January Wedding

by princesscas

Summary:

On the first of December, Phainon’s summer fling shows up at his door and asks to stay.

Notes:

for kyla and gracie, who make cardboard boxes into christmas trees!

sigh!! it's a holiday fic. it's 26k. i got carried away. there's some nsfw implications which are top phainon bottom mydei but it's not very overt!

go check out this fic's phaidei playlist on spotify!

On the first of December, there’s a knock on the door. Phainon has just gotten out of the shower, and perhaps the shower was a little longer than usual but he’s pretty sure Cyrene doesn’t get off work for another hour at least. He ignores it.

The knock grows louder.

Must be something important. Maybe Cyrene’s shift leader let her go home early, or there’s a delivery he has to sign for. Phainon mutters a curse to himself and shuffles into his pants. His hair is still wet; usually he spends a little while toweling it off, but he can’t very well open the door naked, so that’ll have to wait.

A pause. Then the knock comes again, rapid, one-two-three taps.

Phainon gives up on the shirt. “Holy shit, Cyrene, give me two minutes, I’m coming,” he yells, throwing the door open.

And then—

It’s not Cyrene.

Phainon, shirtless, hair dripping, stares at the person in front of his door. He remembers him. He remembers; how could he forget? When that summer they’d—and he’d—and he remembers that face beneath him, his hair spilling out across the grass by the river, his breath in Phainon’s mouth and the flush down his collarbones when they—

“…Mydei,” he says. He’s suddenly profoundly embarrassed about his shirtlessness, though he knows Mydei’s seen him in far less already. “Um, hi?”

“Phainon,” says Mydei, his one-night stand from the hottest weekend of July. “Let me stay with you.”

Phainon stares at him. His hair is all over the place and there are shadows beneath his eyes like he hasn’t slept in days, and yet he’s still, somehow, beautiful. “Mydei?” he repeats faintly. “You’re—you’re here? How are you here…?”

“Just for a few days,” Mydei says, not quite begging, but not quite not-begging either. His hands are stained red from the cold, and at his feet is a suspiciously large backpack. “Just for a little while.”

Logically, Phainon should say no. They haven’t seen each other since that July night, when Phainon took him to his favorite spot on the river and kissed him on his hard mouth until somehow all their clothes came off. It was only one day. He doesn’t know Mydei, not really, and Mydei doesn’t know him. And with the backpack and the desperation, he’s clearly on the run. Anyone with half a brain would turn him away.

Phainon throws the door open wider anyway. “Get in. You look freezing.”

So Mydei brings his large backpack and his red-cold hands into the house, and thus begins their life together.

***

“I’ll give you the short version: I ran away.”

Phainon waits. Eventually, when Mydei starts removing two pairs of pants from his backpack, he realizes there won’t be any more, and says, “That’s all?”

Mydei doesn’t look at him. He nods and goes back to the backpack. Phainon expects him to pull out another pair of pants, but instead he starts removing socks. Is that all he has? Just the two pairs of pants in the bag, and the ones on him now?

“At least tell me you’re not on the run from the law,” Phainon says, only half-joking. “If I’m harboring a fugitive, I’d at least like to know about it.”

“I haven’t committed any crimes.”

Phainon sighs in exaggerated relief. “Good! One less thing to worry about.”

Mydei throws him a tiny smile over his shoulder. His meager clothing pile sits next to the living room table. Phainon and Cyrene’s apartment is a one-bedroom that they’ve forcibly converted into a two-person space; Cyrene sleeps in the bedroom, which is also her study space. Phainon sleeps in a corner of the living room with a curtain. Mydei has been unpacking his things along the border of the curtain, just outside Phainon’s space.

Without all the clothes, his backpack looks pathetically thin. Deflated. Phainon stares at it sadly for a moment. The only thing left in the backpack, as far as he can tell, is a sleek laptop peeking out of the top. “Hey,” he says, quieter than before. “Aren’t you still in school?”

Mydei’s mouth thins. “I was.”

Phainon looks at him for a long moment. He almost wants to ask. Why would he leave his life? Why come to Phainon, of all people? Doesn’t he have friends, family? Doesn’t he have somewhere better to run?

“You’ll need a better jacket,” he says instead.

Mydei glances up at him. For the first time, he looks genuinely surprised.

“Don’t lie,” Phainon says, smiling. “I saw how cold you looked out there. You need something better.”

This makes Mydei’s mouth even out again. “Yeah?”

“You can use one of mine,” Phainon offers, before he can think better of it. “We’re the same size, right?”

Mydei eyes his chest. “Think so.” His eyes drag lower, and his eyes glimmer with amusement. “Hm. Maybe I’m a little bigger.”

Phainon flushes hot and looks down. He’s still shirtless, and the waistband of his pants has begun to slip down his hips, just enough that his happy trail is showing. “Oh my god,” he squeaks, already tightening the waistband. “I’m so sorry. Let me go get decent, what the hell, I can’t believe I forgot I was—well. Give me a minute.”

He makes a beeline for his dresser, pulling out the first shirt he can find. It’s a flannel, blue and gold, one of his nicer ones. He can’t be bothered to save it for a better occasion. He just throws it on and buttons it as fast as possible.

Mydei watches him, his mouth slanted. He waits until Phainon’s on the last button to say, “You missed the top one.”

Phainon blinks. Sure enough, there’s one extra button at the bottom of the shirt. He groans.

Mydei grins. He stands up. “Here. Let me help.”

Once he draws close enough, he reaches out and begins undoing the bottom button of the flannel. Phainon’s breath catches. He stares down at his careful hands, working their way up to his face, and can’t quite remember how to speak.

“You okay?” Mydei asks when his hands reach the top button, right by Phainon’s throat. “You’re really red.”

“Shower,” Phainon manages to choke out. He scrambles to say something. “Um, the shower was really hot. Made my skin red. You know.”

“Hm,” says Mydei. He starts to rebutton the shirt, this time correctly lined up. “You weren’t that red earlier.”

Phainon probably blushes even more; he can’t quite tell. He bats Mydei’s hands away and fumbles for the buttons himself. “I can take it from here.”

Mydei steps back and watches him. Then, just as Phainon finishes, he says, “You blush all the way down your chest.”

Phainon nearly trips over his own feet. “What?”

Mydei laughs.

Phainon stares at him, entranced. He’d nearly forgotten how handsome Mydei looks when he laughs. Six months now. It’s been six months since they last saw each other. Six months since Phainon swallowed the lump in his throat and told himself that summer flings never meant anything. Never lasted. Never came back.

At last Mydei’s laughter grows quiet, but his eyes stay light, like something’s changed. “I don’t suppose you have a guest room,” he says drily.

“Well, I might be able to get my sister to give up the bed? Or share it? She’s a blanket hog, though.”

Mydei shakes his head. “I wasn’t serious. I’ll be fine.” And he moves toward the living room couch, complete with the layer of blankets that he and Cyrene always fight over.

“What? No,” Phainon says, reaching for his arm. “You can—you can take my bed. It’s way more comfortable. See? I even have a real bedframe and throw pillows. I’m not like those guys with the mattress on the floor.”

Mydei snorts.

Phainon crosses his arms, mock-offended. “Whatever,” he sniffs. “Sleep on the couch, then, for all I care.”

“Okay,” Mydei says, and moves his things to the couch again.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Phainon blurts, taking his wrist again. “Mydei, I was only joking! Obviously! You really can’t take the couch, the cushions are weird and they slide around a little if the gap gets too big and—”

Mydei grins at him. “Uh huh?”

Phainon abruptly realizes he’s been had. He sighs defensively. “I can hardly let you be uncomfortable.”

Mydei sits down on the end of the couch, leaning his head against the armrest. “Phainon,” he says quietly. “I’ve been sleeping at train stops for the last three days. I’ll take anything.”

For the first time, he sounds truly tired. He sounds like someone with nowhere safe to go. Phainon’s chest feels strange. He has the sudden urge to give Mydei everything, to pile all the blankets on him and never let him be cold again. “You don’t have to settle,” he says weakly. “I don’t want you to settle. You should be—you know, comfortable.”

Mydei smiles. “Knew you’d say some sappy shit like that,” he mumbles, settling further into the couch cushions. “I thought about it the whole way here.” Then, before he can elaborate, his eyes slip closed and he sighs softly.

“Wait,” Phainon blurts. “Don’t fall asleep there, at least let me move you to the—”

“Too late,” Mydei says, through a massive grin. “I’m already asleep. Can’t hear you.”

Phainon huffs. “I’m taking you to the bed.”

Mydei’s eyelashes flutter, though his eyes remain closed. “You can try.”

Phainon crosses his arms. That sounds suspiciously like a challenge. So he grabs Mydei by the ankles and starts dragging him off the couch.

Mydei’s eyes fly open. He yelps. “Phainon—!”

Phainon laughs. He scrambles away from the couch, hiding in the kitchen. Mydei follows him instinctually, lunging across the counter for him. Phainon leaps out of the way of his touch, but bangs into the stove behind him. He hisses in pain.

“Got you now,” Mydei declares. His smile grows with every step he takes.

Phainon backs up slowly. His hip still hurts from the stove. He can’t quite believe it; Mydei’s here, Mydei’s here, with him. He thought they’d never see each other again. He thought—he thought—and Mydei’s so beautiful, even now, with his hair ragged and his eyes shadowed…

Eventually Phainon’s back hits the fridge. Before he can escape, Mydei’s hands close in on either side of his waist, pinning him there. There’s a noise behind them, sort of from the door, but he’s too preoccupied to notice it. Instead he stares at Mydei’s encroaching face and swallows thickly.

“Hey,” Phainon says, his voice strained.

Mydei’s eyes don’t look so tired anymore. “Hi.”

Phainon’s eyes flicker down, then back up just as fast. He hesitates.

Mydei doesn’t move. He looks at Phainon evenly, staying close, waiting for his next move.

And then, from the doorway, someone squeaks.

Phainon flushes bright red. “Cyrene!” he calls loudly, pushing Mydei a reasonable distance away. “Welcome home! We have, um, a guest…?”

Cyrene unwinds her long scarf from around her neck. “I’ve noticed,” she says drily. “So is this a guest, or a guest?”

“Cyrene.”

“Gotta know these things,” Cyrene says, shrugging. “Anyway, my manager let me take home the leftovers from tonight’s dinner! There was eggplant parmesan, but we ran out because it was so popular. You only get the pesto pasta with chicken.”

Phainon sighs longingly. “I’ll take it.” He hasn’t eaten since breakfast this morning; he was going to have lunch, but he got caught up helping someone find all the relevant texts for their thesis on the Aidonian revolution, and then it was three in the afternoon and he didn’t have time. Any hot meal is a gift.

Cyrene twirls into the kitchen and plunks her bag onto the counter. The sound is promisingly loud; the bag must be heavy, which means she’s brought home enough for multiple meals. “Help yourself.” She glances at Mydei. “Both of you, actually. Have you eaten yet?”

Mydei blinks at her slowly. “No.”

Cyrene puts her hands on her hips. “Then eat, silly! There’s like five pounds of pasta in there. You think I can eat that much?”

“I definitely can,” Phainon says dreamily, already loading up his plate. He puts his dish into the microwave and starts it. It hums gently in the background.

Mydei looks a little relieved. “Okay. How much do I owe you?”

Cyrene looks at him sideways. “I got it for free. You don’t have to pay us for it.”

Mydei’s spine stiffens, just minutely. “It’s not a problem. I have enough money.”

“So do we,” Cyrene says sharply.

Mydei’s mouth thins. “I didn’t mean—I’m just—” he tries, and then he sighs, looking tired again. “I’m only trying to be polite. Sorry.”

The microwave beeps.

Cyrene looks at him, then at the microwave, and laughs.

Mydei frowns. “What?”

“Ah, nothing,” she says, beaming at him. “Stop being so shy! Go get food already! At this rate Phainon’s gonna be done eating before you even start.”

Mydei carefully picks up the serving spoon and serves himself some of the pesto pasta with chicken. The microwave hums again. Phainon barely hears it over the sound of himself chowing down on his pasta. It’s warm and nutty and it tastes like heaven.

“Oh,” says Mydei, turning around from the microwave. “I forgot to introduce myself.”

Cyrene waves her hand. “Ehh, it’s not your fault! It’s Phainon’s, obviously. He should have introduced us. Anyway, I’m Cyrene! His older sister. We live together.”

“I’m Mydei.”

“Nice to meet you, Mydei,” she says, plunking herself down at the kitchen table. Then, “Wait. You’re Mydei?”

Mydei blinks at her. “Yes…?”

“You’re Mydei-Mydei.”

“Just one Mydei. Not two.”

“Augh,” says Cyrene with feeling. She rephrases: “Mydei from this summer?”

Mydei freezes. Behind him, the microwave beeps. He doesn’t open it.

“He asked to stay with us for a little while,” Phainon says, looking between them. “I said yes. I probably should have asked you first, but—anyway, I promise we’ll both stay out of your way.”

“It won’t be forever,” Mydei says quickly. His eyes flicker to Phainon briefly, then away again. He turns around to the microwave. “Just a little while.”

Cyrene makes a grand gesture with her hands. “It’s no problem! Stay as long as you want. I have finals, but as long as you’re quiet when I’m studying, I’ll be just fine.” She kicks Phainon under the table. “And I’m sure Phainon won’t mind if you stay a little longer.”

Mydei takes the third seat at the table. “He wouldn’t?”

Cyrene shakes her head eagerly. “God, no! Are you kidding? You should have heard how he talked about you. I don’t think he went a single conversation without mentioning you for all of August.”

Phainon flushes bright red. “Phyrefe,” he tries to protest through a mouthful of pasta.

Mydei makes a sound halfway to a laugh. His face is a little pink, maybe from the warmth. “I don’t mind,” he says, quieter than before. “I didn’t talk about anything else either.”

Phainon’s stomach feels odd. Warm. Everything is warm. He takes another bite of pasta.

***

Cyrene goes to bed at ten p.m. sharp. It would be impressive discipline if Phainon didn’t know that what she was really doing was eagerly reading webnovels on her phone and giggling to herself for at least two hours. Anyway, at ten she retires to her room to do that, and then he and Mydei are alone.

“So,” says Mydei.

Phainon looks up from the dishes in the sink. “What’s up?”

Mydei looks at him oddly. His face isn’t red, but his sweater has slid a little and his collarbones are flushed pink where they peek out. “You talked about me?”

Phainon’s embarrassment suddenly returns at full force. He drops the soapy sponge. “I mean,” he says, and then he falters. What is he supposed to say? That he’d never been so obsessed with someone in his life? That he’d suddenly understood, lying there with Mydei’s mouth on his, why none of his fleeting romances with his ex-girlfriends had worked out? “You only lose your virginity once, I guess,” he says eventually, feeling idiotic. “Obviously it’d be special.”

Mydei blinks. “You were—I mean, that was—you’d never done it before?”

Phainon grimaces. His face flushes even hotter. “…Was I supposed to?”

“No, I just thought,” Mydei says quickly, and then he huffs and turns his face away. He leans his elbows on the kitchen counter next to Phainon. The sleeves of his sweater get wet from the dishes, but he doesn’t notice. “Aren’t you older than I am? You’re in college already.”

Phainon shuts off the sink. “I’m not in college.”

“You were working at the university information desk. And you live here, in a college town, with your sister, who’s a college student.”

Phainon shifts uncomfortably on his feet. “I’m not a student,” he repeats.

Mydei’s eyes widen. “You graduated? Shit, I’m only eighteen.”

“No!” Phainon says quickly. “I’m not that old. I’m barely even twenty-one. It’s—well, it’s not that important. I just… don’t go. To the university.”

“But you work there.”

“Sort of. I work for two of the professors,” Phainon explains. “They didn’t hire me through the university, so they don’t mind that I’m not a student. They just… give me jobs. I’m their teaching assistant, sort of.”

Mydei finally notices his wet elbows and lifts himself off the kitchen counter. He frowns down at his sleeves and then, in one motion, strips off the entire sweater. He’s wearing—Phainon swallows—a black compression t-shirt, the kind of thing guys wear to pose for gym photos to impress people. And he’s got the build for it, too. But Mydei doesn’t do anything impressive with all that. He just throws his sweater across the room, landing squarely on top of his backpack, and then goes about his business again.

Phainon carefully doesn’t look at the hem of the shirt, which has ridden up and exposed a sliver of his waist. Probably. He wouldn’t know. He’s not looking.

Mydei motions to… something. “Want me to help dry them?”

“Dry?” Phainon says blankly. Then he remembers the dishes. “Oh! Right. Uh, it’s fine. I got it.”

Mydei looks at him sideways. Something strange happens in his eyes. He steps closer. “I can help you with something.”

Phainon swallows. He turns back around. The dishes. He needs to dry the dishes.

Looking amused, Mydei hands him the towel.

“Thanks,” Phainon mumbles, flustered. He takes the towel and starts drying off the bowl he’d scarfed down his pasta out of. He can’t stop thinking about Mydei next to him, looking at him. His hands feel shaky. He glances over out of the corner of his eye. “You must be tired,” he says, a non-sequiteur.

Mydei huffs a half-amused sigh. “I am. Don’t think I’ve slept properly in days.”

Phainon stops pretending to dry the dish and looks up at him again. “You should sleep.” It comes out softer than he intended. He clears his throat. “I’ll get you new sheets. I washed mine last week, but I can change them for you. It’s no trouble.”

Mydei sighs and looks down at himself. “I need to shower,” he mutters, tugging at the neckline of his shirt. His collarbones are right there. Phainon’s mouth goes dry. “Is that okay?”

“Yeah,” he says automatically. Then he blinks himself out of it. “Yeah, I already showered. I’ll fix the bed while you do that.”

