#I reread ALL of oaths today rather than do anything else

[baejax-the-great]

Hello! For Patrochilles please?

Favorite line/scene you wrote this year

And

Most memorable comment/review

Most memorable comment:

I'm not going to say which fic because it's still a WIP, but I had one comment guess pretty accurately exactly how a fic was going to end, and I had no idea how to reply. Can't just tell someone "yep, you're right," because that's spoilers, but couldn't lie to them and imply that wasn't going to happen... And generally it's good if some people can feel where the fic is heading, because it means you are setting it up correctly, but still really struggled to find a response, lmao.

And favorite scene is from Our Numbered Days:

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Achilles can feel a dull, thudding headache coming on. “About what?”

“You know what. You sleep with guys now?”

He doesn’t know what to say. He wasn’t keeping it from him. He never had to make some big declaration about fucking girls back in high school when he started dating Deidamia. Patroclus has never once asked what he got up to with his partners. Why the fuck should he care now? Why has this part of their lives been off-limits until right this minute?

“Are you planning on living with Iphis after graduation?” he asks, more venom in his voice than he meant.

Patroclus freezes. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Were you planning on ever telling me? Or was I just going to come home one day to find your stuff gone?”

“You know I would never do that.”

He doesn’t know that. He doesn’t know anything. “I started sleeping with guys three years ago. That meet in California. I slept with the number three seed. I didn’t really think it mattered.”

Judging by Patroclus’s face, it matters a lot. “I don’t even fucking know you right now.”

He’s ready for the stupid door slam this time, jumping up and following Patroclus, bracing his hand on the door so he can’t.

“What’s there to know?” Achilles demands. “I sleep with people. You knew that. If you wanted me to document their names and genders and favorite positions, you should have told me. I would have kept a journal.”

Patroclus shoves uselessly at his door before giving up and throwing his hands in the air. “Yeah, well, Iphis doesn’t want me to move in with her after graduation; she wants me to move in with her next semester, and given everything maybe I should. That way you can fuck every guy in school in privacy instead of having to do it in the library.”

Achilles thinks he might throw up. “Great. Do it. Then I won’t have to worry about hearing you two going at it all the time.”

He turns away from Patroclus’s open-mouth expression and closes the door behind him.

He tries to push the tears out of his eyes with the heels of his hands, but he can see in startling clarity the future he’s been avoiding for months. He fails his classes, he joins the tour whether or not he’s even bothered with his finals, Patroclus moves out, and that’s it. That’s the end of “them.” And then, because Briseis was right about everything, Achilles never rises in the rankings. He hangs around the four hundreds for years never breaking through until he realizes everyone around him is younger and more talented than he is, and with no savings, no degree, and nobody back home waiting for him, he gives up. Maybe he’ll coach kids. Maybe he’ll be found dead in a ditch.

He reaches into his pocket, thinking he’ll call Briseis. Might as well tell her how right she was. His hand is shaking. Before he can pull up her number, his phone slips out of his hand, thumping to the carpeted floor.

Patroclus’s door swings open again. He glares down at the fallen phone, as if the noise had offended him, then back up at Achilles.

Achilles wipes the tears from his face, but it’s no good. Even standing there, furious at him for reasons that are unfair, threatening to end their friendship over sex and a girl or a guy or Achilles doesn’t even know what, Patroclus is the most important thing in the world to him, the only thing that matters, and Achilles would remake himself to keep him in his life.

“I’ll, um—” The words stick in his throat, coming out garbled, and he sniffs and tries again. “I’ll stop. I don’t need to…” He shrugs. “I won’t sleep with guys, I won’t sleep with anyone—”

Patroclus cuts him off. “God, that’s not—you don’t get it. You just… don’t fucking get it.”

fanfic end of the year asks