Archive of Our Own

Aglaea’s flowers will never wilt. Creamy peonies sit strewn across her skin, stopping just short of her wrist, still life painted over both her arms. They look like the patterns she designs.

Phainon doesn’t ask about them. It would be insensitive. He sees patients like her at the clinic, with flowers sprouting out of their eyes or shoulders or calves. Sick, heartbroken people. He wonders if it hurts. He wonders if she minds, not being able to see them. 

There’s governmental aid set up to matchmake people and avoid such things from happening, but: accidents always happen. Phainon wouldn’t know. His own skin is smooth and pale. His health is, technically, great. He goes to Okhema St. Mnestia Hospital once a week to get checked out, and he gives the same answers to the same questions: How’s your stomach? How’s your breathing? How’s your sleep? And invariably he replies: Fine.

The nurse nods and jots down something he can’t see. Patient is fine, he imagines, or: Patient says he’s fine. His blood pressure is constant. His weight hasn’t changed. His sight is clear. She examines the inside of his mouth with a probe that lights like an anglerfish and finds nothing. Some days Phainon wishes there’d be something in there. That she’d gasp, horrified, and run to scribble on her notepad, Patient is not fine at all. 

His life horribly lacks any form of motion. Everything is excruciatingly normal. His lifestyle is cyclical: go to the studio, sit still, or move his limbs the way he’s told; go to the hospital, sit still, go home, sit still. He doesn’t tell his nurse any of that anymore. It’s been years of this.

At times, she must get bored too, because she ventures into his personal life, or his past. She inquires, How’s your love life? Readying the column in her notes that says in looped cursive: RELATIONSHIPS.

He tells her there’s nothing. No one. She’d like for him to fall in love, maybe out of goodwill and genuine care, but most likely because it’d be interesting from a scientific scope, giving her more things to scribble down excitedly, maybe even another notebook to fill out: Phainon’s incredible love life. They’d monitor what it would trigger inside of him, oversee him, pluck him apart. Needles, questions, needles.

“Are you considering it?” she asks. Clarifies: “Seeing someone?” 

The underlying message is clear: it will do you good. You should try. Celibacy makes Phainon a dull boy. He says no. She crawls further inside his brain.

“Have you ever been in love?”

He says no again. Nobody, nothing at all. She nods and adjusts her glasses, and he hopes she can’t tell that he’s lying.

Phainon falls sick on the eve of his fifteenth birthday. 

Aedes Elysiae is scorching. Her weather is fair all year round except for the two last months of summer, where the breeze flees and the shade dissolves. Phainon works the fields in the blazing heat, shaping the calluses of his hands to strong stalks of wheat and rusty farmtools, building himself into someone his parents can be proud of. They worry. They ask him what he plans to do for the future. They’ve been saving up a hefty sum of money just in case he’d pick moving out, going to a school in the big city. They know he’s been borrowing books from their old neighbour and diligently learned, up in his room under the roof, about history and maths and literature. He’s been thinking about it. Dreaming, of Okhema and Castrum Kremnos; of leaving. In his free time, he researches their universities; their eminent professors. The fields are his home, but part of him wants to leave, even if only to return a better man, more educated, well-spoken. On the other hand, his parents are old, worryingly so. They had him late, and they’re fissured with wrinkles and unfulfilled dreams — dreams that their money could easily buy.

So Phainon hesitates. He tells Audata he doesn’t know, not yet. Leaving is a beautiful dream, but then there’s the cold reality, the asphalt waiting at the end of the jump; Audata’s aging, the weight of the farm over her weakening shoulders, frail bones, the selfishness of turning his back to it all, casting aside his responsibilities. The unavoidable, harrowing question: What if it doesn’t work out? and he lets the sun melt all his worries to nothing, working empty-brained until all that’s left is the burning pain, the slight tinge behind his temples, the satisfying ache of having worked himself into thoughtlessness. 

He thinks he has time. He’ll sit on it once the harvest is done. Once winter has passed. Once spring flowers bloom. He’s growing. His limbs elongate, turning into strong, corded things. His steps cover more ground. His brain is a fuzzy blend of chemicals and hormones. He’s both overconfident, trusting in his newfound strength, and acutely self-aware, almost timid. Once he’s done with farmwork, he bathes in a small creek removed from the village, far from any prying gazes. He doesn’t want people to know how much he’s changing.

He removes his shirt as soon as he hears the sound of running water. He’s saddled in sweat and his nails are black with dirt. The creek comes into view. Glowing sun-warm stones, a rocky riverbank. And something else: 

Mydei. Back then, just a boy basking naked in the water, a block of tanned muscles glistening like marble, nicked by uneven cuts. Translucent droplets of water sluicing over red tattoos. Sun-like hair: yellow-orange-red, an array of wet fire snaking down his back. Phainon chokes.

Alerted, Mydei turns to face him. For the shortest second, Phainon sees his traits softened by surprise; almond eyes, wide and beautiful; dark eyebrows pointed like spears. Phainon can’t look away. Can’t stop staring.

“How dare you,” Mydei spits out, with the outrage of a startled animal, an angered deity, or something in-between.

He leans down, reaching for the bottom of the shallow water, closing his hand into a tight fist. Phainon is mesmerized by his body. It moves like precise machinery, folding at his stomach when he bends; glistening with water at his chest, round and coppery; his nipples—

He just grabbed a rock, the conscious part of Phainon’s brain notices. The sling of Mydei’s arm is obvious, the perfect triangle of his elbow, hand, and shoulder; the angry tight squeeze of his fingers around a river rock. He’s gonna throw.

“Wait,” Phainon manages hastily. “I’m not—” A whistle through the air. The pelted stone lands somewhere past his shoulder, ricochetting off the sandy riverbank. “Hey!”

The boy leans down again. Resupplying on projectiles. Panic washes over Phainon; he waddles in the river, forgetting to roll up his pants leg. The wet fabric clings uncomfortably like second skin. The stone is dropped, but the fist remains closed.

“I’m not a creep,” Phainon says as an introduction. He takes a careless step forward, into Mydei’s territory, both hands held up in surrender. “I’m Phainon. I didn’t mean to—”

(Scare you)

Mydei lunges.

Phainon stumbles backward. He’s being shoved and punched. Scratched. It’s his first real fight; he’s unprepared, unarmed, except for the boyish impulse to strike back fiercely and twice as hard. Mydei fights like Phainon is out to take his life, and Phainon retaliates like he is. His hand instinctively curls into rust-gold hair. He’s grabbed by the collar and roughly pinned on the riverbank. White sand and dust, sticking to his soaked skin. He’s heaving. Mydei is straddling him, still naked, gleaming from the sun and the river. A tang of freshwater sweetens Phainon’s mouth, and underneath, something else. 

“You cheat,” he says. 

His heart is leaping in his throat and in the veins leading up to his fists. One of his hands is curled over Mydei’s left thigh, and he doesn’t know how it got here but he doesn’t remove it, doesn’t even think to. He digs the pad of his fingers onto Mydei’s coppery skin until it ripples in tiny shivers. Mydei grins, impish. Satisfied. Victorious. Waterdrops clinging to the ends of his hair in hundreds of diamond shards. He’s holding Phainon by his crooked shirt and his tousled hair. He says, “I win.” He’s magnificent. Phainon’s first loss.

They keep fighting over lethargic days, like boys do. A playful shove turns into a heated tussle; a joke ends with Mydei’s thumb and index harshly seizing Phainon jaw, tilting his head up to better look him down, treating him like some animal; like kin. Mydei is half-person half-dog; half-civilized half-wild, and sometimes he wins, teeth bared, snarling and feral, and sometimes Phainon does, grappling, holding onto a shoulder, an ankle, and his bittersweet victories keep him awake, thinking of the plastic texture of Mydei’s scars. 

They fight, and they sneak off to the mountains and eat wild berries, and they nap next to each other in sweltering afternoons, melting into each other; then they fight some more, stop to cool down at the creek, stab skinny fishes with twigs and lay them on rocks to dry; fight again, over who caught the bigger one, who’s the tallest, who’s the strongest.

Phainon dubs their fighting training sessions. Mydei, who takes everything seriously and uses new, foreign words for everything familiar to Phainon, treats them like waged wars, battles to the death; names Phainon’s attempts at keeping their score even petty tactics. Phainon doesn’t take it to heart. A nickname marks importance. Mydei’s uncle is the old man; his home is back there; the tallest horse running in Phainon’s family field is Kokopo III — and for Phainon, a plethora of titles, boy, HKS, Deliverer, from that time when he showed up at Mydei’s door with freshly-hatched eggs.

“You should pick one,” he comments. 

They veered off the mountain path and stopped by a tiny clearing. Mydei will leave in two days. It has become ritualistic to take him somewhere, kidnap him in the wilderness before he goes. He lets Phainon guide him to wherever he wants, only sneering when the silence stretches awkwardly because they’ve been past the same ugly stump twice: You lost us again.

Mydei raises a brow at him. 

“A name,” Phainon explains. “For me.” 

He’s just been called HKS for stopping without warning in the middle of the path to watch a busy ant line, and Mydei collided into him, nose bumping into his back. Phainon’s legs are throbbing from their long walk and his head is filled by a pleasant nothingness, all his thoughts gathered in his mouth. He gets like this after days at the field, when he’s so tired he doesn’t parse what should be said and what shouldn’t. Just the other day: Looking good, Mydei, and Mydei’s blush looked like sunburn.

“HKS,” Mydei replies, part insult, part answer. An afterthought: “Deliverer.” 

Phainon nods sagely.

“Right,” he concedes. “But if you could only keep just one.”

He doesn’t know where he’s going with all this. He watches the clouds roam abovehead, puffy white ships in the clear sky. His back is humid. The earth is still damp from last night’s rain. Mydei sits at his side, the tip of his pinky brushing against Phainon’s ear. They’re always touching. Connected, one way or another. Mydei’s fist to Phainon’s chest; Phainon’s hand on Mydei’s wrist. Head on shoulder. Teeth on throat. Mydei looks at him like he’s never seen him before. Looks at him like he’s known him for his entire life. Phainon smiles drowsily. He wants to be special. He wants to be important. He wants a title Mydei will bestow him, or just his name, pronounced in Mydei’s way, heavy consonants and hashed out vowels. He wants to be in Mydei’s mouth.