Mydei nods. As he walks toward the bathroom he strips off his shirt and picks up something else from his pile of neatly-folded clothing. Must be pajamas. Phainon stares after him unthinkingly and watches the muscles of his shoulders move when he stands again.

Mydei glances back at him. “Is there something else I should know?”

“…No,” Phainon says, strained. “Um, have a nice shower.”

“Not going to join me?”

Phainon blinks. The flush explodes from his face all the way down his chest. “Uh…! What?”

Mydei snorts. “I’m just kidding. I’m filthy. You don’t want to join me.”

A little filth never hurt anybody, Phainon thinks, but he keeps the words from spilling out. He picks up the towel again, then realizes the bowl is already dry. He’s been scrubbing the towel across it pointlessly.

Mydei smiles a little. “Phainon,” he says, quieter. “I’m trying to tell you it was my first time, too.”

Then he turns the corner to the bathroom, and he’s gone.

Phainon watches the doorway where he’d disappeared for a long while. He holds the dry bowl and listens to the water. When he tries to sleep, he hears the shower running in his mind.

***

Evidently, Mydei wasn’t lying about not getting proper rest. When Phainon throws open the curtain in the morning, he doesn’t even stir. Phainon watches him while he has a quiet breakfast. He doesn’t want Mydei to wake up alone while he’s at work, but he doesn’t want to disturb Mydei’s rest, either. Eventually he decides on the lesser of the two evils, and heads out to work, leaving Mydei asleep and peaceful.

He isn’t a university student, but two of Cyrene’s first-year professors took pity on him and hired him as their lab assistant anyway. Professors Aglaea and Anaxa wanted administrative help, and there he was. It was supposed to be a six-month gig. Then it was supposed to be a one-year gig. Then a two-year gig. Now it’s his third year being their assistant, and they’ve shown no signs of stopping.

Phainon works for Aglaea two days a week, and Anaxa two days a week. Today is Tuesday, so he’s with Aglaea.

“Good morning, Phainon,” she says when he walks in. “Tell me something that happened this weekend.”

She always says this. Usually Phainon tells her something mundane, like a meal that he and Cyrene had, or a particularly interesting library visitor. But today he freezes in the doorway, his coat still half-unbuttoned, and draws a blank.

Aglaea glances up from her desk. “Nothing?”

Phainon finally snaps out of it. “The opposite,” he says, shucking off his coat awkwardly. “Someone came by yesterday. Someone I haven’t seen in a while.”

Aglaea turns back to her pile of student papers: sheets upon sheets of textile samples for proposed fashion projects. “A good visit?”

Phainon nods. Then he remembers Aglaea’s poor vision, and says aloud, “Yeah. It’s good.”

“It was good?” Aglaea asks pointedly.

Phainon fumbles with his coat. It slips out of his hands, landing precariously on the coathook. “Um, yeah. Well, he’s still around. He might be staying for a while.”

“Hm,” says Aglaea. She doesn’t quite smile, but she adjusts her thick glasses and slides her chair aside for him. “Will you help me go through these fabric samples? Just read the descriptions aloud for me while I inspect the textiles.”

Phainon sits. He passes her the first sample sheet of fabrics and leafs through the design proposals. “First student: Lysander. He’s designing a three-piece suit with bellbottom flare pants and a fitted corset.”

Aglaea closes her eyes and takes the fabric in her hands. She runs her careful fingers over it, like it’s something to be treasured.

Phainon watches her. He’s always been fascinated by her—blind in one eye, half-blind in the other, and yet her vision for designs is unmatched.

“A bit thick, but it’ll drape well for the pants,” she decides at last, passing him the fabric sheets. She clicks something on her desktop, and it transcribes her words into a comment on the student’s proposal. “And the next?”

So he gives her the next fabric samples, and she begins anew.

***

Phainon comes home to the smell of something savory cooking. He experiences a brief moment of bliss in the doorway—he loves coming home to food—and then he remembers that Cyrene has a club meeting tonight, and isn’t home. If she couldn't have made it, then…

“Mydei?” he calls to the apartment.

No response.

Phainon swallows. He carefully makes his way into the kitchen, almost tiptoeing. The smell gets stronger. Lemon, maybe? The light is on in the oven, and there’s clearly something in there. He starts sweating. Well! Maybe Cyrene left something before she went to class! Maybe she texted him with directions! Or—or maybe Mydei put it in the oven and then just… went out! Yeah. Yeah! It’s fine!

He approaches the oven with trepidation. Each step feels like one step closer to his doom. He peers into the glass. It’s a sheet pan with some kind of vegetable on it? And something… pink? He stares at it. The oven glass is hard to see through, and he can’t remember owning any of these ingredients. What the hell…?

“Hey.”

Phainon screams and leaps to his feet.

Behind him, Mydei blinks. He’s got his blond hair tied up, and he’s wearing a flannel tied like an apron around his waist.

Where did Mydei even come from? “Hi!” Phainon says hastily. “What’s… what’s up?”

Mydei crosses his arms. “I should be asking you that. Did you forget I was here?”

“I was just surprised when something was cooking. Did you order food?”

Mydei furrows his brow. “No. I went grocery shopping. Then I made it.”

Phainon frowns. “Made it?”

“Salmon with lemon miso glaze,” Mydei explains, motioning vaguely towards the oven. “Usually I make it with asparagus, but they’re out of season. It’s just leeks and brussels sprouts instead.”

“It’s just—what the hell?” Phainon splutters. He kneels back down, staring into the oven like it’ll give him answers. “How did you buy groceries?”

Mydei looks at him like he’s the weird one. “Well, I don’t know if you know this, but there’s a produce market about four blocks away.”

“Smartass,” Phainon mutters. When he stands back up, his knees make an odd sound, and he winces. “I mean, how’d you afford it?”

“Oh,” says Mydei. His expression flickers and settles on something unreadable. “I paid for them.”

“Oh! Let me pay you back,” Phainon says, already headed back to the door to pick up his bag. “I have my wallet in here somewhere. We don’t really eat salmon, since it’s kinda expensive, but I have enough for it right now. Aglaea gave me—”

“No,” Mydei interrupts loudly.

Phainon’s hands pause in his bag.

“I mean, I’m paying for it,” Mydei says, returning to normal volume again. “Don’t pay me back.”

“That can’t have been cheap,” Phainon insists. “And you—well, you ran away from home, right? You need all the money you can get.”

“I don’t.”

Phainon ignores him. He finds his wallet and shoves three twenties in Mydei’s direction.

Mydei stares at the bills in his hand. He doesn’t move.

“Don’t be stupid,” Phainon insists. “Just take the damn money.”

Mydei inhales unevenly. He walks away.

Phainon’s offense at being rejected is vastly overshadowed by his sheer confusion. If someone had offered him sixty bucks when he was eighteen, he’d have taken it in a heartbeat, even with strings attached. “Please, Mydei,” he says, following him toward the bed. “Just let me—”

And then he falls silent.

Inside of Mydei’s deflated backpack is a long yellow envelope. Mydei holds eye contact with him and reaches into it. He pulls out a stack. Twenties. Then he reaches back in. Another stack. Not twenties this time. Hundreds. Then he removes another envelope. And another envelope. Three envelopes full.

Phainon stares at him, incredulous.

“I don’t need the money,” Mydei says quietly. He starts putting the bills back into the envelope.

Phainon gapes at him. “I… I mean, if you don’t want it, that’s one thing, but…”

Mydei doesn’t look at him. He just keeps putting bills back into the envelope. It’s thick. He didn’t even take all of them out, Phainon thinks, dizzy. He has more. There has to be at least ten thousand dollars in that envelope. Maybe way more. He’s not sure. And there’s two more on top of that. “Okay. Maybe you can buy us salmon a few times,” he says faintly.

Mydei huffs a dry laugh. “Yeah. I can buy you salmon.”

They fall into silence for a moment. Mydei curls his knees to his chest. He looks at the covers beneath his feet, like it’s his fault.

“So,” Phainon says eventually. “You can cook?”

Mydei’s eyes aren’t wet, but they glimmer in the corners like he’s been thinking vaguely about crying. His mouth quirks up, just barely. “You can’t?”

“Well, no. Cyrene and I are both pretty hopeless in the kitchen.”

“That can’t be true.”

Phainon raises his eyebrows. “You need me to prove it to you? When I was eight I tried to boil corn and I somehow managed to burn the spoon, melt the butter dish, break the glass bowl, and disintegrate the corn. I don’t think we need a repeat of that.”

Mydei laughs through his nose. “The hell? How did you disintegrate corn?”

“To this day, I have no idea,” Phainon says, grinning. He offers Mydei a hand up from the bed. Mydei takes it and adjusts his apron. “Hey, wait, is that my flannel?”

Mydei looks at him judgmentally. “It’s ugly as sin.”

“You’re using my flannel,” Phainon repeats. “As an apron.”

“I’m doing you a favor. Now you don’t have to wear it anymore.”

“It’s not ugly!” Phainon protests, following him back into the kitchen. “It’s black and yellow! Like bees, right? Bees are black and yellow. Do you hate bees? Is that it?”

Mydei smiles at nothing. “Get back in here,” he says, grabbing Phainon’s hand. “I’m gonna give you a tour of your kitchen.”

“It’s my damn kitchen,” Phainon protests, though his heart soars for every moment their hands stay connected. “If anything I should be giving you a tour, Mydei, you’re the—”

In response, Mydei throws open the fridge. It is, for the first time since he and Cyrene moved in, full. The drawers are even being used properly; there are vegetables in the vegetable drawer, and there’s butter in the butter dish, and is that a fresh package of shrimp in the back?

“…Guest,” Phainon says vacantly. “Shit, did you buy all this?”

“Uh huh.”

Phainon might be sick. “I can’t cook,” he says weakly. “Cyrene can’t cook. We won’t be able to use any of this.”

“Obviously,” Mydei says, closing the fridge again. “It’s for me. No home of mine is going to have an unstocked fridge.”

Phainon stares at him.

Mydei, halfway through untying the flannel at his waist, looks up at him. “What?”

Home, Phainon nearly says. You said home, you said home, you said home. “Nothing,” he says instead. “I’m just surprised.”

Mydei finishes untying the flannel. He swings it over one shoulder like it’s nothing. “I’ll teach you,” he says. “The dinner I’m making right now is really easy. You just put everything on a sheet pan and roast it for half an hour. Even you can do it, I’m sure.”

Phainon looks at him pitifully. “I like your confidence in me.”

“You can’t be that bad. Besides, I’m a good teacher.”

Phainon sighs and leans against the counter, distraught. “Can’t you just cook for us?”

Mydei breathes out a half-laugh and turns away. “It’s a good skill,” he says. “You’ll need it when I’m gone.”

Phainon looks at the oven, the mess of beautiful ingredients in there making the apartment smell so good. He looks at his own flannel, slung over Mydei’s shoulder, stained in the corner with red miso paste. “Right,” he says, his voice strange. “When you’re gone.”

Mydei opens his mouth, but then the timer goes off, and he fumbles for the oven mitts and pulls the dinner out of the oven, and Phainon is too busy praising the orange-pink salmon and the crisp roasted vegetables to ask what he was going to say.

***

“Hey,” says Phainon.

Mydei looks at him from the bathroom doorway. His hair is still dripping from the shower and his skin glistens with a pretty flush. He likes the water extra hot; Phainon’s glad Mydei likes to shower at night, because otherwise they’d be fighting tooth and nail for the hot water during the day. The water heater can only hold so much.

“You don’t actually go to bed at ten, right?”

Mydei’s mouth twitches. “Does it matter?”

“Well, I’m just saying,” says Phainon. “Cyrene goes to bed at ten, but she’s actually in there reading some romance webnovel. You don’t sleep either, right? Do you just scroll on your phone or whatever?”

Mydei throws him an exasperated glance. “I like going to bed early. Is that a crime? Are you the bedtime police?”

“No, no, no,” Phainon splutters. He fumbles on the table for his laptop and misses it by a solid five inches. “I was going somewhere with this, I swear, just let me—ah! Here!” He triumphantly swivels the laptop to face Mydei.

It’s set to play a movie, one of Phainon’s favorite rom-coms. Mydei frowns at the screen judgmentally. “Love Actually?” he reads, his voice skeptical. “Isn’t this movie super sappy? Also, isn’t it over two hours?”

“Yes, yes, and yes,” Phainon answers. He beams and turns the laptop back around. “So? Are you in?”

“In for what?”

“What else? Eating two dozen cabbages, obviously.”

Mydei looks unimpressed.

Phainon laughs and shuts the laptop again. “Watching the movie! I have pillows, so we can lean against the wall and sit on the bed together. And we can make microwave popcorn and put chocolate in it.”

Mydei stares at him like he’s lost his mind. “Chocolate?”

“It’s really good,” Phainon promises, already standing up. He searches through the pantry. “I could have sworn the microwave popcorn was right here…”

And then suddenly Mydei is behind him, leaning in over his shoulder. His wet hair tickles the curve of Phainon’s neck. Phainon’s heart skips over itself like a kid stumbling over their shoelace on the sidewalk. He can’t quite remember to breathe. Mydei sets his hand on top of Phainon’s and guides him down a shelf, then to the left. Phainon, powerless to resist, follows his touch and finds the popcorn packets right there. He picks one up and swallows thickly.

Then Mydei steps away. “I reorganized,” he says, like nothing happened at all.

Phainon blinks a few times. “Yeah,” he says vaguely. He reaches for the bowls and opens the cabinet full of plates instead.

Mydei grins at him. “You’d think you’d know where your own dishes were.”

“Shut up,” Phainon mutters, throwing the cabinet closed again. Eventually he finds a bowl instead, and starts the popcorn in the microwave. Then he searches the pantry for the chocolate chips. He can’t find anything, not even on what he’s determined is the new baking shelf. “Where’d you put the chocolate?”

Mydei is conspicuously silent.

Phainon stands up and turns around. “Mydei?”

Mydei crosses his arms. His face is a little pink, maybe from the hot shower. “What chocolate chips? I didn’t know you had chocolate chips.”

“Yeah, they’re bittersweet, sixty-five percent, that nice Aidonian brand,” Phainon says idly. Then he frowns. “Wait a minute. I didn’t say they were chips.”

Mydei huffs and turns away.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Phainon pleads, reaching for his arm. “Just tell me you ate the chocolate. I don’t care. I just don’t want to search the pantry if it isn’t there.”

“No other sweets in your damn house,” Mydei mutters, shooting him what might have been a glare if he weren’t so clearly embarrassed. “I’ll buy you more. The popcorn’s probably done, by the way.”

Phainon blinks. The popcorn is silent in the microwave. It should be making a ruckus. Should be popping over and over again. Unless… all the popcorn has already popped. “Ah, fuck,” he mutters, slamming the pause button. He gets out the bag and looks sadly inside of it. Sure enough, every last kernel is overdone. The burnt smell wafts out of the microwave, settling into the kitchen. He looks sadly at Mydei and motions to the bag.

Mydei takes one look inside and bursts out laughing.

“This is tragic,” Phainon cries, elbowing him in the side. “Don’t laugh at my plight. I wanted popcorn.”

“You can’t even—microwave—a fucking bag,” Mydei gasps, still laughing so hard that he’s struggling to breathe. “Oh my god. This is the greatest day of my life, I think.”

Phainon huffs. He takes out one of the burnt popcorn kernels and pelts Mydei in the face with it.

That does the trick. Mydei stops laughing. “Did you just throw—?”

Phainon grins and reaches back into the bag for more ammunition.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Mydei protests, reaching out for the bag. “Give me that. You should just throw it away.”

Phainon sneakily aims another kernel at his face. It hits perfectly on the point of Mydei’s nose.

Mydei stares down at the tip of his own nose. Then, slowly, his gaze falls to Phainon, and his eyes sharpen. “I see how it is,” he says darkly, and then he pounces.

Phainon’s eyes fly wide open. He shrieks and jumps out of the way, barely evading his grasp. But Mydei is fast, and he’s right behind him, and the apartment kitchen is small enough that Phainon can only run so far. Inevitably they end up looping around the kitchen counter and through the living room, and Phainon glances behind him and sees Mydei coming and leaps over the couch—

And Mydei’s jump falls short, and he stumbles down onto the couch cushions with a groan.

Phainon breathes an exhilarated laugh and leans down over him. “Got you! That was pretty good. Hey, are you okay? I feel like we probably spread the burnt popcorn smell all over the house now, which kinda sucks, but I can open a window or someth—”

Mydei reaches up and places a hand on his mouth.

Phainon stares down at him, eyes wide. “Mmph,” he tries to say, but nothing happens.

Mydei looks up at him like he’s the last light source left in the world. His pupils are huge. They stare at each other in close-proximity silence. Mydei’s phone buzzes on the table. His lips part, just a little bit.

Phainon’s heart pounds out of his chest. The last time they were in this position was when they—is Mydei going to—is he…

On the table, Mydei’s phone buzzes again, once, twice, three times.

Mydei’s intense expression shifts. His hand falls away from Phainon’s mouth. Phainon inhales like he’s been holding his breath for minutes. His vision is a little blurry.

“I’m picking the movie,” Mydei says, his voice a little rough.

Phainon looks at him. His head is still spinning. “What’s wrong with my pick? I think it’s a great movie. Holiday-themed too. It’s perfect.”

“You burnt the popcorn,” Mydei says flatly. “The microwave popcorn. I’m picking the damn movie.”

Phainon sighs, but concedes this point. He takes the burnt popcorn to the garbage and says a sailor’s farewell to it before dumping it overboard into the trash can. He takes a moment to mourn his fallen comrade. Then he goes back into the living room and pulls open the curtain to his bed—well, Mydei’s bed now, but he digresses.

