Chapter Text
None of it has changed. Every blade of grass in the perfectly manicured lawn holds its place. The warm white of the stone façade remains unmarked, as though impervious to the world around it. And, spotless enough that you could almost imagine the glass wasn’t there, the large windows stare out onto the street, watching Patroclus approach the front door.
He wonders if he still looks the same, walking down the immaculately maintained stone path. Taller maybe, broader perhaps, but surely still recognisable as the boy that had once walked, and ran, and stumbled across, this path almost every day.
Certainly, it’s never felt this difficult before, every step a decision to be committed to. It's not until he reaches the door that he realises how easy those steps had really been, compared to what he has to do next.
All those years imagining this moment. Imagining himself racing down the path and the door bursting open before he can even reach it. But doubt and hesitation — these things he’s never thought to imagine — stall him.
With a last measured breath, Patroclus presses his finger down on the doorbell.
He listens to the long, ringing notes, every cell in his body tensing in anticipation. The door swings open, at once too slow and too fast. And there it is. The worst that could happen.
Thetis glares down her nose, eyes cold and expression colder still. Patroclus freezes under her gaze, all the words he’d so carefully selected and practiced drying up on his tongue.
“He’s out,” she says after a moment. “With friends.”
Patroclus knows better than to think he could be imagining the cruel pleasure lacing the words, the same as one might affect when slipping a dagger between the ribs of a long-standing enemy. It’s familiar, this feeling of folding in on himself beneath that cool, malicious gaze.
“Could you tell him I came by?” he asks, voice quiet but still too loud. “Please.”
Thetis doesn’t answer, ice-shard eyes scraping over him, seeming to catalogue each of the changes the intervening three years has wrought upon him and find fault with every single one. Her lips purse.
“How long?”
She sighs when Patroclus hesitates over his answer, impatient.
When she speaks again, it’s sharp, demanding. “Are you staying?”
“Yes,” Patroclus answers.
He peers past Thetis’ shoulder into the house, half-hopeful. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d lied to get him off her doormat. But the house behind her appears empty, silent.
“Will he be long?”
A brief, harrowing mental image of what it might look like for him to wait in Thetis’ sitting room, her disapproving gaze pinning him to the fancy settee, flashes through his mind, and he hastily discards the idea. But there’s a bench nearby that he could wait at. Or he could even just leave and come back later.
“He didn’t say.”
Thetis’ tone leaves no room for optimism. Patroclus’ eyes dart to where her fingers tighten on the door.
“Give me his phone number, then,” he says hastily, eyes widening when he realises that what he’d intended as a question has slipped out as an order. But he doesn’t apologise.
Expression hard, Thetis steps away from the door.
“No,” she says, that single word carrying the total finality of their conversation.
“Please, just tell-“
The door closes in Patroclus’ face, the lock turning sharply.
Patroclus has moved around a lot over the last few years. Historically, this has meant his few belongings hastily tossed into a bag, if they’re not already stowed in one. To his new foster family, the Swans, moving means a houseful of furniture and general paraphernalia and an entire team of trucks and dauntingly efficient people to move it all.
He’d hoped in the chaos of shifting furniture and busy workers that his absence might have gone unnoticed. A fool’s hope that dies with the flash of pale blond hair he catches in Helen’s window as he approaches the house.
The front door is already open for the workers’ easy access, the sound of his foster sisters’ rapid descent down the staircase tumbling out of it. Patroclus tenses as he draws closer, fighting the urge to turn tail and run.
Penelope reaches him first, dark eyes wide and excited. “Did you see him?”
“What was he like?” Helen adds, breathless as she reaches them.
“What did he say?” Penelope asks urgently, wholly uncaring that her first question remains unanswered.
“Does it matter?” Clytemnestra wanders over from the direction of the kitchen, brandishing a popsicle. Flecks of juice spatter the white-painted walls as she gestures with it. “He could’ve gotten on his knees and apologised via song and I’d still hate the guy’s guts.”
“Of course it matters!” Helen objects. “Pat, tell us-“
“There more of those?” Penelope interrupts, eyeing the melting popsicle.
