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When Zagreus pants, a name’s on his lips.
It slips out in breaths, not to be stopped.
Achilles doesn’t falter. His eyes are half-lidded, and he’s here—but not all here.
He’s not the only one, but that’s okay. It’s an honor to have any part of each other.
They have something different to give, after all.
Achilles offers tenderness.
He brushes sweat-slick bangs from Zagreus’s head like he’s feverish. He cups his face and whispers to him. He asks and he assures because he is kind, not patronizing. Zagreus knows with him, he doesn’t have to plead. Achilles will oblige whatever he asks.
Through his teeth, he says, “Still with me, lad?”
Zagreus laughs. The tail end turns broken and thin when Achilles aims, and hits his target.
“I couldn’t—very well be, ah—anywhere else, could I?”
They both know it's not totally true, but it's alright.
Achilles has few smiles, but they’re all with purpose. This one, small and fond, rose-tipped around the edges—this one's just for Zagreus.
To see it is one thing, and to feel it is another. Zag snakes a hand around his neck and pulls him down to taste it. He’s sweet and cool to burning skin, like only a shade can be. His hair falls around Zagreus like the halo he deserves to wear in death.
This aching affection, this is something only Achilles can give.
Zagreus licks into his mouth to make his want known.
Achilles’ rhythm stutters when Zagreus cants his hips up to meet every stroke. He spurs him on, urges him faster, takes him deeper. When he obliges, Zagreus wraps legs around and digs heels into his back, his soles barely avoiding the burn. (Achilles wouldn’t want that, the pain. Not like—)
The sweet sigh that spills from his throat has letters attached. Achilles smiles for the same reason Zagreus does—because they both know he doesn’t need all of him. Achilles’ mind wanders, too. But when Zagreus tightens around him, both their eyes are wide open.
Achilles may be a man of focus and ability, of power and great self-control—but at the end, he is only a man. When Zagreus takes his bottom lip in his teeth, his hips snap without any mind behind them.
And as close as he is, eyes screwing shut and breath coming ragged, Zagreus knows that a part of him wanders. That’s alright. Because when his mouth finds its way to his throat and teeth graze skin, Zag's thinking of Megaera. And when a hand fits around his cock and strokes fast and sure, just the way he likes it, his mind drifts to Thanatos.
Achilles comes with a deep stroke inside. With a gasp and a whimper, he calls out for Patroclus.
He rides it out, grinding into Zagreus with a hazy fervor. Zagreus takes himself from a stilling hand and before long, the flames on his feet lick their way up to his belly. His mortal blood glows his cock an angry red, and he jerks himself in time with sweet burn inside him.
When Zagreus comes, there’s a trinity of names on his lips.
Achilles holds him as he floats back down, calm as the flowing Lethe. He traces a finger along his jaw, eyes bright with warmth.
It takes a minute for the fog to clear. When it does, Zagreus wears a smile, crooked and dazed, that’s just for Achilles. The kiss they share is long, both of them sated and spent.
They tangle together in the Prince’s sheets.
And for a while, they think only of each other.