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Pyrrha's bracelet was triple-stranded red gold, with termini like wolf-heads. Fox-heads. To Achilles it seemed something like a fetter, something like a trophy. He wore it always, because it was also a taunt.
---:-:-:---
Odysseus had heaped silver and gold and jewels on a gaudy carpet in the middle of the hall, telling the women to choose what they would. Jewelled torcs, delicate earrings, ivory combs: the magpie-girls fell upon them, cooing, as if they were no more than river-polished stones.
Pyrrha stayed in the shadows near the wall. There were armed men at the door, so it would imprudent to leave. She had no wish to draw attention to herself. Odysseus' blue gaze passed over her again, like a feather brushing her skin. The best place of concealment is in full sight: so Pyrrha pulled the scarf straight on her hair, and went forward to kneel and be jostled by the girls.
A red-gold bracelet, glinting torchlight as it was cast aside, was simple enough to please her. She pushed it closed around her wrist, afraid her choice had been too swift. And what was that, shining silver? A mirror? She reached for it anyway, and her hand met Larissa's. Let her have it ... but Larissa shrieked, turning an accusing eye on Pyrrha even as she raised her bleeding finger to her mouth.
The girls exclaimed: one ran to find water and bandages, and the others clustered around the victim. Pyrrha saw that it was a small cut, and might not even scar. She turned her gaze to the weapon that had dealt the wound. The knife was silver-bladed with an enamelled hilt. It was no longer than her hand (though Pyrrha's hands were large) and perfectly balanced for throwing. She tossed it and caught it, twice, before she looked more closely at the enamelling and saw the fish-and-net motif. Pyrrha looked up, and met Odysseus' sea-blue gaze, closing on her like a trap.
The look she returned him was full of hatred: but he beckoned, and she followed. He was a king, and she merely the princess' handmaiden. There was no point in resisting him. Not then. Not in front of the still-distracted girls, and the older men with Odysseus, laughing together as they looked at her.
Pyrrha held her head high and followed her captor.
* * *
A heavy striped curtain over the doorway to the guestroom was their only privacy. Two of Odysseus' household -- she did not recognise them -- stood sentry beyond that curtain. There would be no interruption, but they would hear every word.
"You make a pretty enough girl," said Odysseus thoughtfully. He circled Pyrrha, looking her up and down as though she were a slave at market. Yellow linen chiton, belted with blue cord: finer yellow linen, fringed and knotted, over her bright hair: a red-gold bracelet aching on her wrist with its unfamiliar weight.
"I am not pretty!" Pyrrha said. On another girl's lips, it might have sounded bitter. Her voice was dark and smooth like polished wood.
"Hmm. Have it as you will. Perhaps you're right: the jaw is too strong."
A single straight vertical line appeared between Pyrrha's savagely-plucked eyebrows.
"Unfeminine temper, too." Odysseus smiled indulgently.
"If you have something to say to me, my lord, I wish you would say it." Pyrrha gazed at the pale leaves painted on the wall. Her disdain was palpable, like a shield. Odysseus stood behind her, and his warm breath stirred the hairs on her nape.
"Your name is not Pyrrha."
"And if it's not?"
"You make a pretty girl," said Odysseus again, mockery stronger now. "Are you grown soft, to play the girl so easily?"
"If I lie down for you as a girl should, will you leave me be?" snapped Pyrrha. Her pale skin flushed with annoyance.
"You speak as though you could choose to walk away."
The tension in Pyrrha's shoulders was unmistakeable.
"Pretty, painted lips," said Odysseus. Perhaps the desire in his voice was another trap.
"What would you have from me?" demanded Pyrrha, sharp-voiced. Odysseus moved to stand in front of her again. Her broad hands clenched and relaxed.
"Come away with us. You are needed."
Pyrrha met Odysseus' gaze for the first time. Her eyes were ocean-blue, like his. She shook her head.
"Why will you not?" demanded Odysseus. He raised his hand, reached for Pyrrha's shoulder.
Her hand shot up and closed around his wrist, faster than a snake, stronger than a woman.
"I said no."
Odysseus shook his head, but he was smiling, and there was triumph in it. He let his hand lie in her grasp. "I know you, Achilles. You may end the pretence."
That blue stare, like a statue's painted eyes, met his. Not ashamed or guilty or flinching. Angry at discovery. Angry at him.
"Troy will not fall without your aid," Odysseus said softly, hearing the plea in his own voice.
"I care nothing for Troy. Why should I?"