Clytemnestra narrows her eyes. “Not for you.”
“Not for-“ Penelope gasps, outraged. “Who do you think you are? King of the popsicles?”
Sensing an opportunity for escape in the brewing discord, Patroclus edges away.
“Yep,” Clytemnestra says, popping the p with antagonistic glee. “They’re mine, and sticky-fingered cousins that can’t stay out of my makeup bag don’t get any.”
Penelope’s affronted reply fades behind him as he makes his way to the back staircase. He waves as he passes his foster mother, Leda, unpacking her office, a strict no movers allowed space because she apparently likes things in there ‘just so’.
Relief sweeps through him as he closes his bedroom door, a physical wave that relaxes his shoulders and eases his breathing.
The reprieve only lasts a few minutes before the door bursts back open, Helen, Penelope, and Clytemnestra pouring through it, each now clutching their own popsicle.
“Sorry about that, Pat.” Helen seats herself next to him on the bed, winding her arm through his. “You have our full attention now.”
“Um, actually…” Patroclus trails, unsure what the correct sequence of words, if there is one, might be to buy him the space he needs to process the trauma that is Thetis.
He takes too long.
“Did you bring up the letters?” Penelope prompts.
Clytemnestra snorts. “And people think you’re smart. It’s Pat Pen, of course he didn’t bring up the letters.”
“Would you guys stop?” Helen huffs, annoyed. She turns back to Patroclus, squeezing his arm encouragingly. “Don’t worry about them, Pat. Just start from the beginning.”
The beginning. Thetis’ gaze, heavy and cold. Patroclus stood like an ill wish on the doormat, unwelcome and unwanted.
“Look at you all in here.” Leda appears in the doorway, arms crossed. “You don’t seriously mean to tell me that not a single one of you has anything better to do than sticking your noses in where they don’t belong.”
All three girls’ heads snap to the door, speaking over each other at once to defend their actions, words forming an incomprehensible, whining lump.
“Off,” Leda demands, moving further into the room to pry Helen off Patroclus’ arm and drag her off the bed. “Honestly, you girls. I don’t know how you put up with them, Pat.”
“Hey!” Clytemnestra objects, arms akimbo and chin jutting, the very picture of indignant. The overall effect is only slightly diminished by the popsicle sticking out of her mouth.
Penelope pouts. “We were just-“
“Barraging our poor dear Pat with questions you have no right to ask nor expect answers to like the nosy pack of gossip-hungry fiends you are,” Leda finishes, gesturing sharply to the door. “Away with you all.”
Then, levelling Clytemnestra with a hard look when it seems she might be winding up to argue, “Now.”
One by one, the girls leave. Helen first with an apologetic glance over her shoulder. Then Penelope with a look that promises she’ll have her answers from Patroclus later. And last Clytemnestra, slamming the door with enough force to leave it shuddering in her wake.
Leda rolls her eyes. “That door needs a lock,” she says in that decisive that Patroclus has learned means that the task is now on her list and will be completed within 2-3 business days.
“Thank you, Leda.”
His foster mother’s expression softens at the obvious relief in his voice.
“Any time, Pat,” she says, taking Helen’s vacated spot on the bed next to him, though at a much more respectful distance. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” Patroclus says, automatic. But his traitor voice gives him away again, shaking just a little over that single word.
Leda doesn’t call him out on it though, much to his gratitude. She hums, fiddling with a paperweight she must have carried in with her from her office.
“You know we moved here for you, right?”
Patroclus looks up, eyes wide. “But I thought- You got that job here.”
Leda gives him a kind smile. “I’m an independent consultant,” she says gently, “I could work anywhere. Have worked anywhere, especially when we’re travelling with Tyndareus. Once I even found myself taking meetings from a yacht off the coast of Borneo!”
Her eyes take on a wistful tint that awakens an increasingly familiar stab of guilt in Patroclus’ chest. If it weren’t for him, he knows his foster family would’ve swept themselves off somewhere far more glamorous and exciting than San Diego, California.
