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The clamour of metal struck the training ground’s sun-bleached stone walls, kept alight at all hours by the Dawn Device and capturing the silhouettes of its innumerable warriors. Their bare skin gleamed with oil and sweat to be worn with pride, as the proof of a day dedicated to honing their bodies in preparation for the next time the Kremnoan detachment would be deployed from Okhema’s gates. The clash of weapons and jeers had begun with Entry Hour but showed no signs of slowing as the day slipped into Parting Hour.
Sweat dripped from Phainon’s hair down his neck in a sticky trail. He had discarded his coat upon his morning arrival but even his usual collar felt too restrictive as he tugged it from his neck to let the skin breathe. While the sweat rapidly cooled upon its descent, it was hardly a relief when it made his clothes cling to him as he sought refuge in the shaded pathways surrounding the courtyard.
He had been one of the first to begin training that morning—a choice rather than obligation. The detachment only accepted Kremnoans among their ranks but their training sessions were always open to those who proved a worthy sparring partner, and Phainon had proven himself during their first encounter all those years ago—so it was only natural that he was one of the first to take a well-deserved break. Especially considering who he had been sparring with unceasingly for those many hours.
The thorough ache in his deepest muscles and the mental exhaustion of a mind forced alert for too long were evidence that he had given every round of sparring his all. If he even thought of holding back, his wooden sword would have been reduced to splinters, back flatted to the ground by a foot upon his chest and raging eyes ablaze like the embers of war glowering down at him. Because Mydei expected his best and nothing less.
It was undoubtedly what Mydei had given him. He bore the mottled bruises of a gauntleted fist against his ribs to prove it. If anyone else had been unfortunate—or, since it meant Mydei considered them something of an equal and threw his entire body into a concentrated hit, fortunate—enough to endure the punch then their ribs may have cracked from the sheer force.
Each deliberate inhale made his chest ache but he didn’t shallow his breathing. The tenderness was a reminder of their relationship; one built upon mutual respect and solidarity, unachieved even by those who had accompanied Mydei in exile. When it meant Mydei had faith, reserved for Phainon, that he could endure the hit without being rushed to the Twilight Courtyard, Phainon took pride in the bruise down to the bone. Despite how it had cut short the day’s sparring session.
Although they had stepped off the training grounds and intended to take a break together, Phainon lounged in the shade while Mydei was still on his feet. Between the sparring ring and the stone archways, his gaze had strayed to a young recruit and he promptly excused himself to correct the boy’s form.
Without company, Phainon’s only entertainment was watching from the sidelines as the boy did his best to follow Mydei’s instructions and guiding hands. As though he weren’t on the brink of dropping to his knees and gazing with reverence at the Kremnoan crown prince.
At least some of the instructions sank below the skin where Mydei’s gauntlets shifted his arms into a better neutral position. It was one of the most important stances: returned to in the minuscule space between every attack, block and counter in preparation for the movement into the next. Despite the boy’s nervous stiffness, enduring long after Mydei’s voice disappeared from his ear, his form had improved somewhat when he returned to his sparring companion.
Mydei had only commented on Phainon’s form once. It was right after their duel of ten days and nights ended in a stalemate. At some point, their weapons had cracked under the assault before either of their bodies surrendered, and they started swinging at each other barehanded. By the end of it, Phainon had reached previously unknown levels of exhaustion, so beyond tired that his mind and body felt unable to stop for even a moment or they would never start up again.
Of course, neither of them had ascended to the ranks of demigods much less Titans, so their bodies weren’t wholly infallible. When they collapsed into the grass and, without words, agreed to the verdict of a stalemate, Mydei had said one thing:
Steady-footed. Not bad for an Okheman.
The fatigue had been so great that he hadn’t attempted to decipher whether that was an insult or a compliment. He had only thanked him and they shared one last ragged pant in the silence before they dragged themselves to their feet with responsibilities prickling their necks. Now, Phainon had become familiar enough in Kremnoan culture, even if not its language, to know it had been the closest thing to a compliment Mydei had been willing to offer back then.
So there was nothing to comment upon. If Mydei had seen the opportunity to needle his combat prowess—during a spar if he wished to goad him. After a spar if Phainon had avoided earning his ire that day—then he would have mentioned it at some point. Phainon’s form was simply beyond the reproach or correction offered by Mydei’s hands gliding down his arms, straightening his back with a press between his shoulder blades, tightening his core with a hand on his stomach and lower back.
And beyond further compliment. Apparently.
“Deliverer.”
Attuned to that specific voice, Phainon’s head swivelled. A red blur flew towards him and he cupped his hands, catching it gently in his open palms in case it was fragile—only to pause. It was an apple. A fairly large one; red skin beautifully ripened and glossy, without a hint of bruising or damage to the firm flesh beneath.
He scanned the training grounds for someone apologetically running towards him. A rare clumsy Kremnoan, flushed as red as the apple that had accidentally slipped their hands and ended up in Phainon’s own. He could almost hear the embarrassed ramblings running off their tongue with the thundering speed of a dromas who caught the scent of red soil. There was no such person.
Only Mydei. The heated tinge to his cheeks matched the tops of his shoulders, warmed by exertion and sun exposure but already cooling as he stepped beneath the archway into the shadows. While Mydei had once called him steady-footed, the epithet was more fitting for Mydei.
Mydei, who marched his way across Amphoreus, felling armies and cities at the end of his spear like a farmer scythed wheat.
Mydei, who never once retaliated against the rampant scorn the people of Okhema had levelled at him in the early years of Kremnoan and Okheman cohabitation. Instead, he spared a single glance to any who dared spit on the heels of the patricidal crown prince, and walked away with his shoulders back and head held high.
Mydei, who tossed an apple up and down, in and out of his palm, mindlessly, thoughtlessly, without the barest hint of hesitation as he met Phainon’s eye and approached him sat alone in the shadowed alcove.
Phainon was the one left unsteady. His face regained all the heat it had managed to shed and his feet shuffled against the stone like they wanted to retreat, yet the rest of his body was utterly uncooperative. His muscles were no longer sore but stiffened still by Mydei casually falling to sit beside him on the bench. All the while he tossed the apple up and down.
Tucked away from the Dawn Device, the stone alcove was cool with the breeze sweeping down the hallway. It ruffled Mydei’s untamed lion’s mane, made more wild by the vigorous exercise with the exception of the small braid neatly hung by his ear. Yet Phainon’s face felt warmer than ever. His cheeks were practically aflame and his mouth parched dry as the air thickened between them but he couldn’t avert his eye from Mydei’s hand.
It had taken him this long to even realise they were bare. Bare. When Mydei wore his gauntlets like a second layer of toughened skin, absent only in the bathhouse that threatened to damage the artisan metal. The smooth skin was made more pale by the contrast against the vivid apple peel, peering through his slender fingers curled around the body that fit nicely in his palm.
“Deliverer,” Mydei said again and the apple jumped with his voice.
He tried for a smile. It was weak but he couldn’t find it within himself to make it more convincing. He hoped the dimness lent him some legitimacy. “Yes?”
“You’re distracted today.”
He aimed for levity in his hum. “Am I?”
Mydei’s brows rose, surprised but not enough to shake off the underlying challenge. “Earlier, you were staring at Thero—“
“I was merely admiring your capabilities as a teacher. In fact, I was struck with inspiration for our next contest. We can have a disciple each to train in order to test who best understands combat by honing the skills of ano—“
“And now you’re rambling,” Mydei interrupted dryly. His hand paused its rhythmic catch and throw, and Phainon almost sighed with relief but Mydei was still staring at him with the smallest wrinkle to his nose, a habit he was certain Mydei knew nothing of. “What is your preoccupation with this apple? I already handed you your own.”
Then he lifted the fruit to pink lips, pulled back to reveal white teeth that sank through the skin like a lion tearing into flesh. Phainon’s withheld gasp stuttered in his chest.
It was a cultural miscommunication. The product of a cultural difference. Phainon was certain of it. After all, Phainon had hardly been aware of the implications when he first arrived in Okhema. It wasn’t until he attended a class on Okheman theatre at the Grove and they were halfway through analysing a play script from Era Bellica that he was exposed to the symbolism for the first time.
Everyone had been engrossed in a discussion of a female character’s impropriety. Phainon alone failed to grasp where their criticisms stemmed from, let alone the insults to her character with rough labels, and became a laughingstock amongst his classmates when he dared to ask. The girl next to him had taken pity and timidly whispered the answer to his question.
Throwing apples was a ploy at seduction.
The kind of seduction that ruined good men and their reputations. Apples were a symbol of Mnestia and her pursuit of Cerces, taken from the myth of Mnestia adorning Cerces’ leaves with golden apples, a lover might adorn each other’s hair with flowers or laurels. To this day, the fruit flourished year round in the Grove of Epiphany’s canopies.
What should have been a touching symbol of eternal love was perverted by a brothel woman. Upon hearing of their irresistible allure, she had stolen a basket of Mnestia’s golden apples in order to seduce wealthy clients, and was punished by the Romance Titan for her blasphemy. However, from then on, the implications had become inescapable.
By the way Mydei happily crunched at the apple perfectly matched to the one he had thrown with every intention for Phainon to catch, and the lack of scandalised attention from the surrounding Kremnoans, tossing apples clearly did not carry the same meaning in Kremnos as it did in Okhema.
The realisation did nothing to quell the heat pumped straight from his racing heart into his cheeks. It sped through his body so violently he willed himself not to tremble and was so distracted he didn’t notice the hand coming to push back his bangs.
He nearly jumped from his seat. Except it was Mydei’s hand against his forehead, just as it was Mydei’s face leaning closer with a concerned crease to his brow, and Phainon remained utterly still.
“You’re flush. Heat exhaustion?” He kissed his teeth disparagingly. “Carelessness will be your downfall.”
He was strangely lightheaded. If he hadn’t scraped the strength to force his body to remain upright, he would have swayed into the touch. Mydei’s hand was warm yet managed to be refreshing against Phainon’s forehead.
His throat scratched with a pained swallow, words lodged in his throat, but he smiled with a cocky tilt of his head. “Insulting me, Mydei?”
