Free Story: Just When I Thought It Was Safe To Go Back to the Beach

Another Greek Mythology spin-off, this one featuring everyone’s favorite couple: Achilles and Patroclus. The hook: they’ve been separated for four + millennia. And Patroclus doesn’t really need his ex’s bullshit on his first day back at the beach since the Trojan War.

 The hydra was massive.

“Oh, come on!” I shouted as it dripped seawater, acidic saliva, and chunks of rotten, halitosis-infused lunch all over my towel. 

“Of course,” I muttered, stomping to my neatly folded clothes and kicking them off my xiphos, unsheathing the blade, and turning back around to face the monster. It regarded me with what I was certain was a raised eyebrow and a skeptical mou. “Oh, don’t you give me that look,” I snarled at it. Its graceful, sinuous necks bowed back just a bit. “Do you know how much I spent on therapy to be able to poke a toe in sand millennia and half a world away from that beach? Do you?”

The hydra shook its heads.

“That’s what I thought. And yet here. You. Are. And now there’s running and screaming and I haven’t even had a beer yet. I should have listened to Ajax. ‘It’s always noon somewhere, Patroclus.’ But no. I had to be responsible. And nowhere we are.”

The hydra blinked.

“No, you’re right, no one should ever listen to Ajax but still. One day. All I wanted was one fucking day which you’d think would be a reasonable request but apparently the gods have seen fit to fuck me without even buying me said drink first. This is my surprised face. As you can see, it is identical to my regular face.”

The hydra nodded. 

“Wonderful, I’m glad we’ve had this talk. Nothing personal?”

It shrugged and nodded again. 

“Have at thee and shit.”

On any other day, I probably would have felt some trepidation storming into the ocean towards a hydra. On that particular day, however, my future watery grave was entirely bereft of fucks. It was fine. If dying on beaches was going to be my schtick, then at least there was a chance this tombstone would say something more heroic than the last one. “Here Lays Patroclus, Son of Menoetius: He Died Defending Innocents From a Monster,” or “He Was Eaten by a Hydra,” instead of, “Here Lays Patroclus, Son of Menoetius: He Did Butt Stuff With Achilles.” 

I was a good warrior. By most standards, I was great. Just as, by most standards, I had a chin worthy of epic poetry and an ass worthy of praise hymns. But when one spends his life standing next to Achilles, son of Peleus and died at the hands of Hector, son of Priam, he’s only ever measured in comparison to them. 

If this was the end of my second chance, I was glad to be going out measured only against the yardstick of a life well lived on my own terms.

I made it ninety whole seconds before becoming a hydra chew toy. That had to be some sort of record amongst mere mortals. Definitely deserving of a solo epitaph.

Skill only got one so far when one’s opponent had three heads and one can’t go for the double slash because, if one does, one will get double the quote-unquote fun in return. I managed to put one of the heads out of commission, jamming my sword into a soft spot in the lower jaw and out between its nostrils. The hydra snorted chartreuse mucus on me that, luckily, didn’t seem quite as radioactive as its spit but did set my swim trunks, nary a natural fiber in their weave, smoking. 

Gods, I hated fighting with my dick out. 

The third head was arcing toward me, maw stretched wide, posterior fangs glinting in the noon sun when, suddenly, its movement was arrested and then reversed. The hydra fought, swinging the head from side to side, whipping out its hook riddled tongue, stabbing behind its ear holes and over its head with the bizarre, deadly weapon. After several such forays, it screamed and drew the thing back limp as one of the Circe’s giant slugs and missing a good six inches of the tip. It bled black ichor and more chartreuse mucus, the combination creating an unholy odor of rotting meat juice, sour milk, and paperwhites. 

“Need a hand?” The voice was all woodsmoke, whiskey, and morello cherry. 

“Not from you.” I elbowed back, felt a rush of air against my neck, swung my legs up, and wrapped them around the hydra’s jaw and snout. The other functional head tried to bite me; I retrieved my sword despite its thrashing and speared it in first the left eye and then, while it was howling and distracted, the right, then cut out the rest of its damaged tongue. It had to open the only functional mouth, the one keeping me pinned, to scream, which it did, sending me plunging into the ocean which hurt a lot and knocked me unconscious for long enough that, by the time I resurfaced, I was awake and being dragged up onto the beach. 

Tiny crabs followed the blood trail. They burrowed to find what had soaked beneath the surface. One of them decided to come straight for the source and started digging into the sole of my foot with its small, sharp fore-claw. A spear descended on it, driving through the shell and twisting. The crab let out a shrill cry and then went still.