Perhaps catching sight of something in his face, Leda shakes her head. “You’re part of our family now, Pat. There’s nowhere else in the world I’d rather be than together with my family.”
Patroclus cracks a smile. “Not even a yacht off the coast of Borneo?”
“Not even a yacht in the Greek islands,” Leda answers seriously.
The first time she’d spoken to him this way, like he mattered, like he was someone worth going out of her way for just to make his life a little easier, Patroclus hadn’t known what to do with it. He still doesn’t, really. But he’s better at enjoying the warmth of it now, letting himself bask in the comfort of being seen and cared for even if he can’t quite convince himself yet to trust that it will stay.
“The point is,” Leda continues after a moment. “You said you wanted to come here, so we did. Simple as that. But it goes the other way too, Pat. And it doesn’t have to be any less simple. If things here aren’t what you imagined, if you ever find it gets too hard, just say the word, okay? Say you want to leave, and we will.”
And every part of her, from the level confidence in her voice and the unwavering truth in her steady gaze, means it.
It’s one of the things Patroclus likes best about her. Leda has been clear with him since day one. She’s always kept their relationship on stable ground, making sure he understands what she expects from him and what he in turn can expect from her. Always shares her plans and follows through, making sure he knows where she’ll be and when, how he can contact her.
A lump forms in Patroclus’ throat, stopping up all the words he doesn’t know how to say in his throat. Instead, he reaches across the distance between them and takes Leda’s hand in his, the gesture wholly inadequate but his eyes begging her to understand anyway.
He can see in the warm smile she gives him in return that she does. She squeezes his hand.
Achaea Heights High School isn’t so different from Patroclus’ last school. In that his last school was also cleaner, brighter, and frankly better smelling than what he’d become used to over the past few years. Also in the disappointing lack of familiar faces he finds in the corridors and his classes.
He hadn’t exactly expected to see all of his old friends assembled and waiting at the front of the school when he got out of the car, but… Or maybe that had been what he expected, silly and unrealistic as it may be. But even his most rational side thought that he would’ve seen at least one person he recognised by second period.
It’s not until he’s making his way to his fourth period class though, shoulders slumped and feet dragging, that his eyes catch on a familiar shock of wild, unkempt hair.
“Odysseus!” he calls the name without hesitating, already moving forward in his excitement.
The familiar head of hair turns, revealing an equally familiar face that stares in stunned confusion as Patroclus draws closer.
“Pat?” Odysseus asks, as if needing to say the name out loud to be certain. Then, face breaking open in delight, “Pat!”
They collide in a clumsy but hearty embrace, with much backslapping.
“You’re here!” Odysseus exclaims, incredulous, pushing away from Patroclus to get a better look. “How are you here? How long? Where-“
Patroclus laughs, ridiculously pleased to be talking to the same old Odysseus he remembers and his thousand questions a minute tongue. He thinks he could probably stand like this all day and be happy, soaking in the familiarity of the dizzying onslaught that has always been Odysseus’ favoured approach to conversation. But a cleared throat at his shoulder reminds him of his impending fourth period class and the guy he’d roped into showing him there.
“I’ll fill you in later,” he interjects, knowing that if he waits for Odysseus to finish his line of questioning before speaking, the school day will probably end first. “But it’s good to see you, man.”
Odysseus gives him a warm look. “You too. Really good.”
“Hey,” Patroclus says, a thought occurring to him before he can turn away, “If you see Achilles, think you can let him know I’m around?”
Odysseus’ expression turns suddenly rigid, the warmth leeching out of it all at once.
“You haven’t seen Achilles yet?”
“Nah,” Patroclus answers, wondering at Odysseus’ reaction, “Haven’t been able to track him down. Why? Is-”
Patroclus’ guide taps him lightly on the shoulder. “We have to get going, dude.”
“Wait.” Odysseus’ hand clamps down on Patroclus’ arm. “We need to talk.”
And Patroclus agrees. Especially if Odysseus has something to tell him about Achilles. But his only hope of finding his next class is currently disappearing into the crowded corridor.
“At lunch,” Patroclus promises, pulling away.