Odysseus shrugged. "Of course, if you prefer to play the girl ..." He let his eyes linger on Pyrrha's, Achilles', red-tinted mouth. He thought of a girl's painted lips on his skin, a boy's hard limbs pinned under him, and did not try to hide his body's response. The corner of Pyrrha's mouth twitched, he was sure of it. She -- he said nothing.
"I told them you could not resist," he added, goading.
"Do you expect me to congratulate you?"
Achilles was laughing at him. He was sure of it. It was not the response he had wanted.
His wrist came free from the younger man's loosening grasp, and his hand finished its journey to Achilles' shoulder. There was hard muscle beneath the fine yellow linen: no need for gentleness. He did not kiss Pyrrha the way he would kiss his wife, or the way he would kiss a girl, or a pretty boy: some other pretty boy. Pyrrha, Achilles, returned the kiss as though it were a contest, twisting closer to wrap sinewy arms around Odysseus. It was not, quite, a wrestling hold.
Odysseus grinned against Achilles' soft mouth, and kissed him back as though victory were already declared. He felt his captive's hand slide beneath linen to his skin. There were sword-callouses, still, on the palm.
Then, appallingly fast, the kiss was broken. Odysseus was crashing backward onto solid stone. Hot-eyed Achilles followed him down, lithe as a dancer, and his hand pillowed Odysseus' head before it cracked against the floor.
The little enamelled knife was in his left hand.
Odysseus had ordered the sentries to stay on the other side of the curtain: but there was an alarmed enquiry.
"All's well," he called back, almost sure that Achilles would not harm him. Almost sure. The knife was not at his throat, nor -- more appropriate, perhaps -- against his groin. He lay quiet, gauging the tension of the body above him.
"Soft, you said?" Achilles' breath tickled his neck.
"I asked." Their proximity left little doubt. Pyrrha was athletic, the slender frame as wiry as any youth who went daily to weapons-practice and the wrestling court. And Achilles had reacted to the kiss as wholeheartedly as to the threat he perceived. His erection pressed against Odysseus' own, though for the moment neither man allowed himself further response.
"I would not have it said that you forced me to accompany you. That you dragged me kicking, screaming, wailing like a maiden from the comforts of court."
"I would not force you to anything." He stared up at Achilles, fighting the smile that might doom him.
"My honour bids me to Troy." The enamel on the knife-hilt reflected amber lamplight. A lock of dark red hair escaped the linen. With a girl, Odysseus would have stroked it back into place, and let his hands travel further over her body. He did not move.
"And my manhood bids me prove myself still a man," Achilles added after a long, pregnant moment. Laughter glittered in his eyes. He stretched deliberately against Odysseus to set the knife aside, almost out of reach. Odysseus pulled the younger man down against him, and Achilles allowed it.
That second kiss was sweet with complicity, sharp with the tang of blood from a bitten lip. Achilles' skin was hot and smooth under Odysseus' rough scarred hands, hotter and less smooth than a girl's. Each touch was like a burning brand. They twisted together on the flagstones like snakes, and their breath grew uneven. After a while, Odysseus braced and rolled and got the other man underneath him, grinning crazily. His lips were red with kissing now. Their tint was lost, smeared on Odysseus' mouth and throat.
Odysseus began to untie the blue corded belt. His fingers faltered on the knot when a broad hand, well manicured, covered his.
Achilles was frowning again. He said softly, "I'd prove my manhood to you." His arms tensed in Odysseus' grasp, ready to reverse their positions once more.
Odysseus, poised above him, said nothing. That he was older was obvious and irrelevant. He wanted to submit, to surrender to this painted boy, this prophesied warrior hiding in yellow linen. He was alarmed at the strength of that desire. It had been years ...
"This is the way to bring him to you," said someone clearly, so clearly that he thought for a moment that someone else had entered the room. The sentries would not let a woman pass unquestioned, not even a queen, though from her tone she could be nothing else. There was no flicker of recognition or of anger in Achilles' eyes, no sign that he heard or that he saw anyone. They were alone. None to see disguise stripped away, none to see Odysseus obey this puppy's whim. None save Pyrrha, Odysseus thought, and smiled to think of a woman looking out through those darkening eyes.
All this struck like lighting, in an instant. Then Achilles writhed from under him and pulled him to his feet, seized his shoulders for another kiss, wrestled him around until his shoulders met the wall, ungently, and Achilles' teeth in the soft flesh above his collarbone made him gasp and arch against the other man. Submission was not in his nature, and twisting his hands in that long red hair he drew Achilles' head gradually, implacably, down his body. Achilles' hands were deft with clasps and ties, and his mouth was wicked on Odysseus' revealed skin. He traced wet circles around each swelling nipple, teeth teasing before he bit. When his tongue tasted the clear, thick fluid oozing from Odysseus' straining erection -- wine-dark against his pale palm -- Odysseus dragged one hand free to brace himself against the wall, to stop himself from pressing the shapes of his hands into Achilles' skull as he thrust into the dazzling heat of that mouth.