The spider of Mydei’s hand crawls up to the top of his ear, brushing at the splotchy red here, carding through Phainon’s hair. Phainon closes his eyes halfway, until the world is reduced to Mydei’s silhouette. Fingers in hair. Nails on scalp. He turns towards Mydei, cheek pressed to the cooling earth, and he waits.

“Phainon,” Mydei decides. A shiver runs through Phainon; a gentle breeze and then a pull, inside the pit of his stomach, a wire being tugged until he’s filled with current, shocked by a barbed fence; Mydei’s crooked smile. “Phainon, of Aedes Elysiae.”

(And Mydei is Mydei.)

(And Mydei is like nothing Phainon knows. He’s covered in bruises. Molded by colors; red, and black and blue. He fights like his life is on the line, and his entire life is a long battle. He laughs as if he just learned how to, fierce and mean, with his teeth bared and his eyes open, and Phainon helplessly cherishes the sound.

He’s not from here. He comes from the big city, where life is larger and more complicated, and he visits his uncle’s house in Aedes Elysiae when summer nears its apex. Curious, Phainon asks about it, how the people are, the schools, the cars, and Mydei tells him everything until made-up images of Castrum Kremnos fly behind Phainon’s retinas and his brain swarms with thoughts of it, the city, Mydei, the city, Mydei, and it hits him before he can realize, over the course of his last teenage years, how corrupted he’s become; how ill. Mydei’s voice and Mydei’s accent. Mydei’s body, carved bronze and grey by cool shadows. Mydei, soft, cat-like, lazily dozing under tall trees, awaking with slow blinks. Mydei, ever-changing, a new version of him each time he returns. Mydei with his saltwater sun-bleached hair, his colors diluting. One day he might never return and just vanish into the atmosphere. A passing summer dream. Mydei. Phainon is in love.)

“You’ve been hanging out with Krateros’ boy,” Audata says warily. Can she see the static buzzing in his brain, the scattered remnants of Mydei’s touch? The nebula of neurons in his grey matter, going haywire?

“Is it a bad thing?”

Her smile wobbles. It’s been three years of meeting Mydei each summer, but she looks like she aged ten. “No,” she answers, but her voice is unsteady. “Of course not. Just — Be careful, okay?” 

He winks. “When am I not?”

She doesn't smile back. She gives him a quick nod before heading outside to the fields, leaving him alone in their tiny kitchen. Phainon knows what she means: fooling around is okay, but falling in love isn’t. That’s a danger zone. They’ll be of age soon. There’ll be government matchmaking, sorting through files to find their partners before the seeds inside their bodies reach the end of their maturity. He doesn't want to think about it. He doesn't want to admit that he still hopes that, by some play of fate, he and Mydei are meant to be. 

Phainon pushes his vain hopes onto Mydei. They roll around in damp grass, Mydei’s knee kicking at his sides, Phainon’s hands locked onto his wrists, pinning them above his head. They’re panting, covered in sweat and dirt. Red dribbles down Phainon’s nose, and, matching, pearls at Mydei’s bottom lip, and Phainon imagines what it’d taste like, the cold iron of him, the flavor of hurt off the salt of his skin, then he imagines what Mydei’s flowers would look like in bloom, and he pictures them like his hair, yellow-red, like blood spilled on fine sand.

“I think I want to leave,” Phainon decides.

He’s been thinking about it for a while. It wasn’t an easy decision. Mydei shifts at his side, his white shirt dyed green and brown by the earth. Phainon thinks of touching his face and painting his temples and his cheeks in a warpaint of his own colors.

Phainon likes Aedes Elysiae. He was born here; he knows her quiet rivers and her patches of dry land, and she’s seen him grow through his carving in the bark of her trees. Aedes Elysiae is home. It’s not enough.

Mydei’s laughter splits his mouth like a knife. He raises himself to his elbows to better look at Phainon, before letting his head drop to the ground again. 

“Where to?”

He must have thought about it as well. Leaving the stuffiness of Castrum Kremnos, the limited freedom of his uncle’s house. Above them, the sky is an ocean of deep blue, its stars millions of abyssal lights.

“I don’t know,” Phainon says, blinking up. He extends his hand until he touches the waning moon with his fingertips. “Somewhere. Anywhere.” The Grove or Okhema or beyond the frontiers of what he knows. The world is vast, and he feels so small; the world is vast and he feels omnipotent.

(He hasn’t been coughing yet. Mydei neither, but Mydei is younger by a few years and still growing and growing, and there’s anxiety in the pit of Phainon’s stomach, that he’ll end up a beautiful flower.)

He shifts onto his side. “Would you come with me?”

“If you left?” A pause for a thought. A cocky grin. “Anywhere?”

Phainon nods. He tries not to seem too nervous. Mydei crosses his arms behind his head. He’s so carefree that the stars must be jealous, turned into insignificant bugs, trapped in the amber gold of his eyes. 

“Well,” he says, “sure. If you want me to.”

Years later, Mydei stands on the hospital rooftop. 

He shouldn’t be here. Maybe he’s not; maybe Phainon’s hallucinating. Phainon blinks. Mydei is still here. A coincidence. A one-time chance; Mydei in Okhema. Phainon runs. He knocks nurses in his crazed rush, muttering quick Sorrys. Beeping monitors. The scratch of pen on paper. The stairs up are endless. His hands are clammy, shaking when he pushes panel doors open, and he slips and almost falls, and he keeps running until he feels nauseous, and his heart sways so violently in his throat he might throw it up. 

Mydei. Mydei. Mydei.

He’s panting. He’s mad. He thought about this moment for so long, and spent even longer convincing himself it would never happen, carefully destroying any buds of hope that could have nurtured in his chest — and now, in the face of his unattainable wishes: he runs. 

Another flight of stairs where he trips again. It’s all stupid, really. How it went: Phainon left. They promised they would text, and they did for a while, until eventually their conversations died down, petered out with the acceptance that some distances couldn’t be crossed. The rift between them grew larger and larger until Phainon couldn’t see Mydei on the other side. They didn’t break up, not technically, but they grew apart, which was worse. Phainon could talk to Mydei but he didn’t know which topics would spark his interest anymore; he could call Mydei but there was no saying whether he’d hear a stranger’s voice on the other end of the line, and then he’d start spiralling, thinking of another person witnessing the Mydei he knew, touching him, kissing him, and he— 

His shoulder bumps into a passing doctor, sending their glasses tumbling about. He apologizes mid-run. He reasons himself: it could be someone else; anyone else. He knows his fair share of replacement blondes. His veins have turned into wires, and they pull him along. He runs like he used to in Aedes Elysiae’s endless fields, chasing the dazzling color of Mydei in the wheat. His entire body thrums with joy, with anxiety, with the weight of itself.

“Mydei,” he calls, loud and breathless, shoving the rooftop doors open, the flat of his palm on the smoking area sign.

Mydei is here. Mydei is as beautiful as Phainon remembers him to be, a vision of the past printed on the polaroid blue sky. He turns towards Phainon. He’s kissing a cigarette, and he exhales slowly, eyes narrowed, blowing smoke towards Phainon. Phainon’s throat aches. 

(The first time Mydei smoked: a cloying summer, soured by the shape of the pack of cigarettes in his shirt front pocket. The nimbleness of his hand working around it, used to it, fetching without looking, and Phainon, jealous, I didn’t know you smoked; a finger shushing him, a conspiratory smile, a relieved drag; air gone straight from Mydei’s lungs to lips to Phainon’s atmosphere.)

“Hi,” Mydei says, relaxing against the guardrail. “Long time no see.”

He’s light. Something’s different; missing. He’s become tall and unfairly handsome, easing into his striking features. Faint smoke-like eyeshadow; bright red ink underneath his eye. He’s Mydei and he’s someone else, someone Phainon never met.

“Hi,” Phainon replies. He feels like that time Mydei playfully kicked him in the ribs but put on too much strength and bruised him, tattooed his left side red and purple. “You’re here,” he says, and he thinks, Why didn’t you tell me you were here?

Step forward. Hug him. Kiss and lick the sharp rim of his enamel. Impale yourself on it. Phainon wills himself in place. His hand flexes uselessly at his side.

“I’m just passing by,” Mydei replies. He’s so casual it hurts. Their meeting feels one-sided. He shrugs. “For check-ups. I’m staying at a hotel nearby.”

His voice is softer than in Phainon’s memories, his accent almost entirely erased, his anger gone, tempered. Coming for routine checks at the clinic specialized in lovesick people — did he find someone? The thought strikes Phainon like lightning. He must have. There’s no flowers on him. There’s no ring either.

“How about you?” Mydei asks. Phainon jolts.

“I’m single,” he blurts out.

Mydei’s eyebrow rises.

“...You are?” he says, tilting his head in confusion.

Phainon’s face is so hot it nears melting temperature. He clears his throat. “Yeah. Um. I live here. I guess you already knew that.” Fucking hell. “When are— How long are you staying?”

“Couple days,” Mydei mercifully replies. “I heard good things about Okheman cuisine. Might take a look while I’m here.”

I can show you around. Let’s grab dinner together. Are you seeing someone? I’m not seeing anyone. “Nice.” Phainon swallows. “Hope you have a great time.”

Mydei looks him up and down. “Mmh,” he says, the shadow of a smile clinging to his cheeks as if all of this was only an amusing joke. 

Phainon has nothing to laugh at. Mydei’s hair has gotten longer, reaching down to his shoulders. His skin is grafted in tattoos. Phainon can see them swirling past the hem of his collar and imagines someone else’s hands marking him forever. He needs to throw up. Mydei looks at him like they're playing a game and it’s Phainon’s turn to make a move.

“There’s going to be a party,” Phainon stammers. Mydei ashes his cigarette on the metal railing and Phainon watches the embers fall below. “I mean, Lady Goldweaver is hosting a party.” A flicker of interest. “On Friday.”

“Lady Goldweaver,” Mydei slowly repeats. “You know her?”

“I work for her.” 

A defensive silence. He hasn’t told Mydei about his modelling career, and Mydei hasn’t told him about whatever it is he’s doing now. When Phainon moved to Okhema, he was overwhelmed with novelty. The modelling gig, the big city, the people, the absence of Mydei he learned to do without. It was easier when he held himself back, when he stopped from texting Mydei How are you doing? I really miss you. Even easier when he put his phone on silent and avoided replying to calls, only sending meeks Sorry, I was busy, to which Mydei would plainly text back ‘Take care.’ Guilt pinches at his stomach. In the crowd, you can only drift and drift apart.

