Chapter Text
He burns like a fever. He burns like a sun. He burns relentlessly against Phainon’s skin, warm, scorching and violent, with a heat that’s nothing but dangerous. His fingers are knives, stabbing into Phainon’s chest, pushing him onto the bed, and Phainon lets himself melt, bleed out and die.
“What’s your name?” he asks. He’s clueless and out of breath, and the stranger chuckles, the sound spilling into the room like light.
“Mydei.” He glances down at the obvious shape in Phainon’s shirt, fishes out the condoms he stacked in his front pocket, and coolly comments, “You came prepared.”
Phainon gives a half-smirk. “Always. Name’s Phainon, by the way.” Mydei rips the wrapper open with his teeth. Phainon feels an absurd surge of jealousy; wants to be bitten and torn.
“I know.” An amused grin. “You told me already.”
Phainon can’t remember when he introduced himself, or the last time he formed a complete thought. Mydei’s weight is destructive, oppressive over his lap, a mass of solid muscle. He’s built like a statue if a statue was built by a madman; molded with perfect, impossible curves; designed to make Phainon’s head spin. A strike of red ink underneath his left eye. A glimmer of blue hanging from his left ear. Phainon leans forward for a kiss that tastes like cigarettes. Mydei nips at his bottom lip and Phainon lets out a moan, his tongue darting out, finding the corner of Mydei’s mouth, more cinders, a prickle of blood, more of that sweet toxin that makes him lose himself and feel every second of it. Mydei laughs. His eyes are an old, somber shade unearthed from buried sepulchres, kings’ gold, and Phainon wants to swallow it too.
“I can’t see you,” he complains.
Mydei chuckles, kiss-wet lips forfeiting the sound right against Phainon’s earlobe. “I know,” he repeats, like that's the point of it all, the low lights, the drawn curtains; like Phainon couldn't fathom the sight of him, and Phainon, defeated, eager for whatever he can get, lets it go.
He can’t see now but the memory of when he could, mere moments ago, remains vividly imprinted behind his retina. Mydei, leisurely sat at the hotel’s bar, waiting for the world to end, backlit red and blue by the ceiling lamps; scarified with blooming bruises. Phainon had imagined which clothes would fit this kind of man, which he’d never seen before, not in his small native village of Aedes Elysiae and not in the sophisticated, ever-expanding Okhema; and then his thoughts flowed freely, a river of indecency, the idea of stripping said clothes, of his fingers playing with expensive linen and rough leather; of bare skin glistening with sweat and wine before growing dark and flushed and beautiful, and then Mydei glanced at him, talked to him, Do you need something? with the look of someone who knew exactly what it was that Phainon needed; the look of someone who’d give it to him no questions asked, no strings attached, and then —now — they’re here, limbs tangled, hungry, thirty-third floor up of a business hotel, terrifyingly new.
Would Aglaea be disappointed? Maybe. Surely. She doesn’t need to know, Phainon decides, and he dismisses the thought of her in favor of chasing after one more kiss, then another, then another, until Mydei pulls away to press two fingers where his lips used to be, right against Phainon’s starved mouth. Phainon would lick it all, down to the very bones.
Skin and iron flood in. Mydei’s digits pry his mouth open, his cold rings flush against the flat of his tongue. Phainon takes them up to the second knuckle, wets them like he was made for it; moans in return when Mydei hums appreciatively. He could cum just like this. His cock throbs, pushing against Mydei’s still-clothed ass. Too many layers, he thinks dazedly — an impious thought for a tailor. He blindly tugs down at Mydei’s waistband, and as soon as they’re past the ridge of Mydei's hips his hands crawl all over newly-exposed skin, groping, Need—
“Shh,” Mydei prompts, with an obvious hint of amusement. Phainon looks up at him, an urgent heat coiling in his lower belly. He watches as Mydei slowly, purposefully, removes webbed, spit-soaked fingers from his lips; pries its toy from the dog’s maw; leaves Phainon’s stuffed mouth suddenly empty and wanting.