His eyes narrowed, peering beyond the facade even Phainon would admit, to himself, was shoddy. It was nice—from a distance. A pretty, amiable thing that the citizens could look to for reassurance and continue about their lives with the confidence that the dawn would arrive to herald a peaceful tomorrow.
The expression didn’t hold under Mydei’s close scrutiny. But Phainon couldn’t discard the only defence at his disposal. Without it, Phainon would have to be honest about what lay beneath the heroic idealism and flawless Deliverer beyond all selfish pursuits. Beneath the person with a clear heart and mind, unsullied by the black tide that dredged hatred from the depths of the earth and scarred.
An empty heart filled by others but not any one in particular. Not with love. Not even with tortuous yearning.
They were so much to each other—rivals, friends, confidants—but there were lines between Okhema’s Deliverer and the Crown Prince of Castrum Kremnos that could not be crossed.
He cleared his throat and let his smile dim, as though in acquiescence. “I suppose… it’s possible I’m more exhausted than usual. You, on the other hand, appear to have plenty of energy. Don’t feel you need to stop honing your skills on my account.”
The graceful offer sat wrong behind his teeth and felt worse sliding off his tongue. It was almost a dismissal, and when had Phainon chosen to do anything other than eagerly bask in Mydei’s company. Let alone hurry him along to share it with someone else.
However, Mydei missed the suspicious detail, suddenly enraptured by his thumb running across the apple peel. “No,” he said slowly. “It’s best to have you as my sole sparring partner.”
“Oh.” He frowned before the realisation—that, at least in this, Mydei’s attention was reserved for him—made him smile. “It is more efficient that way.”
Since it allowed Mydei to dedicate his best efforts to their spars unhindered, and get the best results. After all, Phainon was his only equal in the city.
Mydei huffed at the insinuation and waved a dismissive hand contradictory to his words, “Eat. Regain your strength. Your condition must be poor if you’ve yet to drag me to the bathhouse.”
“My,” Phainon said. He bit into the apple; a crisp and sweet burst across his tongue, so refreshing his smile was reinvigorated to finish his sly remark, “you almost sound disappointed.”
His lips twitched downwards. The rest of his expression was unreadable, except for the brief flick of his eye. It was the only prelude to the swipe of his hand but Phainon was already prepared and lurched back, dodging the quick hand aimed at his apple.
“No take backs,” Phainon crooned and he was fortunate Mydei’s indignation distracted himself from glimpsing the truth behind Phainon’s teasing.
He didn’t want to give it back. He didn’t want Mydei to want it back.
“Haikas.”
“Unless that means please—“ which they were both aware it did not. The exact definition had never been spoken but, from the numerous times Mydei had growled the word low, he could only assume it was less than flattering, “—this is mine now.”
“You don’t deserve it.”
Phainon forced a smile. Not loose nor arrogant enough to be genuine but Mydei’s words had wound his chest too tight to try for something better. “Unfortunately, you already gifted it to me. Unless you wish to argue before the dikasteria about how I coerced a gift of this singular apple from you, it became my property the moment it exchanged hands.”
“I only meant for you to borrow it,” Mydei claimed flatly, as though it were the most commonplace thing in the world to lend a single apple.
“Some things can only be given without expectation of it being returned. Not in the form it was gifted in.”
“And yet I don’t see you eating it,” Mydei retorted so sharply it took a moment for him to recognise that it wasn’t much of a retort at all.
“So now you’re giving me permission?”
He shrugged. “Your argument rests on the idea it’s already yours. In that case, who am I to give permission? It’s yours to do with as you please. But it would be a waste not to savour it.”
The apple’s stark red gleamed at him, reminiscent of markings that mimicked flames, glistening with the exertion of battle. Or perhaps blood red crystals smooth all over with the exception of the sharpened ends that wouldn’t draw blood if approached with care.
“In that case…” Phainon’s thumb caressed the apple’s curve and he raised it to his lips once again. “Thank you.”
He committed the taste to memory: the crispness of the skin breaking beneath his teeth and the juices that followed with a subtle sharpness overwhelmed by sweetness.
There were lines they couldn’t cross. Things he would never dare wish for when, out of Mydei’s many burdens, he refused to be another. But there was no harm in playing pretend. The only person being deluded was himself as he indulged, with every bite, in the sweetest fantasy hidden beneath the surface.
The opportunity came again during one of their private spars. They had become a weekly, sometimes more if they had a score to settle, occurrence not long after Mydei arrived in the city and Phainon found him napping in the daylight and cool breeze.
His impressions, taken from the streets he patrolled, of the brooding and violent crown prince, who had turned his spear against his own father, had flipped at the sight of him half-curled and soundly asleep. He was hardly different from a chimera as his chest rose and fell, golden lashes fluttered, and he basked in the warmth of the Dawn Device so different from the fading sun hung above Amphoreus’ dying plains.
Of course, Phainon had waited patiently for him to awaken and immediately wheedled him into a private spar that swiftly became tradition.
Perhaps private was a stretch considering their feet danced across the rooftops above Marmoreal Marketplace where anyone who turned upwards—towards the dull thud of wood against bronze, the occasional tile clattering loose, and shouts alternating between taunting and victorious—would see them against the backdrop of weathered stone and open sky.
On numerous occasions, the children had gathered to spur on their chosen champion. They made a habit of coming back every week, as though the spars were their regularly scheduled theatre production.
But once the song and dance of a duel, ringing with laughter rather than anguish, ended and the crowd dispersed, there was privacy to be found along the quiet rooftop above the murmuring streets and below the sky alight with an eternal day on the horizon.
Their habitual duel led into another regular activity squeezed in before their bath: a meal that one of them was responsible for buying or personally preparing. In the early days, they had both been too hungry to drag themselves to Marmoreal Palace where only light snacks accompanied the pleasure of the bathwater. Unfortunately, their attempts to patronise the local eateries usually came with hesitation and second glances.
At first, Mydei had assumed it was his reputation and bristled before simply shrugging it off. Between them, Phainon was the one more shaken, left in disbelief at the treatment of someone who had staunchly declared themselves an ally to Okhema and the Flame-Chase. Only Phainon’s insistence he try the fares before leaving prevented him from removing his supposedly distasteful presence from the premises.
It took three weeks for them to realise the issue was less Mydei and more the both of them. To be exact, the issue was the aftermath of rigorous exercise on their skin and, regrettably, the air around them.
Still too hungry for the bathhouse but too embarrassed to torment any more restaurants and patrons, Mydei had devised the compromise himself by bringing a basket of food to their next spar. Which was how Phainon learned another surprising fact about the so-called brutish prince: he was an excellent cook. Not one to be beaten, Phainon had volunteered to cater their next spar and their little ritual was decided.
Once again, it was Phainon’s turn to fill their bellies and Mydei relaxed against the cool stone while Phainon retrieved the baskets from the rooftop’s deepest shade. At the very top were two apples. He had wasted much of the morning debating whether to add them to the meal before haphazardly tossing them in with a promise to decide later. As though their inclusion weren’t already a decision in itself.
It didn’t mean anything. Rather, it didn’t have to mean anything. Since Mydei wasn’t aware of the cultural significance behind the gesture, in a place like this, only the two of them as witnesses, it was harmless to either of their reputations. In the end, the only person at risk of being hurt was Phainon and he had already decided the pain was worth the indulgence.
Before his hesitation could draw Mydei’s attention and ensuing questions, he grabbed an apple and tested its weight with a small toss before he committed. “Mydei. Catch.”
Although his head was tipped back, lost in thought, Mydei’s hand was up before he had even turned from the clouds and he caught the apple with ease. Rather than let the moment steep in the obvious confusion creasing Mydei’s proud features, Phainon smoothly crossed the rooftop and claimed a seat at his side.
“Deliverer,” he began, voice steady, “what is this?”
Phainon tilted his head. “An apple,” he stated the obvious, tinged with uncertainty only because of Mydei’s blank-faced stare. He placed the basket between them. “No need to worry, as per our arrangement I brought a proper meal too.”
His eyes lifted from the apple and something complex flickered within them, akin to a distant flame’s beautiful but incomprehensible light and shadow. It was gone before Phainon could reach out and catch the meaning to imprint in his palm. Mydei hummed but didn’t elaborate before bringing the apple to his lips.
A gasp teetered on his tongue and he bit his cheek as Mydei’s teeth sank through skin into firm flesh. Of course Mydei would eat it: it was an apple! One Phainon had thrown and Mydei had caught and now his lips shone with the juices left upon them that he licked clean with the swipe of a pink tongue.
“Why do you gawk?”
Phainon’s eyes flicked up from Mydei’s lips to his piercing gaze that grew sharper against the whetstone of Phainon’s mistakes, ready to slice through him to the terrible mess entangled so deep in his chest it throbbed in an echo of every heartbeat. They were bright once again but, this time, Phainon could read the jump and sway of embers. Amusement.
He began to unpack the basket. “I merely wanted to see your judgement on the produce. I thought they were quite sweet myself. I’m impressed with the harvest this season.”
He was lying. He hadn’t tried them yet because he purchased only two the day prior on nothing more than a whim. One he came to regret upon his return home so he shoved them out of sight.
There was the satisfying crunch of another bite but he kept his attention on the pomegranate juice as he poured a chalice each. He was thankful his hands didn’t tremble as he set the full chalices down and reached for the soft goat’s cheese.
“It’s good,” Mydei concluded, nodding his thanks at the other food on offer but clearly intent on finishing the apple first.
Phainon chuckled. “See. I always deliver.”
A familiar joke. One that gave Mydei cause to roll his eyes or scoff; to loose a sidelong glare at minimum, like he wanted to check Phainon’s skull for holes his intellect could be leaking from. Phainon was prepared to riposte his exasperations as easily as his fists.
Except, Mydei always had a way of surprising him. He tipped his head back to the clouds and the same pensive expression as earlier befell his features with the light of the Dawn Device. “And, apart from the ideals of deliverance, what do you have left?”
If Phainon were stripped of the role of deliverance…
He simply smiled. “As long as I don’t ask for too much, everything will unfold as desired.”