“You should come,” he says; pleads, “with me. I can bring a plus-one.”

He’s not sure he can, actually. He has nothing else to gamble. He’s never been this nervous, and this is new too, this anxiety from not knowing what Mydei will do or say. Mydei, who was once his other half, born from dirt and dust and sunshine; who was so different yet the same. Mydei’s thumb crushes the butt of his cigarette until it folds in on itself.

“Is it a date?”

Phainon’s heart leaps. Mydei’s voice is low and his gaze steady, the same animal-like warning he used to wield. Still the same fangs. Still the same man, despite it all, and his anger must be buried down somewhere Phainon can’t see, but it's here. Phainon doesn’t move. He’s looking for something he doesn’t know. Signs that will hint at who this new, older Mydei is, and whether there’s a place for him at his side.

“It can be,” he replies. The warmth of his cheeks has reached the tip of his ears. “If— If that’s okay. If you want it to.” 

Mydei doesn’t tell him what he wants. Perhaps he knows that whatever it is, Phainon would give it to him stupidly, whole-heartedly, as an apology for everything he’s done wrong. Perhaps there’s nothing he truly wants, and he’s only the adult husk of the Mydei Phainon knew, the child who wished to rewrite all the rules he couldn’t break. He nods, head tilting back, hair swaying in the breeze. He still wears the earring Phainon’s given him. He’s still Mydei, even when he’s not. He’s so gorgeous it hurts. 

“I’ll come,” he says. 

He’s still Mydei.

Love kills. There’s someone out there, a single person, who can love you; save you. For the unredeemed: flowers, blooming everywhere, sprouting from bone and flesh. Tendrils reaching out like children’s arms. Blooming from the throat, the mouth, an endless vomit of wilting, darkening petals. Clogged airways; inevitable death. 

There’s a luck factor. The flowers can bloom on your arms, or legs, or forehead instead, and you will be left as some human monstrosity, but you will live. There’s medicine. Stops the growth before it wraps you in it. There’s other people’s tales, to serve as a warning: some singer with roses strewn along her mouth; a pianist gone blind, peonies inside both sockets. So: Don’t fall in love. The person that is meant for you, the one that will allow you to exist as your whole self, already exists somewhere. Anything else is rotten. Sickness. Don’t nurture your vain hopes. Don’t cherish your feelings. 

At sixteen, Phainon’s flowers are nowhere to be seen.

He assumes his significant other must be near. He side-eyes Mydei with that theory in mind. Maybe you and I are meant for each other. Maybe the world sent you to me prematurely. Maybe loving you isn’t wrong. Maybe, maybe, maybe. 

(Be careful)

He doesn’t say anything. Mydei is younger, born two years after Phainon and late too, an unexpected winter child. Phainon asks him someday, What do you think your flowers would look like? And Mydei replies, sullen and resolutely staring at the ground, where he’s making indents with the tip of his brand-new sneaker, I don’t care. They don’t talk about it again. The topic is shelved alongside all the things Mydei doesn’t like speaking about: home, his father, the ten long months he spends exiled from Aedes Elysiae.

Phainon busies himself with the farm. He takes care of the cattle, stocks up on wood for the cold dry season, tends to the fields. He’s hopeful. Blooming. Turning into a fine man, the villagers say appreciatively. A reliable man. Audata still watches him with a worried look.

Mydei returns once, twice. Healthy. He’s about to finish his studies then graduate. Phainon has finished all his books. Dog-eared them so many times the paper folds easily, like stalks of wheat. He decides he’ll ask Mydei to come with him, properly this time. Rent a tiny apartment together and live off part-time jobs, and be happy wherever they are. Mydei has a passion for history and mentions off-handledly going to the Grove, where the best museums are and the smartest professors teach. He eyes Phainon and adds that they have an extensive maths and science curriculum. It’s as good as an invitation. Phainon says he’ll think about it, and then he thinks about asking Mydei to move in, to date, to marry.

Mydei returns on the half-year of his eighteenth birthday, sick. Coughing red all across himself, and the color spreads to his teeth and his tongue and his hands and Phainon, and he doesn’t stop no matter how tight Phainon holds him. He apologizes in a small muffled voice, strangled by his own lilies, and Phainon imagines Mydei sent off to a governmental matchmaking office, wed to some guy who’s not him, who’ll know how to make the hurt stop. Bad luck, he thinks, and he wishes he could drip feed pieces of himself to Mydei’s flowers until they grew accustomed to him, satisfied by him. There's nothing he can do. No matter how big and strong and reliable he’s gotten he remains powerless. He doesn’t cry. He closes his fist around Mydei’s shirt, wraps him in a last hug, and he doesn’t cry. He doesn’t cough either.

In Aedes Elysiae, there’s only one doctor, a crumbling old man with skin like folded paper who tends to both people and cattle. I don’t know, he says, when faced with Phainon’s condition — or rather, the lack of it. The worrying normalcy. Looking at him with a regretful gaze: You’d have to go to the city. So Phainon goes. An unsatisfying fulfillment to his childhood dreams.

He goes to Okhema alone, and there he’s welcomed by curious doctors and ominous scientists. He’s isolated. Monitored. 

“I’ve never seen anything like this,’’ a nurse says, holding a CT scan of himself. “There’s nothing at all.”

He sees plainly: the notched lines of his spine, the skeletal cage of his ribs, his pelvis, a glaringly empty desert, himself, all gouged out, and it makes sense, since Mydei’s gone. 

Some girl coughs and sobs, crouched on the sidewalk, clutching at her throat. He thinks: she must be in love.

Mydei opens the door a minute after Phainon nervously knocks. He’s gorgeous. His hair, tied in a short ponytail, reveals the sharp line of his jaw and the shine of his azure earring. He’s wearing some expensive designer outfit, black and red and leather and linen, a gold chain around his wrist, another across his chest.

Phainon clears his throat. He’s taken a dozen deep breaths on the way from the entrance door to Mydei’s floor, getting a few curious glances cast his ways. He’s wearing clothes Aglaea insisted on picking after patting down his shoulders and frowning at the glittery texture of the overcoat he was wearing. 

“Hi,” he says. “Hello. You look great.”

Mydei looks him up and down, leaning into the doorway with his arms crossed. His mouth ticks left; he reaches out towards Phainon — Phainon freezes — and nudges away a particle of dust that caught onto his jacket. He smiles.

“So do you.”

Phainon smiles back, mentally thanking Aglaea. “I would have bought flowers, if that was still a thing.” 

“Let’s pretend you did.”

Mydei closes the hotel room behind him and leads Phainon out to the hallway. The two of them make their way down to the parking lot and Phainon’s rental. Phainon is hyper-aware of Mydei’s presence at his side, the almost-touch of their shoulders.

“So,” Phainon starts, opening the passenger side door to his car, for Mydei, “you really don’t live here.” He tries not to sound too disappointed about it.

“Told you so,” Mydei replies, getting in. “Still in Kremnos. I’m just passing by.”

“Then I guess I was lucky to find you.”

Mydei is distant. The space between them is distorted. In the hotel, side by side, they were so close they could brush. Touch through their shoulders or elbows and merge again. In the cramped space of the car, surrounded by clean grey leather, they’re nothing more than strangers again, animals who forgot each other’s scent.

The ride is silent. They pass by places Phainon imagined going to with Mydei before he weened himself out of the habit. His knee keeps jumping; he wills it to stop when Mydei gives a pointed look. Straight ahead, the bustling streets, the herd-like crowd, and the blinking signal fires, instructing him to still, red, orange, red, green.

“It’s been a while,” he says, and immediately regrets it. You idiot, you stupid idiot.

Mydei nods. “It has.” 

He’s looking out the window. Peaceful. Phainon likes to think that the place at his side will always be a comfortable spot for Mydei. Some late evenings where Mydei was tense, closed off, a shadow cast over his face, and he rubbed new scars on his arms while refusing to tell Phainon where he got them. Hours before Mydei’s departure, he'd curl up against Phainon, sigh into his throat, softly say I’ll miss you, and Phainon thought he was special; thought he was loved.

“Thank you for coming,” he says a little abruptly; softer, repentant: “I mean it.” They’re stopped at a red light again. To their left, a car has its windows pulled open, and inside two girls sing off-key to a trending pop song. (For you baby I’ll die / Ten thousands times / So put my flowers / On our grave)

Mydei looks at him curiously, like he’s some peculiar insect with notable features. “Of course,” he says. And then: “I didn’t know you worked for Aglaea.”

Phainon’s laugh isn’t as relaxed as he wishes it to be. Bordered with edges. “I do, yeah,” he says. “Been a while. I model for her.” 

Mydei hums. There’s no telling what his judgment is on that particular nugget of information, Phainon making a living off being photographed. Maybe he doesn’t care.

“Is that…” A slight pause. “Something you enjoy?”

The underlying question is obvious: Didn’t you like sciences and travelling and meeting people? What are you even doing? 

“It’s something I’m good at,” Phainon swerves. 

He moved to Okhema in the midst of personal chaos and health non-issues, and Aglaea had scouted him, sensed his untapped potential; required his help, and Phainon, drifting, stuck in apnea the summers where Mydei wasn’t here, needed to be needed. She saved me and she doesn’t even know. He doesn’t say it. Mydei doesn’t talk either, only watching through the glass as the city blurs past as they drive further into her guts, entering her long arteries.

The job wasn’t particularly easy, nor did Phainon truly believe he was any good at it. He was ordered to dress and undress, putting his shyness aside, on the floor with discarded clothes, and he had to endure the incessant flash of cameras, the unblinking, stalking gazes, the annihilation of his privacy. He sometimes thought the world dissected him over and over, making up new Phainons as it pleased, young men who’d fit new design lines, and he could only passively watch the death and rebirth of himself. He rose to high-rise heights, joined the socialite lifestyle. Practiced dozens of faces to offer depending on the occasion, and became better at saying what he was expected to say and doing what he was expected to do. He went from cycling between three outfits to having two shelves busting with polished pairs of shoes, yet he was still awful at picking them and putting them in coherent outfits. The old, unfashionable corpse of himself hung in his clothes closet still twitched and kicked. 

