The sheets are still warm beneath you.

Threadbare linen, tangled and clinging, marked by the shape of him, by the weight of what just was. The air is thick with salt and something sweeter—flesh and oil, crushed laurel, the ghost of sweat still gleaming in the hollow of your throat.

He lies beside you, not asleep, but somewhere close. One arm flung over his eyes, golden skin half-shadowed, ribs rising and falling in a rhythm too slow for battle but too sharp for peace. You watch him in that hush, the kind that follows ruin. The kind that feels like aftermath.

You do not speak. There is no need.

He is Achilles still. Even now. Even like this—spent and stilled, his hair clinging to his temples in damp curls, the bend of his collarbone catching the torchlight like the edge of a blade. You know the map of him by memory, know each muscle as if carved into your palms, each scar like a stanza. But now, after the breaking, after the taking, he is not a hymn.

He is only a man.

And that is the most dangerous thing of all.

Achilles shifts, lashes flickering. The arm drops from his eyes. He blinks, slow. Then turns his head toward you, mouth parted as though he means to say your name, but forgets how it sounds.

"Is it always thus?" he asks at last, voice rough as stone dragged over shore. "Afterward?"

You do not answer. You do not have to. Your silence is not refusal—it is reverence. It is knowing. It is the ache that sits low in your belly, that curls its fingers around your spine and holds you still.

He sighs. A sound like surrender. Like something being let go.

Outside, the sea speaks in murmurs, the tide drawing back only to return, again and again. Inside, he draws a hand across his chest, fingers brushing the space where your mouth had been. Where you had pressed yourself into him like prayer. Like offering. Like the kind of love that leaves bruises in its absence.

"My soul is still not returned to me," he says, softer now, like confession. "You have it. I think you stole it from me, in the dark."

Your hand stays where it is, curled in the folds of the sheet, as if to move would be to wake the moment, to scatter it like birds at dawn. So, he turns to you himself, finally. Eyes open and clear and tired.

Seldom the kind of tired that sleep cures. The kind born of being too full—of love, of longing, of the unbearable truth of being known.

You smile, though it aches. “I would return it, if you asked.”

He shifts, propping himself on one elbow, golden hair a halo disheveled by your hands. His fingers trace the line of your jaw—idly, reverently.

“No,” he says, “Keep it. I have no need of it, not when you look at me like this.”

And you do. You always have. Even now, when the silence grows thick and the night cools against the sweat on your skin. You look at him like you know him. The boy and the god. The lover and the weapon. The ruin and the worship.

Achilles leans close, pressing his forehead to yours. If this was what they call a little death, let them know you have already lived to the fullest.

“Tell me, Patroclus,” he breathes, “Was I cruel?”