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The young prince drags the blade across his tongue, patient, cloying. His thighs are bracketing Achilles’s waist. The power of generations, here. They’re a phantom presence, yet somehow, Achilles is struck out of breath.
He’s afraid. He’s never been afraid of his prince.
“Watching me? As if you’d ever have a chance?”
The prince laughs and presses his hips into Achilles’s erection. “You tried so hard in life, and now, look at you. You’re nothing but a shade, right, sir?”
Achilles’s hands are frozen up beside his head. The clothes he’s in—they’re damp with sweat. He’s panicking, the breath in his lungs naught but wisps.
He’s irredeemable. To have Zagreus—his prince—look upon him with such disgust, he’s surely among the most vile of men. Positively wretched.
“I could end you,” Zagreus comments, observing the blade, “I could. And then… what would your dear Patroclus think?”
“No, no—“
“Don’t mention him? Hm? All you’ll ever do is hide. You’re a poor excuse for a man. Watching me in secret; I’m sure it’d kill Pat to know how you’ve become.”
“Please, Prince, lad—“
“The great Achilles, stooping ever so low. Maybe you hid yourself from me for a reason. How could I, or anyone, want someone like you?”
The smile on the prince’s face is sickening, like honey is dripping from his lips—treacle, disgustingly sweet. Achilles is stock still as he adjusts his grip on the dagger, and he can’t control the agonized shout he releases upon the blade digging into his chest.
Right in the heart. Right where it hurts.
Achilles gasps and jerks from his sheets, tears wetting his eyes. His hand rushes to clutch his heart, and he finds it clean. He doesn’t feel clean. He isn’t, he isn’t. Zagreus doesn’t deserve this.
His stomach aches. He’s someone his prince (and should he be allowed to refer to him as his—) looks up to, admires, and always has. This is wrong.
He wipes at his eyes, but the longing in him is desperate, claws its way through him, out from his heart and through his eyes, his mouth. It’s a beast, one that’s spent far too long being restrained. He hiccups, stomach lurching with his despair.
He thinks of Zagreus. Zagreus, and the betrayal he’d feel, knowing the way Achilles imagines him. Zagreus’s kind eyes, and the way his lips curl around a smile every time he meets with Achilles, his mentor.
His obliviousness to how much Achilles wants him— needs him, to hold him, to have him. Achilles weeps, and hides his face in his hands. How can he think such thoughts about Zagreus, his ward?
The one who looks at Achilles like he cut every gemstone in the Underworld with his own two hands. But those two hands itch with an inhuman desire to dig into his soft flesh, to make him his.
Gods. It isn’t what Achilles should be thinking. Far from it.
He adjusts his legs beneath his blanket, an overwhelming sensation, and realizes that—he’s still hard. Hard from fantasies of his prince, where he’s objectified and defiled him.
Zagreus deserves better. Achilles can’t be better, and will never be what he needs. His throat closes around a sob, but he lies back against his pillows, reaching a hand below the covers and the other to his mouth, to stifle any sound that could alert anyone.
And maybe, possibly, so he doesn’t have to pay attention to the sound of his own voice. Desperate, wrecked for the fantasy of a prince he will never have.