Chapter Text
7 years ago
Night air breezed through the open window, a quiet chill. When he leaned forwards and narrowed his eyes, the lights from the building across the street winked back at him in orange and yellow. Warm and inviting, all the way over there.
He could imagine people coming home from work to their waiting families - tables laid with dishes kept warm in the oven. He could imagine people coming home to empty apartments, too, microwave dinners at the ready. Which one he envied, he wasn’t sure.
The bed dipped, the sound of a cigarette tapping against an ashtray. Shuffling sheets, smooth linen against skin. When he wrapped them all around him he felt like an ancient mummy - decay at the edges, crumbling with only a touch.
“I never know what you’re thinking about at times like this,” Eudoros said, mumbling around his words as he took a long drag.
Achilles didn’t have to glance over his shoulder to know what the man looked like. He gave debauchery a pretty face - all tousled hair and sleepy eyelids. It was the eyelids, Achilles thought. The way the man looked at him, half-asleep half-awake. Never seeing the whole. He liked it that way, as though he were half-something or the other, and didn’t have to be anything else.
But how wrong he was.
Eudoros smirked. It never bothered him. He didn’t know what Achilles was thinking, and it never bothered him. He didn’t want anything from Achilles. It was baffling.
Achilles had never had a client like him before. Eudoros was too pretty. Too confident. Too everything.
There was something off about this story.
“It’s not like you want to know what I’m thinking,” Achilles managed, turning back to Eudoros at last, matching his smirk.
When they’d met, he’d had none of that smarmy charm he reserved for Agamemnon’s other associates. A slight change of tone, a perpetually amused expression. What he was expected to look like, ever the entertainer.
But the real Achilles was never amused. The real Achilles exchanged banter with vile men, secretly hating them with every phoneme and every breath. Behind his smiles and his laughter he cursed them. He was Agamemnon’s avenging angel, Agamemnon’s eyes; a honeyed trap to lure them in while spinning their secrets like a web.
When he’d met Eudoros, it had been his night off.
As soon as he’d seen his last client, he’d torn that amused expression off like a plaster cast. His face had sagged. The weight of him and all the anger he carried, infused into muscle until he could no longer ignore it.
Sometimes he dreamed about going up to the very top floor of the Aulis Hotel.
He would take the elevator; it would play that song about palm trees on a sandy beach, and ladies in coconut shell bikinis. He would listen to it, thinking about all the places he might have gone if he’d been someone else.
And then those warm yellow-orange lights from the apartments across the street would greet him, and maybe then he would catch a glimpse. Maybe then he could be at peace, in that fleeting moment as his feet met air and he soared …
“It helps to look in front of you when you walk,” came a voice. Slightly irritated. An expression to match.
Achilles had bumped into a guest on his way out, without noticing.
“I could say the same for you,” Achilles growled. He didn’t care. He was off duty. He did not have to be anything for anyone.
A light scoff. “Someone needs a smoke.” The man offered him a cigarette.
Achilles looked down at it in disdain.
“What? Do you only smoke after sex?” If it was supposed to be a joke, it didn’t land.
After a while, the man gave up.
“Geez. Where’s your sense of humor? No wonder I can’t stand handsome men.”
Achilles studied the man properly this time.
“I can’t stand people who think they’re so funny.”
The man backed away, as if offended.
Then he laughed.
“You’re alright,” he said. He looked Achilles up and down. “A little out of my price range, but alright.”
Achilles glared at him. “I’m off duty.”
“Well, when do you get on?”
He thought about it. “You’re right. I’m out of your price range. Get lost.”
The man laughed again. “I’m Eudoros. Remember that name. I’ll come asking around for you. And I don’t give up easy.”
Sure enough, he was back the next day. And the next.
He was not truly a guest at the Aulis Hotel. Real customers did not hang around the side door where the delivery boy left the packages. And he was not dressed well enough. The men who patronized the hotel wore three-piece suits with gold chains, leather shoes clicking against the polished lobby floor.
Eudoros was not a poor man. But he was not a rich man, either. He was entirely ordinary. Ordinary people did not frequent the Aulis Hotel.
