Patrochilles (Achilles x Patroclus) Oneshot

Home is where the heart is

Home.

What is home?

Home is a comfort zone and a safe space for those who accommodate it.

A place to build memories as well as a way to build future wealth. A place where we can truly just be ourselves.

Not for me.

For me, home is vengeful and proud, carefree and loving, petty and beautiful. He is the strongest soldier, and the most vulnerable man.

"Stay at home." They said, "You'll get used to the house being empty soon enough." They said. But how can I feel at peace in this place, when I know my home is with my Achilles?

Since Achilles left, I've just been holed up in the house, doing chores like cleaning.

It's almost as if I'm his wife or something.

I snort unattractively under my breath, remembering how we used to joke about such things when we were younger.

The first day, I wept. I shut myself away and cried for all the selfish things that come with being in love with someone. But I didn't let the tears surpass the sunrise of the second day for wasting your energy by crying over the inevitable is simply below me.

By the time a month had passed, the emptiness had bore its way into my head and settled in the space between my brain and my skull, eating away at my insides. I wasn't used to it, as others had become, I had simply learnt to push through.

Time was spent mercilessly cleaning our living spaces - I could hardly come to call it a home, the word felt like a betrayal - and pacing desperately. Back then I had still been so sure that my love would return to me.

Six weeks and nothing had changed, only from sunrise to sunset, I settled for walking aimlessly around the town, hardly eating or speaking. At nightfall, horrors would await me beneath my eyelids, unnamed creatures pulling him away.

Friends said I was being dramatic, all I had to do was wait it out, they would tell me. I felt hurt that they would push me away like this, but as I lay in the dark, patiently plowing through the dark minute by minute, sleep became easier as I remember his parting words to me through sweet kisses and salty tears, "I promise to return to you, eros. You simply have to be patient."

Two months. At this point I'm starting to believe the cursed words of those around me. The words that the war is being lost and our soldiers are being slaughtered in hundreds by the day. My faith in Achilles is strong but through time, the rumours are starting to take their hold. I keep it pushed down, concealing my fear from the rest of the city. Gods let him come home safe.

I pray every day, begging to every deity I can think of before I sleep, Tyche, Aphrodite, Nike, Kratos, Hygieia, please, let my beloved return home safely.

Three months and I'm stuck in a time loop of waking, eating, pacing and sleeping. I've stopped going outside and the isolation is sending me crazy.

I've never been a massively adventurous person granted my father would never let me when I was a child. But if I was inside, I almost always had Achilles near me. Be it if he were playing the lyre, polishing his armour or reading to me while my head rested in his lap, we were never more than hearing distance apart at all times.

I wouldn't exactly call it codependency, and yet I know others would.

I can get along fine without him, but the fear of him dying on a battlefield - honours be damned - still scares me stiff.

I've stopped cleaning the house, everything except Achilles' lyre lays coated in a thin layer on dust. I don't dare pick it up and play it, even though I know how and consider myself rather good at it too. Sleep, however, comes easier than it used to.

I rest, curled up on my side, facing the wall and away from his side of the bed that we've shared since we were young adults. My heart beats the words not home, not here on repeat, and it seems to be the only thing I can think of that gets me through the day.

My home is in his arms, or in the laughter that fills the room when I say something he finds particularly amusing, which, albeit, can be either rare, or on a daily occurrence. His sense of humour is both similar to mine, and completely different as he grew up surrounded by violent young boys, and I was an outcast.

The black sheep of my family.

His touch and my name in his voice is what gives me a sense of being in the darkest of times. That is why my home is not here, in this house.

On the morning of the fourth month, I rise later than usual. Silence greets me once more and I swallow my silent disappointment that, again, he isn't next to me. A sparrow chirps repeatedly outside the bedroom window and I resist throwing something at it, as the bird is sacred to Aphrodite.

Aphrodite?

I stumble through the building, into the main room. The front door is flung open and this raises my guard. A movement in my peripheral vision makes me spin and I blink, staring at the young man watching me from the couch.

I nearly lose my balance as I race across the room and into Achilles' outstretched arms. I grab at his shoulders in disbelief and kiss him yearningly.

"My love," He whispers, stroking my hair, "My love, hush your crying, I am here."

And finally I hear my name leave his lips;

"Patroclus."