Chapter Text
Patroclus has been to jail before. It was when he was young, nine or ten, he can’t even remember now that he is nineteen—he can’t remember much of what jail was like, either, except the sharp metallic smell the police station seemed to emanate no matter where he turned. It is probably because he spent a good chunk of time trying to forget that trip, and the cracking of his neighbor’s son’s skull against hard pavement, and the blood on his hands, and the look on his father’s face, awful beyond description. Kids usually get juvie, but not for a crime like that. It’s still baffling to him how quickly his father washed both their hands of it. It’s as if it was wiped off of the face of the earth.
Peleus will probably not be able to wipe away Achilles’ arrest so easily. It is three in the morning on a Friday and Patroclus is sure the paparazzi have already gotten their hands on it. The detention center still has that rotten metallic tang, like old change. Patroclus’ eyes are heavy.
The policeman that brings Achilles out wears a bored look. It is Los Angeles, and a celebrity child gone awry is probably nothing new. Achilles hurts to look upon; Patroclus has not seen him off of a screen in upwards of six months. He’s in a pink hoodie and black shorts and sneakers Patroclus has never seen him wear before. He’s still buzzed, clearly; his long golden hair is a mess, falling out of its bun, and his lips are pulled back in a sneer until he sees Patroclus waiting for him, and he goes very still.
“I’m driving you home,” Patroclus tells him.
Together they walk out of the detention center. Achilles reeks of alcohol and weed, and has probably ingested more stuff than that, but he manages to walk in a straight line. He has always been more graceful than most people; at Pelion, Patroclus thought Achilles seemed unearthly, when he sang hymns in other languages and played violin and danced ballet, joyous. Now he has never looked more human.
Achilles makes it to the passenger seat without a word. He slams the door too hard. Patroclus shuts the door on his side gently, and wonders if it is out of anger, or if he is just that drunk.
“Why’re you here?” Achilles asks. His voice is hoarse.
Patroclus still hates to look at him. He jams the key in and twists it, listening to the car come to life. “I told you, I’m driving you home,” he says, hoping in vain that the ignition will swallow his voice whole.
In the corner of his eye, Achilles slumps back into his seat. “I know that.” He’s staring out the windshield, looking lost.
Even Peleus knows that Patroclus and Achilles are not best friends anymore. But, he said over the phone, Achilles’ mother is out of town, and his new friends—he faltered for a moment—they are not the type you would want picking you up from a jail cell.
I don’t know what’s happening to him, Patroclus had replied.
“Your dad’s out of town.”
Achilles scoffs. “My dad could’ve called anybody. He has a million drivers—”
“Your dad,” Patroclus says, firm, “is worried about you.”
It hasn’t been the same since you left for college, Peleus said. You were here all the time, and now suddenly you aren’t. I don’t think he knows what to do with himself, son, he said.
The semester started in September. It was the middle of May, now, spring in its full bloom. He’d come back to Peleus’ for Thanksgiving and Christmas. In November, Achilles was in Italy. In December, he was at his mother’s in New York. Patroclus had given up on coming home for spring break and chose to take a class that ended in a trip to Greece—all the better, apparently, because when spring break came around he’d opened Instagram to pictures of a beaming Achilles in the Miami sun with popstars and IG models. If Achilles didn’t want to talk to him, fine, but at least he could’ve done something more original.
He doesn’t even live that far. It’s UCLA.
What he said to Peleus was, I think he’s doing fine without me, sir.
“Oh.” The sound is empty, little more than a whisper from Achilles’ lips.
Patroclus waits for him to say more, fight back, but Achilles just pulls his legs up onto the seat and keeps staring out the window, like he’s not quite here. It’s unsettling. Patroclus tells himself it’s just the drugs and doesn’t make himself feel any better. The seatbelt alarm starts ringing, keeps ringing as Patroclus puts the car in reverse and backs out, high and grating and infuriating.
“You sound pissed,” Achilles says. Suddenly he’s alive again, talking quickly. “Are you pissed?”
“Why would I be pissed, Achilles.” He’s aware of the venom in his voice. The streets are still busy, probably too busy to be safe with how exhausted he is. “I only woke up at two in the morning and drove fifty minutes to get here—”
“You didn’t have to.”
“Yes I did.”
Achilles has nothing to say to this. The air is stifling and the seatbelt alarm is still making itself known in the most annoying method possible. Patroclus takes a hand off the wheel to roll down the windows.
“You should put some music on,” Achilles says over the rushing wind.
“If your new album comes on,” Patroclus replies, “you’re walking home.”
No, he’s not. It doesn’t matter how mad Patroclus is, because he’d do this a million times over. Achilles doesn’t turn on the radio, just sits back and lets his head loll against the seat, probably exhausted in his own right.
“What’d he tell you?” Achilles says, maybe five minutes later, when they stop at a light. His words are just barely slurred.
“What?”
Achilles peers down at his hands. “Dad,” he says. “I know… I know he told you something. I know that’s why you’re pissed.”
Patroclus squints into the red light. It hurts to look at in the dark, even with how much of the city is still lit up. He’s so tired, and his tongue is loose with his exhaustion. “Does it have to be something your dad said? Can’t I just be mad that you don’t like me anymore?”
“Patroclus.” Pa-tro-clus, scandalized. “Patroclus, you can’t—”
“I mean, he did tell me something,” Patroclus says, just to rub it in. “He told me a lot, actually. Lot you never told me.”
Achilles stops and stares at him full on, his green eyes wide, for the first time since Patroclus picked him up. Patroclus is still looking up at that light, but he can see Achilles in his periphery, his mouth twitching. He moves to lean back against the seat, slowly, his face hardening. “It’s not like you fucking called, either.”
“You stopped responding to my texts, Achilles,” he says. “I can take a hint.”