~~~
“You’re not spending your life’s savings on a mediocre fuck, are you?” Achilles asked, as they rolled away from each other, breathing hard in the stuffiness of the room.
“I bet you hope I am spending my life’s savings on you,” Eudoros muttered, turning on his side so they could look at each other. “You have to admit, it’s a bit much.”
“That would make you even more pathetic in my books,” Achilles replied.
“What can I say. Maybe I’m a romantic.” Eudoros smiled, and for some reason, Achilles could not help smiling back.
Eudoros was one of those infuriating men who were hard not to like.
“Besides - I wouldn’t go so far as to call it mediocre. More like comfortably pleasant.”
Achilles was laughing before he realized it. He tended to switch his mind off when he fucked, but he hadn’t needed to this time. There was something oddly impersonal about how they touched each other. As though they’d already done it a dozen times, as though they’d already known each other. Like old friends. Old lovers. As Eudoros said, it was comfortably pleasant.
~~~
He wasn’t careful enough. For some reason or another, no matter who he had to see during the day, whose arm he was on in the evening - he would find himself meandering over to that side door late at night. He had never wanted to see any of his clients again.
But there was something about the other man that was so easy. It made him forget. Just a little.
It became a regular thing, when he had never meant it to be.
They met on the boundaries of the city - those shadowed places where House Atreus’ hand hovered, but did not reach.
They met in alleyways, in cheap motels, in the back of a car in an abandoned junkyard.
When he went through his list every day, that dreaded weight did not feel quite as much a burden; seeing the other man’s name last in the blank space where he neglected to write it.
~~~
Slow kissing. The way Eudoros liked it, not quite open-mouthed, a suggestion of tongue but never more. His back against concrete, fingertips digging grooves in the furrows lining his hips.
He could pretend they were lovers, ill-starred and illicit. Meeting in stolen moments, something more than heat and flesh.
“You’re a stupid, stupid man,” Achilles said, fishing around in Eudoros’ front pocket, tracing the silver star on his badge. The metal was cool on his palm, and he thought of it pressed up against him, burning its mark like a fiery brand.
“And you’re a stupid whore,” Eudoros replied, before soothing the insult with a kiss.
When they were finished, he thumbed Achilles’ jaw until he opened his mouth, and slipped a dollar bill between his teeth.
“Spend it wisely.”
“Your life’s savings?” Achilles asked.
“My life’s savings.”
Eudoros looked at him for a moment more, seeming to hesitate.
“Spit it out,” Achilles said.
“Anybody ever take you out to the carnival?”
Achilles scoffed at him. “Don’t make me laugh.”
“I mean it. Popcorn. Candy apples. Big ferris wheel, and all that.”
“And what would we do?”
Eudoros shrugged. “Why, we’d go for a ride, of course.”
Achilles thought about it. He’d accompanied powerful men to fancy dinners and charity events. Rode in limousines, ate caviar and drank champagne.
He’d never ridden on a ferris wheel. Or eaten a candy apple. He didn’t even like apples.
But the way Eudoros was looking at him - not expecting an affirmative, yet hoping for one all the same. No one had ever looked at him like that before.
“I can’t,” he said, too honest for his own comfort.
He never said anything to Eudoros that he meant. It was all hidden behind sick jokes and biting stabs. There was no way he would allow himself to say something more, to feel something more. It was not possible.
“Who says you can’t?” Eudoros challenged, raising an eyebrow.
A minute passed in silence.
Eudoros reached out a hand, brushing Achilles’ cheek - a gesture too real for the both of them.
Achilles turned his face away.
“I have to go,” he mumbled.
“And sooner or later you’ll have to stop paying me in dollar bills. I’ll write your name in his book and they’ll come kicking down your door.”
Eudoros smirked. “You wouldn’t do that to me.”
“Like you said,” Achilles bit back. “I’m just a stupid whore.”
“You’re more than that,” Eudoros replied.
Too dangerous. The ground they were treading on, like cellophane over an open sky.
“If you’re not going to go with me, at least kiss me goodbye,” Eudoros said, dark eyes glittering.
He was fucking pretty, like a shiny pin on a dirty sidewalk.
Achilles leaned forward to kiss him - but something inside stopped him short.