Everyone’s wishes would be fulfilled. What more could Phainon want, to dare wish for, but the outcome where everyone could achieve their own happiness.
At this distance, no one else between or near them, Mydei must have heard him. Yet he didn’t respond at once: not to call him a self-sacrificing fool nor the embodiment of deliverance in a tone that left Phainon unsure whether it was a compliment or insult.
He only gazed at the drifting clouds for a while longer and looked at Phainon to ask, “Where did you get them?”
At Phainon’s questioning hum, he raised his half-eaten apple. Relieved by the conversation’s direction, Phainon recounted his trip through the marketplace. From updates on the vendors to the produce that had particularly caught his eye, he spared few details as he layered the bread with cheese and olives.
By the time they finished eating and vacated the rooftop, the topic had strayed to a book on Chrysea Era pottery Phainon had finished the other day. Then onto antique weapons from the same era, including the differences between Kremnoan and Okheman forging techniques.
It was a familiar rhythm: Phainon spoke while Mydei stayed quiet, revealing how attentively he listened in his thoughtful questions, detailed answers, and subtle reactions. A quirk of his brow, an upturned corner of his lips, a crinkle of his nose.
Mydei was undoubtedly stoic. From a childhood existing under a burden too great for most adults, he learned to carefully restrain his words and expression at every hour until it was ingrained in him as deeply as the ability to wield a spear. It was the cost of his title, his forsaken crown even as he chose to stand at the helm of his people. The wrong words, the wrong look, carried too much weight to be reckless with either.
But Mydei was far from expressionless so long as someone knew where to look, and Phainon had dedicated himself to learning. He wanted to know every thought that passed across Mydei’s face, as fleeting as the thunder and lightning that called his people to arms. Especially if Mydei believed it wasn’t the type of thing he was free to say aloud, and so only Phainon was privy to.
That’s why he was fairly certain there was something between them. Mydei had offered more of himself to Phainon than others were allowed to know existed, let alone see and touch for themselves. These emotions budding between them, quiet but fierce, would remained unclaimed, unnamed, until Mydei was spoke it aloud.
Until he was steady on that tightrope between two people’s perpetuating an age-old grudge written in blood. Between tradition and a new future.
He knew there was something but it was Mydei’s to nurture or quash.
Yet, as they stood, prepared to part ways, that indiscernible expression returned. No matter how Phainon searched it, for an edge he could catch and peel back, for a foothold to regain his balance, there was nothing.
Awkwardly, Phainon raised his hand, basket emptied of everything bar his wooden sword, and waved. “See you tomorrow.”
It would have been nice to attend the bathhouse together but Mydei had other duties today. A new delivery of weapons had arrived in the Kremnoan armoury and he preferred to inspect the goods himself.
Mydei’s lips twitched into a slight frown before they parted with purpose. Only for him to exhale, words lost to the sound and irretrievable even to Phainon, before he echoed, “Tomorrow.”
At each of their private meetings, Phainon made a habit of tossing an apple at Mydei. As a refreshing snack after a spar in the training grounds, or as an appetiser for their lunch tucked in a corner of the Garden of Life, or to stave off Mydei’s hunger the time Phainon invited Mydei into his own home to rebut the insults to his cooking technique.
Each time, Mydei caught and ate it without qualms. Just as Mydei had become accustomed to the act, Phainon’s heart swelled but he was no longer forced to avert his eye or risk igniting his face in a terrible flush and stammering out something truly humiliating. Like the true meaning behind the apples Mydei enjoyed in blissful ignorance. He was lucky they were in-season and he could peruse the marketplace for the best ones, judging by the colour, the sheen and the firmness so Mydei’s palate had nothing to critique.
Far from Okhema’s walls, the wild apple orchards flowered less than perfect yields. The dull, matte skins blended reds with pale yellows and the fruits were smaller than the apples cultivated by Okhema’s farmers. Less sweet too, as Phainon plucked one from a tree and tested it for himself.
But it was the best they could offer to the refugee caravan they were escorting to safety within Okhema’s walls. The number of elderly and children necessitated frequent breaks between long hours of difficult travel, and more rations than the Kremnoan legion had deployed with.
The apple orchard had been a fortunate find by the children who had run off from the temporary encampment to play. None of the adults had the heart to discourage them from finding some small joy after losing their homes, friends and family members, so had only warned them to not venture too far before letting them go.
Crouched among the branches, Phainon searched for the ripest ones to pluck and drop to the children waiting below with their baskets at the ready. They had loudly planned their contest over who could climb and gather the most fruit but Phainon had interceded before they could get injured in the competitive fervour, and proposed a rule change to whoever could catch the most.
They were the children of a farming village, so Phainon knew well that climbing trees and others things they shouldn’t was as much a part of their childhood as learning to walk or speak. But their parents had been through enough heartache. They deserved better than the devastation of their child’s new injuries, no matter how minor they turned out to be.
As he shifted the branches aside, knocking some apples down to a flurry of footsteps and excited shouts, the tree top offered a good vantage point of the orchard. The refugees and Kremnoan were cooperating amiably as they harvested apples together.
Although the Kremnoan warriors were an intimidating sight with their broad bodies, polished armour and tattooed skin, the black tide was a much more terrifying foe—an indomitable executioner. The ones to rescue them from such a hopeless situation had been the Kremnoans.
More eye-catching than the rest was Mydei. The red of his clothes and gold of his hair were stark against the greenery, and Phainon was drawn to him before he had the chance to properly search. While Mydei was tall enough to reach the higher branches himself, there was someone assisting him. A child seated upon his shoulders.
He had already picked the tree of ripe fruit but he shouted down for the children to prepare themselves and vigorously shook the branches. They squealed as the apples tumbled and they rushed to collect them while Phainon climbed down to solid ground.
There were a few people stationed at the trees nearby and Phainon waved to get their attention, immediately catching the eye of a Kremnoan warrior. He motioned to the children carefully counting their individual hauls and the warrior nodded, taking responsibility so Phainon could quietly slip away while they called out their numbers.
He crossed the orchard in long strides. The fastest path to his destination had been memorised with the same quick mind that committed battlefields to memory, and he arrived at Mydei’s side.
The girl upon his shoulders had light hair slightly muddier than the crown of Mydei’s head as it tumbled past her shoulders. That was where the similarities ended. The child’s features were too soft and delicate for a Kremnoan; he had encountered enough young Kremnoans in Okhema’s streets to know youthful fat could round their faces but failed to temper their proud features.
Not to mention the cool hue pooling in her eyes. It was a complete contrast to the warmth captured within Mydei’s but a match to the woman stood beside him with a basket in hand to catch her daughter’s harvest.
It was pure impulse that swept Phainon’s hand through the low branches, taking an apple in hand and letting it go again before he could comprehend his own foolish actions. Instincts honed for blades and arrowheads, Mydei had no need for a warning before he released his steadying hand on the girl’s thigh to catch Phainon’s harsh throw.
All three looked to him. The girl confused, the mother startled, both matching his own befuddled disbelief at the act. And Mydei…
In the brief moment before Mydei’s expression disappeared behind the apple, Phainon could have sworn his teeth flashed in a smile. “Thanks. I was getting hungry.”
His brow prickled and hands twitched with the urge to clench at his side, an apology or excuse or that cursed explanation welling up the back of his throat.
But he swallowed and relaxed his body into the smile of an ideal hero, beyond selfishness and impulsivity. “Happy to help.”
To the surrounding Kremnoan warriors as well as the mother and daughter, all raised as far from Okhema and its cultural minutiae as Phainon had once been, the meaning behind the apple toss was unknown. It was simple to brush aside as a friendly, helpful gesture, exactly as Mydei had already done. Nothing more.
But it had become a habit. Apples changed hands so thoughtlessly that Mydei watched him expectantly and, more often than not, was ready to catch when Phainon had yet to reveal his hand. Phainon’s heart had become accustomed to the familiar sight and learned to calm itself, letting the moment pass without comment as they delved into their usual conversation between bites, until the original meaning that had so tormented him became more distant from his mind than the fun of sharing a routine. A gesture unique to the two of them.
It was the same instinct that led to his mistake as they browsed Marmoreal Marketplace together. Although Phainon had been the first to extend an invitation into his home, Mydei had followed up with an offer into his own kitchen where Phainon learned to recreate a particular Kremnoan dish he had especially enjoyed after their spar.
Since then, they had spent numerous hours in each other’s homes. The pretence of cooking faded away as the visits dragged beyond a simple meal. At times, they shared interesting scrolls or their rivalry found renewed vigour in a board game. Usually, they simply lounged in the andron with drinks and idle conversation. But they still shopped for produce to inspire their next meals.
So, when Phainon encountered a stall selling fresh apples and he took one to inspect, only for his peripheral vision to catch on red fabric adorned with gold, his muscles moved before his mind could remind him the importance of time and place.
As the Deliverer, whom people turned to with their wishes and troubles no matter how large or small, he was distinctly aware of the weight behind people’s gazes as they fell upon him. They were heavy but effused with warmth for someone they considered a friend, and with hope for someone they idealised as a hero.
The moment the apple rolled neatly into Mydei’s open palm, all eyes in the marketplace latched onto them. A strange atmosphere plunged over the streets and, in the brief silence, he could hear the murmurs to come as clearly, as loudly, as his heart and mind roared in wordless disarray.
His clammy palms snagged Mydei’s wrist, halfway to his lips in the same habitual motions that had lured Mydei into this predicament constructed by Phainon’s carelessness. Before Mydei’s confusion could become a dangerous curiosity, Phainon hurried them away from the marketplace and left behind the whispers that would betray them both.
Throwing apples was a ploy at seduction.
Phainon was hardly seducing Mydei when, from his perspective, the innumerable apples that had tumbled into his possession were merely pieces of fruit to partake in. They were the same as any other food or beverage Phainon had offered him: friendly, helpful, and Mydei accepted within the capacity of being Phainon’s comrade, rival and friend.
