falls. Heart in his throat, trembling hands, wide eyes and fear gripping him tight, pressing underneath his ribs and against his heart. He knows his end is nearing with every second – he is no fool, but he can’t do anything to prevent himself from going down.
He spread his arms, a faint attempt; a soft ‘what if’, but his hands tangle with nothing but air and he falls and falls and falls and –. The wind blows air into his lungs and his hair vans all around his face, creating a halo that he doesn’t deserve (one that won’t save him from the doom he’s chosen for himself – no matter how much he prays).
And he just keeps falling, hoping that there are no rocks where he ends up, but the darkness is too vast to let him see. And he falls, falls, falls, falls and there’s no one who will catch him.
(In the end, Ross wonders what is worse, falling or hitting the ground).
+
Ross’ encounters with Alexandros were never about words, only about actions, only about mouths meeting and hands skimming and eyes clashing. He can count on one hand the number of conversations they’ve had and somehow the words they speak become even less with the time that goes by.
(He’s not quite sure how no words spoken can become even less, but Alexandros finds a way).
The days come and go in silence and so does Alexandros.
+
‘’Apollo.’’ Ross breathes the name out one day, against Alexandros’ shoulder blade. He feels the body beneath his own grow cold (and frantic, and oh so desperate – Ross doesn’t know how to describe it, he’s no poet).
The slight sheen of sweat that should be there isn’t and he feels every muscle beneath his fingertips and beneath his mouth tense.
It’s not a surprise, it’s not a twist of events, because Ross has known for months now (years?), but it’s the first time he’s dared to say it out loud (and, Ross thinks, gods probably don’t like to be confronted with the lies they spin).
He doesn’t really know what he expects (an answer, a solution, death), but nothing comes. Somehow it isn’t as surprising as it should be (this, Ross thinks, is a twist of events, but not one he needs).
In the end the quiet confession between the sheets doesn’t change a thing. In the end he still is as trapped as before and he feels like the world is going to collapse on him (and, Ross muses, it might, it just might).
+
It’s something in the pit of his stomach, in the tremble of his fingers and in the way the sunshine doesn’t hold warmth anymore.
The days go by and his skin grows colder. He doesn’t know the year and he doesn’t know his age anymore and there’s something brewing beneath his skin, yearning to get out, screaming for it to be released and Ross feels dead and alive at the same time.
Trapped between the two.
(Trapped in every sense of the word).
+
One day Alexandros comes by with a bag and sits on the bed. He pulls Ross close by his hips, spreads fingers across his skin and tugs greedily at his tunic.
It’s no surprise and it doesn’t hurt that much anymore. All it is now is a dull ache and a longing for days spent in army tents and when he still believed in real love and hadn’t ever thought about knowing a god better than the back of his own hand.
So Ross lets him, feels his skin grow cold even when he should feel warm. Alexandros’ fingers burn where they touch his bare skin (as they always do now) and when he skims across his arms and across his thighs, he feels no pleasure, just routine.
It’s when the other looks him in the eye, that the hands fall away. It’s when blue meets golden, that shines as bright as the sun that is so deeply embedded in Alexandros, that he takes a step back. Ross lets him again, doesn’t protest, hasn’t used his voice in years (decades – centuries).
Alexandros takes the bag and opens it. All grace and smooth movements and elegancy – so much that is isn’t fair. He reveals a book and Ross takes it without question when it’s handed to him.
Ross blinks and Alexandros is gone, leaving him with nothing more than a book in his hands and a stone instead of a heart in his chest.
Ἰλιάς, he reads, Ἰλιάς.
+
‘’Is it true?’’ He asks the next time Alexandros stops by and his voice sounds foreign and hoarse to even his own ears.
He asks, because he needs to know, because gods have lied before (to him, to his people, to everyone), because he doesn’t want to believe the story that is written on the paper in crooked letters and short strokes of ink.
Alexandros looks at him and he makes sure that their eyes meet (and god, Ross still feels his heartbeat race and it shouldn’t – it shouldn’t but it does). He nods, makes his curls bounce and his throat moves up and down when he swallows (it’s a detail he shouldn’t worry about, but does).
‘’It is.’’
(Can you hit the ground twice? – Free fall).
+
Gods don’t fall in love; mortals do.
Gods only need people to believe in them.
+
He feels like the world is going to collapse on him (and, Ross muses, it will, it will).
+
It’s not that Ross wants to be in love with a being who doesn’t acknowledge him. A being that keeps him locked up and so far away from places he is needed. It’s not that Ross wants to feel his heartbeat race every time they touch and it’s not that Ross wants to end up in the same place (the bed) with Alexandros every time.
Yet – yet he is stuck in a palace made of gold and silver and he doesn’t really have a choice, does he?
+
Time is a human concept. Time is a thing that has faded to the background and Ross doesn’t know the year and doesn’t know his age, only knows that it’s too late and he has to be older than he looks (no twenty-five-year-old should feel this worn out).
One thing, Ross does realize, is that time is passing and that it is running out.
The gold has lost its shine and the walls are giving in; veins have curled around the marble and the silver ceiling. The palace is getting overran and Ross is scared (and glad and hopeful).
The end.
+
It ends like this: pale hands grabbing his and squeezing so hard that he can see the edges of the other’s skin become even whiter than before. Desperate eyes boring into his, pleading almost, and Ross notices that they have lost their golden glow.
‘’Do you believe in me?’’ Alexandros’ voice has lost its honey touch and his words are spoken out of breath and rough around the edges.
Ross looks him in the eye, sees no gold speckled in them, and his heartbeat doesn’t race (not this time). And he answers truthfully.
‘’No.’’ Ross thinks Alexandros looks like a fallen soldier, life slipping away from him like blood seeping from open wounds.
It ends like this: the world collapses on Ross (he takes Alexandros with him).
Ross thinks: this is irony.
+
It ends like this: 1450 A.D., the gods have finally been forgotten and Ross dies (too many years overdue) – hits the ground one last time.
Free fa-