They stared at each other, neither wanting to be the first to look away.
“Fine. I’ll go with you,” Achilles gritted out.
Eudoros smiled.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
He hated his reflection in the hallway mirror. Agamemnon’s gaze, hawk-like, behind him. The man insisted on attending every fitting.
The slide of the measuring tape, mapping him out in the proportions Agamemnon wanted. Cutting him out of cloth and stitching tight to hold him together.
He stood proud and poised as a sharpened arrow. Agamemnon’s prized weapon against his enemies. Whatever path the man laid out, he would follow.
“The deputy mayor,” Agamemnon started, examining his fingernails. “Happens to like the color blue.” And so it was a blue suit they tailored for him, pinstriped and perfect.
“Is there anything else I should know?” Achilles asked, as he always did. Waited for the smirk, that knowing lift of the mouth. That is up to you to find out, it said. Agamemnon expected no less.
The man rose from his seat and strode up to Achilles, placing a hand on his shoulder. They locked eyes in the mirror. He felt himself a stranger - a made-up persona, a wax figure. Cold and unfeeling, at the other man’s bidding.
A crash sounded out from the hallway, a distant cry.
Achilles jerked back in alarm, the sudden noise breaking his composure.
“What was that?”
Agamemnon didn’t reply.
Achilles turned to look at him. “Has somebody broken in?”
The man continued smiling. “Patience, Achilles. All good things come to the one who waits.”
He could do nothing but nod, accepting it.
Agamemnon dismissed him with another clap on the shoulder.
“You will do well tonight. I expect nothing else.”
It could almost be misconstrued as fatherly. Achilles had lived long enough with his mind warped this way and that; so much that he believed in it sometimes.
But he believed in whatever he wanted to believe. It was, in his opinion, the only way to survive here.
Crystal chandeliers reflected light across the room. Band music in brassy tones, although he heard it in a blur. He laughed until he was hoarse. Threw his head back until his neck ached.
When the deputy mayor turned away for just a minute, he was out that back door, struggling for air.
The stench of the gutter hit him in a wave.
“Oi, Tydides, you’re overdoing it!” a voice hissed.
He cast his gaze to the side, where two of the band members were taking a break, shooting up Ichor like nobody’s business. Achilles snorted. What a mess.
It was an ugly drug, the kind that ruined people’s lives. He had gotten by without ever being touched by the needle’s fine silver point. And he intended to keep it that way.
One of the band members - the singer, he thought - gurgled and keeled over.
“Tydides!”
Tydides’ bandmate shook him hard. No response.
A hard slap.
This time, Tydides’ eyes cracked open just a little.
“Throw ice water at him,” Achilles suggested.
The bandmate eyed him warily as he cradled Tydides against his chest.
“You stay out of it. We don’t need the boss looking our way any more than he already is.”
“Is that so?” Achilles looked the bandmate up and down. “You’re the one who did this to him, Promachus. You don’t think I heard?”
“He should be dead by now, at the rate he’s going,” Promachus replied, grimly. “But the bastard pulls through every time.”
“So we’ve got ourselves a survivor. Even though what he’ll have left when he gets to the other end, who knows?” Achilles shrugged.
“Stubborn fuck,” Promachus mumbled. “He’d be better off dead.”
Tydides, who had been drifting in and out of consciousness, must have heard. He started laughing - clinging to Promachus’ lapels and laughing.
Achilles watched them, feeling the first dregs of pity rising up like froth in a glass.
“Take him away, Promachus,” he said, softly. “He can’t go on stage like that.”
“Fucking hell, he can’t,” Promachus objected. “I’ve seen him perform a whole set five minutes after passing out.”
Achilles shook his head. “His choice.”
He knew the feeling. Some people survived because they knew how to embrace the pain rather than avoid it. Learn its ways, and in turn, begin to withstand it. The aftereffect was, of course, that sooner or later - the parts of them that were human were eaten away. Nothing remained but the empty shell.
He liked to think of himself as a shell. Untouchable and unreachable. All the hands that touched him met skin as cold as marble. They could never reach him, Achilles. They could never find the boy hiding inside, cowering away with his head under his arms.