There was hair caught between the fingers of his free hand. He felt it tickle as he reached again to Achilles, stroking the curve of his jaw almost tenderly even as Achilles swallowed him ever deeper, hot and slick and clenching around him as lightning started at the base of his spine and he gasped, convulsed, folding forward over Achilles' strong curved back as the fire consumed him, as he heard Achilles gag and swallow and gasp.
Eventually he could stand straight again, breath even. Some wicked impulse made him speak: "You use your mouth like -"
Achilles' mouth, strongly flavoured with musk and salt and almonds, fastened over his like a lamprey. Again, the echo making it like a dream, he was falling slowly to the stone floor, hand pillowing his head and keeping him close in the kiss. Achilles sucked the breath from his mouth, and he was too dizzy to resist: sucked the will to resist from his bones, so that he turned and lay, limbs flung wide, hot cheek against the cold stone and yellow linen under his hips. Achilles' hair slid like a girl's against his nape: Achilles' unhesitating hands, nothing like a girl's, wet with saliva and semen, stroking him and opening him. What he felt was too diffuse, too double-edged, to be pain. His body remembered how this went, and he pushed back against the invasion, feeling the pulse in Achilles' burning shaft where it pressed against the skin inside his thigh. Achilles licked, slow and deliberate, from the hollow beneath his ear to the crease where his arm met his shoulder: and then bit, hard enough to draw blood, hard enough that Odysseus choked on an inhalation, and gulped in air as Achilles sheathed himself in one long hot glide.
The rhythm of his thrusts sent Odysseus back to the edge of the abyss. He struggled to read the flickering shadows on the wall: the black shape of Achilles rearing above him, head back and long hair wild. A hand snaked beneath their joined bodies to seize his swiftly-hardening flesh as Achilles drove into him relentlessly, his other hand pulling Odysseus back against him so that each stroke seemed to strike more deeply. For a moment the sheer wrongness of it unanchored him from his body: he was letting this boy take him, this long-haired beardless youth with painted eyes ... no. There was nothing girlish about the hard body against his, interlocked with his, forcing him to awareness of every point of contact. Odysseus felt the muscles inside him clench and spasm, and Achilles groaned against his shoulder where it was tender from the bite. The rhythm was changing, harder and faster and deeper, rough enough that he'd ache tomorrow but driving him to delirium with the barely-restrained strength in each thrust, with the wicked twist at the end of each stroke and the matched beat of the hand sliding on his own hardness and the sloppy groaning kiss stinging against the broken skin on his shoulder, with the way the sweating skin on Achilles' hard chest slipped and sucked against his back. With every fiery point of the constellation in which they touched.
The constellation blazed agonisingly bright, and fell into ashes.
* * *
Outside, the sentries were whispering to each other. Achilles scowled, and raised an eyebrow at Odysseus sprawled beside him.
Odysseus shrugged. "Let them talk. They won't noise it around."
"They had better not," said Achilles darkly. There was no trace of demure Pyrrha now.
"What would they say? They saw nothing. They heard little enough. They don't know who ... This is between us."
He stared at Achilles, without whom Troy would not fall, until Achilles met his gaze.
These two were gods' playthings, and knew it: there was scarcely anything to be said, even between them. They dressed in silence, and if they looked at one another's bodies, that was no more than men might do at the bath-house or the brothel. If their breath caught, it was weariness at the end of a long day, or the thought of a long and bloody war to come. Only, turning to leave, Achilles -- Pyrrha -- looked back, and touched the bracelet on her wrist.
"May I keep this?"
"Of course," said Odysseus: and because Achilles was young still, he bit his lip and did not say, "and what will you give me?" Young men should not be bound: young men should not regret.
---:-:-:---
Pyrrha's bracelet was triple-stranded red gold: fox-head termini forced wide apart by the broad bones of Odysseus' wrist. The metal had been corpse-cold when he took it from Achilles' wrist, and the delicate fox-mouths had been caked with blood. Over the years of voyage the gold has worn smooth and bright again. He wears it always, though it looks too delicate for a warrior-king with whitening hair. It's a keepsake that reminds him of a girl named Pyrrha, who should not be forgotten. It's a relic of a gentler age, before violence and desecration and death. Before Troy.
~fin~