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I ran my hands down his stomach, firm and sculpted from the athletics of war. He had changed so much since we were children, and yet having spent every day by his side he hardly seemed different at all. He was still the same Achilles I had kissed so eagerly on the beach, the same Achilles whose body I had grown to know better than my own in our pubescence on Pelion.
It was a good body; hearty, strong, and provoking. The sight of it still stirred me after all these years. Even when he returned from the battlefield covered in Trojan blood, despite how it turned my stomach and tugged at my heart to envision the lives he cut short, I could still feel the flipping in my gut at the sight of his overworked muscles defined by salt crusted cruor.
Tonight, as I helped him remove his breastplate I could smell the musk of his exertion mingling with the sharpness of iron. I leaned in, gathering his curls away from his neck, and breathed in his scent. “You smell like war,” I whispered into his jaw.
He tilted his head, offering his neck to my lips. A gentle sigh caught in his throat. “Help me wash,” he requested. This was unusual, but I did not object. Any opportunity to see him, to touch him, to soothe him, I would take. One last taste of his skin, delicate and salty. One last bite. “Later,” he promised. “When I am clean.”
Together we removed the rest of his armor and dressings in the tent before walking to the shore. It took some convincing for him to agree to wear a covering of some sort to preserve our modesty as we walked past the Myrmidons through our camp. Aristos Achaion had nothing to hide from his men, but I felt jealousy rise in me at the thought of another feasting on the rise of his buttocks, the dark valley between his sturdy muscled thighs. Those were for my eyes alone.
Achilles chose a private shoal beyond the hill that backed our camp, far out of sight. Perhaps he knew something of modesty after all.
We waded until the water lapped at our hips, salty and warm from the day’s sun. It was late summer and the evening air bore a slight crispness that made the sea feel like a bath. The sun would set soon, a golden light cast across the beach.
I looked to Achilles and felt my breath catch in my chest. His hair was aflame in the setting sun and his skin seemed to glow from within. It was never easy to forget his godhood, but there were some moments when his divinity was impossible to ignore. He was the fathom beneath a cliff and I was a dizzy climber, eager to throw myself into his gravity. I watched him in awed silence as he knelt and dipped his head beneath the waves.
He rose and approached me, shaking his wet mop of curls like a dog, bearing his teeth in a playful smile. “Help me wash,” he said again.
I smiled in return and wet my hands in the sea. We had no rags, nothing with which to scrub besides the sand beneath our feet, and I thought to save him from the stinging of salt in a thousand small abrasions. I smoothed my wet hands across his broad chest and down his shoulders, watching the water pour in blood-muddy rivers down his sides.
Our faces were close, we stood almost nose to nose. His breath came softly and when I looked into his eyes I saw adoration there. After all these years he could still make me blush like a child.
“Turn around,” I ordered gently. “Surely you can wash your front without my aid,” I teased. I did not need to see his face to know he smiled. I could feel it.
Determined to fulfill his request, I cupped more water in my hands and brought it up to dribble down his back. I alternated this with scrubbing broad circles with my palms, lifting the coat of grime that had accumulated during the day’s battle. He was patient and obedient, allowing me to lift his arms and scrub beneath them while he worked to clean his chest.
When he was reasonably clean I pressed myself against his back and let my arms encircle his waist. Washing him had been undeniably intimate, and I knew he felt more than just my hips against his buttocks. This close, I could see that his neck was still caked in salty gore, and his curls were an astonishing tangle. “Would you like me to wash your hair?” A murmur in his ear.
I felt him react to my body pressed against him, to my voice in his ear. “Yes,” he breathed.
We sought shallower waters in which to sit, him tucked between my legs and reclining so that his hair dragged across the surface of the slowly lapping sea. My fingers worked in gentle circles, massaging his scalp and combing through his ringlets. He hummed in contentment, a tune from our time on Pelion, one his skillful fingers once plucked from the strings of my mother’s lyre.
I wished to stop time, to savor this blissful domestic moment. We rarely enjoyed much time alone together now, besides the hours we spent asleep in our shared bed. The war called heavily upon its hero with little regard for his companion left behind.
I was satisfied when his golden curls hung in thick ringlets, dripping with saltwater and glowing in the late light. I brought my hands to his neck to massage gently down the sides of his throat, pulling a groan of satisfaction from him. I took that as a sign to continue massaging his sore muscles; across his shoulders, down his back, slow circles to ease his tension.