You never learn, Aglaea used to say, patting down at the weird combo he picked. I’m almost glad I can’t see which crime you committed this time.

It’s not that bad, he replied, just to defend himself, with some underlying relief at remaining the same boy who couldn’t dress. It really isn’t, I promise.

Tonight’s party requires a polite, well-raised, sophisticated Phainon; a Phainon who has never assisted calving or napped in the grass or fought bare-handed. Aglaea’s launching a fundraiser to help the victims of a recent flooding in Dolos, the harbor collapsing and resulting in hundreds of casualties, and he’s her center piece, her shiny trinket to flaunt and barter. The Garmentmaker tower comes into view. Phainon’s stomach coils on itself like a scared snake. Being here with Mydei, the rawest proof of his past, feels wrong. He’s bringing evidence to his own trial: Watch, I offer you the kid raised in hay and dirt, the cracks insecurities slashed in his skull, and the boy he fell in love with. He swallows. 

He tucks the car in a corner of the parking lot and guides Mydei out, to the sleek password-protected elevator, and to the thirty-third floor. He’s been here before. He’s nervous as if he never was. The doors open to an ocean of people, familiar and unfamiliar, faces he’s seen on well-lit photoshoots, others in the cover of magazines, and Phainon feels small, so small, having forgotten to bring most of himself. 

(I’m scared, he screams. He’s not used to hearing his own voice so loud and wrecked, to feel the angry sticky heat of his tears over his cheeks, but it’s here, ugly and stubborn, an allergic rash. He wipes his face with his forearm and the contact of his own skin over itself burns. He wishes he were normal. He wishes he were sick.)

Mydei’s hand finds the small of his back, its palm open, steady. Gently pushing him forward and dislodging the weight that got stuck in the middle of his diaphragm. Phainon breathes. “Thanks,” he murmurs. Mydei’s smile is a faint, comforting line. 

(His nose, buried in the solid angle of Mydei’s shoulder and throat, inhaling more of his heady scent, metallic like weaponry; sweet like fruit. Mydei, holding him close. With each shape he soothes in Phainon’s shirt reads their own silent, earth-to-sun communication: I’m here. It’ll be okay.)

He spots Aglaea, who’s busy entertaining investors — meaning, she’s swarmed by men who wrongfully believe they hold more power and influence than her, none of them wise enough to notice the hook past the thread.

Phainon shuffles closer to Mydei, whispering: This is Aglaea, while angling Mydei’s shoulder in her direction. Mydei inches towards him, replies in the same quiet tone: I know. A smile tugs at Phainon’s lips. He steers Mydei around the venue, waving at acquaintances as he introduces them with his own flavor text. Here’s Caenis, who’s practically senile, don’t tell anyone I told you. Here’s Lygus, who’s probably competing with her to know who’ll get institutionalized first. Anaxa, who’s both a professor and a scientist, and who allegedly almost blew up an entire aisle of the Grove College during one of his experiments; lost an eye in it. Mydei looks slightly taken aback.

“Is there anyone sane in this room?”

Phainon puts a hand over his chest. “Well aren’t you in luck, there’s—”

“Phainon,” someone hollers. Asat Pramad, known mainly for his avant-guardiste collections of hats and gloves. He struts towards the two of them, giving Mydei a slight bow, glancing at Phainon’s possessive grip on his shoulder. “Is this someone I should know?”

A tightness in Phainon’s throat. How should he introduce Mydei? His date, technically. The person he never got over. He’s inexplicably sheepish. “He’s—”

“An old friend,” Mydei interrupts, stepping forward. He reaches his hand out to Asat, who eagerly takes it.

“From Kremnos,” Asat guesses. A flash of surprise shines; an amenable smile.

“I thought I practiced my accent long enough.”

“You did. It’s barely audible.” He’s still holding Mydei’s hand. Phainon can feel Mydei escaping from his grasp. “Unfortunately for you, I spent a good quarter of my life here.”

“You don’t say.”

“Perhaps the better quarter,” Asat adds. “I’d love to talk.” Phainon’s never been to Kremnos. Phainon doesn’t know what face he’s making. Asad looks at him as if he forgot he was even here. “Would you mind…?”

That same blank stare from Mydei, that vacant space for Phainon to occupy whichever way he wants, and he has no idea how. “Go ahead,” he says, “don’t mind me,” but the blunt of his nails scratch against Mydei’s blazer when he lets go.

Mydei’s gone. Stolen from Phainon, and so terribly easily; Mydei follows Asat further into the party, chatting about the food, the scenery, the important figures; and Phainon watches him get introduced to fellow Kremnoans working in the industry helplessly like a kid getting his toy confiscated. Past the jealousy and the kicked-dog hurt, something else, newer: satisfaction at seeing his revelries come to life, Mydei blending in Phainon’s life so easily, like he’s always belonged there. Cipher catches him smiling to himself.

“You came,” she says, her relief so loud and apparent it’s hard for Phainon not to laugh. “Thank God. I thought I’d die of boredom, alone here.”

Close to them, still crowded by her rapt audience, Aglaea’s head snaps in their general direction. On her glossy lips reads: Cifera, manners.

Cipher giggles and takes in Phainon, Phainon’s clothes, and then as if they were still linked by some visible thread, Mydei, in the crowd. Phainon’s heart throbs. She knows most of their history, and what she doesn’t, she put together with the pieces of Phainon she picked up when he came here. Hollow stares, vapid smiles. It took a lot of dragging him to bars to get him to learn how to live again. Her eyes narrow.

“So that’s him,” she guesses. “The man who broke your heart.”

Mydei’s a dazzling jewel in the crowd. His Mydei, once, and now; well. An old friend, he thinks bitterly. No name he doesn’t merit.

“No,” he breathes out. A stubborn ache pulses in his left side. “That’d be me.”

She pats him on the back. There’s not much to be said. Phainon looks away. He goes to greet Aglaea and chats with her about the upcoming collection she’s launching, letting her bounce ideas off him. She wants to do something poetic, she says. Something meaningful. In the low lights, the flowers encroaching her arms seem to blossom.

The party goes on. Phainon bows and waves as he’s expected to do, Cipher flanking him like a bodyguard. “Stay sharp,” she whispers suddenly, and he tenses up, straightens his spine. “Target in sight.”

Mydei returns. He waves, but he looks worn off from socializing. Phainon’s heart throbs again. He wants to put his hand back on Mydei’s shoulder. The animalistic need to mark his territory, to have his scent, his cologne, his touch, all over Mydei, to make it so obvious everyone would know. Cipher whistles, looking at Mydei’s necklace.

“Ouh, rich boy,” she comments. Phainon makes horrified eyes at her. She ignores him, her grin cat-like. “Are you a Kremnoan prince, or did you rob a bank?”

It’s Phainon’s turn to mouth Cifera’s name and be promptly ignored. Mydei chuckles, fiddling with his braid.

“I inherited,” he says. A cold gust bursts in Phainon’s lungs. Mydei turns to Phainon, and adds, softly, “Mother died.” Phainon is struck silent. Mydei’s voice is a guilty little thing. “Been a few years.”

All Phainon can think of is what he remembers of her. Mydei’s mother. Mydei’s gentle expression when he talked about her, and all the things she’d given him: his first earring; his warrior-like temperament, a fighter through and through; his nose; his eyes. Phainon takes a step forward; he needs, no, he has to, hug Mydei tight. Someone taps his shoulder; another ill-timed investor. May I have a moment? You can’t, he wants to say. All that matters is to talk to Mydei, apologize for not having been there, hold him, close, close, close, like he used to. He’s floating. He’s shrinking back into the chrysalis of himself, the fragile thing that he let Mydei nurture, that would have destroyed the world for him, and he can’t be there anymore. He won’t fit. The shell has withered.

“Sure,” he says. Agitated, catching himself: “—Of course.” He throws an apologetic nod towards Mydei and Cipher, and Cipher grimaces, left on her own to repair her misstep.

The rest of the night goes on like a slow dance. He and Mydei meet at scripted intervals, a short talk before turning to the next partner. A small part of Mydei slowly carves itself back in its place, right below Phainon’s ribs, and he can’t help it, turning to look at Mydei mid-conversation, tracking his outline amongst others. He excuses himself later, when the crowd has thinned and the noises of the party have quieted to a constant murmur. Mydei sits alone in a corner, taking micro bites of pastries. Looking at Phainon, sometimes; been looking at him for a while, maybe. Under the lights, his scars show like invisible ink. There's one here, one there. One across Mydei’s jaw and another on the back of his hand, and Phainon wants to follow them with his thumb, his tongue, wants to learn the shape of them and trace the veins snaking there like roots, yanks them out, see which colour Mydei bleeds, douse himself in it. He approaches Mydei and grabs a glass of wine from a vacant platter.

“Here,” he says, forcing the casualness in his voice. “Okhema’s finest.”

Mydei’s smile comes easily. He accepts the glass, his knuckle brushing against Phainon’s pinky. “Thanks,” he says, and he adds with some malice, “Deliverer.”

Phainon chuckles and then his laughter dies, killed by the sight of Mydei’s lip, pink against the glass’ rim. His mouth, stained scarlet, a fitting shade, blaring danger signals. Come close, or don’t. See for yourself if I bite, and Phainon wants to be bitten until there’s soft and shredded chunks of him yawning inside Mydei’s mouth.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t know — about your mother.”

“It’s fine,” Mydei says. “It’s okay,” but is it? His stuttering chuckle, no humor in it. A topic he doesn’t want to linger on. “Expected, really.”

The inevitable ending of his bloodline. Phainon heard about Krateros’ passing from Audata. He called Mydei and reached voice mail and figured Mydei already had someone to comfort him. Maybe he still does. Doesn’t matter now. They both grieved differently. Separately. How many funerals does that make? 

“I should have been there for you,” he insists. He’s being bold, now, threading a path where he risks being told off, rejected. Mydei’s fingers dance over his earring. 

“You were,” he says. “You always were.”

He’s looking at Phainon so gently Phainon doesn’t know what to do with this, all this closeness he can’t quite grasp, this estranged familiarity. The party runs on tepid embers. “Let’s leave?”

