Work Text:
Patroclus is always there when I return from battle, bathed in the blood of the Trojans and covered head to toe in mud and grass and everything else. I know he spends his days in the medical tent, patching up the soldiers who have been wounded and making them battle-ready again, but by the time I arrive, he is always in our tent, a fresh cloth in hand and a bowl filled with clean water by our bed. He won’t allow me to sit on the bed, as he says I will soil the sheets, so I sit on the floor, while he kneels behind me and washes away all evidence of the day’s fighting. I tell him about everything that happened blow-by-blow while his brow is furrowed and his lips are pressed into a thin line. I offer time and time again to not tell him about the battles or just don’t tell him, but he always shrugs the suggestion off or asks questions. His reasoning is that telling him keeps me human, which is true, but I also know that most of the newly formed lines on his face are due to worry for me, so I censor some of the gorier details. After I am clean, I wash away the dried blood on his fingertips and sweat from his body. Then, we lay together, sometimes touching, sometimes just talking.
Tonight is different.
Today, I was wounded in battle. A sword caught me by surprise, and now there is a deep gash in my thigh. I finished the battle, of course, despite the distracting sensation of blood oozing down my leg, but once the adrenaline of the fight ceased, I felt the pain. My men helped me to the medical tent, and when Patroclus saw me, his face was ashen. I realized not soon after that this is the first time he has seen me physically wounded. He threw some tools into a bag, and immediately took control of the situation, telling the men to bring me to our tent. They lay me down on the bed and leave the two of us.
Now, his face is still white, and he is leaning over me with a cloth stained pink from blood and water. He dabs away at the blood from my wound with shaky hands, biting down on his lower lip the entire time.
“How did this happen?” he asks once he reaches a particularly deep part. The wound runs from a little bit above my knee almost to my hip. He places a hand on my chest to steady himself as he cleans it. I can almost see the thoughts tearing through his head. He is clever, too clever, and I know he is picturing it: Me, pierced by an enemy sword. Me, bleeding out far from his hands. Me, dead on the ground. He knows this is not the death prophesied for me, yet he is scared.
I pull his head down and brush my lips against his forehead. “Trojan sword. Didn’t turn soon enough. It isn’t important, Patroclus, nor is it fatal.” Despite these words, I am starting to feel pain in my leg. I want him to make it go away.
He makes a small noise of disapproval and pulls away from me. “I’ll need to stitch it up.” He sets a needle and thread on the table beside our bed.
“Must you?”
“If you don’t want an infection.”
“And you can do it yourself?”
He scoffs. “I do it every day.”
He threads the needle with deft fingers. The way he moves his hands is magical, and I wonder if he feels like that when I play the lyre. He ties the thread together at the end and takes one last look at my wound before moving the needle to the top of my thigh. When the needle pierces my skin, I gasp slightly, but he shushes me. His hands aren’t shaking anymore; instead, his head is down, and his face is impassive.
Someone who is piercing your skin with a needle should not be beautiful, but his beauty his all I can think about. His eyes shine and his skin glows golden in the dim light of the lamp, and dark curls frame his high cheekbones. Some hair is growing on his chin and cheeks; he must have not shaved today or yesterday. He leans over me, his lips parted slightly in concentration, his fingers moving quickly and confidently. I can hardly feel the pain, and I know not if it is because he is so skilled or I am so distracted by his radiance. He has been the one good thing in my life during this hellish war, clutching to the parts of me that the Agamemnon and the others so want me to forget. He has held me together with bare threads, and now he is literally sewing me whole again.
“Almost done,” he whispers, pulling me from my reverie.
Through the years, Patroclus has never failed to surprise me. He’s like a sunny day in the dead of winter, or a single star on a cloudy nights. He’s like a drop of water in an endless desert, or the last fig on a tree hidden away under leaves on an otherwise empty tree. I never doubted that he was capable of keeping me whole, but I never truly expected him to. Now, here he is, proving once again how invaluable he is, proving to me that I am right in loving him and only him. I came to him cut open, and he is fixing everything.
“There,” he sighs. He sets the needle down on the table, and presses a kiss against my stitched-up cut before pulling back. Before I can say anything, he lays a blanket over me and tucks it around me. For the first time since he saw me being assisted into the medical tent, I see vulnerability. His eyes are blown wide, and his lips are trembling. He exhales shakily and turns his back to me. I see him pick up, drop, and then pick up again a cloth, and then dip it in another bowl of clean water.
“Patroclus?” I ask, trying to sit up. I wince, and then lay back down.
“Hm?” He scrubs at his hands with more vigor. If he isn’t careful, he is going to scrub the skin right off his hands.
“Patroclus.” I reach out to him. It causes me pain, but I need to soothe him. “Look at me.”
He turns around and gives me a small smile that wavers after only a moment. With shaking hands, I turn down the blanket on the spot text to me, and he stumbles over. He lays down text to me, and his hand finds mine. I nestle my head in the crook of his neck, and he pulls me close to him. When he’s finished positioning me, I am curled against him, every part of my body touching a part of his. We lay in silence for a few moments before Patroclus blows out the lamp. Starlight slips through the thin fabric of the tent, and in that dim light, his hands explore me. Finally, he reaches the cut, and I can’t help but hiss as he brushes his fingers over the cut. He draws back slowly, and his breathing hitches.
“When they dragged you in there,” he whispers. “I knew that you were alive. I knew you couldn’t be dead. I would have known if… if you had passed into the other world.” He gulped. “It’s just that stitching you up, I just pictured…. the day you die, they will bring your body to me. And no matter how many stitches I sew or how much I try to stop the blood coming from whatever wound you will have, I won’t be able to. You’ll be dead, and I’ll be here without you. And… and you never get wounded. What if this is a sign?”
I kiss his lips, and run my fingers over his cheeks. There is wetness; he is crying. I am glad for the darkness, because I hate to see him cry. If only he knew. If only he knew how every prophecy of my death weighs on me, not for fear of my own demise, but for fear of leaving him behind. For what is the moon without the sun? What is a soldier without a sword? A needle without a thread? A wound without a bandage?
What am I without him?
I hold him tightly. There is nothing I can say to make him feel better, no platitude I can offer to ease his pain. Instead, I do what I can: I hold him. I let him shed his tears and I shed some, too, for a future we can not control. Crying turns into touching, and touching turns into something else, and before I know it, he is in my hands. I go slowly, pretending that we have all the time in the world. His back arches in pleasure, and he reaches for me. It takes only a few moments for him to exhale and shudder, and then we lay together.
“Tell me again,” he whispers. His eyes are unfocused and he blinks over and over again. He must be tired.
“I will not kill Hector.”
“And why?”
His eyes are closed, and I can feel his chest rise and fall. His face is peaceful in sleep, more peaceful than it ever is. I wish that we could go back to when we were boys, when we had no troubles. I kiss his hand and curl into him.
“Because what has Hector ever done to me?”