He reaches back, hips canting up. Phainon observes like a man witnessing a miracle Mydei’s fingers pushing inside him in a wet, lazy slide. In the darkness of the room, all he can see are absurd shapes: Mydei’s square shoulders, the half-open oval of his mouth, the slender spider of his hand, and then faint colors; the azure glint of Mydei’s earring, the flushed pink of his tip.
Mydei blinks, looking down at Phainon's erection as if he’s just noticed it. “Ah,” he says, half a pleased gasp, half an almost-moan, and he sounds like he hurts; like his throat is threaded with needles, like he revels in each second of it. “You’re bigger than I thought.”
Phainon needs to be inside him so badly it hurts. The impatient strain of his dick bumps against Mydei’s ass. “I can—” he stops to swallow; looks into Mydei’s eyes, searching for his own words within oxidized amber. “My mouth,” he tries. Embarrassing. This is all too violently brand new. He’s been with people before but not like this — he’s lusted after men at times but never bedded them, and Mydei feels barely human, sheened in sweat and danger. Phainon can think of endless ways to worship him yet none that’d be enough.
“Maybe next time,” Mydei says.
He makes a show of swallowing, then lets his jaw hang open, and a trickle of saliva pools down the tip of his tongue to drip onto Phainon’s cock. Mydei’s thumb smears his own body fluids down Phainon’s aching length, squeezing him inside his fist, and then he lowers himself onto Phainon — and there’s no way it doesn’t hurt, Phainon’s fat, barely lubed cock splitting him open, but there’s also no way he’s not enjoying this at least a little, the pain, his own dick hardening against his stomach, his lips splitting into an animalistic grin. The world tilts and blurs. Phainon sits upright, slinging an arm around Mydei’s impossibly narrow waist, holding him close, and Mydei keeps moving in slovenly ups-and-downs, each intake of breath scattered; each roll of hips fatal.
“Wait,” Phainon pants, dropping his forehead against Mydei’s shoulder. His entire body has turned into a coil. He’s flexing muscles he forgot existed just to keep himself in check, engulfed in unbearably tight heat. “Mydei,” he continues with more urgency; a shallow squeeze over Mydei’s waist. “Wait, wait—”
He’s pathetically hard, treacherous heat sizzling in his stomach, threatening to spill with each languid slap of their bodies meeting, and he doesn’t want to, not yet. This night has to last a lifetime, just in case it’s the only one. Mydei’s fingers comb through Phainon’s silver locks.
“You’re taking me so well,” he praises. Is he smiling? Suddenly, his satisfaction is all that matters.
Phainon lowers his head and whines against the dip of Mydei’s collarbone, and Mydei laughs (so he is; smiling), the sound a little hollow from this close, dredged out, like a body without organs. PHis tongue probes inside Phainon’s ear, and Phainon dies once, twice, again, dies a million happy, regretless deaths. He empties out; swells up again; thrusts in the absurdity of Mydei’s body and the sticky mess of the unremoved condom. He stares at Mydei’s mouth through hazy vision, his lips blooming where he last bit them, scarlet beading from the incision, and despite the bitter taste of blood Phainon goes for another kiss, affected, addicted, like a chainsmoker would a cigarette.
Okhema welcomes him back like a long gone prodigal son, scratched-red back and all. He returns home with a tang of nostalgia knocking in his chest and an aftertaste of ashes. The first traces of winter descend onto the rooftops’ tiles, and in spite of the coming cold there’s a persistent scald on the back of his mind, a sizzling scar from where Mydei stubbed himself.
Aglaea notices he’s distracted but favors praising him for landing them a contract deal instead, ever merciful; more forgiving than he deserves.
She offers that he uses the opportunity to try fulfilling the commission himself, a perfect learning opportunity as she calls it, and Phainon stupidly agrees. Hates himself for it.
He’s been working under her for a little more than four hurried years now, starting from an occasional helper when her tailor shop was threatening closure, to now as her assistant. She overlooks his lack of fashion sense; he doesn’t tell her his fingers feel ill-suited for the delicate needle, rough and brutish, best made to hold dangerous things (Men. His hands, perfectly embracing each of Mydei’s curves, and perhaps it always was their sole purpose.) He spends sleepless nights sketching patrons and admiring the sunburn ridges Mydei’s nails left upon his skin. He soars in soundless dreams.