Mydei nods. They thread the opposite path in silence, side by side, again. Phainon waves people goodbye from afar. Elevator, parking lot, car. Mydei on the passenger seat. He could take him anywhere, far from all they know. The same thoughts that circled his mind for years. An atmospheric weight presses down onto his chest.

“Congrats,” Mydei says softly. He sounds exhausted. He reaches out to fix a silver strand of hair that didn’t need fixing. Phainon shuts his eyes, wishing the touch would last forever. “You’ve made it in the big city.”

“I guess,” he replies. “You looked like you’d fit in as well.”

Mydei scoffs. “Me? No. I’m not much for crowds.” 

“I guess that’s true.” Phainon laughs, and Mydei doesn’t.

Mydei’s head drops on Phainon’s shoulder. “Finally over,” he sighs. He shuffles closer to Phainon; puts a hand on his cheek, the palm still warm, comfortable; the gentle caress of his thumb. His voice drops to the octave used to tell secrets, “I missed you.” And then:

Mydei’s mouth. His lips, blood-wine-red. Crashing against Phainon like a weapon, thirty-two sharpened knives, precise aim. Mydei’s strategy of choice was always to strike first.

(Their first kiss: the epitome of a fight that was more playing than punching, pulling clothes, touching with underlying intent. Mydei’s ticklish laugh, his eyelashes, long, so long, so pretty. Phainon’s first hard-earned victory, a long-waged war, and Mydei was his trophy. 

You cheated, Mydei says, giggling, shoulders shaking, lightly tugging at Phainon’s hair; an habitual quirk, now. HKS, you cheated. 

He did, admittedly, but, Yeah? Phainon replies, And what will you do about it, uh? Still squeezing at Mydei’s sides, feeling his ribs when his back arches, and he could pull them out, snap them like sticks; and when he presses his thumbs into them Mydei wheezes as if they were gills. Fingers, lungs. Nose to nose. He’s grinning and he can’t even help it. Mydei’s nails are grazing against his scalp, and his palms are squeezing over his ears; Phainon, deafened, but Mydei’s voice comes through his eardrums in pleasant echoes, giddy waves, Mydei’s siren song. Mydei playfully nudges him with his knee, some semblance of kicking, and Phainon grabs it, hikes it up over his shoulder. Come on, tell me. Mouth to mouth almost, pulled closer and closer still.

Mydei smirks and licks Phainon’s lower lip. Not a proper kiss; just teasing, the usual, Phainon’s ego-bruising Mydei who knows where to press for Phainon to fall apart, and Phainon should play it off but he makes a painfully obvious wounded noise, and Mydei’s pupils go wide, danger-dark, and he yanks Phainon closer, licks the inside of his open mouth, wet, pink, wet, and Phainon whines, and victory’s slipping away, and who’s cheating now, Mydei still looking at him, heaving, Careful what you wish for, he whispers against Phainon’s jaw, a glimmer in his eyes, the fast rise and fall of his chest, Phainon’s own empire.)

The car is a narrow box. Phainon isn’t sure who’s trapped. Who’s caught. Who’s winning. Mydei sits on his lap, supporting himself with one hand on the car’s roof, and Phainon thinks distantly that fighting one-handed gives him an advantage. That’s something Mydei taught him. Borrowed scraps. Naive farmer boy, given weapons made of Mydei’s bones. Something Mydei teaches him now: never let your guard down, his teeth drinking from Phainon’s lips. Phainon’s fingers dig into Mydei’s sides, one hand under the shirt and the other over it, taking in both textures, the soft expensive linen, the raw salt-sweat skin. Mydei gasps quietly, and Phainon feels something flood inside his marrow.

“Can I,” he starts. “Can—”

“Yes,” Mydei cuts. “Yes.”

Heat scratching at his skin. Phainon finds Mydei’s lips, the edge of them, his throat, his lips, the corner of his eye, his lips, again, always, magnetic. A chemical reaction builds up inside him, combustion, from the two of them colliding again, blending together, and that rising heat reaches to his chest; his dick. “Missed you too,” he says. His voice is weird and kind of hoarse. “Missed you so much.”

Mydei kissed red. Mydei’s thighs seared around his lap. Has anyone else seen him like this? You were mine first, he thinks, desperately, footnoting all the inconvenient details, all the mistakes he’s made, his own departure. You were mine, even when I wasn’t here, even when you weren’t.

Beneath, the stir of the flowers he’s never had, the fluttering of them, and he desperately wishes he could have any sign from his body, or the universe, or anything, that they were meant to be together, and maybe it would fix something, slap a bandaid on the pain in his chest. Their mouths don’t slot together like they once used to, their teenage clumsiness gone. Phainon surges forward, tilting Mydei until his back ends up against the driving wheel, his hair tousled wrong, strands flying in his eyes, his shirt riding up his stomach. He’s hard, too. Fogged-up eyes, like early morning mist. 

Phainon collapses his weight on him and revels in the absence of retaliation. That’s something new: Mydei, not fighting. Makes him chuckle; a single-syllable sound. Mydei, nothing but a limp, accepting body beneath him, and Phainon could do anything, he thinks, startingly, could tear him open from top to bottom, could fuck him in the rental, again and again, fuck him stupid until he forgets everything but Phainon’s name, and Mydei would let him, and Phainon wants, and needs, needs, needs, and maybe some things don’t change, maybe it’s printed in his DNA, all that endless aching greed.

Mydei softly moans against him, “More.” The sound is intoxicating; he’s wrecked, too, tugging at Phainon’s sleeves. Rattling him with the barest pull. “HKS, more,” and Phainon can only say, “Yeah,” against Mydei’s collarbone, Mydei’s mouth, Mydei’s earring, give him all he can; all he has, his hips stuttering erratically, grinding down, Yeah, fuck, Mydei. Anything for you; everything, for you.

His phone rings. The moment shatters. Mydei pulls away, unfocused, glistening with Phainon’s drool, and Phainon reflexively strengthens his hold around Mydei’s waist, almost begs, No, no, please. He goes for another kiss, finds Mydei’s pulse singing in his throat. He trails down Mydei’s chest, wetting the thin fabric of his shirt, while his fingers tap up, up, playing on keys; Mydei’s bones, Mydei’s spine, and Mydei makes a choked-up melody—

“Your phone,” he chokes. He’s panting. He’s stopping Phainon, holding him by the face, muzzling him with his palm. Phainon licks the intersection between his index and thumb. 

“Right,” Phainon says. He doesn’t move. 

The ringtone is still annoying, loud, intent on forcing them apart, and he knows he has to pick up, that it’s most likely work, but Mydei’s here and he’s so close and he fears if he doesn’t take him, mark him, he’ll be gone. He feels feral, like the foxes that circled around the farm at night, looking for opportunities to maul clueless chickens, their eyes a hard sword’s edge glow through the darkness. He’d peer out his window and wonder when they’d give up and leave, and they wouldn’t; they stayed out there, empty-bellied, starving, looking for strays to hunt until morning came.

“Phainon,” Mydei says.

Phainon blinks. He tries to give Mydei a smile, but he can tell it’s wrong, messed up; that his chops are showing. He lets go of Mydei to reach his phone, somewhere in his pants pocket. He picks up on autopilot; hears something about a dinner, another gig, a modelling contract. He’s barely able to speak or understand Okheman. Words are nonsensical, quick babble rushing from one ear to another. He hums accordingly, focused on Mydei’s weight lifting from him.

He watches the feline silhouette of Mydei extirpate from his lap and slinking through the car, pushing the passenger door open. A pang of hunger drills into his chest. 

“I’ll call you,” he murmurs. “Hold on—” 

He scrambles for the gloves box, looking to find a piece of paper or a tissue for Mydei to write his number on. Mydei leans down, gently holds Phainon’s wrist, and shakes his head.

“Same number,” he says, and he sounds like he’s aware, that Phainon kept him in his phone, as his emergency contact, starred and everything; never deleted him even when he couldn’t bring himself to look at it, and there’s another ringing now, going through Phainon’s skull, a loud, belated alarm signal, and he ignores it, thinking: Perhaps I was right. Perhaps nothing has changed.

He’s right and he’s not. Things Mydei still does: the cute, confused tilt of his head, the barking lion’s roar of laughter, the pressure in his body noticeably relaxing in Phainon’s presence, letting him unspool the thread of his tense nerves. 

They go on all the dates they’ve never been to. Phainon texts Mydei with an address and a timid excuse, I heard they opened a new restaurant here, and Mydei rings him, amusement shining in his voice, and makes him spell his invitation out loud because he gets a kick out of it. He must have extended his short stay, Phainon thinks, hopeful, as the days trail behind each other and Mydei doesn’t mention returning home. He dreams of Mydei staying, of dating; he thinks the time they spent apart, the slow scarring of their separation, was maybe all for naught; stupid children making stupid choices. Everything feels easier now.

Two days after the party; they're strolling through a temporary flea market. This time, brave and inspired, Phainon called Mydei first, ambitious plans in mind: a nice lunch, then walking through the busy streets, maybe bringing Mydei home, formally asking him to date. His heart thumps and thumps and thumps, and gazing at antiques and old portraits does nothing to soothe it. Mydei taps his shoulder. 

“This one’s a fake,” he says. Phainon has been eyeing a necklace allegedly melted from ancient king’s gold, thinking of turning it into a gift for Mydei.

“How do you know?”

Mydei smirks. “I’m from Kremnos.”

“I suppose,” Phainon concedes, “but really? Is there a tell?”

“Yeah,” Mydei replies. His grin widens, and he lets himself bump into Phainon’s side. “You. You’re always picking counterfeits.”

“Wow. I’m hurt, Mydei.” A hand clutched at his heart for dramatic effect.

“No you’re not.”

“Not yet,” Phainon says. “You know, I still have that ring of yours at home.” Another antique; Mydei’s prized possession, slipped it around Phainon’s fingers to compare sizes and left here. 

“Liar.”

“Always, always wounding me. I’m not lying.” His hand comes to Mydei’s waist easily, spinning him so they’re facing each other, and the world around them is only a noisy blur of parasitic noises. “I keep it on a very special shelf, next to a very rare relic from Amphoreus, I’ll have you know.”

A playful quirk of Mydei’s eyebrow. “You’ve been keeping my precious treasure next to another fake.”

“A rare antique,” Phainon corrects.