Come the storm, he had crawled under the dinner table. As a child, the feeling of great oak shielding him from wicked streaks of lightning across a black and merciless sky. He had stayed there until the storm was over, or until his father came to comfort him with reassuring words.
Now, of course - such comfort did not exist. He stayed concealed. It was the only way he could be safe.
~~~
He walked the halls of the Aulis Hotel on his nightly patrol. It gave him some sort of rest - knowing this place like the back of his hand. Knowing for sure that no matter where he turned, there was no escape.
The walls were gilded. The carpets blood-red. They were soft under his feet, a river made of clouds.
He felt he was walking to tomorrowland with every padded step. He could close his eyes and recite the corridors from memory.
An open door at the end, the light filtering out.
Agamemnon’s silhouette seated in his armchair. Imposing and inviting.
Like being summoned to sit at the fire.
He took his seat next to Agamemnon and whispered in his ear, all the things he had learned that night. And all the others.
Taking the city piece by piece, stealing it away. For this was what Agamemnon had learned about power - not gained from wealth, or even connections - but knowledge. Forbidden fruit on silver trees, snatched up at the right moment. Agamemnon dreamed to surpass his father one day. And he would do it by knowing secrets best kept locked away.
“You’ve been good, Achilles,” Agamemnon praised, placing his hand on Achilles’ head like a beloved family pet. “Good deeds must come with a reward.”
“I want nothing,” Achilles blurted out, because he knew what Agamemnon’s rewards were like.
“Nonsense. You must have something. Now, you are almost twenty-one. When a man comes of age, he should own something that will teach him responsibility.”
Achilles frowned. He had forgotten how close it was to his birthday. A day that he wished had never happened. He could remember it in fragments - candles flickering on an iced cake, the scent of the wax. It was not his clearest memory, but certainly the most visceral.
He thought, perhaps - he had run away from home on his birthday. And the thought stabbed like a shard broken off in his ribs.
Agamemnon observed him, almost fondly - hand still on his hair, reassuring him.
Then he sat up straighter and clapped his hands.
“A gift. For a valued member of the family. What kind of man would I be if I cannot show my gratitude?”
Achilles felt his muscles tense.
The side door leading to Agamemnon’s study creaked open.
Inaudible footsteps, and a small frame; a boy with shining eyes, but no tears. He had been very clearly trained not to cry. How long he had been here, under Agamemnon’s tutelage, Achilles could not guess.
But the boy was thirteen or fourteen. The right age.
“This is Antilochus,” Agamemnon introduced. “Your new little brother.”
Achilles’ throat seized up, the bile coming to surface quicker than he could restrain it.
“Perhaps one day he will surpass even you, Achilles. But that, of course - is in your hands.”
Agamemnon passed Antilochus over to him, like an impeccably wrapped gift on a gleaming platter.
Underneath it, a veiled threat.
If you fail … if you fail …
Antilochus was his responsibility now. In a sense, Antilochus was Achilles.
He could see the lightning, hear the thunder - and the reflection in the window, of the screaming boy dragged out from his hiding spot.
He had thought to keep him safe. He had thought -
~~~
He left Antilochus in his room, perched on the bed like a porcelain doll on the mantelpiece.
Then he locked himself in the bathroom and staggered to the sink.
Holding his throat, trying to force it out. Failing.
He glared at himself in the mirror.
“What’s the matter?” he spat. “Sorry that you can’t save him? It’s too late. It’s too late.”
Whatever had been done to the boy was already over. The same as it had been with himself.
Now the boy sat compliant, the last of his childhood chiseled away from his features.
The beginning of a beautiful face, and the monster crouching behind it.
When he came out of the bathroom, Antilochus raised his head and looked up at him.
He had deep, dark eyes - all of a sudden, Achilles couldn’t help staring back.
He’d once looked like that, he thought.
Hopeful.
Searching for a kind word. A gentle face.
He would have done anything for borrowed affection.
He stared at that face and learned it by heart. After a while, it became too much. He couldn’t breathe in that room. He couldn’t bear Antilochus looking at him, like someone who could be trusted, someone who could love him in whatever made-up world they managed to build within the Aulis Hotel.