He can’t shake the craving. He’s in busy streets cities away from their hotel room, hunting for a flash of fiery blond-red. He buys a lighter. He’s in fancy dinners with real people and he searches for the taste of a foreign man through others’ cigarettes.
“I didn’t know you smoked,” Aglaea comments when she catches him.
“Me neither,” he replies with an easy laugh.
His throat prickles from unfamiliar nicotin. She leaves him to his madness.
(Be careful, she says, because she notices even what she doesn’t know. By which she means: Take care of yourself. Sleepless nights are a war of attrition against himself, and a lost battle at that. What Phainon understands: Be careful. You’re falling. He doesn’t fight it.)
He darns trousers and recalls the texture of Mydei’s shirt. The ruthless cold of rings colliding against his earlobes, his temples. That hollowed-out, selfless laugh, as if he was only hot skin stitched together, the inside of him all gone, the organs eaten. He wonders, where did Mydei stash them? All these missing pieces? He thinks of them until it haunts him. He Googles Mydei’s name and finds nothing. A fever dream. He thinks of Mydei even when the needle punctures tiny pearls of blood from his index; even when the first snow finally falls; even when the deadline closes in and he has nothing to show for it. He thinks of Mydei hopelessly, angrily, for far too long, until he resigns himself and accepts that they will never meet again.
The second time Mydei finds him happens at the end of a slow afternoon. Winter’s shortened days have chased away the sun. The sky has darkened and filled with early stars. Phainon leaves the grocery shop carrying a plastic bag filled with frozen food and beers, like he would on any good Friday. Outside, there’s a fancy black car with tinted glass.
His entire body runs warm. With want and need and memories of skin flushed against skin; a simile of lovemaking. The windows roll down just enough so he can catch a glimpse of Mydei’s eyes, curtained behind dark shades. He looks different. Soon, Phainon will learn that he looks different every time, that he uses the scars on his skin like a costume. There’s something animal about him, a wound Phainon can’t see, the threat of a bite — but he's here, in Phainon's city; in Phainon’s space. Phainon would feed him his fingers.
(Are you free?)
The place he brings Phainon is a home built for people who never lived in it. A house on the outskirts of the city, past hedges of ordinary-looking condos. Plain white walls, a blatant lack of family pictures. Phainon isn’t given a tour. He’s shoved against a door roughly, hastily, the knob stabbing into his lower back, and Mydei’s fists at his collar, Mydei’s lips on him, teeth and tongue. Phainon gives his mouth too willingly and Mydei devours his ear and shoulder too, pulling at his shirt until the fabric makes way in a rip of synthetic fiber. The jab of his incisors, finding Phainon’s pulse point. His knee, pressing into Phainon’s erection. His hands, carding through his hair, as if he’d lose his footing without the support.
“Where’d you get that?” he asks, tracing over the tattoo at the side of Phainon’s throat.
“Back home.” From a time where he needed a permanent reminder that the sun would always eventually shine. An entire forever ago. The faded ink still helps.
Mydei hums. He’s entirely covered, a black turtleneck, matching pants. Phainon wants him naked and sprawled out underneath him until he’s shivering from the cold and the relentless assault of his mouth. He’s still pressed against the door; does nothing to change that. Mydei kisses him again.
“Something’s on your mind,” he notices, his voice uncharacteristically soft, his hands gently holding Phainon's face. Phainon wants to sleep cradled between his palms, far from the rest of the world, curled up in his inferno. How comfortable can a person be?
“Just work,” he replies. And built-up heat. “Just — tired.” Scatterings of anger gathered at the bottom of his lungs. Internal pollution. He moves before it corrodes him.
He seizes Mydei’s waist and lifts him up, Mydei’s legs locking behind his back. Phainon carries him to the bed and pushes him into the mattress. He traces the skin of Mydei’s throat, licks the scent of him from his collarbone, smoke and sweat and something bittersweet. He thinks up of a million ways he could take him apart, each more self-indulgent than the last. He finds the hem of Mydei’s top and hungrily pries it away from his stomach. A firm hand lands on his wrist.