Only to Phainon was each apple imbued with different meaning—more. But that didn’t mean he expected more to come from his actions. He could play pretend and let his smile brighten under the fantastical possibility but he knew it wasn’t true because Mydei didn’t know.
If they lingered in the marketplace, he would learn. He would overhear the truth of the charade Phainon had indulged in for months. Some brave soul may even ask because Mydei may have been clueless about the cultural layers behind the gesture but the citizens were just as oblivious about the two of them.
All they would see was Phainon’s advances and Mydei’s acceptance. Ignorant to the uncrossable boundaries between them that Phainon would never truly dare to push against because Mydei deserved better than to unbalance the only relationship in which he felt free to be Mydei rather than the crown prince.
Sometimes—when one of them was pinned at the end of a spar, when Mydei tended to Phainon’s wounds during an expedition, when they were alone in the Hero’s Baths—the air between them crackled with the possibility of more. Thickened with it until Phainon could t breathe without it on his tongue, stuffing his chest. But Mydei never said nor did anything and the moment slipped away.
His steps slowed as they reached the end of the narrow alleyway. In his haste, he went the wrong way. He was supposed to take a left turn but he missed it and took the next one instead. His havocked mind had hardly seen the streets as anything more than a way to escape the corner he had willingly backed himself into and unwittingly trapped Mydei in alongside him.
There were few nasty rumours or mistakes Phainon’s reputation couldn’t endure. A friend free to misstep here and there, just as he had done multiple times a day when he first arrived in the city. A hero akin to the ones immortalised in song, devious antics included and lauded.
Mydei wasn’t afforded the same luxury. As a prince, a leader, who constantly toes the line between an age-old hatred always ready to spark anew at the slightest provocation.
So maybe it would be right for Mydei to know the truth. Then Phainon’s fate would finally be up for Mydei to decide, once and for all. No longer an equal but a supplicant, yet one willing to wholly accept Mydei’s decision regardless of which way it swayed.
“Deliverer.”
At the low murmur spiralling in his ear, he turned and his breath hitched. They were close. Warmth emanated from Mydei’s body, burning through air and fabric to settle beneath Phainon’s skin, muscles strung tight, while he was fixed in place by Mydei’s narrowed eyes practically alight in the alleyway’s dimness. Close, but no closer than they had stood in the heat of battle.
Yet Mydei leaned closer still. Across that invisible threshold where they could guard each other’s back. At this scant distance, they would both be pierced through by the same blade, breathing and bleeding into each other.
The only thing that separated them was the apple still in Mydei’s hand and raised to his lips. It concealed all but his eyes, twin blades poised to pierce Phainon’s every lingering thought about propriety and reputation. The smooth skin grazed Phainon’s lips and the corner of Mydei’s eyes creased. His mouth watered with the urge to bite.
When his lips parted, it was merely to whisper, “Mydei.”
A statement like Mydei needed a basic nudge to return to his senses. A question, so many questions, tangled into one heart-aching mess.
“You didn’t take one for yourself,” Mydei murmured back, layers hidden in the depths of his voice that Phainon couldn’t parse. “We may as well share.”
Share. He could run back to the marketplace, even his house, right now and return with a second one. There had to be a knife somewhere he could purchase or borrow and slice the thing in two. With the cool brush of Mydei’s gauntlets against his jaw, he was certain Mydei could split it with his hands and it wouldn’t be perfectly even but that would be something to tease him about, taunts and ribbings escalating until they were somewhere far from this. Maybe then Phainon would remember how to do anything other than gawk.
A crunch sounded in his ears and he swallowed, smelling and tasting sweetness in the air despite the emptiness between his teeth.
Then Mydei blinked and that honeyed look, thick and sweet enough to drown in, disappeared, swept away by the cool air that came to occupy the vacant space left by Mydei’s retreat. The cold forced its way into his lungs and a shiver lashed down his spine yet he remained where he stood. A single step and his unsteady feet may crumble beneath him.
Mydei next bite sounded harsher than the last, teeth gnashing together. “Don’t you have a meeting with Aglaea?”
“Oh.” Phainon blinked hard, trying to restart his brain like a teleslate. “Yes?”
Not that he recalled, but his mind was clearly too occupied by other thoughts to be reliable. If Mydei had mentioned it then it must be true. Besides, he wouldn’t refuse such a convenient offer to part from Mydei’s side. It presented the perfect opportunity to kneel before Aglaea’s desk and plead with her to stifle the rumours sure to emerge from the marketplace like a venomous butterfly from its chrysalis.
“Then let’s end this here for today,” Mydei decided for them both and Phainon didn’t argue as Mydei walked away.
While he lingered, unable to will his mind and body to move on from the phantom memory of Mydei so tantalisingly near, Phainon knew he had made more than one mistake that morning. But he couldn’t pinpoint the second misstep, just that it had caught him unawares.
It was only after he rushed to Marmoreal Palace—where Aglaea looked upon him with a strange blend of pity and distaste. Thankfully, she agreed to do her best suppressing the rumours for the good of Mydei’s reputation—that Phainon recalled how he failed to pay for the apple before carrying it away like a common thief. However, when Phainon sought out the marketplace stall to offer his profuse apologies and proper payment, the vendor informed him that Mydei had returned soon after leaving and completed the transaction.
If anyone approached Mydei while Phainon was absent from his side and whispered a truth that wasn’t quite the whole truth into his ear, there was no indication that anything had changed. The next morning their spar unfolded to the easy rhythm as the last. The same could be said for their rooftop meetings and meals, their bath and home visits, their expeditions and everything in between.
Once again, the one changed was Phainon. After his misthrow in the marketplace, he resolved himself to stop. Of all people, he should have known the private and public weren’t so easily delineated, but he had let private habits impair his public judgement and there was no guarantee it wouldn’t happen again. He had his fun but when that joy teetered into danger, with Mydei unknowingly caught in the fusillade, it was time to set aside such bad habits.
Thankfully, a single comment about new fruits being in-season dissuaded further questioning into the change in Mydei’s diet and the loss of the unique gesture shared between them. Not long after, the Kremnoan detachment’s deployment, with Phainon under strict orders by Aglaea to remain in the city, gifted him time to mentally reset.
At first, the mere mention or sight of an apple made heat rise to his cheeks as he was bombarded by the memories of his, in hindsight, embarrassing behaviour. No better than an unruly adolescent.
It undoubtedly would have been worse if Mydei witnessed his inexplicable reactions. At least, without him to add more shame to compound the memories, he returned to normal within a few days and breezed past the humiliation at every hint of the fruit, leaving him prepared to see Mydei again. When the detachment returned a few weeks after their departure, he was prepared to settle into their normal relationship absent of fanciful distractions.
It usually took Mydei a couple of hours to account for his men and their supplies. Then he was responsible for providing Aglaea with a detailed report of the expedition and aftermath. By afternoon, since he was already in Marmoreal Palace, it was time for him to wash away the grit of travel and combat. Which meant it was time for Phainon to join him in the baths.
The Hero’s Bath was occupied by a lone figure. His shoulder slouched in the water, hair tied up, and head tipped back across the lounge back where his arms were hooked. Red tattoos rippled with the golden water like the blazing heart of a fire, encompassed by yellow flames. At the sound of the elevator, Mydei’s eyes opened and lazily slid to his periphery.
Phainon smiled and waded through the waters, setting his bath towel where it was safe from the water on the back of the round lounger. “You’re looking relaxed, Mydei.”
A tad weary, but Phagousa’s blessed waters had carried the rest of his exhaustion away, leaving Mydei’s face serene and muscles loose. Even if just for now, the responsibilities that kept him rigid and unyielding had drifted away like leaves taken downstream.
He hummed, low and lazy as it droned on like the lapping waters, and raised a hand. A wave if not for how it remained upright. Waiting. Phainon tilted his head and the flit of Mydei’s eyes may have been an eye roll if he weren’t too mellow to make it all the way around.
“No apples?” he elaborated, curiosity dulling the unknowing sting of his jab.
“Oh.”
The table stood in the Hero’s Bath offered small biscuits, honeyed figs, pomegranate seeds and juice that Mydei had gathered to nibble at while he bathed. At the furthest end, where the seats opened and Phainon stood, was a platter of golden apples just out of Mydei’s reach.
It didn’t mean anything. Not that Mydei asked and not that Phainon selected one—all undoubtedly perfect. There was no need to check for flaws in Aglaea’s domain—from the platter to throw. “Here.”
It landed in the centre of Mydei’s open palm. “Thanks.”
There was nothing more Mydei could want from him, yet he didn’t avert his eye, shining as brilliantly as the apple raised to his bared teeth, when he took that first bite. It was quick and messy: the complete opposite of Mydei’s usual eating etiquette that had him carefully relishing his food, savouring the flavours and textures, with manners befitting the prince more than the warrior. He licked his lips, replacing the shine of juice with spit, but left the mess dripping down his chin untouched as he went for another bite.
Steam filled Phainon’s lungs as he inhaled so sharply it burned. The damp heat diffused through his body but failed to extinguish the sparks in the pit of his stomach before the haze rose to the forefront of his mind. It took the form of something unnamed and unclaimed, yet mirrored in Mydei’s eye peering through water-darkened lashes.
He was back on the training grounds, on the rooftop, in an alleyway tucked away from prying eyes as the distance between them smouldered away with the fires of passion rather than war encapsulated in Mydei’s eyes.
Flames that burned for Phainon and to consume him. Tender, yet his heart violently squeezed as Mydei tossed the exposed apple core onto his plate and lapped at the juices running down his arm. The pink tip of his tongue traced his tattoos, his prominent veins, his defined muscles and slender joints.
When he was finished, he set his chin against his knuckles, shameless despite the display, and commanded, “Pick up another one.”
In all that time, Phainon had yet to move. The table was at his side and he didn’t need to look, couldn’t even if he wanted to, because Mydei had him trapped in an irresistible golden snare. He grabbed any one but, as his arm drew back to toss it—
“Now come here.”
Unexpected but Phainon obeyed just the same. Mydei had something in mind and Phainon happily let himself be led along, like a dog on a leash, as he rounded the table. With Mydei watching him expectantly, he lowered himself to sit at Mydei’s side, the same distance as always, closeness without indecency, between their broad shoulders and thighs. Uncrossed.