“That goes for the rest of you too,” Achilles warned. The crabs’ eyestalks waved around for a moment, clearly contemplating the risk-benefit of rushing me. Achilles stomped his foot at them. A collective blep rose from the cast and they scuttled away in search of less well protected prey. 

I squinted up at my ex-husband. He looked down at me. I scratched my nose.

“You’re bleeding,” he said, gesturing to my shoulder. 

I glanced down. I was, indeed, bleeding. “So it would seem.”

“Do you want me to —“

  “Who let you out of Tartarus?” I interrupted. 

He knelt in the sand and reached for my wrinkled, filthy t-shirt, tore it methodically and intentionally. “You’re lucky someone did.”

“Go die in a fire.”

He shook as much sand off the cloth as he could before winding it around my shoulder and upper arm just a titch too tightly, tying each piece off neatly. “Fire and I are intimately acquainted. No stars. Do not recommend.” He sat down beside me. 

“My beach day schedule did not include ‘hulking ex in my bubble.’ There’s plenty of space that way,” I jerked my thumb to the left, “and that way,” to the right.

“Your beach day schedule?” He did a one eighty survey and then looked out to where the hydra was chewing on one of its own necks to rid itself of an injured head in order to grow healthy ones in its place. 

I wiped my sword off on my towel. “My beach day.” 

He burst out laughing, all bells and high tide and storms on open water and I hated him for it. I hated him because I had missed that laughter. I hated him because I still loved it. 

Because it made me wonder if I still loved him. 

So, I said, “You deserved it.”

And he said, “I know.”

“No,” I said. “You deserved it. For what you did to Hector. And for pretending it was ever about me.”

And he looked at me, made eye contact, azure gripping my raven’s wing and he said, once more, “I know.” 

“No,” I said. “No, you don’t get to do that.”

“Hydra’s heading this way.” 

“You don’t get to do that either,” I snarled, but I checked my shoulder. It had stopped bleeding. It hurt but I’d had worse. Much, much worse. Feeling my guts follow a spear out of my body worse. So I grabbed my sword and I stood, a little wobbly but I stayed up. 

Achilles grabbed his spear. 

“They let you out and they gave you a sharp, pointy thing for killing.” I cracked the knuckles of my free hand. “Hades has gone entirely to shit.”

“I mean, it didn’t have that far to go.”

“That’s why the two of you were perfect for each other.”

“Me and Hades or me and Hades? Because there was this one time before you and Persephone —”

“I hate you,” I told Achilles.

“No, you don’t.” The corners of his mouth twitched up ever so slightly. “I absofuckinglutely do.” 

He laughed again and, momentarily distracted again, I didn’t realize how close the hydra had gotten and almost got bitchslapped by one of its tentacles. 

Achilles knocked me flat, shielding me with his body. 

He definitely stayed on top of me several beats longer than strictly necessary.

“This isn’t a good look on you,” I told him. 

“No, but it’s a good look on you.” He tapped me on the end of the nose and rolled off. 

My face grew hot. 

“I don’t need saving!” I told him. 

“Prove it.” He backed up for a running start and then launched himself at the now six-headed beast, landing gracefully at the apex of the middle neck. He dropped immediately and locked his legs around the squirming mass like it was one of his horses, shoving the spear in enough for extra support but not so much it would get stuck if he needed it quickly. The hydra bucked; he merely tightened his thighs for a better grip. 

Those fucking thighs. 

I wonder if he thinks about my thighs like that. 

“I do!” he yelled, baritone carrying over the incredible noise of the agitated monster. “I’m thinking about them right now. And I’d like to continue thinking about them but that’s going to be difficult if we’re dead.” 

“Didn’t seem to stop you before,” I pointed out. 

“There’s dead,” Achilles reminded me, “and then there’s dead.”

“I don’t want to think about your thighs,” I bellowed. “I spent a very pleasant afterlife and reincarnation not thinking about them.”

The hydra snapped at his legs.

“Will you think about them more or less if this bastard bites them off?” He asked.

Wanting him off my beach and wanting him mutilated were too entirely different things so I opted for diving into the surf and staying under for a stealth approach. I let the whirlpool created by the hydra’s sinuous, struggling body drag me closer, conserving my energy as much as possible, wondering if it had a vulnerable spot somewhere on its lower half, if I could find it should it exist, if I could hit it, and whether I’d be able to escape or sentence myself to going down with the beast. 

If making the sacrifice play was the best choice this time.

Fingers dragged through my hair and snarled in it. I nearly dropped my weapon in an attempt to clamp down near the roots, to alleviate the agony and then I was gasping, suspended in the air. 