“I wouldn’t want to hurt you again,” Mydei retorts, “but you don’t strike me as an expert in counterfeits.”

“Well,” Phainon says, his voice lowering, “I have an extensive curriculum vitae. Can do plenty of things.”

Mydei laughs. There’s a dangerous glint in his eyes, the same as that day where he pounced at Phainon, feet and fists soaked by the river. Salt and iron. “So much talk,” he says, with that airy playful, teasing tone. Salt and iron; Phainon will never forget. Mydei pretends to adjust Phainon’s choker just to sneak his fingers under it, grazing at the tender skin with his nails, making Phainon dizzy. “I’d rather you show me.”

They kiss while Phainon’s car is parked in front of his place. The keys are somewhere on his lap, or on Mydei’s, he’s not sure. 

“Hey,” he says, his mouth full of Mydei’s taste, his hands groping at skin and muscle indiscriminately, yet in his brain, the same ringing alarm, Audata’s voice, Be careful. The only way to be cured is to find your significant other, and Mydei isn’t coughing anymore, even as Phainon’s fingers defile him, untangling his braid just to see blood-red hair spill. He doesn’t want to ask but he has to, and it’s not that he doesn’t trust Mydei but he can’t help it, the irrational fear, and Mydei’s all he’s ever had, all he’s known, and he doesn’t want to lose him, not again. “Is there—” Mydei stills, looking at him wide-eyed. How desperate must he look? How pathetic, his petty jealousy? “Is there anyone I should know about?”

(The same insecurities as before. Would you tell me if, if. He can’t ask. Tangles his achy fingers together and looks away. Teeth worrying into his lower lip. He keeps imagining that out there, in Kremnos, in Amphoreus, in any part of the world that isn’t the dull autumn of Aedes Elysiae, there exist men better than him, men that Mydei could love, men that aren’t him. There’s nobody, Mydei says. There’s no one else.)

The same answer, too. 

Mydei is the closest thing Phainon has to a religious experience. In Aedes Elysiae, there’s a decrepit church the village’s elderly visited. It had a low ceiling and cracked stained-glass windows the same dull green as beer bottles, and on Sundays the chants from mass would leak out. Audata said that people prayed when nearing their end. That in fear of death, they became pious. Phainon never bothered learning how to pray. He believed God was a nebulous identity that didn’t bear much weight in mortal matters, towering over the Earth like a distant planet. He still thinks it, but: Mydei is sitting on his lap. There’s something miraculous about it. Mydei pushing his weight onto his. Mydei breathing into his mouth. A benediction. Mydei’s kissing him open-mouthed, and Phainon’s heart roars and screams. He could die tonight.

“I don’t have condoms,” he confesses, flushing lightly because while he’s not a virgin he’s not sexually active either; hasn’t been in a long while. 

Mydei wields his signature satisfied smirk again. “Good,” he says, breathlessly; fingers in Phainon’s hair, then threading down his temples, his cheek, getting in his mouth. “Good boy.”

Phainon comes a little. A damp spot forms in his tented jeans. “Mydei,” he prays, canting his hips up. Mydei’s thumb rubs over his left molar, jabs at the inside of his cheek. Phainon sucks diligently. He’s so warm he’s shivering. Mydei is the closest thing Phainon has to being sick.

He’s euphoric. He slides down Mydei’s pants, the motion slow, unsure, readying for Mydei’s retaliation. Mydei stays still. Lets himself be stripped half-naked. His bare legs are corded and laced with tattoos. His tits are huge underneath the shirt, stretching its fabric. I could milk him, Phainon thinks. Fuck. Mydei watches Phainon watching him. He smirks. He pets Phainon’s throat and says, free thumb pushing against the golden circle, Phainon’s old tattoo, foreheads pressed together, “You got inked.” 

Phainon laughs. He can’t talk. He couldn’t talk even if he wanted to. Mydei pushes his knuckles further in until they rub against the roof of Phainon’s mouth.

Mydei unzips Phainon’s pants. It’s insane to see. Long ringed fingers glistening down the length of his metal zipper. His tip is soaking wet in Mydei’s hand. Twitching.

“Your tail is wagging,” Mydei says. 

Insane to hear. Phainon swallows spit around Mydei’s digits. Mydei removes them an eternity later, after Phainon’s gotten used to their shape and length and cleaned them with saliva. He whines at the loss. 

Mydei asks where his lube is. Smirks when Phainon shows obvious disappointment that he won’t be the sole thing going inside of him. Don’t be selfish, Mydei admonishes. You’re big. He is. Physically, they’re the same size, minus a few insignificant inches, but Mydei’s hole is so tiny, and Phainon’s cock is so big. He could break him without trying. He could think about this over and over. The only small thing about Mydei. His hole. A tiny wound. His own fingers inside of it, when it should be Phainon’s mouth.

Mydei lowers himself onto Phainon’s dick. Insane. Insane. He’s inside Mydei. He’s going to lose it. He’s going to die. His own god will kill him.

Mydei’s body rises lazily, making a show of each half-inch sliding in and out of him. His thighs and his ass are dripping with lube and Phainon’s spit. He moves like he’s aiming to punish him. It’s deserved, Phainon thinks. Welcome, even, each sultry slow circle of Mydei’s hips, grinding into him, grinding him into dust; into a puddle of lava, summer-sun-warm, I love you, be careful, I love you so much. Phainon’s dizzy. Rubbing his thumbs into Mydei’s waist: 

“Do you remember when we met?” Mydei grunts in response, and Phainon continues. “At the creek—”

“Shut up,” Mydei growls. “Focus.”

The frustrated tinge in his voice makes Phainon’s cock throb. Is that strange? How conditioned he is? Capillaries blown wide, goosebumps running over his forearms and nape over Mydei’s annoyance, out of all things. Mydei’s looking down on him, and Phainon’s hard, and he thinks, You always had a need for superiority, didn’t you? — No, that’s not it. He couldn’t fathom being inferior, bending the knees. He taunted, and he threw Phainon figs from a tree he couldn’t climb, and Phainon said, Come down and fight me. Take me; eat me, and Mydei did. Does.

Mydei grabs Phainon’s collar, the muscles of his arm flexing. Tilting Phainon’s head, warning the blue of his eyes. “Deliverer.” Impatient and hungry and angry. “Focus.”

Phainon is delirious. Hand, hip. Mydei on his back. Feline sprawl. Phainon knows how Mydei wants to be hurt and how Mydei will hurt him. A predictable kick; he grabs Mydei’s ankle and licks a silver line along his calf.

“Fuck me,” Mydei rasps.

Phainon leans down until their noses touch. “I am,” he says. He gives the lightest roll of his hips. A wet noise of sex and flesh against flesh echoes. Mydei frowns.

“Fuck me properly.”

“I don’t like your tone,” Phainon retorts, but he’s teasing. Fighting the natural urge to obey. He’d make an excellent soldier.

Mydei nuzzles against Phainon’s nose. “Phainon.” He goes lax on purpose — ominous bait, look, it’s safe, come, I won’t bite. Hand, stomach. Lifelong scratches. “I’ve been waiting for you long enough.”

Phainon pulls out almost all the way before sliding back inside Mydei, slowly, watching the shift in expression, the clenching and unclenching of his jaws, the sudden tensing up, tightening around him. “Yeah?” Breathless; his palm runs over the valley of Mydei’s stomach, appreciating the muscles here, the molten skin. Mine, mine, mine. “You were waiting for me?”

“Phainon,” Mydei says, the sweetest thing he’s ever learned to, “Phainon—”

Phainon fucks his own name out of Mydei’s mouth. He changes the angle of his thrusts until he earns a sound he likes; a low grunt that pitches higher whenever he drives his cock in deeper. He fucks Mydei with no proper rhythm, fucks him like he’s punching him. “Mydei,” he groans. Beads of sweat roll down his temple. Sodium. Mydei’s taste. He’s gonna come. “Fuck, Mydei.”

“What?” A beautiful glint in Mydei’s eyes. Drool on his chin. Precum on his belly. He looks like he’s feeling good. Like he’s having fun. Fucked out and still fighting. “‘That all you got?”

Phainon chuckles. He leans down so Mydei can lick him. He wonders what he tastes like, and he hopes he tastes a little like Mydei, at least. “I’m gonna break you,” he promises. An uncontrolled tremor agitates his fingers. How are you gonna hold him like this? Make sure he doesn’t leave again? Have you not learned? “I’m gonna win. Just you wait.”

He wakes up to Mydei shifting next to him. Getting up to do whatever, get a glass of water in Phainon’s kitchen, stretch, grab a bite, something harmless, and Phainon knows but still he panics. He circles his arms around Mydei’s waist, nuzzling against his back. Mydei should be sleep-slack but he’s rigid. 

“Stay,” Phainon murmurs. He can’t see Mydei in the dark but he can picture the marks he’s left all over him like learned constellations. Dots and lines connecting the pressure points of his legs. He tugs at Mydei’s shirt and he wonders why he didn’t remove it earlier. Nothing that can’t be fixed now. He’s still hungry.

“Phainon,” Mydei warns.

Phainon pulls at his shirt. Undoes buttons blindly with his other hand. Mydei keeps terribly still. And Phainon learns that silk rips so easily; that Mydei’s tattoos run all the way up, circling his throat, underlining the firm lines of his chest, rampant on his arms, his hips; pre-drawn lines all for him to follow; he learns turning Mydei onto his stomach, nuzzling against his nape. That some things have in fact changed, Mydei’s skin, steel-knife-cold; Mydei’s spine.

It’s run over by a path of lilies, red, tattoo-colored. One per vertebrae, like tiny deformed buttons. Like Mydei got stabbed, sliced clean from top to bottom, and he picked up the pieces and organs and skin and clumsily stitched himself back. 

“What happened?” Phainon asks, but he already knows, he’s already seen. Clinic patients. Aglaea’s arms. Love kills, and he was long gone; as good as dead. Mydei gives a soundless laugh.

“Not very appealing to look at, I know.”

“No,” Phainon says. Sober at once. “Sorry, I mean. No, you're beautiful.” A strangled pause. “You’ve always been beautiful.”

Mydei’s not looking at him. He turns to stand on his elbow, hiding the flowers stuck in stasis on his back.

“Mydei,” Phainon pleads. Mydei’s jaw tightens like he can’t bear to hear his name.