Mydei beckoned with an open hand and there wasn’t enough space to justify a throw so he placed it upon his palm. Mydei immediately flicked it into his other hand. Then he tossed it back to Phainon.
He was so surprised it was only a warrior’s instinct that let him keep some dignity, bringing his hand up to snatch the apple from the air before it hit him across the face. But, once he had it, he didn’t know what to do with it. “Ummm…”
“Deliverer.” Mydei tipped his head, brows high and the corner of his lip crooked with an arrogance Phainon couldn’t help but find charming. “Do you intend to ever act on these seductions of yours?”
His body lurched. Forwards, upwards, somewhere that wasn’t here where Mydei had stripped him bare with a single question as honed and well placed as Mydei’s gauntleted fist plunged through his chest fuelled by bloodlust for his heart. But since when had he ever run from Mydei.
Not when he was Mydeimos The Undying, known only by a reputation for crumbling cities like a child’s wooden blocks.
Not when he was Mydeimos, the warrior Phainon had fought to a stalemate and was desperate to learn more from, more of, despite being seemingly rebuffed at every turn.
Not when he was Mydei, who challenged and supported him in equal measure through harsh words and pointed jabs that grazed skin without digging into fresh wounds nor old scars. Through warm meals and patient teachings. Through a look both daring and smug but not derogatory for it—for thinking he could ever fool Mydei.
So Phainon inhaled to let the animal instinct to flee pass and the next exhale cleared his mind. Mydei had waltzed up to the line Phainon had only been courageous enough to toe, and set one foot over, redrawing lines and boundaries so swiftly Phainon could hardly keep up with the shock of frameworks crumbling so easily perhaps they were hardly standing all this time.
But if Phainon ran, if he retreated or stayed stagnant when Mydei was inciting change in the wake of every steady footfall, then he was undeserving of the opportunity Mydei had given him and him alone. He would no longer be worthy of everything encompassed within their relationship, and everything it could be, which meant he was never worthy at all.
“I want to,” Phainon admitted with all the confidence he could muster as he, for the very first time, put a label to these emotions. Want. Desire. “Do you want me to?”
A prod. A drawn line for Mydei to gaze upon and decide whether it was better elsewhere.
Finally, Mydei’s provocative expression softened. Performative, as Mydei had been since he laid eyes on Phainon entering the Hero’s Baths. With the weight of his people draped over his shoulders, trailing behind him like a chlamys woven from the thousand years of history, Mydei masked his true thoughts and feelings behind the stoicism of a reliable leader. But he rarely ever exaggerated. Pretended.
Unless it was under the guise of their push and pull. Phainon had pulled Mydei close only to push him away, so Mydei responded with a harsh tug of his own knowing that Phainon would rise to his challenge.
Phainon had voiced desire and Mydei smiled, a small and subtle thing that was so completely Mydei that Phainon’s worries dissipated before the answer had a chance to fall upon him like gentle daylight over the horizon:
“I do.”
And there was only one name that could cup Mydei’s cheek, caress the crease of his eyes, and lean close to meet him in a kiss—affection. So overwhelming that it jolted through him and forced a short gasp from Phainon’s parted lips the moment they met Mydei’s own.
Soft where his immortal body healed even dry, cracked skin and smoothed it flawlessly. Warm and damp from the bathwater and steam. Sweet with the lingering taste of fresh apples Phainon collected with a drag of his tongue across a plump bottom lip.
His eyes fluttered open, the thinnest line of blue meeting gold, before Mydei’s lips parted. Phainon hesitated, tongue prodding the seam of Mydei’s mouth, but hands grabbed the back of Phainon’s neck. He was helplessly reeled in, commanded to delve deeper despite Mydei’s impatience leading him to ravage Phainon’s mouth himself.
The angle was awkward. Phainon’s flank pulled at the steep bend but Mydei’s lips moved with an inescapable fervour, temperate wracking higher and higher until Phainon was shaking with it as he swung a leg over Mydei’s lap. He loomed over him, descended upon him, and Mydei met him with equal force even as Phainon took his turn to plunder Mydei’s mouth.
He gripped the lounge back with one hand, steadying them despite lightheadedness threatening to spin him off his feet, and the other cradled Mydei’s cheek to hold him in place as Phainon fought for control. He chased apples on Mydei’s lips, pomegranates on his tongue, and honey behind his teeth.
When he finally broke away it was with a gasp for air as their bodies, crowded against the seats and slick with water, slid together. He shuddered with a whine he was too startled to muffle. His head dropped, chest heaving with breaths forced long through his nose when he wanted to pant like a dog, and the flowing water distorted the sight but the feel of it was unmistakable: they were both hard.
Before he could hesitate, the arms slung over his shoulders skimmed down his torso, supple palms following the dip of his waist to grab onto his hips.
“Keep going,” Mydei encouraged, cheeks and lips reddened from more than the heat but his voice as controlled as his hands guiding Phainon’s hips to roll.
The friction caught through the thin bathing robes and a low sound spilled from Phainon’s throat as Mydei set the rhythm, rutting against each other like… unruly adolescents. He laughed but Mydei’s hold slid from his hip, taking them both in one hand, and his chuckle warbled into a breathless moan against Mydei’s sharp grin. So arrogant, as though the fresh colour weren’t imbued in his cheeks and his nostrils flared.
His hands wrapped around Mydei’s back but refrained from forcing them closer. He just needed something to hold onto without cracking the wooden lounger and Mydei grounded him like nothing else. Never mind that it was Mydei’s sinful voice whispering in his ear and leading him to insanity.
“After all your seductions…” Mydei broke off with a grunt at Phainon’s forceful thrust, rutting into Mydei’s hands, up his length, and bumping his stomach only to withdraw and do it again. Harder; splashing water over them. “Take what you want from me.”
What Phainon wanted from Mydei. He had never considered anything more than the abstract in the most fleeting, fanciful wishes he denied himself. He he never done anything more than childishly holding hands with a girl from his hometown who had liked him more than he liked her, but he was too afraid of disappointing her to say it aloud.
His movement slowed and he swallowed, mouth dry despite the water in the air. “I’ve never…”
Mydei blinked, head tilted into the silent question creasing his brow, before the bashful dart of Phainon’s eyes conveyed the meaning he didn’t possess the brash intrepidity to say outright. Realisation cleared Mydei’s features and a hand threaded through the hairs along Phainon’s nape, dragging his attention back where it belonged.
“Tell me what it is you want,” Mydei demanded without room for argument and ground their hips together, dousing his doubts in a fresh wave of pleasure.
Tentatively, Phainon’s hands splayed across Mydei’s back, and then slid lower. “Can I?”
“Yes,” he breathed, relief and anticipation mingling together even as he relinquished his tight grip and Phainon tried not to groan at the loss.
Mydei’s arms flexed, hands braced on the lounge edge. Before he could lift himself, Phainon gripped Mydei’s sculpted thighs and lifted him up to sit on the lounge back. Removed from the water, Mydei was even more exposed: bathing robe still mostly opaque but clinging to the outline of his muscular thighs and stomach, and tented indecently at the front.
Mydei huffed a laugh and that small sound brought Phainon’s otherwise immovable eyes upwards to become transfixed by Mydei’s smile. So hopelessly fond in the same manner as Phainon that he wondered how he ever thought they could go without this intimacy. To spend the rest of their lives toeing the line that had been obliterated beyond all repair and they revolved in the wreckage.
“Show-off,” Mydei chided despite the appreciative stare down Phainon’s biceps to his hands, thick and rough where they gripped his thighs while Mydei grinned.
Plump, red, shiny. Phainon slotted himself fully between Mydei’s thighs and swayed closer for another kiss, plush lips mirroring his movements. He succumbed to the temptation of these past months and nibbled at Mydei’s lip. At the tease of his teeth, Mydei’s breath jumped but he didn’t berate him, so Phainon sank his teeth in. Muscles twitched beneath his palms moments before a metallic tang coated his tongue and he pulled away to the sight of gold smeared across Mydei’s lip, shimmering in the daylight reflected off the waters.
“Sorry,” Phainon murmured. He hadn’t meant to be so overzealous and cleaned it away with a swipe of his tongue—apologetic, yet the thought of Mydei’s swollen lip bearing his teeth made him feel less than remorseful.
The flare of possessiveness was obvious, yet Mydei didn’t judge him for it. Instead, he prodded his tongue against the two raw pinpricks, ichor already stymied by his immortality, and none of the hunger in his eyes had been diminished under the sting. The fact Mydei wasn’t averse to being marked bloody fuelled Phainon’s own greed and he licked the remnants of blood from his molars.
Before he could lean in for another bite, Mydei’s placed a hand on his chest, preventing his advance. “If you wish to make amends, then grab the scented oils.”
There was a small basket of them on the table at Phainon’s back. They were intended to customise the bathwater’s scent and Mydei was always partial to the mellow sweetness of certain flowers. On numerous occasions, after particularly long days, Phainon had almost been lulled to sleep by lavenders or lilies.
“All right.” He turned as quick as he could against the water’s pull. “Which scent would you like today?”
“Just pick one. Any will do to loosen me up.”
Phainon’s hand in the basket paused. The words replayed in his mind, and was swiftly accompanied by a flurry of heady images. “Oh.”
Despite not being able to see Mydei’s face, Phainon was certain his incredulity came with an eye roll. “What did you expect we were using it for?”
“Setting the mood?”
“Get back here.”
He snagged a handful of vials he recognised as Mydei’s favourites before hurrying back to his side. Water and gold dripped down his body like small, scattered jewels and molten precious metals, accentuating the lines of tattoos and tempered muscle; arms braced, legs splayed and core flexed. Waiting.
Phainon positioned himself between Mydei’s legs and knelt on the stone seat. Mydei beckoned with his fingers and Phainon placed the vial in his hand, setting the rest aside while Mydei popped it open to pour over his fingers.
“Hyacinths?” he casually mused after a quick sniff of the empty vial, as though his slicked hand weren’t trailing down his own torso.
