BUT I’M INTO YOU !!

by azullumi

Summary:

like paramore’s hit song, “still into you”, some things just make sense and one of those is you and him.

chapter 1: anaxa and the reversed “how are you two not dating yet?”, so it’s just “WHY ARE YOU DATING HIM?”
chapter 2: phainon, a laid back guy who takes care of everything, and you, a dramatic person who stresses out a lot.

Notes:

originally posted on tumblr: @azullumi

took me too long to transfer this here,,

Chapter 1: i. maybe meant to be

Some people are just born soulmates, complete halves of each other; the edges of their being meant to fit one another. ANAXAGORAS and you are what you like to believe to be the embodiment of that—two flames from the same fire, burning brighter when together.

“Must you really be troublesome?” His voice echoes, concern written on his often stoic his face as he places the back of his hand against your forehead for a moment. His fleeting touch is cool against your warm skin, a quiet contrast that makes you lean into it instinctively. He exhales softly, almost inaudibly, before retrieving his hand.

“Must you be so handsome?” You beam at him, despite how sickly you look and how your voice is rough and hoarse. The frown he gives you makes you laugh—then choke and cough afterwards. He clicks his tongue, not unkindly, giving you the glass of water then dabbing at your lips with the edge of the towel when you finish, muttering something about how recklessness must be a disease. Still, even with the irritation painted across his face, his hands are careful, his touch gentle. And you feel it again: that unwavering, bone-deep certainty that you were always meant to be right here, with him.

“You’re fussing too much,” you murmur, voice still scratchy, but your smile is unshaken. You let him do what he needs to do for yourself, lest you concur his wrath and get a mile of scolding about your carelessness from him. You don’t want to hear it anymore. He had already talked your ears off when he had arrived and saw that you weren’t resting just like he had wanted you to do.

“You’re ill,” he replies flatly, squeezing the excess water from the towel before folding it anew, placing it over your forehead. “Forgive me for wanting to keep you alive.”

“I’m not dying, Anaxagoras.”

No. If you perished from something as banal as fever, it would be after he’d dragged you back to lucidity and made sure you remembered it was his hand that spared you. And not just once. He’d remind you daily and without shame, that it was he who nursed you through your recklessness, he who kept you from slipping away over something as embarrassingly preventable as he’d once put it; “Next time you have decided to tempt mortality, at least wear a coat.”

(It was undeniable, however, that underneath all that pride and sharpness, Anaxagoras loves you in the only way he knows how: deeply, deliberately, and with a care that clings to the edges of everything he does for you.)

“And? Shall you be on the deathbed before I begin taking care of you?”

In a world full of almosts and maybes, you and him are the rare certainty—a quiet, unwavering truth as if the stars themselves whispered your names in the same breath long before you ever crossed paths.

However, others seem to oppose these ideas.

Such as your friend, your dearly beloved Stelle, who finds fascination in trash cans. Over the duration of your friendship—which is roughly from when you saved her when she got her ass stuck in a bin to this very moment and onwards—, you’ve found that embarrassment does not exist in her vocabulary.

You’ve recalled your conversation with her a few days ago, when she had asked you to: “Blink twice if you need help.” to which was met with just your confusion. You remember the dramatic groan that escaped her—loud, theatrical, and full of despair—as she clutched your shoulders like she’s anchoring herself from being swept away by the tragedy that is your love life. You remember her eyes and how they lock onto yours with the intensity of someone who’s seen too much, recounting horrors no one else can understand, and the rare seriousness painted across her usually unserious face. All of that just to present the grand question that has been repeatedly hammered into your ear drums: “Why are you dating him?”

Was it really unbelievable that you are dating THE Anaxagoras—the demised scholar, the known blasphemer, one of the Seven Sages, and founder of the School of Nousporists?