Mydei is already curled up along the side of the bed, leaning against the pillows. “Here,” he says, shoving Phainon’s laptop toward him.

He’s chosen Pride and Prejudice. Phainon turns back to him, incredulous. “This is even sappier than my movie! What the hell were you complaining about if you were going to turn around and pick an even worse one?!”

“It’s a classic, asshole.”

“Hold on,” Phainon says slowly. A grin spreads across his face. “You like romance movies, don’t you? Oh my god.”

Mydei rolls his eyes. “Get in. Or don’t. I don’t care.”

“Fine, fine,” Phainon says hurriedly, still smiling. He scrambles under the covers and adjusts the laptop so it’s sitting on both of their thighs, halfway between them. Mydei shifts away from him, then back toward him again, like he can’t quite decide where he wants to be. In the end he presses their legs together under the blankets, skin to skin, keeping them both warm.

The popcorn shenanigans took a while, so it’s nearly half past ten by the time they start the movie. Mydei’s eyes start fluttering half an hour in. By eleven thirty he’s fast asleep, his head pillowed on Phainon’s chest.

Phainon looks down at him and smiles a little. All the lights are off already; Mydei’s sleeping face is illuminated only by the glow of the movie on the laptop. “You weren’t kidding,” he murmurs, tucking Mydei more securely against him. “Not a night owl, huh?”

Mydei doesn’t respond. He just sighs in his sleep and softens his shoulders.

He really does look peaceful. Phainon can’t bear to disturb him. He hits pause on the movie. He manages to slide his laptop onto the bedside table, but getting up is another matter entirely. Mydei is too entangled with him; he can’t just get up and return to the couch. Besides, it’s his own bed, isn’t it? And it’s not small, exactly. They’ll both fit without issue. And if Mydei doesn’t like it, he can say so in the morning, and they’ll never do it again.

Phainon looks down at Mydei one last time. He tugs the blankets over both of their shoulders and closes his eyes.

On the coffee table, Mydei’s phone vibrates again, like someone’s trying to reach him over and over again. Phainon lets the gentle hum of the phone on the table lull him to sleep.

***

Cyrene works four-hour shifts at the dining hall after class a few times a week, but that alone isn’t enough to pay her tuition and their rent. So Phainon works six days a week: two for Aglaea, two for Anaxa, and two for Theodoros at the antique and thrift shop. He’s not always working all six days; sometimes Anaxa has nothing for him to do, or Aglaea sends him on an errand that won’t actually take all day. But one thing is certain. Every week, he has Fridays off. No deliveries, no heavy lifting, no calls. That day is for him, and him alone.

Well—he says that, but now it’s for Mydei, too.

So when Friday comes around, Phainon brings it up.

“Hey,” he says over the breakfast table, while he pours rice milk into his cereal. “It’s my day off. Do you wanna do something together?”

Mydei looks back at him from the counter, where he’s slicing pears. “Like what?”

Phainon hadn’t actually thought that far. “Tour?” he offers. “I’ll take you around campus.”

Mydei turns back around. “No. You already did that. It’s how we met.”

He’s not wrong. Phainon doesn’t usually give tours, but in the summer everyone leaves, so they have to scrape the bottom of the barrel for university employees. The tours were supposed to be student-led, but apparently Anaxa recommended him, and so there he was. He started in June. By July Phainon thought he had a handle on it. Then Mydei showed up on one of his tours in a beautiful linen shirt, and Phainon forgot everything he’d ever known. That shirt had been pristine in the morning. By the end of the day it was grass-stained beyond recognition from all their tumbling together. It couldn't have been wearable, after all that. Mydei probably threw it out. Maybe burned it.

“That wasn’t a tour,” Phainon protests, his face hot already. “That was the university-sanctioned tour. I can give you a real tour this time. Show you the best library corner, the sunset-watching spots, the place where everyone shames bad bike riders during the first week…”

Mydei’s knife comes to a halt. “You’re really not a secret student? I feel like you know too much about this school.”

Phainon forces out a laugh. “Of course I’m not,” he says, like it’s ridiculous.

Mydei looks at him over his shoulder. He runs the pear knife under the sink. Phainon watches the water drip down the knife and thinks about the water bill, then about the rent, then about the tuition. Cyrene’s tuition. Because she was the one with big dreams. She was the one with ambitions. She wanted to write the grandest story in the world. All Phainon ever wanted was to be part of it when she finally wrote her masterpiece.

“Of course I’m not,” he repeats, quieter. They can only afford tuition for one of them; he’s known that for a long time.

Mydei doesn’t look at him. Maybe the sink running drowned him out, or maybe Mydei is taking mercy on him. Either way, he’ll take what he can get.

At last Mydei turns around holding the cutting board full of perfectly neat pear slices. He sets them on the tiny kitchen table across from Phainon and sits down. He eats one of them. Phainon picks up his spoon and scoops up a floating cereal piece from the rice milk.

“I miss my blender,” Mydei says eventually, looking down at the pear slices. “For my sixteenth birthday my mother got me a really nice one. Made smoothies with it every morning for two years. I always made enough for her, too.”

Phainon smiles into his cereal. “Sounds nice,” he offers, because Mydei never talks about his family, and he doesn’t want to push.

“It was,” Mydei agrees. He lifts another pear slice to his mouth, but doesn’t eat it. He just looks at it, and then sets it back down. Then, bluntly, he says: “She passed away.”

Something in Phainon’s chest tightens. “Oh,” he says softly. “I’m sorry.”

Mydei looks at his pear slices again. Though his eyes look odd, he smiles. “Yeah.”

Phainon sets down his spoon in his cereal bowl. “I really am,” he says, even quieter. “Cyrene and I would kinda get it, I think. Our parents died in a car crash a few years back. Medical bills for their injuries ate up our inheritances and then some. So.” He motions vaguely at the kitchen. “Now we’re here.”

Mydei sighs through his nose. He finally eats the pear slice he’s been staring at.

Phainon looks into his cereal bowl and sees his own liquid reflection in the rice milk, pale and clouded-over. He looks… tired. Like it’s been years since he let himself rest.

“Hey,” Mydei says.

Phainon snaps out of it. He looks up. “What?”

Mydei pushes the cutting board closer to him. “Eat some,” he says, his voice a little rough. “I cut too much for one person.”

Slowly, Phainon picks up a pear slice. He eats it in silence. It’s crisp. Tastes like someone cares about him. When he reaches for another, he doesn’t notice Mydei already picking it up, and their hands run into each other. Mydei looks at him strangely, but then places the pear slice carefully into his hand, like he’s entrusting him with something precious.

Phainon blinks. When Mydei lets go, he holds the pear slice in silence for a moment before he remembers to eat it.

Something soft lingers in Mydei’s eyes. He stands up again. “I changed my mind,” he says. “Let’s go out today.”

***

“I am not going to fit in that.”

“You totally will,” Phainon protests, adjusting the milk crate on the back of his bike. “It’s, like, a big-ass milk crate. Cyrene sits in it all the time while I bike her around. She calls it her limousine service.”

Mydei looks at him judgmentally.

“Okay, maybe you’re a little bigger than her,” Phainon admits. He sneaks a glance at Mydei’s generous ass and then immediately looks away, blinking several times. “Yeah, um. We can try it anyway?”

“How would I even get in?”

“Oh! Easy. So you just—” Phainon makes some sort of wild motion with his hands. “And I just—” Here he starts moving his feet, trying to imitate pedaling the bike. “So if you get a running start, and I keep going, it should balance out the weight and everything and then it’ll be totally fine.”

Mydei looks like he’s going to be sick.

“On second thought,” Phainon says, already refastening his bike lock, “maybe we could just walk.”

“Thank fucking god,” Mydei says immediately. So they walk to campus.

Phainon and Cyrene’s apartment complex is almost half an hour away from the university by foot. They usually bike. Phainon’s bike is a shitty brown number he got from a freshly-graduated senior who was moving out when he was moving in. “This bad boy sticks with you through every failed test,” she said proudly when she handed it over. Phainon didn’t have the heart to tell her that he wasn’t the one enrolling, so he just smiled and took it, milk crate and peeling paintjob and all.

On second thought, Mydei definitely wouldn’t have fit in the milk crate. Even Cyrene is a stretch, and she hasn’t gotten taller since she was about eleven years old. Phainon tries to picture Mydei fitting himself into it like a seat and giggles to himself. His breath echoes in front of his face.

“What?” Mydei asks.

“Nothing,” Phainon says, still grinning. “Just glad we walked. You’re right—biking would have been a disaster.”

Mydei huffs. He shoves his hands deeper into the pockets of his jeans. “I’m usually right. You should listen to me more.”

Phainon bursts into more giggles. He stumbles over his own feet, but corrects himself and stands up straight again. “Go on, then,” he says, motioning toward the street they’re on. It’s the university entrance road, lined with trees and lawns and brick facades. “I’m listening. If you’re right all the time, then give me your tour.”

“You have got to be kidding me,” Mydei mutters. Before Phainon can answer, he actually turns around and starts walking backwards. He takes his hands out of his pockets to motion dramatically to the street behind him. “This,” he says, “is University Avenue. Where they take all the brochure photos. It’s annoying because it doesn’t look like that in real life. Look at this place. Depressing as—”

Then he walks backward directly into a light pole.

Phainon doubles over laughing.

“Fuck,” Mydei finishes, grimacing. “Don’t laugh at me. I might have a concussion.”

“You don’t have a concussion,” Phainon reassures him. He didn’t even hit the pole that hard, and besides, it was mostly his back that hit the pole, not his head. He places a hand on Mydei’s back anyway, running up and down his spine gently.

Mydei inhales sharply. He goes entirely still.

Suddenly Phainon’s worry spikes. He shouldn’t be reacting like that unless he’s really hurt. “You okay?”

“Fine,” Mydei says. Even his voice is less strong, more breathy. He exhales quickly in a puff of white air. “It’s just cold. Why don’t you have more indoor walkways?”

“It’s really pretty in autumn,” Phainon says, smiling apologetically. “When new students first get here, it’s gorgeous. Like, stunning. The orange leaves and the blue sky… And the red brick buildings…”

“Uh huh,” Mydei says drily. He kicks at the last remaining leaf on the ground, which is dead and half-decomposed. “Stunning.”

Phainon sighs and looks up at the trees lining the road. All the color is gone; the formerly-gorgeous trees are now nothing more than hopeful branches, sticking toward the sky. “You’re right—winter is kind of depressing here. Hard to find anything beautiful at all, actually.”

“Hm,” Mydei says. Oddly, when he looks up at the branches again, he smiles.

Phainon looks over at him. “What?”

“Nothing,” Mydei says. He grabs Phainon’s hand. His fingers are cold against Phainon’s, even though he’s had them stuffed in his jeans pocket. “Come on. Weren’t you going to give me a tour?”

Phainon smiles. When he tugs Mydei forward again, neither of them let go. Behind them, the last leaf of the fall lies forgotten in the street.

***

On the eighth of December, Phainon gets a sore throat. He ignores it. On the ninth, inexplicable tiredness. Again, he ignores it. On the tenth, a fever strong enough that he feels dizzy when he stands up. He tries to ignore it. Then he collapses on the floor of the kitchen like a chalk outline at a crime scene.

“Morning to you too,” Cyrene says from the table, frowning down at him. “Dude, are you good?”

“I’m so fine,” Phainon says weakly. He tries to sit up. His wrists fail and he falls back to the ground with a groan.

“Uh huh. So fine.”

Phainon groans and rolls over onto his back. The lights are blaring bright above him. There’s been a cold going around the university; he’d imagined he was immune to it, though. “I thought only actual students were supposed to catch the student plague…”

“You still work there,” Cyrene points out. She takes out her phone. “I’ll call Anaxa and tell him you can’t make it in today. You just stay there on the floor. I’ll make you oatmeal.”

Phainon tries to sit up again.

“And if you say some shit about wanting to go into work anyway I’ll kick you in the balls,” says Cyrene cheerfully. “Come on! Do you really want to get your poor half-blind professor sick from your dumb cooties?”

Phainon, defeated, lays back down.

“There you go,” Cyrene says, patting his head like he’s an ill-tempered pet. She turns around to the counter and makes him oatmeal with jam in the middle. She even swirls the jam in a little spiral for him, the way their father used to prepare it. He eats the whole bowl. Then he drinks three glasses of water and passes out again.

Next thing he knows, he’s in bed, and Mydei’s sitting next to him on his laptop.

Phainon blinks. “Uh,” he tries to say, but it comes out scratchy and awful. He clears his throat. Then he clears it several more times. “I’m—”

“Shh,” Mydei says, already shoving him back down into the pillows. “Don’t push it. You’re sick. Oh, by the way, take these.” He shoves two red tablets in Phainon’s direction, then hands him a glass of water.

Phainon feels a little ill just looking at them. “I don’t,” he tries, and then he coughs again. “I can’t take pills.”

“They’re just ibuprofens with fever reducers,” Mydei reassures him, pushing them closer to him. “You won’t be allergic to them or anything.”

“It’s not an allergy,” Phainon mumbles, flushing with embarrassment. Or maybe that’s the fever. He can’t quite tell which is which anymore. It’s all just him, a hot mess on so many levels. “I, just, uh.” He clears his throat aggressively. “It’s a mental block. Don’t like swallowing pills. Reminds me of the hospital. I always throw them up.”

“Oh,” Mydei says, quieter. He takes the pills back and sets them on the table. “They’ll help a lot, though. You sure you don’t want to try?”

Phainon thinks vaguely of sterile hospital hallways and ventilators and his parents dying and the panic attack and the valium they made him take. No. He doesn’t want to do that again. “I’m sure.”

Mydei doesn’t push. He just presses the glass of water into Phainon’s hands.

He tips his head back and drinks half the glass in one sip. He pauses to breathe. Then he tries to drink the other half and promptly spills it all over his face.

Mydei laughs through his nose. He takes the water glass and refills it. This time, when Phainon reaches for it, Mydei keeps his hand on the glass, making sure he takes smaller sips. The cool water feels nice on his throat. Actually, the water he spilled feels good on his feverish skin, too. He should have spilled more of it.

“Hey,” Mydei says, when he’s done drinking the water. “I know you can’t take pills, but can you do powder?”

Phainon squints at him. “Like cocaine?” He doesn’t think that would help with his fever, but what does he know?

“The hell?” Mydei mutters, rolling his eyes. “No, Phainon. Powdered medicine. Little packets that you can eat. They taste like shit, but you can pound a bunch of water afterwards and it’ll be fine.”

“I didn’t know they made those,” Phainon says, a little dizzy. “I’ll try it, at least. This sucks.”

Mydei breathes a laugh. “Yeah, I bet,” he says. “Okay, you stay here and I’ll go buy some. I need to get ingredients for soup anyway. You like bean sprouts, right?”

Phainon sits up weakly. “Go?”

“To the market.”

“Don’t go,” Phainon sighs, letting his eyes slip closed again. The cold water must have evaporated off his skin, because the fever only feels worse. “What if I need something? What if I decide I hate bean sprouts while—” His voice breaks off, scratchy, and he cringes.

“I won’t be gone long,” Mydei promises. Strangely, he only looks pleased at Phainon’s plight, like this is somehow sweet to him. “Just text me if you need anything. I’ll be back in twenty minutes.”

Then he gets up from his chair.

“Wait,” Phainon says. “I don’t have your number.”

Mydei turns around. “You don’t?”

“No,” Phainon says, suddenly feeling very idiotic. “We probably should have done that the first day you arrived.”

“Don’t worry about that now,” Mydei says firmly, already pulling his phone out of his back pocket. “Here—put your number into mine, and I’ll text you. Then you’ll have it.”

Phainon takes his phone with weak hands. He squints at the contacts page and types in his own name: Phainon Khaslana. He thinks about adding a profile photo, but one look at himself in the selfie camera convinces him otherwise. He’s flushed and his eyes are lidded and he’s sweating half to death. Not exactly a look for the books.

Maybe there’s something in Mydei’s camera roll that could work. Phainon clicks on the photo icon and scrolls back in time. It’s mostly food photos, with the occasional landscape or close-up of a plant. But—and here Phainon pauses, convinced he isn’t seeing right—somewhere in the middle, there’s a photo of him.

In the photo, Phianon is looking at something sideways, caught halfway in a laugh. He thinks it might have been taken at the kitchen table, during one of their breakfasts or dinners together. He can’t quite tell. All he knows is that he looks…. happy. He looks happy.

And Mydei had taken this photo in secret. Like it was something precious for him to keep close.

Mydei huffs and looks at him, exasperated. “The sooner you finish, the sooner I can get you your medicine.”

Phainon hastily clicks on the photo. It loads into his profile section, and he crops it to feature his face. He double-checks his number one last time, looking closely at each digit. “All good,” he announces proudly.

Quietly, a notification comes in at the top of Mydei’s phone.

He tries to read it. It’s from an unknown number, but the text starts with a capital M, like the sender already knew Mydei’s name. Strange. But Mydei takes his phone back before Phainon can catch any more of it.

“Oh,” Mydei says, blinking at his phone. “You found that photo.”

“Yeah,” Phainon says. The room feels too bright. He lets his eyes slip closed again. “S’nice. I like that one.”

Mydei makes a sound that might be a laugh. “I like that one, too.”

“Hm,” Phainon says noncommittally. He’s tired. Everything is too hot.

A chair creaks on the apartment floor. The keys jingle by the door. Mydei’s probably taking the spare key with the shitty chimera keychain. “I’ll be back before you know it,” Mydei’s voice says from the doorway. “Rest.”

Like a loyal soldier, Phainon’s mind obeys his command. He falls asleep heavily.