“You said any would do,” Phainon mumbled back, tongue numbed by the sight of the long line glistening a shade off from the water still clinging onto the defined muscle.
Mydei hummed, a non-answer, and shuffled his legs further apart. The thin bathing robe stretched to its limit, outlining his chiselled thighs and the shapely curve of his cock and Phainon couldn’t look anywhere else. He had seen it bare before: when they were changing and Mydei, never one to shy away from exposing his body, had dropped his trousers before Phainon could politely turn away.
He had stared then too. For a moment. Then he came back to himself and whipped his head away so quick his neck still ached at the memory. Yet the pain was muted by the myriad of incomprehensible thoughts that had whirled through his mind. Back then, he had believed he was merely in awe of Mydei’s body—truly the pinnacle of masculinity. The epitome of a warrior. The form all Kremnoans took inspiration from and all Amphoreans should follow in their footsteps—the same as always.
Now he knew better and felt no need to avert his eye. Not when Mydei so clearly revelled in him watching and made himself a spectacle. It would be rude not to enjoy himself.
Phainon dipped his nails beneath the bathing robe, opening the wet seam for his fingers to slide against the supple skin of Mydei’s tensed thighs. “This is in the way.”
“So it is.”
There was slight resistance as Phainon pushed it up. Until Mydei closed his thighs, then the fabric easily bunched around his hips. Higher.
It was better than Phainon remembered. Flushed, erect, leaking at the tip. He had all the time to admire it but didn’t have to be content with sight alone. He familiarised himself with the smooth skin, the solid weight of it as his long, thick fingers struggled to enclose around the girth.
Mydei’s chest hitched, sharp breath breaking across the crown of Phainon’s head, and he peered up through dampened lashes. Mydei’s eyes were half-closed and lip pinned between his teeth, gnawing at the damaged skin to bring more blood to the surface. Innumerable times in the past, Phainon had witnessed that same blood—fallen from the divine to anoint mortal bodies as demigods—spilled in battle. Shed in an anguish that Mydei’s body had become numb to: unbreakable even in death.
So it was fitting to see it drawn from him in pleasure. This sensation Mydei was still weak against. It was written, boldface, across his proud features crumbling to the leisurely stroke of Phainon’s hand, callouses catching soft skin and prominent veins while his entire body, down to his toes, curled into the sensation.
Mydei’s hand knocked against Phainon’s inner wrist. Not a reprimand for his audacious touches—he didn’t know Mydei’s weaknesses yet, so started with the things that worked on himself. A twist of his hand. A thumb at the base of the head—but a mismanoeuvre as Mydei reached past his own perineum.
The moment he found what he was looking for, his brows pinched and Phainon frantically searched for a hint of pain. His clenched jaw and eyes fully closed beneath furrowed brows appeared more baffled than distressed.
“You know your way around… this,” Phainon said unintelligibly and heard it aloud differently than in his head. “I didn’t mean to suggest—“
But Mydei laughed through his nose. Wavering with discomfort or gratification, Phainon couldn’t tell. “I picked up a few things here and there.”
A few scenarios whirled behind his lashes but he smothered them all before they could throw him into disarray. He had never suspected—would never have imagined. Could never have even thought—that Mydei had been this intimate with anyone else. His guard seemed as high as a city’s impenetrable walls and, while other admired the craftsmanship from a distance, Phainon had always delighted in knocking upon the front gate until Mydei deigned to open them for him.
Before the tightness seeded inside his chest could bloom into something repulsive and poisonous, a hand gripped Phainon’s upper arm.
“Keep going,” Mydei commanded, no comment on the sudden swing of Phainon’s mood; eyes closed and face lined with tension. “It helps.”
He didn’t realise his hand had stopped but he immediately rectified his mistake and resumed his firm strokes. Mydei’s stomach flexed but Phainon’s eyes were drawn lower to Mydei’s hand at the apex of his thighs. He already had two fingers down to the knuckle and scissored himself open.
Again, Phainon searched the tension drawn up his body to his face. When he couldn’t find a satisfactory answer, he had to ask, “Does it feel good for you?”
“It’s fine,” Mydei said tersely. A statement just a touch too sharp.
“Does your… experience preclude… receiving?” Phainon asked and cringed at the words he overheard in crass gossip or crude rumours he preferred to avoid.
While Mydei had been unflinching in his discomfort, his face scrunched at Phainon’s question and he very nearly dropped to his knees to beg forgiveness before Mydei said, exasperated, “What are you on about now, Deliverer?”
They stared. Equally confused.
“You picked up a few things. Here and there,” Phainon repeated dumbly.
His lips twitched but he turned away before Phainon could parse the expression and he didn’t want to push when Mydei was already so unsettled. “From the idle gossip of the detachment members and some written word. That’s all.”
“Oh,” he said. “That’s…”
It would have been rude to say it was a relief. Yet the tightness in his chest unwound. Despite how confident Mydei acted, they were on similar footing. Phainon may have been slightly behind but that was nothing new and he always prided himself on being able to catch up and keep pace with Mydei.
He was still inexperienced and clumsy but knowing Mydei was blustering to hide a similar state gave Phainon the confidence to resume. He suddenly thumbed at Mydei’s slit and his head bowed under the onslaught of sensation, shoulders and hips collapsing into himself as he bucked into the pressure.
“D-deliverer.” Whatever he was about to say was silenced by his teeth gnawing his lip.
“You’re bleeding,” Phainon murmured rather than ask for the rest of his words. He ducked his head to lap at Mydei’s lips, appearing as gold but tasting like iron. “Let me help you.”
Mydei peered at him—assessing. A warrior on the battlefield if not for the gaze as stripped of armour as his body. Always exposed yet only vulnerable here and now. “Distract me.”
He pecked his nose, just to watch it wrinkle, and quietly chuckled. “All right.”
When he had fetched the oil, something forgotten had caught his eye but only now, hand diligently working to distract Mydei all the while, did he grab it from the table.
At the sight of the uneaten golden apple, Mydei’s lips parted but Phainon brought the fruit to his open mouth, silencing him, and explained, “I disappointed you last time.”
Back in the alleyway. When Mydei had tried to tell him something but Phainon had been too caught up in his own panic and misconceptions to decipher the obvious as Mydei tried to share an apple between them.
So Phainon took the first bite of the apple Mydei had thrown him moments ago—sweet. The sweetest he had ever tasted, yet too lovely to be sickening—and watched Mydei’s eyes widen. Then the crunch of crisp skin and firm flesh breaking beneath Mydei’s teeth.
The juices ran down his wrist but Mydei grabbed his arm and Phainon let the limb be guided from Mydei’s lips. He flinched at the warm, wet drag from his elbow to his wrist. But Mydei’s grip tightened and his brows quirked with the corner of his lip. A challenge.
So Phainon let Mydei lick his arm clean, hardly different than a cat, before taking Phainon’s wrist to focus on his hand. He lapped at the thin skin between his fingers then laved his tongue upwards across each digit, only to take it into his mouth and work his way down each knuckle to the base.
While he was focused on Phainon’s index finger against his upper palette and his cock rutting against Phainon’s stomach, he fiddled a vial open to clumsily coat his fingers. Before Mydei could detect the blooming scent of lilies, Phainon prodded at the loosened furl of muscle and his finger slowly begged entry alongside Mydei’s own.
A harsh sigh skidded across the waters, almost a breathy moan, as Mydei’s head tipped back. To distract him from Phainon’s finger adding to the stretch, he pinched Mydei’s chin and pulled him into a kiss. One sweeter than the apple they had shared because he was devouring the taste directly from Mydei’s mouth.
The give beneath Phainon’s finger wasn’t immediate. Mydei had worked himself open but Phainon couldn’t imagine the awkward angle did him any favours. Still, Mydei’s three fingers, paused in their ministrations, remained lodged inside to allow Phainon’s ministrations.
It was warm. Tight. Phainon felt along silky walls in gentle, exploratory touches encouraged by Mydei’s hitched breaths and short rumbles in his throat. All subtle reactions that Phainon eagerly familiarised himself with and committed to memory.
Sometimes Mydei’s face twisted and Phainon stopped, fearing it was pain rather than pleasure shuddering through his limbs, until Mydei’s eyes cracked opened in a narrow glare. Demanding, like a spoiled cat, and Phainon swayed to his whims without preamble just to watch that expression loosen again.
It was the prelude to the sharp moan torn from his chest at Phainon’s next press and his first instinct was to back away. But the frantic jerk of Mydei’s hips against Phainon’s stomach and painfully hard cock, and his mouth silently agape around the sound that had since ended, existing only in Phainon’s mind repeating it over and over again, told Phainon one thing…
“Here?” Phainon asked. Rhetorical when Mydei didn’t have a chance to reply before Phainon crooked his finger again. Harder.
Mydei’s hand slid from himself with a squelch of oil as he scrabbled at Phainon’s wrist. “Wait!”
“You told me to distract you,” Phainon reminded him and delved down for another kiss, mouth opened in protest beckoning Phainon’s tongue to trace the back of Mydei’s teeth.
Mydei clawed at his back, his wrist, and another strangled noise escaped from the pit of his stomach into PhainonMd greedy mouth. It was his now. To keep. To cherish.
Phainon withdrew his hand and Mydei’s hold relaxed around his wrist. Only for Phainon to slam three fingers—no resistance—and crook them against that sensitive spot.
Warmth splattered across his stomach in the instant Mydei shoved him away by the chest. An apology was poised to roll from Phainon’s tongue but it halted at the blush cascaded from Mydei’s cheeks down his clavicle that nearly mingled with the white across his stomach.
Despite the steam wetting the air, Phainon’s mouth was utterly dry. “Did you just…”
Two legs locked behind his back and hauled him closer, hips crushed to Mydei’s pelvis as he growled, “Inside. Now.”
“But you just—“
“Now,” Mydei commanded, teeth bared and eyes narrowed in spite of, or because of, the humiliation colouring his cheeks.
He glared like he would tear out Phainon’s throat with his teeth if he dared hesitate a moment longer. The thought made Phainon swallow, heat pooling in his stomach where his neglected arousal ached.