"Patroclus, sometimes I think you divine if only for your hands," Achilles joked through a groan.
"Achilles, please do not anger the Gods with your blasphemy," I smiled. Memories of that first night in the rose quartz cave swam in my mind. Memories from Scyros following our reunion, slick hands and hot breath between damp walls.
"If Zeus felt your grip between his mighty thighs I do not think he would remain angry long," he intoned, lying back on his forearms and tilting his chin to regard me upside down. The look on his face was one of playful suggestiveness, and he waggled his eyebrows to complete the charade.
I splashed him, grinning ruefully. "You are not much of a Prince with those manners!" I did not want to admit the effect his mere voice had on me, gravelly with thinly veiled lust. I shifted beneath him, suddenly too aware of how the wings of his back pressed my thighs open to accommodate his frame.
“Are you hungry, Patroclus?” Achilles asked, taking my hand in his and tracing it across his chest.
I felt myself redden. He could read me too well. “Perhaps,” I conceded.
“Then why do you not eat,” he guided my hand across the taut ripples of his stomach, lower and lower and lower. I pressed my chest against his back, tightened my thighs around his waist. I felt desire swell in me, I felt Achilles swell in my hand.
My left hand rose to cup his jaw, my right sliding and twisting beneath the water.
The water.
My lust-heavy eyelids wrenched open. “Wait,” I gasped against his cheek. “Not here,” I hesitated. “Your mother…” I knew well of Thetis’ disdain for me. I did not seek to anger her by profaning her waters with our sex.
I felt his displeasure, his impatience; he hated to be denied. But we both knew that I was right to stop us. He sighed and rose from the water. “Let us return to our tent.”
He turned to me dripping and backlit by the last shreds of sun, looking precisely as a demi-god should. His arousal hung heavy between his hips and I felt another swell of heat roll through me as it bobbed before my face. My lips felt drawn to it. My tongue felt empty without its weight.
Achilles reached a hand down to me and I took it, pulling myself up with his counterweight. I watched the tendons in his wrist flex like ropes as he curved his fist towards himself. No matter how many years we spent, he was always full of new small wonders. So clearly sculpted by the gods.
“I will race you,” he grinned, already turning to sprint to the shore. Startled, I watched him go, splashing through the surf like a wild horse full of exalting freedom. I loved to see him like this; playful, youthful. If only for a moment, the war seemed lifetimes away.
He did not stoop to claim the covering I had painstakingly convinced him to don for our journey here, and this spurred me to action. I chased after him, hastily tying one cloth around my waist to conceal my own arousal, waving the other in my hand as I shouted his name.
“Achilles!” I was stricken with embarrassment. “Achilles, wait!” but he was already to the edge of camp and my shouting only turned more eyes to him. I saw them see him, saw the lascivious grins that bloomed on their faces as they understood the situation. I saw one man clap a hand on his shoulder in encouragement as he passed. I willed myself to disappear. To disintegrate into a million grains of sand, sifting in the wind, carried away by the waves.
I had no choice but to keep chasing him, to follow his path through camp back to our tent. My face burned, my skin pebbled in the cool night air for all to see. The same man that had smacked Achilles’ shoulder swatted my partially covered buttocks on my way by, growling a “Give him hell, Patroclus!” that was meant to be fraternal. It was mortifying.
Finally the sea of tents and bodies parted and I recognized our own haven. I dove inside, checking twice to see that the flaps had closed behind me.
Achilles stood before me in the dim light, hands planted proudly on his naked hips. I won.
I met his eyes with exasperation. “They saw--” I panted, gesturing weakly with the cloth still in my left hand.
“Let them see,” he rumbled, gathering me into his arms. He pressed kisses to my neck, flattened his palms against my bare back, soothing my aching lungs, my burning cheeks.
“Let them see,” he echoed, his hands sliding down my flanks to untie the cloth that hung haphazardly on my hips. Indignance and shame melted away as I was reminded of the reason for our retreat. Our hips met, and I saw that his arousal had not waned despite his naked sprint through camp. Mine certainly had, but it was revived now as it slid against Achilles’ stomach.
His abdomen was covered in a carpet of sandy hair that trailed down his chest, across the center of his stomach, blooming between his thighs. I could not recall what year brought such changes to our forms, but we had become men during this war. We left Pelion smooth and supple in our youth. We had hardened, broadened into warriors since. Achilles bore a golden chestplate as prize for his manhood. I had earned a dark trail from my navel that Achilles loved to trace with his tongue.