***

A dream: it’s July again, and it’s hot, and Mydei is wearing his linen shirt, and Phainon’s spending the whole tour talking to him instead of actually answering questions, and he’s looking at him, looking at him, looking at him, and it’s hot, and Mydei stays after the tour, and then Phainon’s asking where he’s staying, and it’s some fancy rental house in the middle of town and Phainon sneaks over in the late-summer dusk and Mydei closes the door quietly, so quietly, and it’s hot and they’re kissing and it’s so, so hot and—

***

“Ah, ow,” Phainon mumbles, squinting into the brightness. The shaking stops. He closes his eyes again, wincing. Everything is still too hot. The imagined heat must have been the real heat from his fever, manifesting in his mind.

“Come on,” Mydei says gently from above him. “Don’t go back to sleep. I know you’re tired, but you have to take the meds.”

Phainon cracks his eyes open. The room is darker than it was before. Mydei must have closed all the curtains for him. He drags himself up against the headboard. “Can’t take ‘em,” he rasps, a little lost. “The pills—”

“I bought these,” Mydei interrupts, holding up a small red packet. “Powdered ibuprofen. It’s supposed to taste like mixed berries. It doesn’t. Just bear with it.”

Phainon grimaces. He nods and holds out his hand.

Mydei rips open the packet and hands it to him. “Swallow,” he instructs.

Hesitantly, Phainon tips his head back and pours the packet into his mouth. It tastes… weird. Then again, all of his senses are weird lately. He swallows it as best he can. His throat is dry. He picks up the glass of water and downs the whole thing like his life depends on it.

When he finally finishes the water, he looks at Mydei and finds him already looking back.

“Feeling okay?” Mydei asks.

There’s a wrinkle in his brow, right between his eyes. Phainon wants to smooth it out, maybe with his thumb, maybe with his mouth. He doesn’t know anymore. His mouth tastes bad. Mydei probably doesn’t want to kiss him. “Feel like shit,” he says. “What else is new, though?”

Mydei breathes a relieved-sounding laugh. “Yeah,” he says, brushing Phainon’s hair back from his sweaty forehead. “Once the fever drops, I’m gonna make you the spiciest soup you’ve ever had in your life. With egg ribbons and chicken broth and bean sprouts.”

“Paradise,” Phainon mumbles, already feeling sleepy again. “Mydei, my mouth still tastes bad. Make the soup now.”

“It’ll just raise your temperature.” Mydei presses his always-cold hand to Phainon’s forehead, then slides it down to his neck along his overheated arteries. Syrupy fondness swims in Phainon’s vision. He can’t tell anymore which of them it’s coming from.

“I’m gonna,” Phainon says, and then he doesn’t ever finish his sentence, because the room goes dark and he’s asleep again, this time without any dreams at all.

***

The fever breaks early in the morning. Phainon wakes up without sweat all over his face and feels preemptively elated. Mydei’s asleep in a chair next to his bed, his laptop on the bedside table with the screen dull. Maybe he’d fallen asleep doing something. Phainon can’t find a thermometer, so he picks up Mydei’s lax wrist and presses it to his forehead. Normal. No temperature difference.

He nearly cries in relief. No fever! He’s finally getting better!

“Mydei,” he whisper-shouts, shaking him awake. “Mydei!”

Mydei makes a noise of protest in his sleep. When he recognizes Phainon’s hold on him, he blinks his eyes open almost instantly. “What? Do you need something?”

“Mydei, the fever went down! I’m better!”

Of course, this is the cue for his congestion to kick in. He clears his throat, trying to clear it, but it doesn’t work. He sighs in defeat.

Mydei grins. The sleep lingering in his eyes makes him look like a smug cat. “What was that about being better?”

“Nothing,” Phainon mumbles, sniffling.

Mydei’s smile only widens. He gets up from the chair, stretching his arms out over his head, and flips on the lights in the kitchen.

Phainon frowns, confused.

“Well, come on,” Mydei says, like it’s obvious. “I said I’d make you soup when your fever broke, didn’t I? A promise is a promise.”

Phainon sits up in bed. Mydei rubs the sleep from his eyes and then puts a pot on the stove with chicken broth. He really is making soup. It’s barely five in the morning. “It can wait until lunchtime,” he protests weakly. “You can go back to sleep. And now that I’m not feverish anymore, you can have the bed back. I’ll get new sheets.”

“It’s your damn bed.”

“And it’s yours, while you’re here.”

Mydei turns back to the pot. “Don’t promise things like that,” he says, his voice a little odd. “What if I don't want to leave, and you never get your bed back?”

Phainon’s breath catches in his throat. It’s probably just the sickness.

“Anyway, no sense waiting,” Mydei says, grabbing the bean sprouts out of the fridge. “You haven’t eaten real food in two days.”

“I am a little hungry,” Phainon admits, feeling embarrassed about it for some reason. “But seriously, I can just microwave a chicken rice bowl or something!”

Mydei looks at him judgmentally. “Can I trust you with the microwave?”

“That was one time.”

“Cyrene told me about at least three more.”

Fuck. He’s got Phainon there; he’s definitely fucked up microwave settings with Cyrene enough for those stories to be true. He looks guiltily at Mydei and opens his mouth one last time.

“For fuck’s sake, Phainon,” Mydei mutters. “Let me make you the damn soup.”

“Okay,” Phainon says weakly. Then, “Thank you, Mydei.”

He catches a sliver of a smile before Mydei turns around again. Phainon watches him make the soup, egg drop with bean sprouts and spicy broth, and wonders how long he’d sat in that chair watching over Phainon while he rested. His chest feels strange.

“Okay,” Mydei says, turning around from the stove. He’s holding two bowls of steaming soup. “Your bean sprouts are cooked a little more than mine, so make sure you take this one. And yours is spicier to clear out your sinuses. I got the tissues already.”

He sits down in the chair next to Phainon’s bed. Phainon stares at him, his eyes wide. “Thank you,” he says, because he can’t quite remember anything else.

Mydei’s mouth twitches. “You already said that.”

“Still,” Phainon says, picking up his spoon. “It deserves repeating. This is—this is—I don’t know. It’s really nice.”

Without looking up, Mydei just shrugs. He picks up his spoon and takes a long sip of his own soup. “I don’t mind. I like cooking, and this is what you need.”

Something in Phainon’s chest melts and crumbles. Maybe the fever is coming back. He takes a sip of his too-hot, too-spicy soup and nearly chokes.

Mydei laughs. Outside the window, silence. No one else is awake; no one else is there to share their joy. It’s just the two of them, alive in the earliest part of the morning with their two bowls of soup and the quiet clink of their spoons against the ceramic.

Phainon looks down at his reflection, swimming in the steaming soup. When he stirs it, the reflection ripples away like an optical illusion. “You wouldn’t do this for just anyone,” he guesses, his heart racing.

Mydei closes his eyes. He smiles, then lets it slip away into a gentler expression. “You’re right,” he says. This time, when he looks at Phainon, his eyes glimmer like the soup spoon full of broth, like the July sky full of stars. “I wouldn’t.”

***

“What do you do when I’m gone?”

Mydei looks at him judgmentally from the couch. “Weird time to get philosophical on me.”

Phainon sighs through his nose and readjusts under the covers. “I mean when I leave the house. You don’t just sit here and wait for me to get back. I know you don’t.”

“Oh.” Mydei hesitates a little. “School, mostly.”

Phainon glances at him, surprised. He’d imagined that running away from home also necessitated dropping out of school. But he met Mydei on a college tour; obviously he cares about his academics. “You can do that?”

“Not usually,” Mydei says, looking back down. He shifts his legs on the couch, crossing them underneath his laptop to hold it up. “But the semester was almost over, and I told all my instructors I was leaving, so they made an exception. Right now I’m working on my civics final.”

Finals. Phainon nearly forgot about finals, somehow. Cyrene doesn’t have finals for another week, but she’s already holed up in her room half the time studying for art history. Finals aren’t really his problem, even as an assistant. He sometimes helps Anaxa grade his finals, or describes material that Aglaea’s visual aid software can’t identify well enough, like clothing sketches. He hasn’t been on the student side of a final in years. It’s not stressful for him. It’s barely even noticeable.

Belatedly he realizes that Mydei’s been staring at him. He clears his throat.

“What?” says Mydei, when he notices Phainon looking back. “I want to pass my classes.”

“Right, right,” Phainon says, waving his hands vaguely. “I’m just… I realized I haven’t taken a final in three years. Really weird feeling.”

Mydei shuts his laptop and exhales heavily. “Must be nice.”

“Yeah,” Phainon says, his voice hollow. He’d always imagined staying in school for longer. He’d even thought about graduate studies, once upon a time, before the car crash and the hospital and the bills. He’d spent his life preparing to take finals, and never ended up doing it. “You could have had that, too,” he points out, instead of talking about it. “You could drop out. You already ran away.”

Mydei’s expression grows strange. “I spent a long time on my education. I want to finish it.”

Phainon sighs and looks at the ceiling. “Yeah. I get that.”

They don’t talk for a while. The click-click-click of typing fills the silence. Mydei must have reopened his laptop and started working on his assignment again. Phainon breathes in slow sync with his typing. It’s odd; he usually doesn’t hear Mydei typing. It’s quiet. Too quiet. Something’s missing. A sound.

“Hey,” he says, sitting up straighter. “Have you heard the heat go on today?”

Mydei looks faintly confused, but shakes his head. “I wasn’t really listening, though.”

“You definitely would have heard it. It’s loud as shit.”

“Well, I didn’t.”

Ah. The heat must be broken. Their apartment building is pretty good about keeping the utilities working, but maybe the power’s out, or the demand is too high. Phainon groans and drags himself out of bed, searching for the thermostat. It’s along the entryway wall, right next to the light switch.

But before he can make it across the room to the door, Mydei stands up and halts him in his tracks with a single look.

“What the hell are you doing?” Mydei asks, raising his eyebrows. “You’re still recovering. Get back in bed.”

“I’m just checking the thermostat. I think the heat’s broken.”

Mydei shifts on the couch awkwardly. “The heat isn’t broken,” he says, which doesn’t quite answer his question.

“Then why hasn’t it come on?”

Mydei looks at him, then at the thermostat wall. He sighs through his nose. “Look,” he says, his voice strained. “I just thought—since you had a fever, it would be more comfortable if you—and then I thought it might come back, so I didn’t turn it back up, and—”

Phainon blinks at him rapidly. “You turned it down?”

“Off,” Mydei corrects. “I turned it off.”

“Mydei, are you crazy? It’s freezing outside.”

“And you were burning up,” he fires back, crossing his arms. “Cyrene’s using the space heater, so she’s fine. And you needed the cold so you wouldn’t sweat to death.”

Something twists in Phainon’s stomach. He had been surprisingly comfortable during his fever, and he’d slept peacefully through most of it. “But weren’t you cold?”

Mydei’s phone dings on the table. He picks it up, stares at it for a moment, and sets it back on the table, face-down. Then he sits on the couch again like nothing is wrong.

“Mydei,” Phainon says incredulously.

He huffs, shoving his phone further away. “I was fine. The apartment is insulated. It’s not like it was that cold in here. I just wore all my layers.”

All his layers. Mydei only brought that backpack, and it didn’t contain anything warm enough for the harsher parts of winter. The swirling in Phainon’s stomach worsens. “Turn it back on,” he demands.

Mydei blinks. “The—what?”

“Turn the heat back on. In fact, turn it up. And take one of the jackets from my closet.”

Mydei looks at him quizzically, but he goes to the thermostat and clicks something on the white panel. The heater whirs to life along the walls of the apartment, loud enough to drown out any quieter sounds. Phainon sighs in relief. He runs hot, but thinking of Mydei wearing all his thin long-sleeved shirts makes his chest hurt. He can tolerate being a little sweaty if it means Mydei will be comfortable.

“And the jacket,” Phainon reminds him, once he’s done. “Pick your favorite one and keep it. You need something for the weather.”

Mydei looks over his shoulder, confused. “I’m not going out today.”

“Just do it.”

Clearly his bedridden begging is effective, because Mydei just sighs and looks through his closet rack next to the wardrobe. It’s not very big; it only holds his cold-weather coats and his one nice suit. Mydei riffles through the options, but eventually settles on a thick brown coat made of synthetic wool. Cyrene bought it for him three Christmases ago, before she gave up on trying to turn him stylish. He thinks it suits Mydei better than it ever suited him.

Mydei drapes the coat along the arm of the couch. “There,” he says. “Now will you tell me what this is about?”

Phainon’s face heats up. Was it that obvious? “I just don’t want you to be cold.”

Mydei’s frown melts into something softer, almost like surprise. “I wasn’t cold.”

“You must have been.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Mydei says, sounding a little restless. “The heat’s back on now, and your fever is gone, so we’re both going to be fine.”

“But you were cold.”

Mydei looks at him like he’s gone insane. “So what if I was a little cold when you were six degrees hotter than normal human temperature? I was fucking preoccupied.”

Phainon makes a split-second decision. He throws off the covers and moves to the couch instead, lying down along the side Mydei isn’t occupying. Then he leans in and slowly, slowly, starts to drape his arm around the cushion Mydei’s leaning on.

Mydei looks at him sideways. “Uh, hi?”

“Hi,” Phainon says, grinning up at him. “You know I’m really warm?”

“Uh huh. You just had a fever.”

“Normally,” Phainon corrects. “I run hot. It’s kind of a problem; I’m always sweaty.”

“Okay,” Mydei says, sounding lost. “That's… not a problem I have. But that sucks, I guess.”

“You run cold.”

Mydei looks at him, exasperated. “Yes,” he says drily. “Yes, I run cold. Now will you shut up?”

“Sure,” Phainon says cheerfully. Then, all in one motion, he wraps his arm around Mydei’s shoulders and leans against his side, pressing their bodies together as much as possible.

Mydei goes absolutely rigid underneath him.

“Relax.” Phainon carefully tucks himself underneath Mydei’s arm and loosely taps at the back of his wrist. “You’re cold. I’m warm. We’ll even out.”

Mydei inhales sharply. Slowly but surely, he starts to soften into the touch.

“Just until the heat finishes getting the apartment temperature back to normal,” Phainon murmurs, leaning more of his weight into his side. “It’ll take a while. Maybe an hour… Maybe two… We’ll just stay like this until then.”

“…Okay,” Mydei says at last. He taps Phainon’s hand with his fingers, like a call-and-response. “You are warm,” he admits, sounding like he’d rather not say it.

“Mm-hmm. Is it nice?”

Mydei makes a sound halfway between a laugh and an exhale. He leans his head on top of Phainon’s, just briefly. “It’s not so bad, I guess.”

“Mm,” Phainon says, pleased. He closes his eyes.

Mydei reaches for his laptop again. This time, as Phainon rests, he barely hears the keystrokes over the gentle whirring of the heat coming on and the soft rhythm of Mydei’s chest rising and falling with his breath.

He sleeps soundly. When he wakes he’s full of energy, and the next day he goes to work again, entirely recovered except for a harmless but persistent sniffle.

***

On the fifteenth of December they have eggplant stuffed with rice and pork. It’s Cyrene’s favorite food. Neither of them have been able to get their father’s recipe right in the years since he passed. Naturally, when Cyrene started craving it during the leadup to finals week, they turned to Mydei with the recipe.

His version isn’t quite the same as their childhood dish, but it’s delicious nonetheless. In fact, it’s so delicious that Phainon is busy serving himself a second portion, or maybe a third, he can’t remember, when the knock comes at the door.

Cyrene puts down her fork and chews her giant bite at lightning speed. “S’probably one of the gifts I ordered,” she says, once she finally finishes.

“I got it,” Mydei says, already standing up. “You both keep eating. I’ll only be a minute.”

“I like this one,” Cyrene says to Phainon, grinning. “Let’s keep him.”

Phainon laughs through his nose. It’s already been two weeks since Mydei arrived, and it really does feel like he’s going to stay forever. He’s fallen comfortably into their rhythm. He doesn’t do any chores, but he cooks their meals pretty often. Lately they’ve been sleeping in Phainon’s bed together; it’s big enough for both of them, and the couch isn’t built for long-term residence. He’s started wearing Phainon’s clothes and using Phainon’s shampoo. Phainon smiles a little at the thought. “Don’t worry,” he says, setting his refilled plate down. “Mydei isn’t going anywhere.”

And then the door opens, and someone says, “Mydeimos.”

Mydei inhales sharply. The door slams shut.

Phainon blinks. “Mydei?” he asks, not sitting back down. “Is it for you?”

“No,” Mydei rasps. “No, it’s—it’s someone else. I don’t know—”

The knocking resumes. This time, it’s more insistent, bang bang bang.

“Mydei,” Cyrene says quietly. “If someone’s here to see you, you shouldn’t keep them waiting.”

Mydei breathes shakily. He hesitates.

“I’ll be right here,” Phainon offers from behind him. “You’ll be fine.”

Mydei closes his eyes. He breathes in, long and careful. Slowly, he turns around and unlocks the door. He turns the knob and lets it open, just a crack. At last he throws it all the way open.

Then he staggers back, knees buckling under the weight of… a young man?

“Mydeimos,” the man says, sounding nothing but relieved. There’s a huge smile spread across his face, and his eyes are lined with dark circles. “Don’t make me worry like that. You’ve been missing for three weeks. Three fucking weeks. You know how long I drove to get here?”

Mydei groans and struggles under his weight. “Get off,” he mutters, though he’s smiling too. “You’re heavy. Freshman fifteen is real, huh?”

The man laughs. “God knows I need it,” he breathes, ruffling Mydei’s hair with one of his lanky hands. “Perdikkas always said I was too skinny.”

The tension melts out of Mydei’s shoulders. He breathes out a long, shaky exhale. “Hello, Hephaestion.”

