#menelaus's patience has completely frayed he's in fuck it mode

[baejax-the-great]

WIP Whenever

I could wait for Wednesday, but time has no meaning in December when the sun doesn't shine so have a bit of Sweet Victory:

Patroclus really doesn’t need to have someone witnessing the most embarrassing conversation of his entire life. “Every time I asked if you wanted to stay in my room, or if you wanted to hold hands or” –God, this was humiliating— “Anything. Anything that couples do, you always said that it was fine, we didn’t need to do things like that.”

“Because you don’t like to be touched.”

“What?”

He stares at the guy who has been touching him in very personal ways for years, but even beyond that, it doesn’t make sense. Patroclus might not go around throwing his arm around everyone’s shoulders like Menelaus does, but he thinks he likes being touched a normal amount. Or he would if Achilles ever showed any inclination toward it.

His confusion must show on his face, because Achilles looks wounded when he says, “You told me.”

“I never said that.”

“Yes, you did. My dad hugged you, and you looked so uncomfortable, and I asked you about it later and you said you didn’t want anyone touching you.”

Patroclus tries to figure out what the hell he’s talking about. Peleus never hugged him, never gave him so much as a pat on the back, except—“When I was ten? And I’d known both of you for all of twenty minutes?” And in what way is an adult hugging a strange child anything like a boyfriend acting like a boyfriend? Achilles has kept that conversation in his brain ever since? Etched in stone as if Patroclus had meant he didn’t want anyone ever touching him again as opposed for maybe only that day or that week or that minute? “Oh my god, is that why Peleus never hugged me again? You told him not to?”

Patroclus had thought surely, surely after his graduation from high school Peleus would give him at least one of those side hugs. He thought he deserved that, maybe. He got one of those from his chemistry teacher, but not the man who raised him for eight years of his life.

“Have you two really lived together for ten years?” Menelaus asks.

“Eight,” they both reply simultaneously.

“It’s just that from this conversation I’d assume you’ve never actually spoken to each other at all in your lives.”

“Thank you for that very helpful observation,” Patroclus drawls without looking away from Achilles.

“I mean I’ve known Patroclus for all of about three minutes and I could tell you he likes his hair pulled.”

Do I? Patroclus wonders for a millisecond before registering the look on Achilles’ face, the near future flashing in front of his eyes, and it contains a lot of blood spurting from Menelaus’s nose. Patroclus lunges forward as Achilles starts to move, shoving both his arms under Achilles’ armpits and lifting him off his feet.

“Put me down,” Achilles growls, trying to wrench out of Patroclus’s grasp.