“Oil,” Phainon blurted before Mydei could impale himself on Phainon’s cock, regardless of how it was still clothed in his bathing robes.
Despite the interlude, Phainon’s jugular remained intact as he snagged another vial to pour onto his hand and stroke himself slick. Then he guided the head to Mydei’s rim and sank inside.
Blissfully warm. Tight despite the preparation, strangling a moan or a whine or something equally pathetic from Phainon’s throat into Mydei’s panting mouth, but wet enough to smooth his entry. Mydei’s eyes were hazy, muscles taut and walls fluttering around Phainon like his body was struggling to understand the sensations.
He was less than halfway when he paused to let them both catch their breath. “How do you feel?”
Mydei shook his head, like he wanted to deny the answer, yet spoke sincerely down to his disbelieving little laughter, “Good.”
Phainon let a small breath he hadn’t even realised he had been holding; a relieved sigh knowing Mydei would silently endure pleasure’s absence for Phainon’s sake but had no need to. They could both experience it together.
“Me too. Mydei, you feel…” There were no words. If there were then Phainon had forgotten them and everything else beyond the clutch of Mydei’s body around him. “Nothing can compare.”
“Then why do you dawdle?” Mydei challenged with a flex of his thighs ensnaring Phainon’s waist.
A weak, reedy laugh escaped him. “I fear I’ll embarrass myself if I move any quicker.”
He was already so much closer to the end than he should be and he wasn’t even all the way inside yet.
“So only I can be humiliated by you,” he retorted wryly.
“It’s not that,” Phainon hurried to correct him but Mydei arched a brow. He amended, “Maybe a little. Mostly, I… don’t wish for this to end.”
“How greedy,” Mydei said. A chastisement if not for the satisfied tilt to his lip.
It was a dull barb and Phainon chuckled beneath his breath into the narrow space shared between them. “I always am when it comes to you.”
Greedy, immature, selfish. These emotions and impulses spilled forth in Mydei’s presence alone. Rather than reserve his best qualities for the target of his affection, his seductions, the worst of himself had risen beyond the amiable pretences of an ideal hero. Somehow, Mydei stayed anyway.
The smugness softened so thoroughly it disappeared, replaced by pure fondness. The notion that it was for Phainon made his chest seize even as the sweetness of it ran down the back of his throat, settling in his stomach to coat the coalescing heat.
Mydei cupped his nape, bringing their foreheads together, noses brushing and eyes creasing with a smile. “Then be greedier. Who said anything about this ending.”
“Mydei,” he breathed against his lips and followed it with a chaste kiss and a needy glance through his lashes. “Tomorrow?”
“If you want.”
“The following day?”
“Sure.”
“And the day following that one?”
“My answer won’t change no matter how many times you ask.”
“Hmm. What about the day following following that?”
“Suddenly, I’m tempted to change my mind.”
Phainon grinned so wide his cheeks ached and nuzzled their noses together. “But you won’t.”
He nipped Phainon’s nose and kissed it afterwards. “I won’t. Even once you finish today, there’s no reason to end things there.”
From his nape, Mydei’s hand trailed down. His fingertips traced the defined muscles of Phainon’s back, sought out the notches and valley of his spine, then lower to tease his nail against the untouched rim of muscle.
The promise of it made Phainon’s hips buck with a moan, buried in Mydei’s throat, and the need tumble loose, “Yes. Please. Please please, I—“ he choked on a whine as Mydei tightened up around him at the wanton display, “—Mydei.”
He knew the shape, the weight, hung between Mydei’s legs. If Mydei carved him open with it, remoulded his body, then Phainon would never be able to forget it.
He nipped at the soft shell of his ear and Phainon’s mind melted away as he purred, “Then get to work, Deliverer. Fill me up, and I’ll return the favour.”
He was reduced to pure, pleasure-seeking instinct and snapped his hips, skin meeting skin with the wet slap of water and oil and Mydei’s own release dripping over them. He plunged in to the hilt and Mydei’s dull nails clawed into his back with a low grunt that rattled around Phainon’s skull.
“So good. More. Want to… want to give you more,” Phainon mumbled, babbling mindlessly as his mind crumbled beneath the sensations like shores smashed by the tide. “Never want to leave. You won’t make me, right, Mydei?”
Until they forgot today and tomorrow and the following day. There was only this one moment, shared between them, stretched on for eternity.
On the next thrust, Mydei’s hips rocked to meet him and he groaned, “Just like that.”
Phainon’s grip on the lounge back tightened and he briefly weighed the risk of snapping the wood but the concern dissipated with the steam as Mydei reeled him down for a kiss. A wet and messy tangle as Mydei slid their tongues together to the taste of iron and apples.
They parted with a slick sound, saliva strung between them. He should focus on setting a rhythm, a depth, that would engrain pleasure as deep into Mydei’s body as a lifetime of anguish, instead of mindlessly humping like a dog.
But Mydei licked his lips like he had never tasted anything better, dark eyes set to devour the rest of him, and Phainon ground his hips against Mydei’s own as he clumsily reached behind him for the table. Warmed metal grazed his fingers and he grasped a thin, chalice stem to bring to Mydei’s lips. He didn’t hesitate to part them, allowing Phainon to tip the pomegranate juice into his mouth.
Despite the rock of their bodies, his throat worked steadily around his swallows and Phainon raised himself on his knees, shifting the angle so he could empty the chalice bottom into Mydei’s open mouth. With Mydei's thighs around his waist, the change in position shifted the angle enough that next thrust made Mydei choke on a broken noise.
The dark liquid spilled from his dropped mouth, running down his chin and bared throat. It brought new colour, deeper than his markings and pleasure-stricken flush, to the pale skin of his clavicle where the drink pooled.
Another pound of his hips as deep as he could get and he tipped the chalice all the way. Dazed by the movement, Mydei lacked the presence of mind to swallow the final mouthful and it joined the sticky mess, overflowing from his collarbones and down his chest.
Phainon cursed and shoved Mydei backwards with a splash of shallow water and loomed over him for better access to drag his tongue across his chest. Sweet but tart. Better. This was how Mydei should taste and he pursued it across his nipples, his clavicle, his throat.
No matter how diligently he lapped at the spilled drink, the juice stained Mydei’s skin and gave him endless excuses to try again while Mydei struggled to hold the awkward angle without completely collapsing. He could have leveraged his arms or his legs around Phainon’s waist to change their position. Instead, he chose to be entirely at Phainon’s mercy as he tormented him with soft touches, harsh bites, and unceasing thrusts forcing the air from his lungs and a melody of delectable noises to follow.
“You taste so good, Mydei,” he rambled and fondled his chest, one mound in each hand, and shoved them together to bury his face in the crease. “After our next spar, let’s go home before the baths.”
His arms flexed, abdomen twitching, as he held himself up with a firm grip on the edge of the lounge back. “Nasty mutt.”
His voice tapered into a hiss as Phainon bit and sucked at his nipples, rolling the pert bud between his teeth. Mydei’s back arched, shoving Phainon’s face into the muscle as though he needed any extra encouragement to stay. He pinched the neglected nipple and Mydei squeezed around him, and again when he dug his teeth into the first flesh with a moan.
Amidst him lavishing attention on Mydei’s ample chest, Mydei had returned to hardness. It slapped against Phainon’s stomach with every shove of their bodies together. To think, Mydei always had his chest on such shameless display when it was so sensitive all along—and Phainon had been none the wiser.
Idly, he wondered if the impressions of his teeth would remain come morning, and whether Mydei would choose to cover them up with a more modest outfit, one not even wariness from the city and scorn from the council of elders had forced Mydei into, or whether he would bare Phainon’s marks as proudly as the rest of his tattoos. Either way, he needed to leave more. Mydei was already a masterpiece but that simply meant Phainon needed to leave his mark upon a body so widely admired and coveted.
Every pomegranate stain and tattoo was accompanied by a grind of his teeth. Mydei panted as Phainon’s thrust lurched the air from his lungs. Despite all the wounds Phainon has seen inflicted firsthand, there were no scars upon Mydei’s body. Still, it jerked when Phainon gnawed his teeth like he intended to leave their impression upon Mydei’s bones, and Mydei encouraged him with the hand in his hair and nails digging into his scalp. Just as Mydei bled for battle and now for pleasure, Phainon wished he could replace the memory of every wound, every scar that should have been, with the mark and memory of their self-indulgence.
He unlatched from Mydei’s nipple, leaving a final small lick as he mourned their parting. “Are you going to finish again?”
“Not before you,” Mydei bit back but it was too strained to be believable.
Not that Phainon was confident in his ability to outlast him. He was so close it burned in the depths of his stomach; one spark away from flaring out of control and engulfing him entirely.
Yet he didn’t betray himself as he teased a light touch up Mydei’s length, mouthing at Mydei’s neck to leave a fresh blotch of bruises. “Are you sure?”
When Phainon’s hand closed around him and his teeth sank into his neck, he clenched around Phainon so hard, lashes fluttering, he almost believed he won right then and there. Except Mydei was still rigid in his hand so Phainon stroked him quicker, firmer, to help him the rest of the way.
“Yes,” Mydei answered without hesitation.
Too confident. It was suspicious but Phainon was too lost in the heat of their impromptu contest and Mydei’s body clinging to him with every forceful, desperate plunge of his hips.
So he didn’t feel Mydei’s hand release the short hairs at his nape nor hear the vial stopper. If he had, then he would have been prepared for Mydei’s finger to circle his entrance and push inside. Just his fingertip in the previously untouched place made Phainon whine and his hips buck. Every thrust to grind into Mydei meant a withdrawal onto the finger steadily nudging deeper.
“F-foul play,” Phainon managed to stammer out as the finger prodded. Experimental and exploratory.
“You were the one begging for this earlier,” Mydei retorted and added a second finger so easily it was like Phainon was made for it, for Mydei, and maybe he was. He wouldn’t argue against it. “Want me to stop, Deliverer?”
A taunt. But Phainon saw no purpose in denying them both.
“Keep going,” he pleaded unabashedly. He felt the shame welling within him but he refused to show it.