The man—Hephaestion—sighs into Mydei’s hair and hugs him tighter. Mydei makes a tiny choked sound and hugs him back. Phainon’s chest clenches. He doesn’t feel like he should be watching this, but he promised Mydei he’d be behind him, and he won’t go back on it now. So he stands there like a shadow as Mydei holds this unfamiliar person close.

At last they pull apart again. Phainon finally gets the chance to observe him. Hephaestion is the same height as Mydei, but he’s much lankier, all bones. He wears his height like he’s been stretched out. His face would probably be handsome if it weren’t so wrought by sleeplessness.

“I was so worried,” Hephaestion says quietly. “We all were, Mydeimos.”

Mydei’s throat bobs, like he’s having trouble swallowing his guilt. “I texted you,” he says weakly. “I told you all I was fine.”

“You wouldn’t say where you were,” Hephaestion counters. “You took all the money out of your checking account in cash and left without a word. Sue us for being a little concerned.”

“I thought—” Mydei breaks off and scrubs a hand over his face. “Look, you have to understand, it’s not about you. I thought my father would—would use you all to track me down. It was a safety precaution.”

Hephaestion looks stricken.

“You won’t tell him,” Mydei says suddenly, his face paling. “You can’t tell him, Hephaestion. You can’t.”

Hephaestion lets out a long breath. “Mydeimos,” he says, his voice a little sad. He leans against the back of the door, looking exhausted. “You think so little of us? Of course I wouldn’t tell your father. None of us would.”

“He’s got money,” Mydei says, his voice breaking. “I know that can be… convincing. I wouldn't have held it against you, if you needed the money and you—”

Hephaestion laughs.

Mydei looks up at him. For the first time, his expression is purely raw, like he’s finally let down his ever-persistent guard. He looks vulnerable like this. He looks honest.

“You don’t get it,” Hephaestion says quietly. “You think I care for a handful of dirty money more than I care for you?”

Mydei is quiet for a long, long moment. He sits down on the arm of the couch and buries his face in his hands. He breathes in, and then he’s sobbing into his hands, big, ugly sobs that wrack through his entire body like tidal waves.

Phainon rushes to his side instantly. “Mydei,” he says, holding onto his shoulders. “Mydei, are you okay? Do you need anything?”

Mydei shakes his head.

“Glass of water?” Phainon offers.

Slowly, Mydei nods.

Phainon goes into the kitchen and gets it for him. It’s a relief, almost, to have a task. He’s doing something. He’s helping. He feels useful, at least a little bit.

He brings the glass of water back. Mydei uncovers his face and tips the whole thing back in two long sips. His eyes are red-rimmed and shimmering, but his smile, although shaky, is persistent. “You found me,” he says, sounding incredulous. “Hephaestion, how the hell did you find me? Did you—shit, is there some kind of IP address link from my schoolwork? I know I turned off all my location sharing. I changed my data plan and everything.”

Hephaestion snorts.

Mydei glares at him through his watery eyes. “What?”

“You talked about him for four months. It wasn’t hard to guess that you had gone back here.”

Mydei flushes bright red.

“Still,” says Hephaestion, his smile slipping away. “I wish—I wish you’d thought to come stay with one of us. We’re your friends, you know that. We’d never betray you to your father. No matter what.”

Mydei closes his eyes. “You don’t know what it was like,” he chokes out. His voice is suddenly very small, pressed down like a wildflower between book pages. “You and Ptolemy and Peucesta and Leonnius and Perdikkas, you all left for college and I was still there, all alone. All I had to do was make it through senior year without you, but—” He groans and wipes furiously at his eyes. “I couldn't do it,” he says eventually. “I couldn't.”

Hephaestion sits down on the floor at his feet. “I know, Mydeimos. It’s alright.”

They sit there in silence.

“I just wonder,” Hephaestion says, and then he cuts himself off.

Mydei looks down at him. “What?”

Hephaestion casts an odd look in Phainon’s direction. “Nothing,” he says, rather unconvincingly.

“Bullshit.”

Hephaestion’s expression twists.

Mydei kicks at his ankles. “Spit it out.”

“Why him?” Hephaestion says abruptly, and oh god, he’s looking at Phainon. “Why, when you have five of us right here, who’ve been here for your whole life, would you choose him? Why would you run to him over all of us?”

Mydei glances back at him, just briefly, but tears his eyes away just as fast. “I told you already. My father knows how to reach you.”

“He knows how to reach me,” Hephaestion agrees. “But he doesn’t know Leonnius or Perdikkas very well. And they both go to college in different states; he would have had a hard time finding you there.”

Mydei’s shoulders tense again. “I couldn't take the risk.”

“You have to see how ridiculous this is,” Hephaestion says, his voice even sharper. “For fuck’s sake, you could have gone to any of us. You could have gone to one of your teachers. Or you could have asked us to help you find somewhere to stay. And instead you chose to run away to what? The summer fling who fucked you one time? Who—god, Mydeimos, who took your fucking virginity and never spoke to you again?”

Mydei’s jaw goes tense. “He has a name.”

Hephaestion looks at Phainon. There’s something sharp in his eyes: not disdain, but hurt. “You don’t even know him.”

“Phainon,” Mydei says suddenly.

Phainon blinks. Hephaestion blinks too. They both look at him, stunned.

“His name is Phainon,” Mydei says, his voice stronger. “He’s twenty-one, and he’s not a student even though he wants to be one—and don’t argue with that, Phainon, I know you do. He burns shit in the microwave and likes terrible movies and never complains, no matter how much work he’s given. He’s left-handed. He’s got a terrible sense of style even though he works weekends at a thrift shop. He can’t take pills, but he’ll try just about anything else. And I know damn well that he cares about me just as much as I care about him.”

Silence. Phainon stands there staring at him like he’s an entirely new person.

“Don’t tell me I don’t know him,” Mydei finishes quietly.

Phainon’s breath catches in his throat. He swallows around nothing. He tries to say something, but it doesn’t quite work. He doesn’t know what he’d say, anyway.

It’s not like he didn’t know Mydei thought of him highly. Mydei wouldn’t have stayed so long if he didn’t like him at least a little. But he didn’t have to defend him, much less to his own friends. And he didn’t have to take the time to learn him, piece by piece. And yet he did, without Phainon even noticing.

“You’re staying here, then,” Hephaestion says, his smile wry.

Mydei nods, just once.

Hephaestion lets out a long exhale. “Okay.”

Mydei looks caught off guard. “You’re not going to protest?”

“Do you want me to?” Hephaestion asks, amused. He sighs and stands up, taking one of Mydei’s hands in both of his. “I just want you to be happy and safe. My place always has room for you if you need it. But if you don’t…” He smiles a little and lets go of his hand. “Text us back, okay? We keep sending you videos in the group chat. You’re like two weeks behind on our meme roster.”

Mydei laughs through his wet eyes. He stands up from the couch. “Yeah,” he promises, his eyes bright. Then, “Thank you, Hephaestion. I love you.”

Hephaestion’s smile grows stronger. He hugs Mydei again, this time less tight, softer. He says something too low for Phainon to hear. It makes Mydei laugh when they pull apart.

“Have some eggplant,” he says, already dragging Hephaestion into the kitchen. “I made too much. And Perdikkas would yell at me if I didn’t feed you.”

So they pull out their fourth chair, and Hephaestion joins them at the tiny dining table, and they eat their dad’s stuffed eggplant recipe together, and it doesn’t taste quite the same but Cyrene eats five portions anyway, because it still tastes good.

***

The next afternoon Mydei takes Phainon to a cafe, buys him an earl grey latte with almond milk, and says, “There’s something you should know.”

Phainon burns himself on his drink. He chokes and splutters and clears his throat awkwardly. “Um, yeah?” he says at last, sitting up straighter in his chair. His face is burning even hotter than the tea. “What is it?”

Mydei doesn’t smile. He looks at Phainon’s hands on his latte and says, “My father, he—”

Phainon waits. He doesn’t ever finish.

“Just,” Mydei says at last, and then he takes out his phone. He types something, then flips his phone around to show Phainon. It’s a search: Eurypon Nikador, CEO of a private contracting company called Kremnos Tech. Mydei scrolls past the results too fast for Phainon to read anything else. There are… a lot of results. Eighteen pages of results.

Phainon’s stomach sinks. “Is that—?”

“Yes,” Mydei says, putting his phone back down. “My father. However much money you think he has, he has ten times that.”

Phainon swallows thickly. He doesn’t see how this is relevant, but at least Mydei trusts him with the information. That’s good.

“I’m not sure how hard he’s actually searching for me,” Mydei admits, his mouth thinning. “But if he’s trying, he will find me eventually. Someone will give in.”

“I don’t think your friends will,” Phainon says. “Hephaestion seemed pretty determined. They all probably feel the same way.”

“They do,” Mydei says. This time, he looks right at Phainon. “But I need to know you would do the same.”

Phainon blinks. He opens his mouth.

“It’ll be a lot of money,” Mydei says, a little desperate. “If he offers you something, or if he—if he posts a reward for me, it’ll be a lot. Enough to pay for everything. If you think you’d hesitate, I have to know.”

Phainon looks at him, incredulous. “Mydei, you think I’d give you up for money?”

Mydei shifts in his seat and looks at nothing. “It would pay for two tuitions,” he says, a non-answer. “Not just Cyrene’s. Yours too. You could—” Here he falters. He groans and props his head in his hands. “You could study whatever you wanted,” he says to the table, his voice hollow. “You wouldn’t have to struggle for it.”

“Mydei,” Phainon says gently, reaching across the table for him. “Let me ask you this.”

Mydei looks up from the table. His eyes look heavy.

“Do you think we’re struggling?”

Mydei hesitates. “Not really,” he says slowly. “You make all your payments on time, and you can afford groceries and clothes and everything.”

“Exactly. Maybe we’re not rich, but Cyrene’s going to graduate debt-free. We haven’t taken out any loans, and we’ve got savings accounts, and we have great connections here. So tell me: do we need the money?”

“…It would be nice,” Mydei tries weakly.

“Do we need it?”

“No.”

“I rest my case,” Phainon says. He picks up his latte and takes a sip. This time it doesn’t burn his mouth, but the temperature still feels odd on the roof of his mouth. “Besides,” he adds, tipping the cup towards him. “You buy me stuff all the time. It’s not like I’m losing money by keeping you around. If anything, I’m leeching off of you.”

Mydei breathes a half-laugh through his nose. Then, quietly, he says, “Forty-seven thousand, eight hundred.”

Phainon tilts his head. He takes another long sip.

“That’s how much money I took out of my checking account when I left.”

Phainon splutters into the cup. He blinks several times rapidly. “Excuse me? Forty-seven thousand?”

“That was at the start,” Mydei protests, his face flushed. “It’s more like forty-five now. I had to buy a new cell plan and new clothes and all the groceries. Oh, and the cross-country train tickets. You know how much AmTrak charges? That was like four hundred by itself.”

Actually, Phainon does know how much they charge, because that’s how he travels anywhere. There’s no airport close by, so if he and Cyrene want to travel, they have to take the train first to get to Okhema City, the closest travel hub. “They do go across all of Amphoreus,” Phainon points out. “I think they can charge whatever they want, really.”

“Not like I can’t pay for it,” Mydei says drily.

Phainon laughs. “No shit! Forty-five thousand,” he repeats wistfully. “That’s, like, three years of Cyrene’s tuition. Not counting the rent and stuff, though.”

Mydei is quiet for a moment. Then he says, “My father’s house in Castrum Kremnos is worth twenty-two million.”

Phainon drops his drink onto the table. The cup creaks dangerously under the pressure, but doesn’t break.

“I lived there for most of my childhood,” Mydei continues. “We had a live-in chef and two live-in housekeepers. I don’t think the garden staff lived on the premises, but they came in every day. My father had three bodyguards and a private driver. The gate was electric; no one got in, and no one came out.”

Phainon can hardly even picture it. “That sounds… strange.”

Mydei doesn’t respond. He parts his lips, but never says anything. Instead he just sits there, looking forlornly at Phainon’s drink like it holds all the answers.

Phainon looks right at him. He reaches out for Mydei’s hand across the table, but chickens out partway through. Instead he says, “I think I would have run away, too.”

Mydei clears his throat and looks away. “It wasn’t that bad,” he says, though his eyes waver. “It was just—my father wants his son to be a certain way. And I’m not that way. I don’t like business, and I definitely don’t like his business.” He sighs, looking out the window at the street. “I think… maybe he’d rather have no children at all than have me. Maybe he won’t ever come looking.”

Phainon doesn’t know what to say. He tries taking another sip of his drink, but finds it empty.

Mydei’s mouth quirks up. “Idiot,” he says, softer than usual. “You drank it all already.”

“So I did.”

They fall into silence together. Mydei stares out the window, so Phainon stares with him. The street is salted and the sidewalk glistens with dirty ice. Everyone who walks by is bundled in coats. The sky is grey, unwelcoming. The scene is altogether bleak. Phainon’s never really liked winter. He loves the summer; this is the price he has to pay for it, he supposes.

But next to him, Mydei looks captivated. He isn’t smiling exactly, but his gaze doesn’t waver from the ice-tinted street. His eyes shimmer with the pale reflection of the sky.

Phainon looks outside again. “Maybe you should have stayed in Castrum Kremnos,” he says quietly. “It’s warm this time of year, right? Isn’t it perfect all year round?”

Mydei tears his eyes away from the window. “Yeah,” he says, his voice strange. “I never liked it.”

“You didn’t?”

Mydei breathes out a thin laugh. “No,” he says. He looks back outside, at the winter gloom, and smiles a little. “I think I got tired of being perfect.”

***

Phainon wakes up too hot. It’s not just the temperature; he’s hard. God. He sighs out a long breath and hears something rustling in front of him. He settles more securely into the warmth surrounding him and tries to go back to sleep, ignoring the problem.

And then the pillow he’s cuddling moves.

Phainon’s eyes fly open. It’s—it’s Mydei, and he’s awake, or almost awake, the same kind of awake that Phainon is, with his eyes flickering and his breath slow and syrupy.

They’ve been sleeping together. Of course they have. Phainon may be something resembling a gentleman, but even a gentleman gets tired of sleeping on the couch. And it’s fine. Really—they just get in bed and sleep, and Phainon sometimes feels the hairs on the back of Mydei’s neck rustling with his own breath because they sleep facing the same direction, but it’s fine, and it doesn’t mean anything, and he never finds himself draped across Mydei’s waist or anything like that. Or at least if he does, he fixes it as fast as possible.

But this time, when Phainon scrambles away and lets go of his waist, Mydei sighs and reaches back blindly.

“Sorry,” Phainon whispers, hoarse. His heart is pounding. “Didn’ mean to do that.”

“Fuck’s sake,” Mydei mumbles. He’s talking into the pillow, still half-asleep. This time, his hand finds purchase, and drags Phainon’s arm back into place, slung across him.

Phainon holds his breath. They’ve slept together, just that one time in July, but somehow this still feels like uncharted territory. “You don’ mind?” he whispers through his rough throat.

Mydei makes a strange noise, like he’d meant to groan in exasperation but didn’t quite follow through. “Shut up,” he says, pressing his head back into the pillow. “Just—god, fucking, just—”

And then he turns over, so they’re facing each other, tired eyes to tired eyes.

Phainon stares at him, incredulous. He doesn’t think he quite remembers how to breathe. “S’just morning wood or whatever,” he says, shying away from his touch. “Not important.”

“Don’t lie,” Mydei says, looking him in the eyes. “I know you like me.”

Phainon flushes. “A little,” he admits, trying not to think of Mydei’s bare skin beneath his. “Dunno if you like me, though.”

Mydei closes his eyes and makes a frustrated sound. “You drive me fucking crazy,” he mutters, and then he reaches down and takes both of them in one hand and Phainon gasps all high-pitched like a little girl, and then Mydei laughs softly into his open mouth and pulls his hand up and Phainon wraps his arms around Mydei’s neck and breathes in unison with him until it’s over.

In the morning they don’t talk about it, but Mydei makes him an extra cup of coffee and wears his jacket all day, even in the apartment.

***

The first snow comes late. The winter has been unusually gentle; it’s been cold, and the streets have been icy most days, but they’ve yet to have hail knocking at their windows and snow blanketing the streets. It finally arrives on Thursday, bright and early in the morning, greeting them just as they’re waking up.

Phainon, of course, wakes up and sees nothing but gloom. He’d been hoping for a snowless December. Maybe Mydei had brought some Kremnos weather with him and kept the snow away. But alas. He sighs and drags himself out of bed, resigned.

And then he sees Mydei in the kitchen, chopping baby bok choy into quarters with his whole face glowing.

“Mor—” Phainon yawns. “Ning.”

“Hey,” Mydei says, not even looking up at him. “You know it’s snowing?”

Phainon definitely knows. It’s made the whole world white outside, and all the light through his windows is too bright now. He bites back another yawn. “I noticed.”

Mydei splits the final halved bok choy into two pieces and sets down the knife. “You could be a little more enthusiastic about it,” he says, throwing a sideways glance at him. “It’s, like, snow. I’ve only seen snow maybe three times.”

“I see it three hundred times,” Phainon says. “Per year.”

Mydei huffs and turns back to the counter. He shoves a plate into Phainon’s hands. “Here. This should make you nicer.”

It’s a full, heaping mound of potato pancakes, complete with a side of sour cream dusted with paprika. Phainon’s chest feels strange all of a sudden. “Mydei,” he says weakly. “You…?”

“If you don’t want them, just say so.”

“No, no, no,” Phainon says hastily, setting the plate down on the table. “I was just surprised. Didn’t know you’d been up long enough to make these. Thank you.”

