He hadn’t meant to do it.

The tambourine had just been there—resting against the bench like it had been waiting for him, for his quiet sigh and the slight lean of his shoulder. And he, sitting silent as usual, hands tucked into the folds of his tunic, had eyed it like one might eye a sword notched too many times. Familiar. A little dangerous.

The fire crackled nearby, all spit and snap and wandering smoke. Around it, soldiers reclined on worn pelts, laughter slurring into tired song, limbs too weary to carry tension. The mood was strange—flickering between the weight of what they'd survived and the strange lightness of still being here. Alive.

Then someone called his name.

“Go on, Patroclus!”

Not Achilles, for once. Not the voice that would’ve curled him open without trying. Just another voice, one of many. But it struck the same chord.

Patroclus shifted, hesitated, muttered something unintelligible, but his hand was already moving—reaching for the tambourine. Slow. Grudging, almost. You watched the way his fingers curled around it, reluctant, as though it might bite.

Then—he played.

Soft, at first. A tentative shake, more whisper than rhythm. The sound shimmered, glass-thin, barely cutting through the hum of voices. But then again, the thing about Patroclus—he never needed to be loud. Just sure.

A roll of his wrist, a shiver of brass. The beat stumbled, caught itself.

And there it was.

The song began in pieces. One man stomping in time, another clapping off-beat and laughing. A hum rose behind you, wordless, some half-forgotten melody stitched from too many homes. The tambourine rang again.

You could tell it embarrassed him a little—how the copper discs rattled, how heads turned when they caught the rhythm, how even the war-weary leaned in without meaning to.

In any case, Patroclus wasn’t a bard, wasn’t a performer. He didn’t wear his grief like armor the way some did—not loudly, not with fanfare. But it clung to him all the same, in the set of his shoulders, in the quiet of his voice, in the way he sometimes looked past you instead of at you.

So, he still didn’t smile. But his brow eased. That furrow between his eyes—the one the war had carved and memory had deepened—it softened. His shoulders stopped bracing against the moment.

You were close enough to feel the tension bleed out of him. His knee brushed yours when he shifted again, adjusting the way he held the instrument, and didn’t pull away.

Someone stood, then another. A circle forming, loose and uneven. They clapped, swayed, spun with the kind of looseness that only came after survival. The kind of joy that burned low and stubborn after everything else had gone.

A girl laughed too loud, a man dropped a note in the middle of a verse. The tambourine rattled through it all. Not flashy. Not showy. Just steady. Rooted.

You glanced at Patroclus. His hair had come loose in strands, curling where the heat of the fire kissed his neck. His expression was unreadable—but his hand didn’t stop moving.

"...At least everyone is finding enjoyment in themselves," he murmured, then smiled at you, subtle, "if only for a little while, hm?"