“Does it matter?”

“What?” Phainon feels like he’s floating. Like he lost his footing. He can see it right in front of him, the lilies, and he wants to touch them, but his body’s paralyzed, and his brain refuses to comprehend, stunning him stupid instead, and he babbles on, trying to find the correct thing to say. “Of course it does,” he tries. “Did it hurt?” It must have. “If I had known—”

“Then what?” Mydei snaps. He meets Phainon’s gaze, but he’s hardened now, closed off, behind a fortress wall Phainon can’t see.

Phainon shuts up. He wants to reach out, grab Mydei’s wrist, pull him close. He doesn’t move. He lost that privilege years ago, when he ran away from Aedes Elysiae to exile in Okhema, thinking it’d be for the better, or when Mydei’s mother died and he didn’t know, didn’t call. When, when, when. So many things he’s done wrong.  “Mydei,” he manages, but the name sounds misplaced on his tongue, difficult to pronounce for no reason, its ease stripped away.

Mydei looks at him with the melancholic gaze of someone peering into an old photograph. He sits up. “It doesn’t matter, Phainon,” he says, softer. “What’s done is done.” A closed matter. He’s not touching Phainon anymore, as if it would hurt if he did. As if beneath the flowers were thorns.

Mydei calls him first. His voice sounds distant, stranded on another planet. “I’m leaving tomorrow,” he says. Departing for outer space and all the places Phainon’s never been to. Phainon feels like the one floating.

You’re running away, he thinks accusingly. “Okay,” he says. He’s still back there, on the couch, trying to mend the two of them back, to catch Mydei’s falling petals. He doesn’t know what to do.

A garbled sound, something he doesn’t parse. Stark annoyance in Mydei’s voice. “Do you want to meet?”

“Yes,” he says automatically. “Yes, of course, I’d love to.” 

Silence. He’d forgotten the terror of them, unable to read anything, thrown in a black void. In person, without the static of the phone, Mydei is easier to approach, to touch. They meet by the ocean in the evening, and the beach is empty, welcoming them to her desert of white sand. They walk side by side along the shore.

Phainon is a ghost limb with nowhere to attach himself to. Pointless. Mydei will return home tomorrow, or wherever else he wants to go, and Phainon will stay here, marooned to Okhema and the old, wrong choices he made. 

“Can we talk?” he asks. Mydei simply looks at him, giving him a silent Go ahead. Phainon doesn’t know where to start, what to say. It was easier before, at the creek, and the farm, and the sloped hill underneath the star ceiling, to say these things, Stay with me, I miss you. 

He watches Mydei. Mydei’s hair, fire swaying in the wind. Mydei’s eyes, the slant of them, the shine. Mydei’s mouth, and the things that come in and out of it, food, cigarettes, himself, swallowed and chewed and spat out.

“The flowers,” he tries. “The— Your spine. Is it my fault?”

(They blossom in absence of a loved one, and Phainon was never really alive, was he) 

Mydei halts. His footsteps are faint traces in the sand. “You?” His voice, torn like ripped paper. Phainon bites his lower lip, wishing to take his words back. Too late, now. Mydei’s laughter, a barking dog. He sneers. “You’re being awfully self-important.”

Phainon scoffs, disbelief washing over him. Mydei’s anger is spreading to him, and they were always like this, weren’t they? So ridiculously corrosive, corrupting each other, their feelings amplified per ten, per hundreds. “You know what, Mydei, you’re right. I guess I am.” An easy enough concession. He shakes his head. He’s tired. He’s selfish. “Maybe that’s all wishful thinking on my end.” Because then Mydei was always destined to be his, even when ‘Phainon’ was only a construct; a person who didn’t really exist. It would give meaning to his existence. To his love. “It would be better if it was all my fault.”

The admittance is liberating. You were hurt, but I’d rather you were hurt because of me. I’m greedy and I want even that, your unhealed wounds, everything you reject about yourself. The corner of Mydei’s lips, thinning and stretching. A mock simile of Phainon’s voice:

“Wishful thinking,” he parrots slowly, viciously. “Who was it who left?”

“Mydei. You know I wouldn’t have if—”

“But you did,” Mydei cuts, accusing, visibly hurt; Mydei, who’s used to fighting and hiding his wounds afterwards and licking them all on his own; Mydei, who had to witness his uncle, his mother, and Phainon, leaving; his Mydei. “You did.”

“I didn’t have a choice—”

“Right,” Mydei cuts. He’s looking away, his mouth flattened to a small line. Looking at Phainon again: “Is this what you tell yourself?”

Phainon’s world warps, distorted. The edge of his vision blurs as if he were drunk, or crying. Maybe he’s crying. He’s tired. He’s tired. He’s crying. 

“You're the best thing that ever happened to me,” he confesses, and there's guilt underneath, for Audata, for his hometown, for all the things he should be grateful for, the unconditional familial love, the protective enclosure of his hometown, but the brightest spark of joy he felt was when Mydei laughed, when Mydei kicked him too hard and fractured one of his ribs, when Mydei laid in the grass next to him and passed out while they were stargazing, a high that will never ever be replicated. “The best, okay?” His voice is rough and raw and terrible. “And I thought you were too good for me.” 

(He still thinks it. Back then the leaves were brown and maple and gold, shades adjacent to Mydei’s hair, and it was summer and it was fall, and it was his own little miracle.) 

“I thought—,” he continues, making some helpless gesture with his hands, but they’re empty, he’s disarmed, nothing to fight with, no flowers or leaves on him, never, “that if it wasn’t going to be you, then it wouldn’t matter if I —” he stops; glances at the same ocean he crossed. (If I left. If I never loved again.)

Mydei's knuckles are on him. Pale-white, pulling at his collar, shoving him in the sand. “It wouldn’t matter,” he repeats, spiteful. There’s a slightly dislodged tooth in the back of his mouth that’s also Phainon’s fault. Shoved Mydei’s head in the dirt too forcefully; still lost that fight. “Too good for you? Don't make me laugh.”

Mydei’s fingers tangle in his hair. His face looks thwarted, shedding on all the things he keeps hidden. Pried apart, the bud of this adult Mydei and inside, the raw still-scarring child curled up inside, his fangs bloody and bared.

“I came back next summer and you were gone,” Mydei roars. His gorgeous tourmaline eyes ripple with unshed tears. 

Phainon’s hands carefully settle on his wrists. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re always like this,” Mydei continues. Phainon wants to scream, No, I’m not. Not anymore; I don’t know who I am, and he’s scared, of this Phainon he’s become, of returning home, of the animals not recognizing him, of his mother saying, You’ve changed. Of Mydei having a different name for him. “Phainon,” Mydei says, (and Aedes Elysiae is far, so far) — “Deliverer,” with an ugly sharp smirk and Phainon loves that too, infinitely, helplessly. Mydei’s fist tightens next to his throat. “I didn’t ask to be saved.”

It hits Phainon harder than a punch. “Mydei,” he says softly. “You’re being unfair.”

(The memory of a cool afternoon, shared shade, their shoulders touching. Mydei talks about home, the origin of his bruises, the genesis of himself, and Phainon listens in religious silence.

That's not fair, he finally says. 

No, Mydei replies. He keeps his eyes closed. He’s smiling. He’s made his peace with it. No, it isn’t.)

There’s nothing else to do when you’re falling, drowning, than to hold on tight to each other, and Mydei knows that; taught him that. Nothing else, back then, for them, but this unfairness. They were so small. So insignificant. So powerless. Mydei’s not smiling anymore, and he looks so sad. Two sad adults.

“Am I?” he asks, a hint of concern in the anger of his voice, raw spilled hurt, a bleeding river. “Unfair? To you?”

“No,” Phainon concedes.  “I’m sorry.” Mydei wilts in his arms. He lets himself be hugged. “I’m sorry,” Phainon says again, all flawed that he is, against Mydei’s cheek, Mydei’s hair. “Sorry, Mydei.” Against all the cuts he’s made, visible or not: “Sorry. I love you.”

Mydei leaves. The world fades to a mourning grey, as if all of its flowers perished.

He goes to the clinic mechanically. Sits on the white plastic chair weak-limbed, void in his head, in his mouth, the rest of him balled in a tumor-like mass sitting on his chest, a sting when he breathes, and the nurse asks him her same series of questions and he tells her, blankly, as if talking about someone else, that it hurts, that it always hurt, that he doesn’t want to come here anymore, that he’s tired, that he doesn’t see that point, that he messed up, that it’s not his fault even though it is; that it’s his fault even though it isn’t, and he’s rack-stretched between both, the guilt of who he is and who he wanted to be, the Grove universities he never attended, his future thrown into a wall, and now what? Now he stands in the ruins of their past, the fallen kingdom of their love, and he waits for decay to inevitably subdue him as well.

Days and days and days and days. He’s gotten weak. He used to survive this. Months where Mydei was gone, and Phainon would soldier on with only the certainty he’d return. He doesn’t even have that anymore. Cipher takes him out, tries to cheer him up. She says: If your little prince has gone into his castle, you have to put on your shiny armor and rescue him. He says: I’m no knight, you know. I’m just a farmer. 

“You’re perfect,” he’s told. “Don’t move — look down a bit, no, left — yeah, perfect.”

Camera flash. Phainon is apathetic. He sits in the circle of forget-me-nots, wearing new clothes and a new face. Make-up applied over the swollen red of his tears. 

It could have been you, the forget-me-nots cruelly tell him. You could have been a beautiful flower. 

Well, he thinks, beauty is subjective.

You will never have him. Because you already died once, and then one more time, subsequently, for each day you weren't at his side. You will never bloom. You’re a dead man walking.

That’s okay, he thinks. He thinks of Mydei’s lilies.

You can still laugh, the flowers continue. It won't be the same sound as before, but it'll still be yours. That counts for something. You are already gone. You are still you. 

I am still me.

He feels alien. He gets up when instructed to, mechanically taking the towel he’s offered, wiping his dry forehead with it. His limbs weigh tons. 

“Thank you,” Aglaea says. “You’ve been a lifesaver.” 

He can’t look at the flowers on her arms without being eaten by guilt. “Of course,” he says.