Mydei turns around from the counter and smiles a little. “Of course I was up. It’s snowing,” he says, a non-sequiteur.

Phainon sighs through his nose. He brushes past Mydei to get himself a fork. Mydei sidesteps out of his way like he’s done it a thousand times before, although he definitely hasn’t. Phainon piles the sour cream onto his potato pancakes and watches Mydei work out of the corner of his eye.

“These are for lunch,” Mydei explains before he can ask. “Cyrene was saying she might not eat between her two finals today. Hephaestion sends me a lot of recipe videos. This one has soup sections in a bowl. Then she pours the broth over and microwaves it and it’s lunch.”

Phainon peers over his shoulder. He’s moved on from the bok choy and is now slicing up mushrooms. As he works, he places them into the microwavable bowl. There’s a tall thermos next to it, which Phainon realizes must be full of broth. “That’s nice of you,” he says, feeling a little warm. “I probably would’ve just bought a fried chicken sandwich for her and ran through the snow to deliver it. This is way nicer.”

Mydei’s mouth quirks up. “That’s nice too, in its own way.”

“No way,” Phainon says through a mouthful of potato pancakes. He swallows. “Her sandwich would be cold and I’d be shivering. Then we’d scarf down our cold fried chicken sandwiches together and run to her next class.”

“See,” says Mydei, his smile only growing. “It’s kind of sweet. You keep each other company.”

It’s nowhere near as sweet as Mydei making her a whole beautiful soup bowl. Phainon shrugs. “We like each other,” he says, which is true, at least. He and Cyrene always got along, even before she was forced to take custody of him and bring him to college with her. They argue, yeah, but they’re always on each other’s team. That’s how it always was in their family. One team. The same team.

In the time he’s been thinking, Mydei has already finished cutting the mushrooms. He doesn’t have any ongoing tasks, but he still doesn’t turn around. Instead he looks out the window at the bleak white sky. He breathes in, long and audible. “I never had a sibling,” he says, his voice odd. “Never saw the snow. Never experienced seasons at all, really.”

Phainon stays quiet. He can’t imagine his life without those things. Who would he have been, if he hadn’t had the seasons to mark each year, and Cyrene’s height marked on the doorframe above his?

For a moment, Mydei looks like he’s going to say something. Phainon waits for him. But instead he just turns to the lunchbox again and packs up the chopped vegetables and meat and the thermos of broth. He zips it shut and places it carefully by the door so Cyrene will see it.

Something blooms in Phainon’s chest. He takes the last bite of his potato pancakes and smiles.

“What?” Mydei asks, raising his eyebrows.

Phainon blinks.

“You look happier,” Mydei explains, crossing his arms. “You were all grumpy from the cold earlier.”

Phainon huffs defensively. “I was not grumpy. I was just thinking, you should come to work with me today.”

“What, so you can foist your work off on me?”

“A little bit, yeah,” Phainon says shamelessly. “I’m with Aglaea today. Her office is on the third floor. Nice view of the campus. You could come along and look at the snow from there.”

Mydei’s surprise melts into something fonder. “Mm,” he says. “That sounds alright.”

Phainon smiles back at him. He opens his mouth.

“AUGH,” says Cyrene quite loudly from down the hall.

The moment shatters. Phainon bursts out laughing.

“Don’t laugh at me,” she yells, glaring at him from her doorway. She’s wrapped in a blanket, held close around her shoulders like she’s at risk of freezing. She sniffs. “Your poor sister is suffering. They should never have let me take a math class. I can’t do math. I’m made for writing silly little stories, not doing matrix calculus.”

“Right, right,” Phainon says, nodding seriously. “Of course, Your Highness.”

Mydei’s sigh sounds suspiciously amused. “Cyrene,” he says quite pleasantly. “Want me to make you some tea? Extra strong earl grey?”

Cyrene takes her seat at the table. “Thank you, Mydei,” she says through a grin. “At least one of you knows your place.”

***

Mydei looks up from the design sketch in his hands. “So you’d like us to describe the shape and angles?”

Aglaea nods. “I’m not entirely blind,” she explains, looking at Mydei with her strange, milky green eyes. “I’ve still got a designer’s eye for color. Thus, I teach a design class themed around the use of color. The lines aren’t critical, but I still like to judge design projects holistically.”

“That’s where I usually help,” Phainon adds, shuffling through the pile of folders. Each one is a student’s final design portfolio, full of sketches and photographs and fabric samples.

Mydei opens the first folder, spreading out its contents on the desk.

“It isn’t just about the clothes,” Aglaea says, picking up the first photo. She peers at it through her glasses, scrunching her nose, then puts it back down. “See, this student has picked a model with black hair for an outfit strongly adhering to a greyscale palette. If they had chosen a brunette, it wouldn’t be as striking.”

Mydei peers at the image: a woman with short black hair in a black-and-white suit with a rich grey brocade cape and a grey tie done into an intricate knot. “Hm,” he says, his eyes sharp. “I see your point.”

Aglaea smiles, just slightly. She nods.

Phainon has been alphabetizing the folders by class section. Aglaea teaches two sessions of the same class, and their projects somehow always get mixed up. He glances up from his work to watch Mydei’s expression.

Then he does a double take, because Mydei’s looking at one of the photographs like it’s the only one on the table.

“What do you think of this one?” he asks, quieter than before. He hands the photo to Aglaea, his thumb over the model’s face.

Aglaea looks at it evenly. “It’s quite bold. The bright red hair is intense with the purple gown, but these are two jewel tones, so they combine quite nicely. This is probably a scarlet dye; it’s too strong to be natural.”

“Scarlet,” Mydei repeats to himself. His expression grows complex. “Isn’t this hair color ugly?”

Aglaea doesn’t even look fazed. She just hands the photo back to him. “It’s bold, but it looks excellent here, doesn’t it?”

“I guess it does,” Mydei says. He looks at the photo for a long moment.

Aglaea waits for him in silence.

“My mother used to dye her hair red,” he says at last. “My father made her grow it out when I was born, though. Said she looked cheap with it, and blonde was classier.”

“Is that so?” says Aglaea mildly. She looks at him through her thick lenses. “Stand in the window light, won’t you?”

Mydei looks confused, but stands up and goes into the snow-bright light of the window.

“Hm,” says Aglaea. She tilts her head. Then she says, “If your mother looked anything like you, she’d look beautiful with red hair.”

“She did,” Mydei says, even quieter than before. “Look like me.”

Aglaea smiles a little. Mydei sits back down at the desk with her. He looks at the red-haired model. Then he sits up straighter and hands her the next photo.

“I’m done,” Phainon declares, sliding over to join him. “All the folders are sorted! How do your class sections always get mixed together? It’s so weird, Professor. It’s like they’re trying to sabotage you. Don’t they know this only makes it harder for you to grade?”

Aglaea’s smile grows stronger. “Phainon, don’t complain,” she says loftily. “It’s unbecoming of a gentleman.”

Mydei snorts. “Gentleman? Him?”

“I am a gentleman,” Phainon splutters, crossing his arms. “I’ll have you know I’m extremely polite, Mydei. And professional! Very professional.”

Mydei looks at him through the corner of his eye, amused.

Phainon pointedly sets the folders down very gently. He takes his seat next to Mydei with grace.

“Alright, alright,” Aglaea says, moving the folders to her side table. “Now that we’ve got everything sorted, let’s begin.”

***

They grade finals with Aglaea until the late afternoon. By the time they’re done, it’s starting to grow dark, and the glow of the sun off the white snow is lighting their way home. It’s no longer snowing, but the air is still biting cold. Mydei is wearing Phainon’s big coat and his sweater underneath it, and he has Cyrene’s old gloves on.

“So?” says Phainon. He holds the door open for Mydei to exit the university building. “What did you think?”

Mydei’s nose scrunches when the cold air hits his face. He retreats into the collar of the jacket so that his chin is covered. “It was nice. Her class is more interesting than I expected. I thought you graded math tests or something.”

Phainon laughs. The hot air puffs in front of him like the echo of his joy. “Me, grading math tests? Is the world ending?”

Mydei looks at him sideways. “Don’t talk like that. You’re smarter than you pretend to be.”

Phainon’s heart skips a beat. “You think so?”

“I know so,” Mydei corrects, with eyes only for him.

His attention is weighty, like a blanket wrapped around him. Phainon flushes hot. He stumbles over his own feet, and the path slides out from beneath him. He yelps and scrunches his eyes shut—

—And never hits the ground.

Phainon blinks. Mydei’s holding onto his arm, holding tight, keeping him solid and upright.

“Thanks,” Phainon breathes, pulling his way to stability again. He taps his shoes against the ground a few times, dusting the layer of ice off the soles. “You see now why I don’t like this stuff?”

“No,” Mydei says, smiling. “I still like it.”

Phainon sighs. “Don’t tell me you want to build a snowman. I’m not giving you my scarf. I need that.”

Mydei laughs through his nose. He still hasn’t let go of Phainon’s hand. “Don’t worry. I need the carrot to make soup anyway. Can’t use it as a nose.”

Phainon rolls his eyes. His face is warm.

“But now that you mention it,” says Mydei, looking at him hopefully. “What are your thoughts on making snow angels?”

Phainon frowns. He hasn’t done that in years, but it was always kind of fun. “It makes nice photos,” he offers. “When Cyrene and I were little, we’d have our parents make snow angels and then sit in the big angels and try to reach the end of the wings. The only thing is that the snow can get in your jacket and then it melts and you have—”

Mydei grins.

Phainon cuts himself off. “What is it?”

“Phainon,” Mydei says, too sweetly. “Would you help me take a snow angel photo?”

“Oh, sure,” Phainon says absently. “Want me to use your phone or mine? Your camera is—”

And Mydei tackles him off the path right into the snow-covered university lawn.

Phainon splutters as his back hits the ground. “Mydei—!”

Mydei holds him down. He takes Phainon’s wrists in his hand and drags them up, carving out wings alongside him. Phainon struggles against his hold, but he’s been caught off guard, and Mydei has the upper hand. It’s fruitless.

Above him, Mydei’s face glitters against the pale sky. His long hair hangs down around him like a curtain, keeping him secret from the rest of the world. Phainon is so entranced that his resistance melts into nothing.

Mydei shucks off one of his gloves and unlocks his phone. He beams and takes a photo, victorious, of Phainon lying in the snow. Phainon can’t help it. When the shutter clicks, he laughs. They’re captured together in the picture, less a snow angel and more the aftermath of a brawl.

“There,” Mydei says, smiling down at him. His face is flushed pink and little clouds of laughter surround him in the cold air. “A perfect angel.”

Behind his back, Phainon slips a handful of snow into Mydei’s discarded glove. “You think so?” he says innocently.

“Of course.” Mydei extends his bare hand down to Phainon. “What else would you be?”

Phainon breathes a laugh. He takes the offered hand and stands up again, dusting the snow off his pants. “Oh, here,” he says as casually as possible. He hands over the glove.

Mydei puts it on and shrieks.

Phainon bursts out laughing. “Oh my god! You really haven’t been somewhere with snow. Mydei, that’s the oldest trick in the book. I can’t believe you didn’t see that coming.”

“I’m from Kremnos,” Mydei mutters, tugging the glove off again. He shakes off his wet hand, brushing the melted snow off his fingertips. “It’s never below freezing there. Give me a break.”

Phainon lets the last of his laughter fade away into the air. He takes off his left glove. “Here,” he says, holding it out. “So your hand doesn’t get too cold.”

Mydei wipes his hand off on his jeans. He puts Phainon’s glove on and frowns down at it. “But then you’ll be cold.”

“I’m used to it.”

“You’re left-handed,” Mydei argues. “I’ll just put my hand in my pocket or something.”

“I’ll just put my hand in my pocket,” Phainon fires back.

Mydei sighs exaggeratedly. “Idiot,” he mutters, “take a fucking hint,” and then he reaches out for Phainon’s bare hand and holds it in his gloved one, and doesn’t let go until Phainon has to reach for his keys at the apartment door.

***

“I’m dead,” Cyrene declares, flopping on the couch. “Deceased. Rest in peace Cyrene Khaslana, who lived a tragic twenty-three years and then perished.”

“You did fine,” Phainon reassures her, patting her shoulder. “You know what they say! C’s get degrees!”

Cyrene groans into the pillow.

Ah. This is serious. Phainon sits down next to her on the couch. “Hey, you’re almost there,” he says. “Only one more final left. And the last one isn’t too hard, right?”

Cyrene shakes her still-buried head.

Phainon runs his fingers through her hair as soothingly as he can. He brushes it out over and over again until it runs smoothly through his hands.

Cyrene makes a pleased noise. Some of the tension in her shoulders eases out.

“You wanna make mulled cider and eat cinnamon rolls for dinner? And watch some shitty action movie with hot women in tank tops?”

Cyrene grins into the pillow. “Hell yeah,” she mumbles, lifting her fist. Phainon fistbumps her out of habit.

“I don’t really like hot women,” Mydei says from the table.

“We know,” Cyrene says drily. “You’re outvoted.”

Phainon sighs fondly. “Cyrene, I don’t really like hot women either.”

“Misogynist,” Cyrene mutters, punching him in the leg. Phainon yelps. “Whatever,” she continues. “You’re both outvoted, because I’m the one who has to take finals. And don’t say some shit about Mydei taking them too. He doesn’t count.”

Mydei frowns, but doesn’t say anything.

Phainon grins down at her. He goes into the kitchen, searching the pantry for the tube of cinnamon roll dough. He rummages through the whole shelf, pulling out everything he can find, and—nothing. There’s nothing at all.

“Hey, Mydei?” he calls. “Did you move the cinnamon roll dough? It’s in, like, a pop tube with a blue label.”

Mydei peers over his shoulder. “Oh. Yeah, I moved it into the trash.”

Phainon smacks his hand over his heart, scandalized. “But that’s what Cyrene and I always do when we’re sad! You can’t just throw away our traditions. Hold on—I’ll go buy more.”

“Don’t go anywhere,” he says, grabbing Phainon’s hand. Phainon is so surprised by the contact that he actually stops in his tracks. “I’ll make them.”

Phainon gapes at him. “You know how?”

“No,” Mydei sniffs. “But how hard could it be?”

From her throne on the couch, Cyrene laughs drily.

Mydei finds a recipe online within two minutes. It’s not a regular recipe, either. Instead, it’s a video of a beautiful man in a skimpy apron with no shirt underneath baking cinnamon rolls on Mydei’s phone. Mydei sets this video on the counter on loop like it’s a legitimate recipe and begins following it.

“Uh, Mydei?” Phainon says, glancing sideways at the phone. The man on screen has begun kneading the dough, and his pecs keep squeezing together to match.

Mydei doesn’t even look up from the cupboard. “Yes?”

The man bends over to put the cinnamon rolls in the oven. His ass bulges in his tight pants. Phainon nearly bites his tongue. “…Never mind.”

The cinnamon rolls aren’t as complicated as Phainon was somehow led to believe in his childhood. Maybe that’s because he has Mydei; everything seems easy when he’s the one doing it. Mydei puts together the dough with flour and water and yeast and sugar, and then he slices it up into nine beautifully even rolls and begins flattening them out.

“There’s no cinnamon in it yet,” Phainon points out, frowning.

“That’s where you come in,” Mydei replies, not missing a beat. “You’re gonna spread the cinnamon paste on the dough. Then we roll up that piece, and put them in the pan, and then we have cinnamon rolls.”

Phainon nods. When Mydei hands him one flattened-out ninth of the dough, he spoons the cinnamon sugar mixture onto it and spreads it carefully across the whole thing. He messed up microwaving popcorn; he will not give Mydei another reason to distrust him in the kitchen.

Mydei glances over at him. He nods, looking faintly surprised.

“Does that mean I did well?” Phainon asks eagerly.

“Mhm,” Mydei says. Phainon takes this as a win. “Now you just roll it up.”

“No problem,” Phainon says brightly, and he rolls up the dough. With the cinnamon on the outside.

Mydei stares at him.

Phainon looks down at his own hands. They’re sticky with cinnamon and butter. “Uh,” he says, buffering. “I… didn’t know which way to roll it?”

Mydei stares at him, baffled. “Have you ever seen a cinnamon roll?”

“Okay, okay, I know I’m wrong here,” Phainon says hastily. “You don’t need to rub it in.”

“Have you ever seen the middle of a cinnamon roll? The part that has the cinnamon in it?”

Phainon groans and drops his head into his hands. “Look,” he starts. “Just because I’m dumb doesn’t mean I’m also stupid.”

“Uh huh,” says Mydei, smiling a little. “By the way, you just put your hands on your face.”

Phainon blinks down at his sticky hands. His sticky hands that were just all over his face. “I give up,” he says flatly. “Maybe I really should be banned from kitchens.”

Mydei huffs a quiet laugh. “It’s not that bad.” He swipes his finger against Phainon’s nose, then licks it off, like that’s somehow going to clean him up.

“Hope it tastes good, at least,” Phainon mutters.

Mydei looks at him with thinly veiled fondness. He leans in closer. His thumb drags against the corner of Phainon’s mouth, then closer, across the soft part of his bottom lip. Phainon stares at him, his heart pounding, as he moves his thumb away again. Then, before he can react, Mydei holds him firmly in place and licks the sticky corner of his mouth.

Phainon forgets how to breathe. He stands there, dumbstruck, as Mydei licks the sugar off his mouth. He thinks vaguely about parting his lips, making it into a real kiss, putting his sticky hands all over Mydei and leaving him nowhere to run.

But then Mydei leans away again, and the moment passes.

“Yeah,” Mydei breathes, his face flushed. “It tastes good.”

Phainon stands there, his mind reeling. He fumbles with the cinnamon sugar spoon.