He would not do that to him. He would not lie.
There was a pain in his chest as he grappled for air. He clutched at it as his eyes went blurry.
And then he ran.
“I thought you wouldn’t show up.” A pair of arms grabbing his waist, fresh cigarette smoke curling into the air.
He buried his face in the jacket, evened out his breathing.
“Hey. What’s the matter?” Real concern that he didn’t want.
Achilles cleared his throat and looked up. Since when did Eudoros of all people become his escape?
“Nothing. You invited me here. Don’t waste my time.”
Eudoros chuckled, a gleam of white teeth. “Who said I was going to waste your time?”
He took Achilles by the arm and they walked side by side. Leaves crunched under their feet.
The air was crisp, strange weather for a carnival.
Striped tents lined the road. The smell of caramel hung heavy. And people, in all directions.
Crowds of them. Happy children. Happy adults. Happy, happy, happy.
This was a place people went to be happy, and Achilles forced himself to believe he could be like them.
“Do you want to watch the show?” Eudoros asked, indicating the big tent where the circus performance would be taking place.
Achilles shook his head. His feet were frozen beneath him. People pushed past them, but he didn’t care.
Eudoros was silent for a long time.
“Achilles?”
“Kiss me,” he replied.
With everyone watching.
Eudoros stared at him. Then leaned forwards, and pressed their lips together, softly.
“You want to play pretend, huh?”
“Anything,” Achilles whispered, fingers finding the hem of Eudoros’ jacket.
They stood in the middle of the pulsing crowd.
“Make it all disappear. You can do that, can’t you?”
Eudoros’ eyes were beautiful and warm when he looked into them. “Of course I can. I can make it all go away.”
He had been waiting for it. Waiting for Achilles to ask.
They parted, and he weaved their hands together. Just any ordinary couple, strolling casually in the autumn fun. He was someone else. That boy was somewhere else, ceasing to exist.
Eudoros made it so easy to forget, like a medicine man in a traveling show. He belonged here, at the carnival.
Achilles would drink potion after potion.
They watched the balloon man form animal shapes in twists and stretches.
They watched acrobats walk the tightrope from one pole to another.
Discarded popcorn glittered like drops of gold in the earth.
He never let go of Eudoros’ hand.
“Where else do you want to go?” Eudoros asked, right in his ear.
“Tomorrowland,” Achilles replied.
Where it would never end.
Just the two of them in the eternal carousel, round and round and round and round. Calliope music playing until the world folded in on itself.
He led Eudoros into the hall of mirrors, where their reflections stretched long and thin, then short and plump.
Multiplied by the dozens, when they reached the room at the end. A dozen different versions of himself.
In one, he was red with laughter. In another, he was frozen and still. When he craned his neck to look, it shifted and contorted. Never letting him catch hold of it for too long.
“Look at us,” Eudoros said, as they came to a mirror that framed the two of them perfectly.
A stunning pair they made, faces bright and eager.
Slowly, Eudoros leaned his head against Achilles’.
“I could make it all go away for real,” he muttered, so low it could barely be heard.
“You couldn’t,” Achilles replied.
“The two of us. We wouldn’t have to answer to anyone any longer.” Eudoros reached into his front pocket, took out his silver star badge.
“We could be like - two trapeze artists. No matter where they look, we’ll swing out of reach. And we’ll never fall, not with your hand around mine and mine around yours.”
He was offering something. Something neither of them could afford.
Achilles didn’t know what was pretend and what was not anymore.
His lips were shaping a word. The boy under the table, peeking out at a hint of sunshine.
“Eudoros -”
“Come with me,” Eudoros said, and his request was genuine.
That was when Achilles realized - that this man was the only real thing he had ever known. And the only real thing he would ever have, in this frightful mirrorworld Agamemnon had built for him. He turned away from their reflections and faced Eudoros, real Eudoros.
He savored it for as long as it lasted.
Three minutes.
The hands on Agamemnon’s watch ticking away in the darkness.
Then the man emerged from the shadows, from behind the distorted reflections.
Clapping slowly.
Eudoros’ face paled with each echo.
“My, my. You have done well indeed, Achilles.”