I caught his lips in mine, open and pliant and wanting. I could not help the quiet groans that came bubbling from my throat. His hands grasped my hips, holding me to him as he rolled his own against me. My head fell back in pleasure and he took to my neck like a man starved.
Achilles loved to mark me. He revelled in the way my skin bruised like crushed grapes; the way the ghost of his teeth lingered days later, claiming me for everyone to see. There was no need for such territorial marking--everyone knew I was his. But Achilles was proud and he wanted his men to envy him, to envy me.
I panted as he sucked a mark into my throat. One hand in his damp hair, the other sliding down his back to grab a handful of firm cheeks.
His lips hot on my ear, “I am going to make you beg.” He always did, but hearing him swear it still filled me with a clamouring need.
I pressed him to the bed, desperate to touch him and be touched. We were all knees and hands, hips and teeth. Eager, hungry.
I opened his legs, drinking in the sight of him below me. The lines of his musculature were so precise and belied the softness of his skin, the plush of his bulk. From far away he was a formidable hero, up close he was human and soft. And I had him beneath me, I had his promise of ecstasy.
“There is one thing more wicked than these hands,” I teased, placing my palms on his knees, dragging my nose up the inside of his thigh. Sandalwood, salt, musk. His quadriceps were truly formidable, olive trunks twisting with muscles that flickered with every small movement. They were tense with anticipation as I slid my hands to his waist and looked up to meet his eyes.
He was looking down at me through his eyelashes, the corner of his lip caught between his teeth. “You look good there,” a breathy whisper full of greed.
I took him in my mouth, fully, just to see the smug grin slide off his perfect face. This was his weakness and my utmost strength. When we coupled, his stamina was nothing short of impressive, occasionally bordering on torturous. But between my lips I could have him undone in minutes, desperate and obscene. My intention tonight was not to bring him to ecstasy so quickly, but to humble him. To press my devotion into him as I drew oaths from his mouth.
He trembled beneath me as I worked my tongue, hands tangling in my hair and tugging his need. “Patroclus,” a quiet moan. I felt him in the back of my throat, hot and pulsing.
I slipped my arms beneath his thighs and hugged them to me so that his knees were cradled in the bend of my elbow, drawing his hips up to me. I swallowed him down at this new angle, deeper, faster. “Patroclus!” Louder this time.
I dropped one leg and reached a hand to press against his mouth. I paused my work to shush him. He twisted his head to the side, out of my grip, petulant. I slid two fingers into his mouth, perhaps these would keep him quiet, but he moaned profanely around them instead. His tongue was hot and slick and slipped between my fingers. Heat ripped through me. Again I shushed him, embarrassment warring with arousal. “They will hear you!”
“Let them hear,” He groaned, wrapping his legs around me and pulling me to him. We wrestled for a moment, the way we used to roll on our backs in the olive groves in Phthia, and as always Achilles came out on top. He pinned me, wrists above my head, and pressed our noses together, eyebrows furrowed in a challenge.
I yielded, accepting my place below him. It was where we both preferred me, except perhaps on the rare occasions Achilles chose to forego his dominance. He was a gracious lover, a conqueror of pleasure, hungry and adoring. He quickly took to pressing kisses into every inch of my skin, starved for action.
"I promised to make you beg," he growled against my throat. Need erupted in my chest, pulling at my hips. I knew he would succeed, but what fun is such a threat if you do not resist?
Achilles loomed over me, one hand tracing down my stomach, the other still holding my wrists above my head. My fingers itched with the want to touch him. My sex throbbed with the want to be touched.
His keen eyes missed nothing, including the eager jump of my cock against my hip. His hand found it, tracing a thick finger down the length. "Is there something you desire, dear Patroclus?" He teased. I bit my lip and did not reply.
He grinned and I saw a devilish crinkle at the corner of his eyes. Gods help me for what might come next. I squeezed my eyes shut; perhaps if I could not see his sultry eyes, his perfect curls, it would not stir me so.
Perhaps I was a fool. His mouth was hot and slick and perfect around me, and I could not stop the moan from leaving my throat. He was not the only one weak to the pleasures of oral sex. I was only a man, and he was only a dem-igod. How was I to resist the sinful twist of his holy tongue?
I wished my hands free so that I might grab him by the hair, so that I might fuck up into his mouth, desperate and savage. So that I might slap one over my own mouth to stifle the obscenities that compelled their way past my lips.