“Going okay over there?” Cyrene yells from the stove. The apple cider is boiling, and she’s going to drop the orange into it soon. She’s busy stabbing cloves into its peel, turning it into a strange, spiky ball.

“Going great,” Mydei replies. He takes the botched cinnamon roll from Phainon’s workstation. “We’ll just put this one in the middle,” he says, looking at it fondly. “It’ll make all the cinnamon rolls around it taste even better.”

Phainon looks at him, then back down at the cinnamon roll dough. “Yeah,” he says, feeling more than a little warm. “I bet.”

***

At midnight Phainon comes out of the shower to find Mydei in the kitchen, illuminated by a single overhead light on the dimmest setting. He’s got the carton of spinach open in front of him and he’s stuffing his face, no utensils, no plate, just spinach directly into his mouth.

“Hello to you too,” Phainon says, baffled. He stands on the other side of the table and raises his eyebrows at him. “You’re just… eating spinach?”

Mydei puts down his handful of spinach like he’s been caught stealing. “I wanted vegetables,” he says defensively. “I can’t just eat cinnamon rolls and cider.”

“They were good, though,” Phainon says. And it’s true—the cinnamon rolls were better than anything they’ve ever had out of a tube. The action movie, as promised, was terrible and had lots of boobs and fast cars. Cyrene loved it.

“You know how people get cravings?”

Phainon blinks, a little lost. “Yeah?” Of course he knows. He lives with his sister, who just had a craving for cinnamon rolls today, in fact.

“I,” says Mydei, “had a craving for spinach.”

Then he begins shoveling the spinach into his mouth at top speed again.

“That can’t be real,” Phainon insists, leaning his elbows on the table. “I thought cravings were always for junk food. Or weird stuff. Like pickles and peanut butter.” He pauses. “Well, I guess that’s a pregnancy craving. And you’re probably not pregnant.”

“Probably,” Mydei agrees. “You used a condom.” He stuffs another handful of spinach into his mouth.

Phainon flushes bright red. He opens his mouth to say something, but nothing comes out. He thinks vaguely about that night, so many months ago. That Mydei seems so distant from the Mydei he knows now.

He hadn’t even meant to do it, really. He’d looked at Mydei that day and realized he was twenty years old and had never had a chance to love someone, and so he’d decided to give it a try for a night. He had no way of knowing, back then, that the first try would be the charm. He thought it would eventually become nothing. Just a story he’d tell in the future, when he summed up his life. But here is Mydei, not content to stay in his past. Here is Mydei, letting him try and try and try until he finally gets it right.

“You know,” says Mydei suddenly, out of nowhere. “When my mother was pregnant with me, she had a craving for chard stalks.”

Phainon blinks. “For what?”

“Chard,” Mydei repeats, grabbing another handful of spinach. “That’s kind of like spinach.”

“Not really?” Phainon says, baffled, but Mydei is already stuffing another handful of spinach in his mouth. Phainon watches. Then, slowly, he reaches in and grabs a few spinach leaves for himself.

They stand there together at the table under the low lights, just past midnight, and eat the entire carton of spinach. When they go to bed Mydei slings Phainon’s arm across his waist and slots their legs together, and Phainon sleeps through the night.

***

“Okay,” Cyrene says, gesturing to the small heap of presents on the table. “Pick one!”

Mydei stares at her over the rim of his mug. “There’s still one more day until Christmas, right? I’m not insane?”

Cyrene waves her hands wildly and nearly knocks over her glass of water. “Yeah, it’s Christmas Eve,” she says excitedly. “So we get to investigate all the presents and open one of them!”

Mydei’s brow furrows.

“It’s our family tradition,” Phainon explains. He picks up one of the packages labeled for him and shakes it gently next to his ear. “Hm… sounds kind of like a jigsaw puzzle. Either that, or I broke it really badly.”

“Here,” Cyrene says, pressing one of the presents into his hands. This one is round, wrapped in yellow paper, with MYDEI scrawled on it in her unmistakable cursive. “Shake it around. You can pick whichever one you want to open today.”

“Don’t you need to wait until Christmas?” Mydei asks, still looking perplexed. “When—when you open them all under the tree?”

“We don’t have a tree,” Phainon says, putting the probably-jigsaw-puzzle back down. “Too expensive.”

“Oh,” Mydei says. He frowns slightly and pushes his chair away from the table. “If money is the problem, then—”

“NO,” Phainon and Cyrene yell in unison.

Slowly, Mydei sits back down.

“It’s not just that,” Cyrene sighs, looking a little downcast. “It’s also a lot of hassle to clean up, and we don’t have a stand or very many ornaments. And we don’t have lights.”

“We didn’t have a tree growing up anyway,” Phainon says, shrugging. “Price went way up when I was maybe five. We stopped getting trees after that. Just made a big pile instead.”

Cyrene puts another one of Phainon’s presents into his hands. “When you were little, mom always said we could get a tree the same height as you. We had a tiny little two-foot tree.” She laughs to herself. “She made you stand next to it to measure. Held up a ruler over your head and everything.”

Next to him, Mydei laughs through his nose.

“Don’t laugh at me,” Phainon sniffs, mock-offended. “I was short once.”

“And round,” Cyrene adds, grinning. “You had the roundest face as a baby. And your hair was so blond. Almost as pale as it is now, even with the bleach.”

Phainon groans and sets down his present. “Cyrene…”

“He’s got to know these things.”

Mydei looks between the two of them, amused. He picks up his present, then sets it back down.

“Don’t listen to her,” Phainon pleads. He fumbles through the pile for the box he’d wrapped himself, wrapped in gold paper with red ribbon. “Here—don’t even look at the other ones. Just open this one tonight.”

Mydei shakes it slightly, but it makes no telling sound. He frowns at it.

“It’s from me,” Phainon says, suddenly a little nervous.

Mydei’s frown softens into something sweeter. “Alright,” he says. “I choose this one.”

Eventually Cyrene picks her present—shaped suspiciously like a bottle of prosecco, because it is a bottle of prosecco, which Phainon bought for her last time he and Mydei went grocery shopping—and Phainon picks his—the biggest one in the pile. All three of them set their gifts in front of them and begin unwrapping at the same time.

“Woah!” Cyrene says, thick with irony. She holds up the bottle of prosecco. “I had no idea!”

Phainon rips open the paper on his giant box. It’s bubble wrap, and more bubble wrap, and more bubble wrap, and then it’s a bike basket, a real one, not a milk crate but a metal wire basket. It’s nice. The tag doesn’t say who it’s from. “Mydei,” he says. “Did you get me…”

But when he turns, Mydei’s eyes are wide and glassy. He stares down at the present in his hands.

It’s a box of scarlet hair dye.

“…Is it too much?” Phainon says, quieter than he intends. “It’s just—Aglaea mentioned you would look good with red hair, and you said your mom dyed it. So I thought maybe you’d want to try it. It’s only semi-permanent, so it’ll wash out if you don’t like it. And—”

“Shut the fuck up,” Mydei chokes out, and then he throws his arms around Phainon’s shoulders.

Phainon laughs into Mydei’s hair and hugs him back. For a moment he thinks Mydei’s going to cry, but then he sighs into Phainon’s shoulder and lets go of him. When he emerges again, he’s smiling, and his eyes are dry.

“Come on,” Cyrene groans, pulling at the cork. “Just—AHA!” The prosecco pops open, and then spills all over her hands. She frantically tries to cover the top of the bottle, and only succeeds in getting her hands even stickier.

“Want some help?” Mydei asks, raising his eyebrows.

“Don’t you start with me,” Cyrene mutters. She sets the bottle back down and licks the prosecco foam off of her hands. She motions vaguely to Phainon, and he runs to the kitchen. They have four wine flutes, a gift from Aglaea for Cyrene’s twenty-first birthday a couple years back. Phainon grabs three of them and brings them out to the table.

Mydei looks at the glasses and makes a strange face.

“What?” Cyrene says, already pouring the first glass. “I know you’re eighteen, and I don’t care. If you want some, you can have it.”

Mydei’s mouth twists. “I… think I’ll pass.”

Phainon nods and takes the third glass back into the kitchen.

“Sorry,” Mydei says, his voice a little rough. “It’s not—I don’t mean to be rude.”

“You don’t have to apologize,” Cyrene says, already pouring the second glass. “It’s my present anyway! More for me. Get your laptop out. We’re going to watch Christmas comedy sketches, and your laptop is better than mine.”

Slowly, Mydei’s smile returns.

***

Later that night Phainon stands over the sink with Mydei and carefully paints dye onto the ends of his hair. He’s reckless when he does his own bleach; with Mydei, he uses the brush and the instruction sheet and everything. He paints the dye on in a perfect straight line, so that it’s even all the way around his face, blond to red and red to blond.

“Thank you,” Mydei says quietly. He traces his own reflection along the mirror, lingering along the lines where his hair changes color. “It looks just like hers did.”

Phainon breathes a laugh. “You have Professor Aglaea to thank for that. She’s the one that spotted the color, not me.”

“And you’re the one who remembered.”

Phainon fumbles with the dye brush and stains the side of his thumb red. “It’s not a big deal,” he says sheepishly. “I mean, you remembered all those things about me when Hephaestion came. I figured I should return the favor. Learn a few things about you.”

Mydei’s smile widens in the mirror. He takes Phainon’s hand and rubs the red dye off until both their fingers are stained pink.

***

On Christmas morning, Phainon wakes up to a pillow smacking his face. He tries to yell in protest and gets smothered with the pillow for his efforts.

“Shh,” Mydei hisses, pushing the pillow down further over his face. “It’s barely five. Don’t wake Cyrene yet.”

Phainon nods frantically and gives him a thumbs up from beneath the pillow. At last Mydei lifts it. Phainon gasps for breath and looks at him in the dark. He’s still half-asleep. Mydei clearly is too; his freshly-dyed hair is rumpled and his face has pillow lines on it from where he’d been sleeping.

“Hi,” Phainon says hoarsely, waving at him.

Mydei breathes a half-laugh. “Hi.”

Phainon drags himself up in bed and rubs his eyes. “Any reason you woke me up at five?”

“We’re making a tree.”

Phainon blinks. Maybe he’s more asleep than he thought. He rubs his eyes again. “We’re… what?”

Mydei drops the pillow and beckons him over to the living room floor, where the pile of presents sits in front of the couch. Phainon follows him over. On the floor are two pairs of scissors, three different rolls of tape, a pile of pens and markers, and what looks like an entire ream of emerald-green construction paper. Where did Mydei even find all of this? Did he go out and buy it? He went gift-shopping, of course, but did he really carry home a ream of paper along with everything else?

Mydei sits down and picks up the scissors. “Come on,” he says, motioning with the scissors. “We’re making a tree.”

Then he picks up a piece of paper and starts cutting branches.

Phainon finally gets it. Silently, to avoid waking Cyrene, he picks up the tape and a handful of paper and starts laying out the pieces on the wall.

It takes almost thirty minutes to construct the full tree. Mydei cuts each piece into diagonal branches, and when he’s done he hands it to Phainon, who places it on the wall into the shape of the tree, building it from the bottom up. By the time he reaches the topmost part of the tree, he’s out of pre-cut pieces. “Mydei,” he whispers, glancing down at him. “Last one?”

Mydei nods. He picks up a full piece of paper, but instead of cutting it, he stands up.

Phainon frowns. “You can just hand it to me. I’ll tape it up at the top.”

“Stand against the wall.”

Phainon frowns. “…What?”

Mydei takes him by the shoulders and lines him up with the wall. Phainon, feeling a bit like a child being measured against a doorway, goes along with it. Mydei puts the paper up next to him and starts cutting.

Phainon looks at him out of the corner of his eye. “You want some help?”

“Stay still,” Mydei says, still focused on the paper. “I’m making our tree the same height as you.”

The same height as him. Phainon’s throat catches.

He can’t remember most of their childhood holidays, but Cyrene can, and sometimes she shows him the pictures. He’d been so little. He wasn’t even eye-level with the tiniest tree in the whole lot. Cyrene stood next to him, her hand on his head, smiling so brightly that she could light up the whole tree by herself.

He’s grown a lot taller. Their family would never have been able to buy a tree his height, not even in their best years. But Mydei carefully lines up the top point of the tree with his head, and cuts the paper precisely where he stands.

“One-ninety,” Phainon says, as he tapes it to the wall.

Mydei glances at him. “One-ninety…?”

“My height. The tree’s one-ninety.”

Mydei’s brow furrows. Then, just as he presses the final piece of tape to the wall, he looks back at him. “Oh. You mean meters.”

“You think I’m a hundred and ninety meters tall?”

Mydei rolls his eyes and throws the tape roll at his head.

“OW,” Phainon yelps, rubbing his head. “That hurt, Mydei.”

“You deserved it.”

Well, maybe he’s right about that. Phainon picks the tape roll back up off the floor and puts it around his wrist. “That didn’t take too long. Why did you wake me up so early?”

“We still have to decorate it,” Mydei says, like it’s obvious. “That’s what the beads and pens and stuff are for. Ornaments, decorations, whatever. We have to draw it.”

“Oh.” Phainon ducks his head. “I’m kinda shit at drawing.”

Mydei raises his eyebrows. “How shit?”

Phainon opens his mouth.

“Very,” says a voice from down the hallway.

Both of them jolt like they’re in the middle of a museum heist.

Phainon hurriedly stands in front of the tree on the wall, and Mydei rushes to clean up all the paper scraps, but it’s too late. Cyrene is already rounding the corner into the living room, yawning blearily. “Too early for this,” she mutters. “And why’s it so dark? Let me get the lights…”

She turns up the brightness, and the room is flooded with light. Phainon’s attempt at hiding the tree becomes fruitless. He steps away from it, a little sheepish. “We’re making a tree,” he says, gesturing vaguely at it. “And decorating it.”

Cyrene’s eyes are wide. She looks at the paper tree like it’s a jewelry case full of diamonds.

“It was supposed to be a surprise,” Mydei says, his face pink. “We were going to have it all done when you came out to open presents.”

Cyrene’s eyes shimmer in the living room lights. “It’s alright,” she says, her voice wavering slightly. “I don’t want it all done. I’d rather decorate it together.”

Mydei’s eyes widen.

“God only knows what Phainon would do to that poor tree if he were left alone,” Cyrene adds, grinning with her whole face. “He’d draw terrible stick figures all over it. Probably a bunch of penises too.”

“I would not,” Phainon insists, crossing his arms. “I have more class than that.”

Mydei looks at him sideways, his smile widening. “Do you?”

Phainon huffs. He throws a marker at Mydei’s head.

“Yep. Classy,” Mydei says drily.

Cyrene just laughs. “Come on, don’t fight,” she says gently. “Let’s decorate our tree together, okay? Phainon can do the string of lights—that’s not hard. Just draw lines across the tree and put dots on it every so often for the lights. Mydei, you should draw some ornaments. And I’ll do the star at the top.”

“The tree’s my height,” Phainon says proudly, standing up tall next to the tree. “Make sure you don’t put the star higher than me, okay?”

Cyrene looks up at him, then at the tree. She puts a hand on his head, just like she did in that old photo at the tree lot, and smiles bright. She’s much shorter than him now, but she still reaches his head when she tiptoes.

***

“I changed my mind,” Mydei mutters, fixing Phainon’s collar beneath his sweater. Phainon didn’t even know he owned a collared shirt until this afternoon, when Mydei threw it at him. “You didn’t need the bike basket at all. Next Christmas I’m getting you a whole new wardrobe.”

“Aglaea and Anaxa already know what I’m like,” Phainon says petulantly, shuffling around to even out the collar. “And it’s not even a formal party. Just a thing for people who can’t go home over break.”

“You should at least try to look nice.”

Cyrene drags both of them forward. “Stop it. You both look nice. Now get in before Aglaea’s security cameras start yelling at her that there’s an intruder breaking into her house.”

Aglaea and Anaxa throw a dinner party every Christmas. Neither of them likes to cook, so they order delivery and break open champagne and have a big meal with everyone, a no-gift holiday celebration. Cyrene and Phainon have been invited every year since they moved here. It’s not a big party; their house isn’t huge, and they can only afford to host so many people. But it’s been their tradition for the last three years, and Phainon can’t imagine going without it.

So they arrive at the professors’ house that afternoon with Mydei in tow.

“Merry Christmas!” Phainon yells into the dining room as they enter. They only have an eight-person dining table, but it’s enough for their little celebration. “We brought chocolate coffee dessert stuff!”

Anaxa is already in the dining room. He’s lighting candles on the table. “Hello, Phainon,” he says, raising an eyebrow. “Dessert stuff? Is that the technical term?”

“Tiramisu crepes,” Mydei corrects, holding out the large covered tray for his perusal. “I’ll have to make the crepes here, because they’re best fresh, but the coffee cream and chocolate are already prepared.”

Anaxa turns to him and adjusts his prescription monocle. “Ah. You must be Mydei.”

Mydei’s eyes shift, just faintly. He inclines his head. “Yes. You’re Professor Anaxagoras?”

Anaxa’s eyebrows fly into his hair. “Feels like I haven’t been called that in years,” he says drily, throwing a pointed look at Phainon. “Some people tend to shorten my name.”

“Come on,” says Cyrene, grinning at him. “Even Aglaea calls you that.”

“And we’re on worse and worse terms by the day,” says Anaxa, waving a hand dismissively. “You’d do best not to emulate her if you want to remain my favorite student.”

Cyrene beams. “I’m your favorite?!”

Anaxa sighs like he’d rather not admit it. Ignoring her, he turns to Mydei. “Put those in the kitchen, please. There’ll be space in the fridge—I don’t think I’ve eaten in over a day.”