Achilles was low on the hydra’s back. He tossed me onto the neck above him. “Not a chance in Tartarus,” he snapped. “Not this time, not ever again.”

“Excuse me?” I choked. He slammed me on the back a couple times. I sheathed my blade and started to climb, fingers scrabbling for purchase on the hydra’s slick neck, using my knees for leverage. “See, this is your problem Achilles. Mm, correction, this is one of your many problems.” When the hydra brought two of its other heads to see what was happening, I kicked one under the chin and grabbed an eyelid on the other, using it to swing myself up. It tried to bite my foot with both mouths; I pulled my dangling appendage away half a second before its noses slammed together. One went limp. The one I was perched on tried the tongue thing but I managed to find a spot that was out of range to camp out and stab from. “You don’t get to dictate my fate,” I snapped as I rolled to the right, attempting to time a strike to its carotid. I missed and scrambled back to the safe zone. “I do. Well, me and the Fates. Not Agamemnon, not Odysseus, and not you. If I’m willing to die to save the people on that beach, that’s my choice.” 

“There’s no one on that beach,” he said, pulling himself onto the head to my left. 

“You know what I mean.”

He wrinkled his nose and punched the hydra just below the base of its skull. It rocked forward and back, the face going fish-belly white. Its eyes rolled up and fluttered closed. “Have you considered that it's your judgment that may be askew? That you might enjoy being a martyr a little too much?”

“My judgment is fine.” I got the timing on my second try at the major artery but the hydra blocked me with its tongue.  

“Really? I had to light your funeral pyre because of your sound judgment?” Achilles punched the hydra again in the same spot and bone crunched, the sound a gross parody peeling grilled shrimp. He stuck his spear in the hole and scrambled whatever was left. The other head on the same neck sort of gave up and the whole mess collapsed into the water, sending a giant wake in every direction. Achilles slid down as it fell, making it to the beast’s body in time to avoid following the heads into the sea.

I was never going to see my jeans again.

They were my favorite too. 

“No,” I spat, locking my ankles and letting myself fall around to the front of my heads’ neck. The maws snapped ineffectually at me. Thrusting my xiphos with both hands, I cut through the skin over the hydra’s larynx and slit the cartilage. It roared and air leaked through the crack, forcing saliva bubbles through the damaged tissue. They popped with enough force to spatter my skin. Small burns blistered where the fluid made contact. I swore but hung on. 

“You,” I said through gritted teeth, releasing my legs and letting my body weight drag my sword down the length of the hydra’s neck, “had to light my funeral pyre because you couldn’t let Agamemnon have the last word.” 

“He stole our daughter!” Achilles shouted, running along the hydra’s back again. 

“Briseis never went anywhere in her life she didn’t want to go, Achilles.” I pushed off one of the hydra’s shoulders, angled myself so that when I fell back toward it, I’d be pointed at the apex of a lung. I bounced off a rib instead but went deep enough to shove my hand in as I fell past and grabbed on. The air sac made a satisfying pop when I punctured it on my second attempt. The hydra tried to scream again but succeeded only in a weak bleat and began sinking. “You wanted to get up Agamemnon’s ass. Nicely done.”

“You didn’t have to —”

“It was me or everyone.” I tried to gain purchase in the cut I had made to get some height but it was slippery and so were my hands. 

“There were plenty of warriors who could have done what you did.” Achilles vaulted halfway up the monster’s far neck and thrust his hands through the hydra’s flesh to create handholds. “You were the only one I loved.”

“Maybe I wanted a way out,” I tossed back, finally hitting vertebrae I could use as a ladder. “Maybe ten years was enough. Enough of the war. Enough of dead friends. Enough of Achilles the blazing, the matchless runner, the most violent man alive.”

Achilles’ hand lost purchase and he slid back to the beast’s shoulder. He tumbled heels over head and nearly went into the water but caught himself with his spear at the last moment and began climbing again. 

“I didn’t mean that,” I said, following along where he’d created a path. “Not that last one anyway.”

“Yes, you did,” he tossed back without looking. 

The rest of the fight was easy, a task of moments. We’d fought together for so many years that even after centuries apart, we didn’t need words or even cues. I distracted, he did the deed, and then we jumped and swam back to shore.

 I needed strength I didn’t realize I still had when the beast went completely under, creating a vacuum that threatened to either drown me or force me to accept his help. 

It was good that I found it because I’d rather have drowned. 

I made it to the beach under my own power, eventually. 

He let me.

By the time I could breathe without gasping, the hydra was gone. 

“Was I really that bad?” Achilles asked as the sun touched the horizon.

“Is that a rhetorical question?”