“No.”
The urge to disobey roars. Mydei observes him grapple with it, Phainon defiantly pulling the cloth a millimeter up, fingers drifting over warm skin before stopping. He licks his lips. Smirks, satisfied. He reaches above, underneath the pillow, where he retrieves a piece of sky-grey cloth. A blindfold, plus a bottle of lube. Phainon wonders how much of this is premeditated, and whether he really wants to know.
“Close your eyes,” Mydei orders.
Phainon eyelids flutter shut. “But I want to see you.”
Mydei is impossibly kind, tying him blind, pulling him down. The pad of his thumbs smooths over Phainon’s veiled gaze. Phainon wishes he could merge into his skin. He lets himself be guided, leaning down to press his lips on the sweat-slick column of Mydei’s throat, devouring the steady vibration of his voice when he says, matter-of-factly and with a strange sort of fondness, “It doesn’t matter what you want.” Phainon smiles; knows this already.
His laughter is light and wobbly. He’s still capriciously anchored at Mydei’s hips. “Is that what you’re into?” He’s eager for something to learn. Back at the hotel too, there was only pitch-black darkness. “Do you want my hands as well?” To bind or to break — Phainon wouldn’t mind either.
Mydei abandons his wrist. Phainon immediately misses the touch. “No,” Mydei says, then: “Undress me.” Phainon’s breath catches. Obeys, as if wired for it.
He can make out shapes even under the blindfold. Blurred monochromatic lines, triangles, squares, hair, shoulders. He moves on autopilot, with mechanical, assiduous worship.
He pushes the black fabric of the tank top up again without being stopped this time; rolls it up all the way until Mydei’s chest is bare and shivering. Mydei’s body is a blurred out piece of art. The bare muscles are slippery under his palm. Phainon wonders what built them. Exercise? Manual labor? (Other people. Things he doesn’t know about.) Mydei’s shoulders are sturdy enough to support the weight of the entire world yet his waist folds like crumpled paper so easily. Phainon licks the underside of a pec, takes the cold, hard nipple into his mouth. Mydei lets out a stifled sound, and Phainon sucks until he drools. He gives Mydei’s chest a tentative bite, aiming for the fat of it, squeezing the pec he can’t suck with his free hand, and Mydei’s pulling, tugging at his hair, shifting below him with quiet grunts.
“Too slow,” he breathes out. His entire chest heaves against Phainon’s mouth, wet and soft and hard. Phainon laughs.
“So bossy.”
He reaches out, searching for the lube and grabbing the pillow first. It takes two attempts to uncork the bottle once he finds it. Mydei's gaze is all over him, scanning his pale skin, learning all the places where it so obviously flushes.
He blindly pats down Mydei’s stomach until he grazes the teeth of his zipper, the curved line of his fattening cock. Clumsily, he pours lube all over, earning a dissatisfied hiss from Mydei. He smears it all with the flat of his palm, one hand rubbing up and down Mydei's length while the other busies lower, pushing against Mydei’s hole.
“So wet,” he says, to himself mostly, but he knows Mydei has heard from the curl of his fingers over his scalp. The light petting; the pulsing warmth of Mydei’s chest; the cold slick pooling between his thighs. Phainon could lose his mind.
He doesn’t know how to touch men, so he touches Mydei like he would himself. He strokes him slowly, up and down in his fist, grazing at his underside, then faster when Mydei arches, chest pushing into Phainon’s mouth; faster until he’s heaving and so wet Phainon can’t help but say, voice hoarse and syrupy, halfways there, “That’s a good pussy.”
Mydei makes a low, quiet grunt; shift almost imperceptively in the bedsheets. Precum spills from his tip.
“Mmh?” Phainon grows bold. Three digits pumping deep inside the most beautiful man he’s ever seen, a whole hand soaked in lube and precum, and Mydei just lets him. “You like this?”
“Shut up.” The tug in Phainon’s hair grows harsher, a little vicious. He’s herded towards Mydei’s mouth for a kiss. Mydei says, directly to his lips, “And fuck me.”