I turned my head to the side, muffling my moans in my shoulder, abashed by my noisiness. Achilles was not so deterred. He released my wrists in favor of gripping my chin and turning my face to meet his. “Let me hear,” he murmured, and suddenly my hips were lifted off the bed and Achilles’ tongue was pressed against my puckered flesh. His hand took over where his mouth had been, sliding profanely against the slick from his spit, twisting tight over the tip.
I could not help but cry out and my newly freed hands clamped over my mouth in habit. Achilles took notice but did not stop. He knew my worry was not embarrassing myself to him; we had seen each other in all states of pleasure, in all stages of surrender. I did not want our men to hear us, to be privy to the only intimacy we could salvage from the proximity imposed by war.
“Let them hear,” he commanded, warm lips moving against the bulge of my perineum. His tongue was flat and soft where it pressed and teased, his hand was wet and quick where it stroked me and I could not disobey him; now I cried his name without restraint. Oaths poured from my lips as his tongue licked and circled and prodded, and when he pressed a thick, spit slick finger into me I could not stop the pleas that sprung from my throat.
“Please, Achilles -- oh! Achilles, please,” I chanted, shame forgotten in the fog of lust. I bit my lip, chewing on the f and spat a desperate, “Fuck me!”
One hand stroking me, the other curled inside me, he smiled. “That was not so difficult, was it?” I could have screamed. Need pulsed in my fingertips, my toes, my cock in his hand, my walls around his finger. Another word, another brush of his fingertip and I would come undone.
“It will be for nothing if you do not keep your word!” I gasped, rising up onto my forearms to stare him down.
“I only swore to make you beg. I never promised you release.” He had slowed to a torturous pace, languid and leisurely, enough to keep me just below boiling. He had been spending too much time with Odysseus, playing with words so. He saw the disdain and frustration on my face and grinned.
I pressed my hips into him, a silent plea; more. He pulled his finger out and pressed it back in.
“Yes,” I whispered, begged.
He curled it toward my belly where he knew my pleasure lay.
“Yeees,” louder. More .
“No,” he drawled, revelling in his cruelty. “Beg me,” he grinned, stroking that place inside me so lightly I thought I might go mad.
“Please!” I no longer cared about the game. I ached for him. “Please, Achilles, take me!”
“You want me to fuck you?” he asked, rising to stand over me.
“P l e a s e,“ I fisted my hands in the furs that lined our bed. I pressed my hips into the empty air, my arousal thumped against my belly. “Please,” it was almost a sob.
“Then I will fuck you. Turn over.”
I obeyed, eager and clumsy, onto my hands and knees. Something about this position drove me wild. Submissive, animal, raw. I twisted to look over my shoulder, to watch him mount me.
Lust washed over me at the sight of him slicking himself up, eyebrows furrowed in the smallest frown as his eyes slipped closed at the feeling of being touched after much neglect. All of him was golden in the warm light of the lamps that lit our tent. As lost as I was in the heat of our passion, I felt my heart swell with adoration.
And when I felt his hands grip my hips, the swelling pulsed between my legs instead. I caught that devilish twinkle in his eye and braced myself. Though I had taken him without much preparation before, there was only so much oil could do to ease the stretch and sting of it. I took an unsteady breath in anticipation.
But the fullness, the pressure never came. Instead I felt his slick length slip between my cheeks, up and over and down again. At first I thought he had simply missed, but the aim of Aristos Achaion was guided by the gods. He meant to tease me more. The head of his cock pressed against my hole and I shuddered, but again it slipped against it and between instead. Frustration and arousal pulled a groan from me, and as soon as my lips parted I knew I had made a mistake.
“Is this not what you wanted, Patroclus?” his voice was dark. Did I dare answer him? I shook my head gently.
“Ah. Then this, perhaps,” he pressed my knees together so that my thighs touched, and began fucking the space between them. The wet slap-slide of his hips on mine, his length just grazing my scrotum in the most agonizingly insufficient way. He made a show of enjoying himself, moaning and grunting and thrusting with sincerity. He whispered encouragement under his breath, depraved prayers to our passion. “ So fucking tight,” he swore. “You look so good.” I shuddered. “ Take me.” I could have cried from frustration.
Despite my grievances at his negligence and taunting, I could not help the way my body reacted to his words. Need engulfed me, flaring in my fingertips and pulling at my skin. I thought to reach between my legs, to bring myself pleasure if he so refused. But he knew me, he anticipated my greed, and he swatted my hand away before I could milk even an ounce of pleasure.