She must sense the exhaustion in his voice. “I won’t need you for a while,” she announces, which he knows is a lie — he’s seen her planning, and heard her organize new runways; he’s seen overheard her talk to her recorder, dictating designs ideas in a rushed voice, all her ideas tumbling about. “How about taking some time to yourself?”

“I’m not sure,” he replies. “I can stay. I can work.”

He feels pitiful. An abandoned dog, and how karmic is that. 

“You can go on a vacation,” she counters. Offers gently: “Go home.”

“You’ll be okay without me,” he realizes. He’s not irreplaceable. He doesn’t like it. He finds a semblance of identity through purpose.

Aglaea hazards a hand in his direction, and he tilts his head to let her pat him. Petals mingle with strands of hair. “I was doing fine before you came along, young boy,” she teases. “I’ll do fine after you’re gone. Don’t take too long, though. We still have plenty of work to do.”

Temporary farewells. He’s not used to it. He lets her feel his nod through the palm of her hand, and forges the forgiving texture of it in his heart.

Home hasn’t changed. The everlasting orange shades of Aedes Elysiae, its tiny homes, its elderly villagers: a picture frozen in time. His mother hugs him tight. He’s surprised at how much her frail arms still have. “You’re back,” she says, in a relieved voice. How long has it been? He kisses her forehead and hugs her back as hard as he can. 

She tells him about the villagers, the animals. A calf was born just yesterday; she says she’ll let him pick its name. Then she looks at him dreamily, his large body returned to the comfortable warmth of her kitchen, and smiles.

“This brings me back,” she says. When she laughs, the skin at the of her eyes fold. “You used to sit on that exact chair and ramble on and on about your little summer crush.”

His heart twinges. “Little?” 

“Oh, my bad. Right, you were obsessed.”

“And you didn’t like it.”

“Oh, baby, no, no.” She ruffles his hair. “I was just worried you’d get hurt.”

“I get that,” he says. He’s threading his fingers. “I really do.”

She looks at him like she knows. It’s a mother’s power. She knew when he first got lost in the forest, and when he scraped his knee on a slanted rock, and when he lied and took the bus to the next village because the travelling circus stopped here and he wanted to show Mydei their lions.

“These things happen,” she says indulgently. “You were in love.”

I still am, he thinks. He’s never not been. Audata's nod is full of gentle understanding.

“He came asking after you, you know,” she continues. Phainon feels like he’s been shocked through his collar. “That summer you left for Okhema. He asked if you were gone for matchmaking, all coughing and fierce, like he had a bad flu. I told him you went to the clinic for testing ‘cause your seeds were not manifesting, and he sat outside by that cherry tree you two used to laze around. He kept waiting there every summer until his uncle passed. I think he thought you might come back here, someday.”

“Mom,” he says. Speaking hurts. Why did he leave?  She smiles at him.

“He loved you too.”

“I know.” He should have clung onto it. Never let it go. He should have battled, like they always did. He thinks of Mydei waiting for him so they could leave together.

“You should call him,” she says. He gazes up to her like he’s drowning, trying to find land. 

“I can’t. Mom, I messed up.”

“Call him,” she insists. “Tell him that.” And she adds, seeing as he still hesitates: “What more do you have to lose?”

It’s late at night when he calls Mydei.

“Hey,” he says. “It’s me.” 

“I know,” Mydei replies. His voice is velvet and silk and wool.

Phainon’s all choked-up. He sits in his now cramped childhood bed, and he thinks of the time Mydei climbed the high garden tree and sneaked through the window; pinned Phainon here, against the airplanes printed on his bedsheets, said, You’re wide open, boy. Against the wall rests a sturdy long stick Mydei picked up in one of their escapades. You could use it as a scepter, Phainon suggested, because to Phainon, Mydei was always some kind of important figure, a monarch or a lake fairy, so nothing was more fitting than scepters made of fallen branches and flower crowns. Mydei sneered and countered HKS, this is obviously a lance, and he chucked it straight in front of him with all his might to demonstrate his point. Upwind; the stick lamely didn’t make it far. Phainon doesn’t remember bringing it home. There’s so many memories of them in the things he owns.

“Do you remember the scepter?” he asks, letting his legs unfold.

“The lance,” Mydei predictably corrects. “My lance of fury.”

“You couldn’t even throw it.”

He hears Mydei scoff on the other side. “I could now. I could throw you.”

“Right,” Phainon laughs fondly. “You beast of a man.”

A faint noise, a muffled growl. Phainon assumes Mydei’s smiling, so he smiles too. Mydei says, “My turn. Do you remember that time I almost died?” 

Do you remember the day the world almost ended? Phainon chuckles. They were running next to the riverbank, further down the creek, where the current was stronger and several feet deep. Mydei slipped. Gone, in an instant. Only the sound of the flowing river. A lover stolen by the Styx; a king vanishing on Avalon. Boy against water. Phainon tried to fish him out, caught his fingertips in a panic but only managed to save his ring. He thought with harrowing clarity, This ring is all you have left of him. Carried the thought for a long time afterward. “Not a really happy memory, is it?”

“I suppose not. You were wailing like a baby.”

“Woah, okay. You cried too, in case you forgot.”

“Did not.”

“You did.”

“Had some water in my eyes.” Mydei exhales slowly; he’s relaxed, smoking. “Where are you?”

“Home.” And, because he’s honest: “I miss you.”

“Really,” Mydei says. “But I’m home too and you’re not here.”

“Mydei,” Phainon says warily. He’s never been to Kremnos. He’s only seen it on maps, and in Mydei’s colorful, melancholic words. Before meeting Mydei, it was on top of his list for places he most wanted to visit. After, it became sacrosanct. The unbreachable other half of Mydei’s life. He’s not sure he’s allowed in, not this far, in spite of everything. He’s scared of seeing Mydei again; of inadvertently hurting him once they’re close, and they’ve only ever learned how to be close. Foxes will always prowl. Boys will always fight.

“Phainon. I’m home. Where are you?”

(Would you come with me? And really, there was only ever one place to go.)

Kremnos is nothing like Phainon’s ever seen. It’s got high towers grazing up at the sky, each an individual bar of Mydei’s large cell. He navigates through its streets like a lost child, wandering up alleys and unfamiliar sceneries, walking below bridges and above metro lines until he reaches the address Mydei texted him. 

Mydei’s place is a small apartment on the third floor of a building, and its entrance door can be reached from the outside. A flimsy staircase leads up to it, the steps vibrating under his weight. The door is left ajar; Phainon knocks, and from further in, Mydei says: HKS, come in. 

He’s terrified. He obeys still, his feet leading him forward, tethered by Mydei’s voice. The door clicks softly behind him. Mydei’s place looks like a greenhouse. It’s occupied by potted plants and flowers, memories of all the people he’s ever loved, and Phainon’s throat tightens. Will you bury me too? Will you nurture me and let me grow in something beautiful, will you, will you.

He finds Mydei waiting further inside. He’s got his bare back turned to Phainon, watering a lycoris. On his spine, the necrotic lilies yawn, watching Phainon watch them. There’s a weight in his chest; the dead foetus of who he was supposed to be. He imagines a world where everyone was born seedless, a world where he’d be normal, and thus he’d be understood. His entire being burns with the need to connect, to be known and forgiven and accepted, burns so hot that if there had been any seed, any growth that could result in a beautiful flower, it would have been calcined without any mercy. 

Mydei turns to him. “You’re finally here,” he says. He walks to the bed, where he sits, facing Phainon, and he gestures for him to come closer and Phainon does, stopping just short of touching him, between Mydei’s legs. Mydei’s smile is sickly sweet. “It hurts less now,” he says, and it could be a lie, but it’s pity all the same.

He opens his palms for Phainon to offer his, and then he brings Phainon’s hands to his nape, the apex of his spine, as if he could tell where the pain flared and where it didn’t just from touching. Phainon lowers his head, slinking to the ground until he kneels. Mydei chuckles.

“Kiss me,” he says.

Phainon thinks: Should I? Can I? Haven’t I done enough? What if the rot from within spills and contaminates you? Mydei only looks at him, uncaring, gorgeous and quiet, eyes tinted with afternoon sunset gold.

“Phainon,” he says, and Phainon shivers, and Mydei’s voice does too. Mydei’s right hand, the one that once held a rock from the riverbed, cards through Phainon’s hair. Everywhere he touches feels blessed and baptized; anew. “Phainon, kiss me.”

Was he lonely too? Was he lost as Phainon was? Their lips touch. Their mouths open. Fragile lilies, at the very tips of Phainon’s fingers. 

(There was once a time when you were young, and Mydei was yours, and you were brave and hopeful and strong. This version of you is long gone: on his spine lie the flowers to your grave.)

The pleasant sting of kneeling, and the bitter taste of Mydei’s lips, blood-bitten, that fitting red choking Phainon. I'm killing you, Phainon thinks. It's a kind, merciful thought. There's love in dying together. 

“I wanted it to be you,” Mydei says. Phainon supposes they’ll never know. Maybe Mydei’s right, and it doesn’t matter; maybe it never did. “I never looked for someone else.”  It could have been avoided. The pain is proof of his existence. He feels undeserving.

“I’m sorry.”

“No.” Such a gentle love. “When you left” Mydei continues, delicately coiling Phainon’s hand over the first notch of his spine. “I thought something happened to you.”

“My mom told me.”

Mydei nods. “She said you were fine. Fulfilling your Deliverer duties in Okhema.”

“She didn’t say that.”

Mydei pulls him up just barely; kisses him again. It comes as easily as breathing. “No, she didn’t.” A pause. “She cried.”

“I’m sorry.”

“And I did cry, too.”

“I’m sorry, Mydei.”

“It’s okay.” Another kiss. Phainon tilts into it. Lets himself melt. Be reforged.

“It’s not.”

Mydei laughs. “Okay. Then it’s not.”

“I don’t know what to do.” How to fix things. Mend the wounds left in his wake.

“You’re here now, aren’t you?” There’s a scar on Mydei’s shoulder, something Phainon made. There are scars all over him, old and new, inside and out. He’s beautiful. Phainon loves him. Nothing has changed. He closes his eyes. “We’ll figure it out.”

We will never be like we were again, Phainon thinks. We’ll keep changing, following the seasons. We’ll go from hot to cold, from gold to silver, from flesh to dust. We’ll watch the stars bloom and the flowers wilt, and it’ll be us and it’ll be someone else all the same.