Chapter Text
Odysseus sighed and looked across the table at Diomedes before taking a sip of his coffee. It was a Saturday and the two guys had met up at a local coffee shop. Dio was one of Ody’s best friends, so he knew that the other guy would drop everything and come to meet him if he said he needed to rant about something. Now the two sat across a small table from each other.
“So what exactly did you need to vent to me about?” Dio asked, studying his friend. Odysseus sighed again and put his coffee cup down.
“I had a date with Penelope last night,” he said, smiling a little as he mentioned his girlfriend of almost six months. They’d started dating over the summer and now, as they went into their junior year of high school, were still going strong. “We watched a movie at her place— just the two of us, her parents were out to a work dinner and her sister was at a friend’s house— and when it got over, she suggested we go up to her room. I agreed, but when we got there, she started taking her shirt off and I panicked.” Dio rolled his eyes a little.
“Bro, you’ve been dating this girl for almost half a year now and you still haven’t managed to have sex with her? Some people might start questioning if you’re gay.” Ody sighed.
“I love Penelope, I really do, I just don’t think I’m ready for that step yet. When I told her last night that I didn’t want to, she said she understood and put her shirt back on, she’s awesome like that. But I’m worried, Dio. I’m worried she’ll break up with me because I’m not ready to give her what she wants.”
Diomedes lightly punched him in the shoulder. “Ody, my man, Penelope is nothing if not patient. She loves you, and she’ll wait as long as it takes for you to be ready to take that step, I know she will.” Ody nodded.
“Yeah… I just feel bad. She’s tried to initiate it so many times since we started dating and I say no every time.”
“Hey,” Dio said. “Don’t feel bad for enforcing your boundaries, Odysseus. If Penelope were going to break up with you over this shit, she would have a long time ago. And communication is important. Tell her that her trying to start stuff makes you uncomfortable, and that when you’re ready, you’ll let her know by initiating it yourself.”
“Damn, Dio. When’d you get so wise?” Ody asked with a smirk, but he pulled his phone from his pocket and shot Penelope a text.
Hey. I want to have a discussion about last night. Can I come to your house later?
A few seconds later, she shot back a thumbs up emoji.
***
A few hours later, Odysseus was sitting on Penelope’s plush lavender swivel chair in her room as she sat on her bed, a throw pillow in her lap. Odysseus loved looking around this room— it was just so deeply, authentically Penelope, and it reminded him of all the things he loved about her.
“Sorry about last night,” his girlfriend said sheepishly. “I didn’t mean to make you feel uncomfortable. It just feels a little unconventional, you know, that we’ve been together for nearly six months and haven’t slept together yet.”
Odysseus flashed her a crooked grin. “Well, I’ve never been conventional.” She laughed, and he felt his heart flutter in his chest.
“I suppose you’re right,” she said. “What is it you wanted to discuss?”
“I just wanted to say that I’d appreciate if you stopped trying to initiate that,” Odysseus said, awkwardly rubbing the back of his neck, his fingers catching in the low ponytail of his dark brown curls. “I’ll initiate it when I’m ready.”
“Okay,” Penelope said with a soft smile. “I just want you to feel comfortable, Odysseus.”
“Thank you,” he said, getting up from the swivel chair and walking over to join her in sitting on the bed. Their faces were inches away from each other and he could feel her hot, strawberry-scented breath on his lips.
“Can I kiss you?” she asked him gently.
He grinned. “Always.” And she closed the inches-wide gap between them.
***
Penelope and Odysseus had met through honors society their freshman year of high school. Odysseus had been new to the area, having just moved with his family. The small town happened to have a nursing home with excellent dementia care, just the kind his aging father, Laertes, needed. So he’d been sent there, and the family— Odysseus, his mother, Anticlea, and his younger sister, Ctimene— had moved to be closer to him. Their new house had a bigger backyard than the last, so Anticlea had finally caved to what Odysseus had been begging for since he was little and adopted a dog, a husky puppy named Argos. Overall, life in their new hometown was good.
Odysseus had aced all of his classes the first semester, and as such, had been invited to join the honors society. He showed up on the first day and nearly bumped into a girl carrying a giant stack of textbooks in her arms.
The girl was pretty, with pale skin, cerulean eyes, and jet black hair pulled into two perfectly even braids. She wore a dark blue denim skirt and a periwinkle sweater to shield herself from the winter chill. Odysseus had barely been able to stop himself from slamming into her, and in the process of being startled, the girl had dropped a couple of the textbooks from her stack. Odysseus, like the gentleman he was, had bent over to get them for her.
“Thanks,” she’d said as he handed the books back to her. “I’m so sorry, I really should watch where I’m going, shouldn’t I?”
“No, no, it’s my fault,” he’d said, his cheeks flushing red. “I’m Odysseus.”
“Penelope.”
As luck would have it, it turned out that Penelope was in both his math and English classes the next term. They sat close to each other in both, collabed for a couple group projects, and just generally got pretty close. Then, Odysseus finally decided to go for it. About a week or so after school let out their sophomore year, he’d called Penelope one afternoon.
“Hey, Penelope?” he’d said into the speaker of his phone. “I have something I’d like to ask you.”
“Ask away,” he remembered her saying, the smile audible in her voice.
“Would you like to get lunch with me tomorrow? I mean not as friends, but as like a date.”
“Of course!”
The first lunch date went so well, they planned another, then another, then another. After about three or four dates, Odysseus asked Penelope to be his girlfriend officially. She said yes.
***
When Diomedes had said that some people might think Odysseus was gay for not having slept with Penelope yet, he had some very specific people in mind. Those people were Achilles and Agamemnon. Odysseus and Diomedes were both on the school’s varsity soccer team. Agamemnon was the team captain, and Achilles was the fastest player. Both of them liked to fancy themselves big, tough men, even though Achilles was more lean than brawny. Of course they’d question his sexuality for not having had sex with his girlfriend yet, though the questioning and mockery was highly hypocritical on Achilles’ part, considering he himself was bisexual. Ody skipped out on practice on Monday because he didn’t want to hear them go on about it. Penelope was busy with fiber arts club, another one of her personal extracurriculars, so he decided to drive a couple of hours to his old hometown and hang out with his childhood best friends Polites and Eurylochus.
He’d been sad to leave the two when he moved away, but they still kept in contact and hung out sometimes on weekends, but a weeknight visit was highly unusual. Polites had practically had to beg his parents to let him go out with Odysseus and Eurylochus, she was worrying about his homework. The trio just sat on the peeling bleachers of an old football field that no one even used anymore, drinking soda, eating snacks, and catching up. Eurylochus was confessing the fact that he had a massive crush on Ctimene, Ody’s sister, who was a year younger than them, and was planning on asking her out soon. It would be a little bit of a long-distance relationship, but not by much, they’d make it work, he insisted. Polites talked about the fact that he was trying to convince his parents to get a pet and how envious he was that it had worked for Ody after the move.
“So, Ody,” Eurylochus asked, “how’s the girlfriend?” Odysseus sighed.
“We’re still going strong, but I have my worries.” He told them about everything he’d discussed with Diomedes on Saturday, but their advice admittedly wasn’t much different. Still, it helped. Maybe the more people that drilled it into his head, the more he would actually believe that Penelope was willing to wait for him.