If he would not give me what I wanted, I would take it myself. I hooked my ankles around his calves and flipped us, a grappling move we had practiced on each other in our youth. Perhaps that was why I enjoyed when he mounted me so, the ultimate consummation of a pubescent fantasy.
His face was startled and pleased, looking up at me from beneath a few fallen sweat-dampened curls. Splayed fingers on his firm chest, I pressed him into the bed. I kissed him, greedy and forceful. “I need you inside me ,” I bit into his ear.
I straddled him and sat back on my heels. He would watch me as I opened myself on my fingers, revenge for all his teasing and denial. He would watch me fuck myself, claiming my pleasure.
I cried his name with two oil slick fingers inside myself and he rolled his hips into me in response. Desperation made the air around us crackle, every touch was electric; so much and not nearly enough. Another finger, pressed against that place that nearly blinded with pleasure. I could wait no longer.
“Fuck me, Achilles. Fuck me please,” I begged as I sank down onto him. His jaw fell open in a silent shout, his hands a vice grip on my hipbones-- perhaps as guidance for me, perhaps as an anchor for himself. He was flushed the color of a summer peach and a thin sheen of sweat glistened across his golden skin. Gods, I loved him. Gods, I wanted him to fuck me til collapse.
I used my thighs to lift up and slide back down, setting a slow rhythm as I tried to remain in control. He was mine, and I was using him. Taking from him what he owed me. I kept up this charade of dominance until Achilles shifted beneath me, tilting his hips, and like flint on steel the drag of his head over my walls sent sparks ripping through me. I lost my composure, a moan pressed high against the back of my throat.
He seized the opportunity to regain his control and dug his thumbs into my pelvis, broad palms cupping my spread cheeks. I fell forward, hands planting on his broad chest as he fucked up into me, deep and relentless. My fingers curled around his shoulders, desperate for something to hold onto.
“Patroclus,” he groaned. His voice was strained, as if he was holding back.
“Give it to me,” I panted into his ear. “Fuck me, Achilles. Ruin me. Let them hear it.” My own words speared me through the gut and I could not stop the hand that reached for my neglected cock.
With a hoarse cry he abandoned his restraint, fucking into me and slamming my hips back down with all his strength. I felt my thighs bruising and it only spurred me on. Heat seared through me, rising and roiling inside me. Achilles was a cliff and I was about to throw myself off his edge.
I could not have focused the efforts of my hand if I had tried. I simply let his punishing rhythm fuck me into my own fist, gasping, sobbing, our foreheads pressed together.
“Yes, Patroclus!” he shouted. “Come for me!” his brow was furrowed in concentration, his mouth twisted in overwhelming pleasure.
“I-- Achilles I am--” I could not breathe, I could not think. The only thing in the world was his body beneath mine, the drag of his cock against my prostate, the slapping of our hips.
“Yes! Yes, Fuck!” He was on the edge with me. So much teasing and neglect had left us both needy and oversensitive, and now we were quick to the finish line.
“Aaaaachilles!” I came with a sharp cry of something like his name, spilling across his chest and mine.
He was not far behind, a primal shout tearing through him as his hips faltered and I felt him spill hot and thick inside me.
I collapsed onto him and rolled to the side, panting to catch my breath. His chest heaved, sticky and shining with my spend.
“Do you think they heard us?” I asked playfully, bottom lip between my teeth.
He huffed a laugh. “I would not be surprised if the Trojans complain tomorrow morning.” My cheeks flushed at the thought of Priam and Paris and Hector kept awake by our passion.
Achilles kissed me sweetly before rising to retrieve a cloth and wet it.
As I lay in the bed, soaking in the afterglow, I heard a small voice outside the tent. My eyes met Achilles', who moved to pull the flap open to investigate.
A counselor stood in the dark night, head bowed and face red. I heard him stumble over his words at the sight of Achilles standing naked, flushed, and glistening with seed in the doorway.
“Pr- uh… Prince Achilles, Agamemnon has called a counsel. They await your arrival.”
“Thank you. Have I kept you waiting long?” Achilles inquired in his Prince’s voice.
“Long enough,” I heard the counselor say before giving a hasty bow and scurrying away.
The flap slapped against the canvas as Achilles dropped it and turned to me with wide eyes. “It is safe to say someone heard us,” he grinned.
I buried my face in a pillow.