Stelle’s question then had come out in a raised tone; horror, confusion, and everything that reeks of despair and doubt. She has met your lover many times before and all she got is terrible impressions from him. You get it, you understand her, truly, a hundred million times over. Anaxagoras is difficult in the same way a cryptic crossword or a sudoku puzzle with only five numbers given as clues is difficult; he is maddening, frustrating, and devilishly handsome. Well, that too, and how he often causes people to mutter curses under their breath. He talks as if every word of his is carved from marble and gold and thinks in layers you often need to chisel through.

Although, Stelle was not the first person to express her concerns. No, no, she was not the only one who had questioned you about your romantic ties with the man himself. There had been a long line of them—colleagues, acquaintances, old friends who hadn’t seen you since the two of you got together—each of them offering their unsolicited takes like critics reviewing a painting they couldn’t comprehend. Some were subtle, expressing their skepticism through light jokes or half-serious jabs, dressing their doubts with honeyed laughter, and the repeated statements of “Really?” or “Wow, I could never… believe that.” While others were more direct, eyebrows raised, voices dripping with disbelief. “Him?” they’d ask, like you just dropped the most terrible news in their lives ever.

“How are you feeling now?” Anaxagoras’ voice snapped you out of your daze. You had not noticed you have been staring at him for a while now, recalling the conversation in your head like a script you’ve read a thousand times. You blink, reality trickling back in with the weight of his gaze. It is steady, unreadable, but undeniably attentive, only for you.

“Better,” you rasp, offering him a weak smile, “or at least I will be, once you stop hovering like a mother hen.” He doesn’t react at first, only lifts a brow as he shifts the damp towel slightly to sit more evenly across your forehead.

“Then I suppose you won’t be feeling better anytime soon."

It’s not that they don’t like Anaxagoras—they just don’t know him, not in the way you do, at least. They see the storm but not the calm it leaves behind when it reaches you. They hear the sharpness in his voice but never the softness interlacing between the syllables when he says your name. They witness the way he dismantles arguments with precision but never the way he carefully tucks your hair behind your ear when the wind picks up or remembers exactly how you take your tea without ever needing to ask.

What none of them seemed to grasp was the way Anaxagoras, for all his cold logic and biting words, treated you as if you were something priceless. Something fragile and worth protecting. You know it, because even with his sharp mind and sharper tongue, he’s gentle with you.

Gentle in this, in him dropping everything that he needed to do just to take care of you, like the world could wait if you so much as whimpered. Gentle in the way he holds your hand, gentle in the way his thumb traces idle circles against your skin like he’s memorizing the heat of it. Gentle in the way his silence filled the room, soft and reassuring. It’s in the quiet moments where he simply exists beside you. You’ve known that the way he shows his affection and adoration for you is not loud, and never will be. It is neither grand nor showy, but it is steady and grounding, and it is yours.

(Anaxa didn’t need to say he loved you for his affections were in every quiet action, in every unspoken gesture that threaded through the ordinary like gold in cloth.)

“What are you thinking now?” Anaxa says, noticing your gaze.

His voice is calm, unhurried, yet carries the weight of someone who’s always listening, even to the things you don’t say. You blink up at him, the corners of your mouth curving, and for a moment, you hesitate. Not because you don’t know what to say, but because putting feelings this big into words feels like trying to catch the sky in your hands.

“That I must’ve done something good in a past life,” you say softly, “to be loved like this.”

Anaxagoras doesn’t speak, but you catch the way his expression shifts. It is the ever-subtle change in his eyes, softer now, like moonlight breaking through cold marble. He doesn’t smile, but there’s something in the way he looks at you that feels louder than joy.

“I don’t love you because of merit,” he murmurs, adjusting the edge of the blanket with care. “You don’t need to earn something that already belongs to you.”

They only saw the philosopher, the blasphemer, the myth himself, while you saw the man who kissed your knuckles when you couldn’t sleep. And something about this feels almost holy, the kindness reserved only for you is sacred, untouched by the noise of the world and tucked safely in the quiet corners of your world. It’s in the way he holds your gaze like it’s the only truth worth believing, in how he tends to your needs before you voice them, as if your comfort is a principle written into his very being.