“You do like it,” Phainon insists, grinning now. He closes his eyes to stop himself from trying to catch glimpses of Mydei’s face. Just the thought of being inside Mydei sends his world spinning again. He forages through his back pocket; finds it empty. “Shit — condoms.”
Mydei’s voice is air-light. “Don’t need.” His hand, rough and callused, on Phainon’s cock, guiding it inside him, and Phainon braces an arm against the bedrest; holds Mydei’s leg up; curses for the first time in an eternity. His entire being feels tethered forward, his breathing trapped in his throat, his orgasm already nearing, heat boiling from his shoulders to his cheeks to his stomach
and he feels drunk even though he’s not, prisoner of a long elusive night even though it’s only late afternoon, not a proper hour for this, and Mydei’s only a stranger, but what a beautiful stranger, for all the secrecy surrounding him. He drops his palm on Mydei’s stomach and feels the bump of his own dick, and he keeps pressing down the pained grunts he tears from Mydei’s mouth sound like moans.
The things Phainon knows: Mydei doesn’t want to be seen. Mydei duly rewards his obedience. Mydei likes painful things — the sharp hurt of being ripped into while still breathing, and the merciless crush of his body underneath another’s, and Phainon could give him that easily; could be so good at it.
Phainon’s full of loud and ugly things. He fucks into Mydei harder, rougher, chasing moans rather than trying to a set rhythm, looking for who’ll break first.
“Gonna come—” Mydei makes a dissatisfied, angry sound that ripples along Phainon’s spine, “—in you.” His hips stutter. Through gritted teeth, he says, “Gonna fill you up—” and that’ll be nowhere near enough; he’s still hungry when his spill trickles down Mydei’s corded thighs; still hungry when Mydei’s voice shatters, More, ah, don’t stop, don’t fucking stop; still hungry when he thrusts deeper, faster, and Mydei thrashes and curses in a foreign language, harsh vowels, hashed-out words; still hungry even though this is all his to take, still hungry—
“I don’t usually do this,” Mydei explains, as if their sex needed a justification. He’s sitting in front of the open windows, cigarette smoke wafting out, and Phainon lays in bed, confident in their afterglow, peering at his own work of art; Mydei’s exposed upper chest, covered in marks the shape of his mouth.
“One night stands?” he asks, his grin widening when Mydei turns to glance at him, “Or do you mean the blindfold?”
“Both,” Mydei scoffs. He turns towards the ink-blue city again. He adds, matter-of-factly, “And we fucked twice. This isn’t a one night stand.”
Semantics. Phainon swallows down his hopes, trying to not look for meaning in that passing comment, for the infinitely small percentage chance that Mydei thought about him; that this man, who could have anyone, picked him specifically.
Silence settles, interspected with Mydei’s quiet exhales. The cigarette butt lights red when trapped between his lips, and Phainon imagines himself in its stead, and Mydei taking long, lazy drags of him until he peters out.
“I tried finding you,” he confesses, sleep-slow. Mydei’s name is still tinted purple in his search history. Mydei flickers ashes on the window sill and walks back inside the room. Drops the back of a hand, the one that wasn’t holding the cigarette, on Phainon’s sticky forehead.
“You shouldn’t have.”
Phainon thinks of putting his fingers into his mouth like a prybar; of opening his skull and seeing all that's inside. He drifts to sleep thinking of this: Mydei’s dismantled jaw, and their two mouths slotting together, and the cigarette’s greying ashes trickling down his throat like radioactive dust. He wakes up hours later, alone. The room is tepid and odorless, as if Mydei had never been here.
Five easy simple steps to curb an addiction:
(He only Googled it for fun, by sheer curiosity, because a very loud, obnoxious part of him kept wailing that compulsively Googling a stranger’s name over and over despite the lack of search results was weird; that masturbating to memories of nights from weeks ago, moaning a name which was most likely fake into his fist, wasn’t healthy. Whatever.)
Set a quit date.
He skips to the next step.
Change your environment; remove any reminders of your addiction from your home and workplace.
Easy; his addiction is nowhere to be seen.
Distract yourself.
There’s work. The failed design, which needs mending. Normal life; groceries and taxes and aging parents.