“Two days,” Aglaea confirms. She places an ornate crystal pitcher on the table, filled with water. “I’m ordering now. Lots of vegetarian food for Castorice, and nothing with nuts because of Hyacine. Mydei, any allergies?”

Mydei shakes his head.

“Preferences, then?” Aglaea asks, pulling something up on her phone. “We’re ordering Dolosian. Phainon and I always get a double order of jambalaya.”

Mydei takes her phone cautiously. He scrolls through the restaurant menu. Phainon peers over his shoulder. Eventually Mydei hands it back to her. “Maque choux,” he requests. “Maybe something with shrimp, too.”

“Oh, yum,” Phainon says dreamily. He can already imagine the table drowning under the weight of all their orders. “Can we get shrimp and grits? Please?”

Aglaea just smiles. “Of course.”

By the time the dinner arrives, the remaining three guests have arrived. There are eight places set at the table: two for Aglaea and Anaxa, three for their group, and three more. One is Castorice, a design student in Aglaea’s graduate class who makes jewelry. One is Hyacine, Anaxa’s other assistant, an aspiring pediatric medical student with an incurable fondness for collectible plushies. The third is—

“Professor Tribios?” Phainon asks, baffled.

Tribios beams and waves at them all. She takes off her impractically high heels—was she wearing those on the icy road to get here?—and takes the seat at the head of the table. “Hi! Merry Christmas! Oh—before I forget, I brought something.” She rustles around in her bag and pulls out a large wrapped package. “Here!” She plunks it onto the table right in front of Phainon’s place.

Phainon looks down at it, bewildered. “For me?”

She nods eagerly. “Open it!”

He doesn’t need to be told twice, so he rips off the silver-green wrapping paper. It’s… It’s…

Phainon groans and plunks his head down. “That was one time,” he pleads, his face burning. On the table lies a copy of Modern Amphorean History: The Chrysos Guide, Eighth Edition. All because he’d failed one history test during her TA application interview. “Professor Tribios, I’m so much better now. You wouldn’t even believe how much history I know.”

“Hm,” she says, smiling. “Okay. What happened after the Battle of Aquila?”

Oh! Easy. Phainon knows this one. He’s seen Seliose Chronicles with Cyrene; it’s one of their favorite boob-filled action movies. “Well, Seliose dies, but her two familiars ride off into the sunset and have a fat baby unicorn together.”

Aglaea purses her lips. Castorice coughs delicately into her napkin.

Tribios opens her mouth for what looks suspiciously like a lecture. Fortunately for Phainon, the doorbell rings at just that moment, signaling the arrival of the food. Tribios eagerly gets up to help Aglaea carry it all in, and Phainon is spared. He breathes a sigh of relief.

The food is, as promised, incredible. Aglaea piles bowls of jambalaya and shrimp and grits and blackened catfish and Mydei’s maque choux with chicken onto the table, and then they all dig in together, eating and laughing and talking amongst themselves. Phainon’s sitting between Mydei and Cyrene; Mydei is at the seat just left of Tribios, who’s at the head.

And then, just when Tribios reaches for the corn, Mydei turns to her. “The Rainsun Unification Act,” he says, out of nowhere.

Tribios looks over at him, intrigued. “Yes?”

“That’s what happened after the Battle of Aquila,” Mydei says, sounding a little flustered. “But it didn’t work.”

Tribios motions with her fork for him to continue.

“They’d been separate entities for so long that when the Amphorean government allotted their tribal land equally, they burned each other’s land until nothing was left. Most of them chose to die of starvation rather than collaborate.”

“True!” Tribios says, her eyes eager. “But that’s not all there is to it. In the end only about ten percent of that land was usable. Even then, it was originally Rainfolk land, and the remaining Sunfolk had to adapt to their practices. So almost all of the surviving culture originates from the Rainfolk.”

Mydei nods, his eyes focused.

“Oh, except for me!” Hyacine says brightly, leaning in over the corn dish. “I’m technically a Sunfolk.”

“You are?” Mydei asks, incredulous. “I thought they were—well…”

“A cult,” Hyacine says, nodding gravely.

Mydei grimaces. “I was going to be nicer than that.”

“Eh, no need to be nice,” Hyacine says. She stabs a piece of fish with her fork with a smile on her face. “I ran away for a reason!”

Mydei’s expression changes, just slightly. “You ran away?”

Hyacine nods. “When I turned sixteen, they wanted to marry me off to some guy I’d never met,” she says, smiling at the table. She cuts the fish slowly. “Ran away with nothing. And now I’m here! Could have been worse. Hey, would you like any fish?”

“Could have been a lot worse,” he agrees, his eyes soft. He takes the serving dish from her and serves himself the blackened catfish.

Phainon smiles down at his plate. He eats his jambalaya like someone’s going to take it from him. Next to him, Mydei eats his catfish and his corn, and hooks their ankles around each other.

***

Phainon is busy wrestling with his shoelaces when Tribios approaches them at the door.

“You know,” she says to Mydei. “I’m teaching a course on historical migration patterns across Amphoreus this semester, and I wouldn’t mind having an assistant.”

Mydei’s hands falter. “I’m not a student. Not yet, at least.”

“You don’t need to be.”

Mydei, halfway through putting on his coat, hesitates.

Tribios’s smile grows wider. “Here,” she says, scrawling something on a notecard. It’s her email, written in sparkly red ink. “If you decide to stick around past the winter, let me know.”

Mydei tucks it carefully into the inside pocket of the coat. “Thank you,” he says quietly. “I don’t think I’ll be leaving anytime soon.”

Phainon’s face feels warm, and not just from the spicy jambalaya. He turns back to the door and pretends he didn’t hear anything.

***

The deadline for university applications—at least for their university—is the thirtieth of December. Phainon wouldn’t know that, except that on the twenty-ninth he finds Mydei looking at the university application page with a strange, despondent look on his face.

Phainon sits on the couch next to him. “What is it?” he asks, tapping their knees together. “Think you won’t get in? You can always reapply next year. I bet Professor Tribios would write you a recommendation if you’re her assistant.”

Mydei exhales slowly and pushes his laptop away. “It’s not that,” he says, his voice hollow. “I don’t care if I get rejected. I care that I don’t have access to my college fund.”

Phainon’s heart drops. Mydei took all his money out of the bank for a reason; his father probably controls his bank accounts, or at least can see his activity in them. It makes sense, then, that all the money he’d thought he’d have is suddenly gone. “Well,” Phainon says hopefully. “You can get scholarships! Or work-study! That’s what Cyrene’s doing, and it’s working out pretty well.”

Mydei looks at him drily. “You think they’ll give me a scholarship? I grew up in a mansion. With live-in staff.”

Ah. Phainon concedes that point with a nod. Cyrene getting a scholarship as a broke and newly-orphaned student was one thing; Mydei was surely another. “Some schools do merit-based aid. You could try those.”

Mydei closes his laptop and breathes a laugh. “Phainon, if you think I’m moving anywhere else for college, get your head out of your ass. I’m not leaving.”

Phainon’s heart trips over itself and falls down a flight of stairs in his chest. “You aren’t?”

“I like it here,” Mydei says, looking right at him. “I don’t want to go.”

Phainon’s whole chest feels warm. He sighs out a long breath, then leans sideways so that his head falls into Mydei’s lap. Mydei runs his fingers through his hair, scratching gently at his scalp, and Phainon closes his eyes and feels it, feels his solid and secure presence.

“You did a shit job on these,” Mydei murmurs, his fingers lingering along Phainon’s roots. “They’re turning blond again already.”

“It’s almost like my hair doesn’t actually grow white,” Phainon drawls, leaning into his hand. “The roots aren’t my fault. I just need to touch up the bleach again.”

Mydei hums. Phainon feels more than hears it. “I’ll do it.”

“Do what?”

“Bleach your hair.”

Phainon blinks his eyes open. “Why?”

When he looks up, Mydei’s already looking at him. He flushes and looks elsewhere hastily. “You did my hair. I’ll do yours too.”

Phainon lets his eyes slip closed again. “I do Cyrene’s pink dye too, you know. I’ve got steady hands.”

“Uh huh,” Mydei says, like he doesn’t believe a word of it. “I don’t care how steady they are. Don’t come anywhere near my knives.”

“They’re safe from me. I’m not touching them; I think I’d accidentally slice my arm off.”

“They’re not even big knives.”

“I’d find a way.”

Mydei makes a sound like he thinks he shouldn’t laugh, but can’t quite suppress it. He runs his fingers through Phainon’s hair one last time, then lets him go again. This time he just lets Phainon lie there below him, languishing in his shadow.

Eventually Phainon opens his eyes. “Hey,” he says, softer this time. “What about school, though? You don’t live in Castrum Kremnos anymore. Don’t you need residency to attend public school?”

Mydei snorts. “You think I go to public school?”

Phainon huffs and sits up petulantly. In retrospect, it makes sense that Mydei would attend some fancy private college-prep academy. If he’d been enrolled in public school, he would have long been issued a truancy for the month of classes he missed, given that he moved across the country. “I was just trying to be helpful.”

“My father pre-paid my tuition for the year.” Mydei leans back and sighs. “At least I don’t have to worry about that. Doing my courses online is more work, but it’s better than not graduating.”

“The high school here is kind of shit anyway,” Phainon admits. He’d gone there for a year, when Cyrene was a freshman in college. Turns out, no one lives in a college town until it’s time for them to attend college. His whole class had maybe twenty students, and even less funding. “I just took a test and got my GED instead. Then the professors let me start working for them, and here I am.”

Mydei hums vaguely in reply. They sit there looking at nothing for a few moments.

At last Mydei slides his laptop back within reach. He opens it and pulls up his email. Then he starts typing in a familiar address. It’s a professor’s email, Phainon realizes. Professor Tribios.

“You’re telling her no?” Phainon guesses, leaning forward.

Mydei doesn’t even look up from his keyboard. “I’m telling her yes.”

Phainon blinks.

“I like the class she’s teaching this semester,” he continues, still typing out the email. “And I can take a two-day position, like you, so that I still have time for school. We can walk to campus together every week. I’ll bring you lunch and bother you for a while.”

“You don’t bother me,” Phainon says, quieter than usual. “I like having you around.”

Mydei looks briefly caught off guard. But his surprise quickly softens into amusement, and he just grins. “If my bothering wasn’t actually bothering you, I guess I need to try harder.”

Phainon rolls his eyes fondly and punches him in the shoulder. Mydei elbows him in the side, and then they wrestle on the couch until Phainon ends up falling off the side, and Mydei laughs at him and Phainon doesn’t even mind because he likes it when Mydei’s laughing.

***

“AUGH! Shit,” Cyrene yelps as champagne flows down her hand. She scrambles for a kitchen towel yet again. “They’re never gonna make these things easier to open, are they?”

“Thousands of people open wine bottles every day,” Phainon points out, not for the first time. “I’m sure you could just learn.”

“This isn’t a regular bottle,” she mutters, glaring at him. “It’s carbonated and shit. Explodes every time. Can’t they make a regular kind? Something that doesn’t shower you with half the bottle when you open it?”

Every single New Year’s Eve they have this conversation, and Phainon knows better than to entertain it. He retrieves three of their four flute glasses and sets them on the counter, lined up in a row. Cyrene readjusts her grip and starts pouring.

“You don’t need three,” Mydei reminds them both. “I don’t drink.”

“Oh! I remember,” Cyrene says brightly. “We bought you one of those big sparkling apple ciders so you can do the toast with us.”

Phainon gets it out of the fridge. It’s an impressive bottle, smaller than the champagne but no less grand. He pops the bottle cap without ceremony and pours the third glass, filling it exactly to the same line as the two champagnes so they look almost identical. Three of a kind.

Mydei takes his glass with hesitant hands. He holds it to his mouth, but doesn’t drink it. Then he sets it back down.

“What?” Phainon asks, frowning a little. “Do you not like cider? You don’t have to drink it.”

“No,” Mydei says quickly. “I’m just—” He inhales deeply. Then he says, slightly quieter: “My father’s big on expensive wine. He always drinks red, though. When I was little he told me it was blood.” He looks down into his own glass, then at Cyrene’s and Phainon’s, sitting in their hands. “I guess I don’t mind the look of white wine as much. This isn’t so bad.”

“You still don’t have to drink,” Cyrene says firmly. “Not now, not ever. Our mom was sober her whole life.”

“She was?”

“Oh, yeah,” Phainon says, grinning. “She was a rancher when she was young, you know? Can’t be hungover when you gotta get up and milk the cows in the morning. I guess the habit stuck.”

“Huh,” Mydei says. He takes a sip of his cider, long and slow. When he lowers his glass again, his eyes shine under the kitchen lights. “It’s good. Thank you.”

Cyrene beams. “Of course! It’s New Year’s Eve, after all! We can’t just leave you out of the celebrations.”

Mydei’s mouth twists into an ironic smile. “You could have.”

“Why would we?” Cyrene says, like it’s ridiculous. “You’re one of us now. You’re family. Of course you’d be part of it.”

Mydei blinks. His eyes widen.

“So we got you this,” she continues, picking up the bottle. “This is supposed to be a good brand. Anyway, let us know how it is. We’ll try other ones too, if you want.”

Mydei’s expression softens. He opens his mouth like he’s going to say something, and then—

“Five minutes until the new year,” Mydei’s laptop says from the table.

“FIVE MINUTES!” Cyrene yells, running to Mydei’s laptop open on the table. She turns up the volume louder. On the screen, Robin’s performing Imagine, and the timer’s counting down to midnight behind her. Cyrene plunks herself down on the couch and eagerly watches the performance.

Mydei doesn’t head over. He stays at the table with Phainon, watching the laptop over Cyrene’s shoulder.

“Almost time,” Phainon says, looking at the laptop with him.

Mydei sets his glass down on the table and lets his hand rest next to it, like he’s thinking about picking it up again. “Thank you,” he says, barely audible underneath the roaring New Year’s show. “For everything.”

Phainon smiles a little. He sets his hand on top of Mydei’s. “Thank you,” he says. “For everything.”

They stand there, not quite holding hands. Mydei looks at the New Year’s show, then at him, and doesn’t look away.

“What?” Phainon asks, suddenly a little nervous. “Do I have something on my face?”

“No,” Mydei says. Then he reaches up and takes Phainon’s face in both hands and kisses him on the mouth.

Phainon inhales sharply. They haven’t kissed at all, or at least not in six months, but somehow this feels different. In the summer Mydei had been kissing the summer fling he met on a college tour and would never see again. Now Mydei’s kissing Phainon. Phainon, who burnt microwave popcorn. Phainon, who he knocked flat on his ass in the snow. Phainon, who he somehow wants to spend his time with anyway.

It takes him several seconds to realize that Mydei’s already stopped kissing him. He blinks his eyes open. “It’s not even time yet,” he says, a little strained. “We’ve got four more minutes until it’s time for a New Year’s kiss.”

“Guess we have to kiss again in four minutes,” Mydei says, casual as anything. He picks up his glass again.

“Wait,” Phainon blurts, catching his wrist. Mydei’s hand falters on the glass, and the cider sloshes around dangerously but doesn’t spill. “Mydei, wait. We haven’t done that before.”

“What, kissed?” Mydei says, raising his eyebrows. “We definitely have.”

“That was different,” Phainon says weakly. “That was before I knew you. It was—Mydei, I really like you. I like you so much. I can’t be casual about you.”

Mydei sighs through his nose. He tips his head forward and presses their foreheads together. “Phainon. I live with you. We sleep in the same bed. We go grocery shopping together. We wear each other’s clothes. I rope you into my stupid ideas and you rope me into yours. What the fuck sounds casual about that?”

“I don’t know,” Phainon breathes, his heart pounding. “You never said anything.”

“I didn’t think I needed to.”

Phainon hesitates. He scrunches up his face. He’s had this whole argument planned, has rehearsed it so many times in his head, and yet now that it comes time to say something, all he can think is I like you, I like you, I like you, a thousand times over, and even that doesn’t feel like enough. Like he could say it a thousand times more and it still wouldn’t add up to whatever’s in his heart.

Mydei’s smile stretches across his whole face. “Go ahead. Say it.”

Phainon takes a breath. “Mydei, let me date you,” he says in a rush. “Let me take you on dates and hold your hand and tell everyone that you’re not going anywhere. Let me be your boyfriend.”

Mydei holds his face tighter and laughs.

“Oh,” Phainon says, suddenly feeling flustered. “I was supposed to ask, wasn’t I? Wait, I’m gonna start over. There was supposed to be a question in there, I think.”

Mydei smiles against his mouth. “It’s alright,” he says, “you already know my answer,” and then he kisses Phainon again, and this time when he tries to pull away Phainon holds onto his waist and pulls him back in until he can taste the cider in his mouth.

“—ONE MINUTE UNTIL THE NEW YEAR!”

“Stop making out and come over here,” Cyrene yells, motioning frantically for them to come over. “We’re doing the countdown! The new year waits for no one!”

Mydei rushes over to the laptop so fast that he forgets his drink. Phainon smiles a little and grabs his glass for him. He carries one in each hand, his own in his right and Mydei’s in his left, and watches the New Year’s show play out before them.

“Thank you, Penacony!” Robin calls on screen, waving in her beautiful silver dress. She looks right into the camera and smiles her beautiful smile. “May this year bring you what you’ve always been looking for.”

And the countdown starts.

Notes:

the next year phainon buys mydei a nice blender. not quite as nice as the one gorgo got for his birthday, but it'll do the trick. mydei makes three smoothies with it every morning, one for each of them :)

please drop a comment / kudos if you enjoyed! i love holiday fics, but don't see a lot of them focusing on the time before and after the holidays. so here's my take on it :)

playlist again for your reference!

find me on tumblr (princesscas-ao3)!