To others, he is a riddle wrapped in cold intellect, but to you, he is all the warmth embodies, the tender affection that weaves into the gaps of your fingers, the gentle lull of a tide as it crashes into the shore, and the stains on his cheek when you kiss him; he is the quiet devotion in the spaces between his sighs and your laughs—it is simply, completely, and utterly undeniable that the both of you are truly for one another.

Chapter 2: ii. won't you give in?

Summary:

The ridiculousness of this situation sinks into you now—the man donned in white and gold, half soaked and entirely unserious, staging a melodramatic serenade over something small, with a busker-turned-background vocalist going off like this was their final performance. And yet, in the absurdity of it all, your chest aches from the sheer, overwhelming love you feel for this man who would make a fool of himself just to see you smile again.

They say opposites attract, and you and PHAINON are the utter proof of that statement. And much to everyone’s expectations, it works against all odds, though how chaotic everything may be. Where you spiral, he steadies. When your thoughts are loud and messy—which often is—he answers in calm nods, soft chuckles, and gentle touches. In those drastic moments, his arms are already around your shoulders before the panic hits its peak, steadying and guiding you back to solid land.

Phainon just seems to know what to say—or not to say—to bring you back down to the ground when you are overwhelmed and flooded by thousands of (imaginary) disasters running inside your head or when you are frantically pacing around, mumbling to yourself, and doing that small habit (e.g. biting your nails or picking your lip until it bleeds). He’ll tread towards where you are, taking your hands, and offers words of comfort and assurance as if he’s done it a thousand times before—he already has and he will never tire of it, never pull away, never let you down, never treat your panic like a burden but rather like something gentle to cradle until it passes.

It was as if your mind is a place he knows all too well, like a maze that he had already memorized, navigating through the paths of your thoughts with a tender precision.

“Don’t worry, love.” He tells you, voice warm and soothing as he cups your face affectionately. He holds the same note in his gaze, love and the gentleness that comes with it, that only you know of, that only the both of you share for one another, “You can leave it to me.” You cling to your thoughts, all panic and muddied, that has now lost all meaning under your turmoil and in between his ease. His words tug you back to the brink and somehow when everything feels like it's on fire—oftentimes metaphorically and sometimes literally—he’s already halfway through putting out the flames of your problems. (See? The world didn’t end) You don’t know how he does it, how he holds your mess with such grace, only that he does.

You had asked him once, “Aren’t you tired of me?” Surely, he should be, right? I mean, having to deal with someone who is stressed every minute and needing reassurance every single time can be so draining, right? You’ve already heard about couples breaking up because of those things like their lover was being so much like they didn’t want to be comforted every single time like they never even listen like everything is just the same thing over and over again and it gets so tiring having to deal with those things repeatedly. You’re tiring to deal with, right? Maybe he’s just trying to put up with you because you don’t know?? How would you know????

It feels like you’re always too much and never enough at the same time. It was as if you’re clinging too tightly and still somehow slipping away, like one more breakdown, one more late-night anxiety spiral, one more text asking “are you mad at me?” will be the final straw. You replay every conversation in your head, dissect every pause, every sigh, every silence that might not even mean anything but what if it did? What if he’s just too kind to say he’s tired of you? What if he’s just waiting for the right moment to leave quietly? What if you’re reading too much into this—but also, what if you’re not? What if you’re right and he’s just too polite to admit it? You try to shake the thoughts off, but they cling like static. It’s relentless.

What if—”No. Why would I be?” But his voice cuts through it all, clean and sharp like a stone abruptly dropped into a pond, and like the settling ripples that eases into the water’s surface to return to what it once was and what it ought to be, your spiraling thoughts are quiet once more. “You may think that you’re unraveling, confusing, and a mess, that perhaps I am tired of your chaos and thoughts. But I promise that you're only a little tangled right now.” His words settle into you like soft rain. “Sure, it gets tiring sometimes, but love is not about ease, isn’t it? It’s about staying, especially when the wires get crossed and the lights flicker. I don’t mind untangling you. I chose you, mess and all, and I’ll keep choosing you, even on the days you forget how to choose yourself.”