Review your past attempts at quitting.
He skips to the next step.
Create a support network.
He chuckles. Closes the tab. He looks at his reflection in the mirror as if it was the first time he faced himself. Scratch marks crosshatch his shoulders. His fingers itch.
“This isn’t exactly what I had in mind,” Cerydra declares, the kindest rejection she’s capable of.
She’s contemptuous, and she looks at Phainon like she dares him to defy her on this, and he doesn’t, because the end result isn’t what he had in mind either. He knows what she’s thinking; that she wasted her time trusting Aglaea’s shop with this project, and that he’s not made for this. Unsurprisingly, he agrees. Facing his own failure is surprisingly sobering.
He misses the thickness of the blindfold over his eyes.
He looks for Mydei inside fleeting cloud shapes and in the darkness behind his eyelids. He dreams of simple, dangerous things: his own name, lovingly murmured against the shell of his ear. Sleeping curled up in each other’s shape. A stranger who only exists at nightfall; who can’t be found in any list or register. A dead man walking, and Phainon helplessly chases his elusive shadow on Okhema’s freezing asphalt.
Mydei calls him. There’s heavy snow that day, too much for cars to trudge through the streets. Phainon is confined inside, doodling outfits he’ll discard later, more paper in the trash, as he watches the world turn into a blanket of white.
“Yes, hello,” he says as he picks up, idly tracing lines and cubes in graphite.
A cough of distant static against his ear, and then:
“How are you?”
His knee knocks against the desk leg; he silently cusses out. “Great,” he stammers, smoothes, “Even better now.”
Mydei’s laughter sounds countries away. There’s another noise beyond the static, the regular sound of waves. He’s not in Okhema. Another short silence before he asks, “How’s work?” and Phainon can’t tell if he really cares or if he’s making small talk, but Mydei remembers, and surely that means something.
“It’s—” A glance down his messy sketches. “Great, too,” he finishes.
“Is it really?”
“No,” he admits with a quick, ashamed laugh. “But I’ll manage. How are you?”
“Still alive.”
The wind; the waves. There’s only so many cities freckling the coast. A map, another hint, and he’d be able to figure out which. Doesn’t matter. Focus. Ask before he leaves. “When will I see you again?”
The next silence is longer. When Mydei talks, his voice is rough and muffled. Someone speaks in the background, in that language Phainon doesn’t know but recognizes, the one Mydei speaks when Phainon hits the right spots, touches his neediest parts. Bruises him sweetly. “I don’t know,” he ends up answering. “I’ll call you.” More talking further beyond, and Mydei warps away from the phone, talking to someone, someone else, before returning to Phainon. “Okay?”
“Okay.” Phainon feels strangely hollow. “How’d you get my—”
A single beep. The call has been cut short. Phainon stays unmoving, staring at the series of numbers on his screen.
He floats throughout the next few days, high off Mydei’s voice, convinced now that there’ll be a third time; that Mydei, wherever he is, thought —thinks — of him. It’s enough. When his confidence eventually wanes, and the desire for fire and smoke and the feel of rings catching into his hair returns, he calls back. Three long dials, then nothing. A cheery feminine voice informs, The number you called isn’t in service anymore, and as quickly as it left, the itch returns.
“The house next door? No,” the elderly woman replies, pity pooling in her stone-grey eyes, as if he wasn’t the only one she watched returning here, searching through empty walls, looking for a ghost. “No, I’m sorry. Nobody lives here.”
How can you miss something that was never yours? How can you not?
The rapture happens while he’s driving, on an errand for Aglaea — fabric resupply, plus some bandages for his clumsy fingers. He sees it in the corner of his eye: a fancy black car, and he remembers that one late afternoon parading as an early night, and he knows Mydei’s back.
He follows it without thinking. It’s a consequence of winter, seeking for the fire he can put his hand through. He swerves through the white streets, steered by curiosity and the hungry need to catch a glimpse of Mydei again, see his voice, earn his touch. From behind, he sees broad silhouettes in the front seat, men in black suits, and then Mydei, a blink of orange-red. The car stops abruptly at a corner; Phainon almost bumps into it.