Agamemnon reached over and swept the silver badge out of Eudoros’ hand. Turned it over so it could catch the light.
“I can imagine your disappointment, Officer. But our Achilles is an expert on dirty cops, after all.”
Eudoros had turned completely white.
“I expect the deputy mayor thinks he’s so clever, sending in one of his own to partake in the chase. But you cannot go up against the best and expect to win.”
“I don’t work for him anymore!” Eudoros snapped, glaring at Agamemnon.
The other man tutted. “Then you are a fool, taking the fall for a man who will never recognize your efforts.”
“You don’t have to do this,” Eudoros said, turning to Achilles instead.
“I was telling the truth. I can make it disappear. We can go away, just you and me.”
Achilles shook his head. “Don’t you know that miracles are only make-believe, Eudoros?”
He took the gun when Agamemnon handed it to him.
“I’m not make-believe,” Eudoros pleaded.
“No, you’re not. But you see, Eudoros - I am.”
He pointed the barrel at Eudoros’ head, dead center.
Eudoros was no coward. He looked Achilles right in the eye.
“I see.”
He swallowed.
“Then, if you won’t come with me - at least kiss me goodbye.”
Achilles’ hand shook when he found the trigger. He steadied it.
“Go on,” Eudoros urged, sinking to his knees.
He nodded. “Alright.”
He leaned over and kissed him. One last time.
Then a burst of sound, the shot ringing through the room, bullet ricocheting until it hit the mirror behind them and cracked it into thousands of pieces. Thousands of identical images, brains littered across the floor; and the body slumping over, lifeless.
His fingers had not uncurled for three days. He kept looking down at his hand. But they would not budge.
He sat on the bathroom floor, hair plastered to his forehead.
Someone had placed a blanket over him.
He thought there was a voice, asking him to drink. But he kept his eyes squeezed shut.
On the third day, he made himself get up.
Antilochus was still there, in the same spot on his bed. He turned to Achilles, brows knitted.
“You wouldn’t wake up. Agamemnon came looking for you, and you wouldn’t wake up.”
Achilles stood in the doorway and studied him.
“I’m up now.”
Antilochus folded his hands in his lap.
“What do you want me to do first?” he asked.
It made Achilles sick, the voice so steady and normal. As though discussing the weather.
He went up to Antilochus and knelt in front of him.
It didn’t matter that he had sold his soul. It didn’t matter if he had to sell it again.
He would commit every monstrosity imaginable. He would tear down the walls around them, even if he had to put a torch to them and watch them catch flame.
But he would not let Antilochus end up where he himself had - clawing his way through darkness.
“I know what they did to you,” he said, holding Antilochus’ gaze.
The boy bit his lip, expression wavering a little.
“I know.”
He took Antilochus’ hand.
“And we are going to make them pay for it. I don’t care what I have to do. We are going to make them pay.”
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Present Day
The engine rumbled as it traveled over the road. Crinkled leaves floated by outside the window. One of them caught on the side mirror, where Patroclus was seatbelted in. He watched it cling for a little while, the way the last of summer seemed to cling before the autumn chill.
It was getting colder.
The clouds gathered, and he made out shapes as daylight hours passed. They were like balloon animals, twisted and bent.
There were miles and miles of nothing, out here on the outskirts of Opus. When they reached the border of Argos Prefecture, they would change hands. And he would be on his way to his new life, secure underneath the Seventh Precinct’s watchful eye.
He wondered if he would ever see them again.
Achilles had turned off the radio in the middle of the drive, so all he heard was soft snoring from Diomedes in the back, and Antilochus muttering to himself as he went through another one of Patroclus’ books.
They passed by a circus setting up in an open field.
The unmistakable red and white striped tent, half-concealed behind the trees.
The telltale music, loud and cheery.
Cars were parked along the road, families rushing out to buy a ticket.
“Hmm,” Patroclus said, wishing for all the world he could experience it for himself.
He saw Achilles glance in the rearview mirror, catching Antilochus’ eye. They held that gaze for a long moment, before flicking away.
Maybe he’d imagined it, he didn’t know.
Then Achilles turned on the radio again, drowning out the music of the carnival.