It’s just so simple. For Phainon, loving you means loving the storm and being unbothered by the lightning and everything terrible that comes with it.

Albeit sometimes, he matches your energy. No, more like snatches it from you, spins it in his hands, and throws it back at you. He can be dramatic too—even a hundred times more than you already are. One particular example is when the both of you had a fight—it was nothing major, no broken plates, no screaming, no yelling involved (aeons, he’ll hate himself if even raised his voice at you for a little). But still, it was something that made you upset and turned away from him.

The silence between you and him had only lasted for less than a day, however, when you heard the sound of something hitting your window, to which you dismissed as nothing at first. Not until it came again, again, and again. Until you get sick of it and decide to check which little kid is playing pranks on you this time, thus you open the window, ready to address the annoyance but…

Spoiler alert: it was not a kid.

It was a man in the form of someone you clearly know, whose lines on his face has been memorized by you, whose hands you had held many times in yours, whose laugh still echoes in your head even when he's not around—and there he was, Phainon, standing a few feet away from your window. You just noticed but there is someone else too, but situated a little further away from your boyfriend who you just had a fight earlier. Wait, are they singing? Was that singing you’re hearing? And is that a water vase that he’s trying to spray on himself to imitate the rain?

“What are you doing?” You voice out the loudest question inside your head, confused. You’re beyond bewilderment, actually.

Phainon expresses the most exaggeratedly forlorn expression you’ve ever seen on his face. The guy beside him, one that you don’t know but have seen performing in the streets of Okhema several times before, keeps singing into the invisible microphone in his hand. You don’t know what the song is but he sure is hitting those notes.

“I’m suffering, clearly.” Phainon replies dramatically, placing a hand over his chest like a wounded prince. “I’ve been banished from the kingdom of your heart, and thus I stand here—exiled, soggy, and still utterly devoted.”

“What?” At this point, you are not entirely sure what to say or react, but Phainon does as he rambles on and on with his poor singer accompanying him from the back.

“I have known despair. I have tasted the bitterness of your silence. I have felt the frost of you turning away from me. Please,” he begs, asks, and does everything just for you even if he looks utterly stupid right now. Thankfully, there aren’t any citizens to witness the spectacle of their dazzling Chrysos Heir. “Please come back to me, my love. Allow me to hold you again.”

“Phainon, it was just spilled milk.” Why was he acting as if you were breaking up with him? As if you were truly going to leave him? You had planned on apologizing to him later on and admitting your mistakes, you really were, but he beat you to it with whatever this is.

“And for that,” he declares, without a hint of sarcasm or anything similar lacing into his tone. “I shall atone.” And you could not help but sigh, rubbing your temples as he continues to look at you like a tragic hero awaiting his redemption arc.

“You know it was my fault, right?” You remind him, voice a little softer now. However, his response comes without hesitation, firm and full of that all-consuming affection he never dares to hide:

“You could never do anything wrong in my eyes.”

The ridiculousness of this situation sinks into you now—the man donned in white and gold, half soaked and entirely unserious, staging a melodramatic serenade over something small, with a busker-turned-background vocalist going off like this was their final performance. And yet, in the absurdity of it all, your chest aches from the sheer, overwhelming love you feel for this man who would make a fool of himself just to see you smile again. You lean slightly out the open window, resting your arms on the sill, watching the man with a mixture of exasperation and adoration, wondering how on earth you got lucky enough to be loved like this.

A breath of laughter slipping past your lips. “What are you waiting for?” you say, voice tinged with fondness. “Didn’t you wish to hold me?”

Phainon beams up at you like you’ve just given him the stars and rushes to where you are, despite the fact that there is a perfectly fine door that he can go through.

“Oh, and please, compensate the poor man for your theatrics.”

Notes:

i love him hes so stupid

Notes:

hope you all are having a great dayyy!!