The light turns green.
Sometime later, over the clicking of Patroclus’ turn signal, Achilles reaches over to turn on the radio. It’s in the middle of some poppy tune by a girl with a high voice, singing about ex-boyfriends. Patroclus has heard her before, but can’t place her. It’s too peppy for a three AM drive home from jail with your ex-boyfriend(?). Achilles is looking out the window now.
He used to be Patroclus’ best friend. More than his best friend. But it was natural that things were going to end up this way. Achilles was the son of a superstar and a defense business tycoon; rumors were abound the second people knew Thetis and Peleus Aeacus had had a child, and the only reason Patroclus was so lucky as to spend any time with him at all was because they wanted to keep him out of the limelight until he was sixteen. He should’ve known it was over the second Peleus called them home from Pelion and told them that their education was finished. Achilles was made for the spotlight, for the stage, for stupid fucking instagram posts of him and skinny models with BBLs. Patroclus was hidden in the shadows. He killed someone. He and Achilles couldn’t keep coexisting once Achilles got a taste of fame, and he should have known.
But Achilles didn’t abandon him as soon as he turned sixteen. They had a good few years together before Patroclus went to college, where Achilles was starting to get his foothold in this stardom thing, kickstarting social media accounts and linking up with high-end producers in the music industry. Nothing was real, then. That was the beautiful thing about LA. They lazed about for days on end, springs and summers where the air was thick and humid and Achilles kissed him with such tenderness that it was hard to believe.
Patroclus did not expect them to fall apart once he went away, even though he really, truly should have. Achilles’ first album came out soon after he moved, and Patroclus was too innocent still to realize how big that must have actually been. Big enough that Achilles stopped responding to his texts on time, and eventually at all. Big enough that Patroclus stopped texting him first. It was not quick, either. It was a slow and painful dislodging.
They hadn’t officially been together. It’s just that Patroclus had thought… He’d thought the thing they had didn’t need words.
Achilles is humming along to the song now, to the pretty words the girl was singing about her new man. Deidameia, Patroclus knows now, is the girl who sings this one. She’s in the background of too many of his instagram posts, and he hears her voice laughing too often in Achilles’ private snap stories. She’s gorgeous, red-headed and slim and pale, with freckles dotting her cheeks.
I’m worried about him, Patroclus, Peleus had said, hesitant.
Patroclus’ fingers dig into the leather of the steering wheel.
Achilles doesn’t have his house key on him, but Patroclus does, jingling next to his dorm key on a keyring. Peleus’ house is too big—probably worth at least twenty million dollars and designed for far more people than him, his son, and his son’s…. and his old business partner’s son. It has a beautiful view of the city, a pool, a gargantuan driveway filled with sports cars that weren’t there when Patroclus left, two elevators, and a movie theater. Patroclus still sometimes feels dirty opening the door, like it’s wrong to leave fingerprints on the pristine handle, but he pulls it open and steps back.
Achilles shoves his hands in his pockets. “You’re not coming in?”
“...Should I?” Patroclus says, knowing this is the wrong answer.
“You drove all this way,” Achilles says. His green eyes are bright.
Maybe Patroclus should not be surprised when he is only a few steps into the house and Achilles pushes him against the wall and kisses him, fierce. He is clearly still not in his right mind, still half-caught in this strange world of excess he wandered his way into when Patroclus left. He is not sweet anymore. His lips are chapped and his mouth tastes awful, like alcohol, mostly, maybe a tinge of vomit. Patroclus should not be surprised, but he is, and more than that he’s furious. He shoves Achilles off of him with too much force.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” he demands.
“With me?” Achilles is incredulous.
“You’re such an asshole,” Patroclus hisses, then, “I’m going to bed.”
Patroclus’ room overlooks the pool. He lived in New York, where Achilles’ mother Thetis is from, before his father shipped him across the country. In New York the winters are real winters and the springs, too, are chilly, and Patroclus almost never swam outside of the summer months. In LA, it was regular to see people in the pools at any time of year—it’s still weird. Now it’s approaching four, and Patroclus still can’t sleep, and Achilles is outside in the pool doing laps. It’s a square-shaped pool, pristine, always perfectly maintained. Waves lap the side from the force of Achilles’ strokes.
His pink hoodie is thrown aside on one of the many empty pool chairs, and his sneakers are six feet away from each other, like he violently kicked them off. He’s probably not sober yet.
Maybe pushing him away was the wrong decision.
No, that was definitely the right decision. But doing it so harshly, maybe that wasn’t right. He watches Achilles dive down and stay there for just a little too long. He re-emerges in a burst of water, sending waves across the pool. Then he’s still, looking over the sparkling lights of the buildings below.
Peleus didn’t ask him to look after Achilles. He asked him to pick Achilles up, maybe talk to him, see if he could get him out of what is very clearly an oncoming meltdown. If Patroclus leaves now, shit will probably get a lot worse. Before Patroclus went to college, Achilles hadn’t even touched a drink, and now he seems like he’s on the verge of overdosing on something every day. If it isn’t on his social media then it’s on the news—Achilles Aeacus with a new girl, Achilles Aeacus puking his guts up outside of a club he’s too young to get into, Achilles Aeacus hurling obscenities at people recording him. It’s a miracle Patroclus hasn't had to pick him up before now. Peleus told him he was just glad Achilles hadn’t hurt anybody yet, especially not the paparazzi.
On one hand, Patroclus doesn’t owe Achilles anything. On the other hand, if he leaves in the morning he’ll have to drive through LA traffic at 9 AM to get back in time for his classes.
And Achilles was his best friend, once. It hurts to see him like this. It hurts to hear what his father has to say about him.
Patroclus has class in six hours. He rolls over and does not set an alarm.