“You never spoke for me. They said they considered commuting my sentence or shortening it. That if you spoke for me… but you never did.”

“No. No, I didn’t. How could I? What you did to Hector…” I hugged my knees to my chest and rested my forehead against them. “He didn’t… I wouldn’t have… Achilles, to say you mourned me like that, dishonored you and it dishonored me. It stained my soul. It destroyed me. And it hurts. It will always. Hurt. Do you understand that?”

“No.” He stared out across the ocean, looking for help or succor or peace, or maybe something else all together. “I’m trying.”

“I appreciate that,” I said. “I guess.”

“But it’s not enough.” 

“No. No, it’s not.”

More silence but there was a different quality to it. Cool but no longer frigid. Heavy but no longer stifling. Portentous but no longer doomed.

“Patroclus?”

“Hmm?” 

“You did love me, didn’t you?”

“More than my own life, Achilles. Still do.”

He nodded slowly. “I love you, too. I loved loving you. But I also love you.” 

I leaned over and kissed his golden ratio jaw. “That, Achilles, I never doubted.”

He stretched his fingers, inched them across the sand slowly, pausing often, until they were twined with mine. We sat that way for a long time, watching dusk swim across the sky with bruise-purple fins, electric blue tentacles, violent yellow tails. Just breathing. Just being. Alone and together. Alone together. Together together. 

A shadow breached out toward the horizon, even larger than the hydra, darker against dark.

The next time it showed itself, it was closer, the bioluminescent spines that decorated its tentacles and spikes and beak highlighting its distinctive shape.

“Is that a kraken?”

“Is that a rhetorical question?” Achilles smirked. 

“Timing, Achilles.”

“Tone, Patroclus.”

“I did not have a tone.”

“You almost always have a tone,” Achilles snorted. He pulled his spear toward him and examined the head, running his finger carefully along both edges, poking at a nick. 

“That’s going to snag on something,” I told him. “At a really bad time.”

“It’s fine.” 

“You always say it’s fine and it’s never fine.” 

Achilles grinned at me. “So you do care.” He stood and stretched his arms over his head, nearly braining me with the butt of his spear. 

“I do fucking not,” I assured him, grabbing my toes and laying out over my legs. My back cracked. 

Achilles planted his left heel in the sand and flexed his foot, pulling his toes up with his fingers. “Yes, you do.”

“I do not,” I insisted, twisting first to one side and then the other. 

He started down toward the water. “You do!” he called over his shoulder, giving me a vignette of perfectly tousled, salt-kissed blonde hair and sharp cheekbone.

“You absolute bastard,” I groaned, grabbing my sword and jogging after him. 

We stood at the shoreline and watched the kraken breach a third time, catching air, the flares it released from its spines wrecking my night vision, which would be precious once we engaged. I had, of course, lost my sunglasses at some point so I’d just have to deal with it. “A hydra and a kraken making landfall on the same day at the same beach is pretty rare,” I noted. “The last time it happened was… oh. Oh,” I realized. “That’s why they released you? You entire bag of dicks, I can’t believe you didn’t tell me.” 

“Would it have mattered?”

“I might have doubted your intentions.”

“Patroclus?”

“What?”

“Calm your tits. It’s the end of the world.” Achilles shoved me with his shoulder. “I meant every word.” 

“Well, if I had known, I might have considered being a little nicer. If I’d known.” 

“Might?”

“I mean, in the end, nah, but I would have considered it.” 

Achilles snorted. “Thanks?”

“Any time. Well. I guess not.”

He laughed again and I savored it. Entirely against my will. 

“You know,” Achilles said. “Even with everything that’s happened, I wouldn’t want to spend the end of the world with anyone else.” 

“You know,” I said. “With everything that’s happened, I’d rather spend the end of the world with anyone else. But that is a big ass kraken and at least I know you’re good in a fight.” I glanced at him. He was smiling again, showing all of his teeth the way he always had, always did, before he threw himself into a mele. “Hey, Achilles?”

“Yes, Patroclus?”

“It wasn’t all bad.”

“No?”

“Remember that thing with the thing and the stuff?”

He scratched his aquiline nose, broken many times and always healed back into a perfect profile. “You’re going to have to be more specific.” 

“You know exactly what I’m talking about.” 

“I might remember. Vaguely.” 

“That was good. It was really good.”

“It was, wasn’t it?” He appraised the approaching monster and then glanced at the bright stars. “Hey, Orion,” he called. “Little help?”

We waited for a beat. 

“Guess not,” I said. 

“Fuck him anyway.” Achilles raked his hair out of his eyes. “Shall we?”

“Dickbags first.” 

He winked and waded back into the ocean.