There’s no movement at first. The men talk, and Mydei stretches in the backseat, rubbing his nape. Then he says something, and the men go quiet, nod. Phainon thinks he’s met their gaze, but he’s not sure. Mydei exits the car by himself.
Mydei's gorgeous. A black and red wound in the snowed-in world. They face each other as if they have never met before. Mydei’s voice is steady, grounded. Anchored to some place faraway, near that beach where the waves seemed so loud. He cocks his head to the side.
“Following me, aren't you?”
“No,” Phainon breathes out, quickly and unprepared. His lie forms vapid condensation in the frigid air. His heart hammers in his chest.
Mydei tugs at his own collar, the buttons closed all the way up, and Phainon notices a scar there, the shape and texture unmistakeable, a skin-colored crater the diameter of his thumb.
“You were,” Mydei says. His eyes are stones; precious jewels doused in cold for safekeeping.
“I was just,” Phainon starts, then pauses. “I—”
I missed you. He can’t say it; that’s insanity. There’s nothing to hold onto here. No relationship. No bond. Mydei pulls the carton of cigarettes from his chest pocket and his lighter from his pants. The motion is bored when he flicks it ablaze, yet he smokes as if it was the only thing giving him oxygen, in deep, focused drags. His eyes never stray from Phainon all the while, scanning him like he would a threat, someone who can’t be trusted, and Phainon stays impossibly still to try and prove otherwise.
The car’s roof is buried in snow. Given enough time, it’ll merge with its surroundings, and Phainon will, too. He remains deathly still, stuck in rigor mortis, letting the snowflakes crash onto his shoulders, his hair, and feeling them melt into trickling water.
Mydei watches him fade into the paling city without a word. He looks older, tired, as if each week apart cost him decades. When he speaks, Phainon can make out the vestiges of a foreign accent.
“What is it you want from me?”
The truth comes to mind immediately. Stability. Fairness. Equity; a phone number Phainon can call, an address he can go to, and an opportunity to reach out on his own rather than wait for his leash to be tugged; for his supply to be delivered. He wets his lower lip.
“I want us to know each other,” he says. That’s simple enough. He’s so desperate. He doesn’t know what he can and cannot ask. His first man, and what a man. He doesn’t know what he’s doing.
Mydei breathes out. He stubs the cigarette in the inside of his palm.
“I already know you,” he says, horribly neutral, cruelly plain. Phainon doesn’t understand, and so Mydei continues, voice even. “Your name is Phainon Khaslana. You work as an assistant in a small, failing tailor shop, where you’ve been stuck for years trying to repay an old debt.” Each word comes with its own double-edged sting. “You’re twenty-eight.” Mydei recites the title of all these chapters of Phainon’s life like he would instructions, and Phainon feels betrayed and insignificant, reduced to all these things he’s never liked about himself. His throat seizes. Unable to speak up, he’s forced to stand in the freezing snow and watch the man he’s grown pitifully addicted to list all his shortcomings. “You live in a small apartment on Ampho St,” Mydei impassively continues. Phainon wishes he would stop. “You were born in Aedes Elysiae. You’ve never fallen in love.” A semblance of hesitation. “Not really.’’
“How do you—”
“I told you,” Mydei cuts. He makes it sound so simple, and maybe it is. It takes nothing to burn bridges this frail. A single flame. “I know you.”
Phainon has taken a helpless step forward, and Mydei’s gaze latches onto his feet, a cold warning, and Phainon stops here, unable to further breach the suddenly endless distance between them.
“Let’s end this,” Mydei says, as if it was a long time coming, and the same way he decided to take Phainon to his room, decided to turn him into something else than a one-night stand, decided to give him strong tastes of something addictive before weaning him, over and over and over.
Phainon is frozen. Something stabs in the middle of his chest; his heart, surely, misshapened, clawing at the walls of his torso, growing thorns in its ugly metamorphosis. His mouth opens. I don’t want to, he tries to say, but Mydei’s back is already turned, and his cigarette lies behind him in the snow, its embers the faint flickering red of a dying light,
(it doesn’t matter what you want)
and Phainon knows. He’s always known.