“That’s what I thought,” Mydei said and didn’t disappoint, lodging two fingers down to the knuckles and scissoring him open.
All the pleasure had been concentrated in one place but now, rather than split, it had multiplied across two locations. His head fell against Mydei’s shoulder, incoherent sounds dripping off his tongue, as he senselessly rutted his hips to chase two inescapable sensations. It took the dregs of his sane mind to keep stroking Mydei in time with his thrusts. Luckily, he frequently lost all sense around Mydei and still dedicated himself to emerging victorious.
A crook of Mydei’s fingers lurched his hips and he ground their hips together, hand spasming. A moan, completely uninhibited, dropped from Mydei’s open mouth as Phainon must have nudged that sensitive spot and he clenched around him, drawing out a sound that Phainon hardly recognised as himself.
It was so loud his voice must have cascaded with the water down to the public baths as his pleasure finally crested the precipice and he finished with a hot flash. He went limp, entirely dependent on Mydei to stop him from collapsing into the water and drowning when he was already struggling to breathe. Despite the lingering high of sensation, Mydei toyed with him unabated, opening him up even as Phainon trembled.
The hot air and steaming waters felt so distant. The world narrowed down to Mydei’s fingers stretching him open and the final spasms of Mydei’s walls around Phainon’s over-sensitive cock, as soft as Mydei’s own against his stomach. It was so wet that it was impossible to discern without looking what was water, oil or their pooling release across their abdomens and trickling out around Phainon’s softening length.
When the fingers popped free from his rim, he whined his protest—too much. Too little. He didn’t know—into Mydei’s shoulder but Mydei shushed him, two hands hooking behind his thighs and hauling him up. With Mydei sat on the lounge back and Phainon knelt on the seats, the starting angle was awkward yet Mydei made it work and laid him across the table.
Phainon mentally braced himself for the stretch of Mydei’s fingers replaced by something bigger. Only to feel the ache in his thighs and lower back as Mydei wrapped an arm around both his legs and levered them upright, resting the backs of his thighs against Mydei’s torso.
“I’m going to use your thighs,” Mydei brazenly stated by way of explanation.
The sight was obscene. Mydei’s hand clamped across his legs eliminated any gap between the dense muscle of his thighs. But Mydei made space as he shallowly thrust between his thighs, swollen head peeking between the pale, scarred skin before withdrawing out of sight.
Each thrust smeared Phainon’s thighs with translucent white as proof of Mydei’s enjoyment, growing more fervid with his increasingly forceful thrusts. He could feel the hot pulse of blood stiffening Mydei up between his thighs, the soft head growing larger and longer with every stroke. The controlled movements, the flex of Mydei’s arm a testament to how difficult it was to restrain himself, coaxed Phainon back to half-hardness.
The sparks of pain had dulled to become indistinguishable from pleasure once again as he leaked across his stomach. The pearlescent liquid pooled between the defined lines of his abdomens, mixing with Mydei’s own dripping arousal.
“Done teasing?”
“Bold words for the man who wears a strap right here.” Mydei’s fingertip traced his upper thigh. Right where the black leather strap usually pinched the muscle.
“It’s for support,” Phainon lied.
Actually, he wasn’t entirely sure why it was included with the rest of his outfit. He never questioned it and simply donned the layers he was instructed to wear: thigh strap included.
Mydei hummed, indulgent yet skeptical. “Then, next time, you can leave it on. For support.”
Phainon’s mouth parted around a retort that was more instinct than thought but Mydei’s withdrew his hips too far, head circling Phainon’s rim, and he gasped. Except, Mydei returned to his thighs for the next thrust. A shallow one so he could grind the head into the muscle before sliding the rest of the way.
When their thighs pressed together and there was no way for Mydei to push any further without bending Phainon in half, Phainon could see exactly how deep Mydei could lodge himself. His stomach tightened and he bit his inner cheek to stop himself from begging Mydei to just get on with it already and ensure Phainon couldn’t walk tomorrow.
It was difficult not to capitulate to that lust when the head grinding between Phainon’s thighs brought Mydei so tantalisingly close to slipping inside. If he timed the swivel of his hips just so, Mydei would undoubtedly breach his entrance; maybe even slam down to the hilt so long as Phainon was quick enough to force their hips together. Not only had he managed to regain his full hardness while Phainon was still only halfway there, he looked even bigger than before.
“You really are a beast,” Phainon said breathlessly, laughing at the weight rested on his stomach.
Mydei huffed a laugh. “Just another boon of this immortal body.”
“I knew I—“ he whimpered behind his teeth as the heads caught, “—liked it for a reason.”
“Yeah? Is that the only thing you wanted from me?”
He laughed again, even thinner than the last as his cock gave a valiant twitch against Mydei’s own but still needed a little more time to recover. “Not at a-all. I want…” He gritted his teeth as his hazy mind caught up with the words about to thoughtlessly tumble free.
Mydei brushed his thigh in a reassuring caress. “Tell me. Be good for me.”
For a moment, it was impossible to follow that command no matter Phainon’s intentions because his mind blanked. Be good.
Then he gasped and it all flooded back to him and out again, “I want everything. Your time, your attention, your favour.”
Mydei’s hips stuttered and his words were the same breathless rush, “You have it.”
Any reply his mind, behind misty eyes, may have collated was stifled behind a yelp as Mydei suddenly splayed his legs apart. He was completely exposed to Mydei’s narrowed eyes and wide pupils, a gaze that could only be described as wanton, and Phainon was abruptly reminded of his epithet. The solitary lion. A lone hunter swooping in for the kill.
At the first press against Phainon’s entrance, it certainly felt like Mydei wanted him dead. He had seen for himself that they were roughly the same size but he forgot how to breathe around the intrusion spearing him open in such an unfamiliar way.
He tossed his head back, arm slung across his eyes so the darkness might help him concentrate. The preparation had gone well, and Mydei had taken Phainon’s own length and girth so easily. Why did it feel like a struggle for Phainon to reciprocate.
A pressure pried his nails from his palm before slender fingers intertwined with his own. He gripped so tight the bones creaked but Mydei didn’t flinch away, only reassuring him with a squeeze.
“Deliverer,” Mydei’s voice snuck through the haze. “Breathe.”
He demonstrated with a controlled inhale, and long, soft exhale that raised the hairs along Phainon’s arm. Mydei had paused to let him adjust and he forced his panting mouth, taking in air but nowhere near enough to feed his brain pulled in so many directions, to slow. When Mydei took another deep breath, Phainon copied.
“Just like that. You’re doing well, Deliverer,” Mydei praised him and he whimpered in the back of his throat, but it didn’t quite make him settle. A single part snagged him.
“Not that…” he ground out into the dimness.
Another squeeze of his hand. “Not what?”
“My name,” he whined so pathetically as Mydei shifted and grazed a spot that made his muscles clamp down.
It took a moment. But then Mydei’s lips brushed his; a faint kiss that could almost be mistaken for a touch of air if not for the sharp sweetness of pomegranates on his breath.
“Phainon,” Mydei whispered and it was loose with a desire slowly being sated bit by bit, inch by inch lodging itself so deep inside Phainon that he would never be the same again. “Phainon, you’re perfect. You’re doing perfectly for me. Look at me.”
Phainon muffled a high-pitched noise behind a bite of his cheek, sealing his mouth shut with a sharp pinch that briefly realigned his mind to his body. When Mydei’s hand tugged at Phainon’s arm, he let their joined hands fall to the table.
Above him, Mydei smiled and the look—carefree, happy, affectionate—stole the last of Phainon’s breath even before the words rolled off Mydei’s tongue, “Good boy.”
Whatever noise he had tried to suppress burst forth. A mewl that teetered on the edge of pleasured and pained by the simple praise that made Phainon lock his legs behind Mydei’s back. Keeping him close.
“Mydei. Kiss,” he demanded, pleaded, vision blurry with steam or tears but it didn’t matter as Mydei leaned down to fulfil his request.
It was a gentle press, as slow as Mydei’s hips that finally bumped against Phainon’s pelvis: sheathed to the hilt, made for one another. Phainon moaned into Mydei’s mouth, hot air mingling together at Mydei’s own pleased sound.
Mydei’s grasp on Phainon’s hand tightened. “I’m starting.”
His head fell back with a sigh strung as tight as the pleasure wound in his core, “Yes.”
Another squeeze of his hand, reassurance and warning, before Mydei began to set his rhythm. Slow when he pulled his hips back and even slower when he pushed his way inside, reclaiming a space that was already irrevocably his, hitting as deep as he could go and meeting no resistance along the way because Phainon’s body had been broken, gently and kindly, into total submission. He relished in it. Not simply Mydei’s to take but to savour.
And he did it with a haughty tilt to his lips as he reached across the table. Ceramic rattled and Phainon rolled his head to peer with dazed eyes at Mydei lifting a dipper from one of the small pots, dripping with thick, liquid gold. Honey.
It was revenge for the pomegranate juice earlier when Mydei brought the dipper over Phainon’s torso and drizzled warm honey across his skin. He started at his collarbone, tracing Phainon’s golden tattoo and then swirling the dipper over each of Phainon’s nipples so the honey pooled and spread.
It spilled over his pectorals, as though he was bleeding ichor clearer and stickier than usual, where Mydei drew a line down his stomach. He flicked his hand at the wrist, mimicking the decoration of golden honeycakes as the honey dripped across Phainon’s abdomen.
He skimmed the outside of short, white hairs beneath Phainon’s bellybutton, drawing lines down to his thighs on one side only to retrace the same path and go down the other. Once he finished adorning Phainon’s thighs, he nudged the base of Phainon’s cock and dragged the dipper up to the head. Phainon shuddered and moaned. It was different from the oil. Too thick and sticky, he could feel it gather and trickle back down his skin.
Thankfully, Mydei knew better than to drop the contaminated dipper back into the pot. Instead, he left a final thin line up the length of Phainon’s body and brought it to Phainon’s mouth. He parted his lips and swirled his tongue around the head. Almost sickeningly sweet without anything to eat it with. Sticky as it clung to his tongue, his teeth, his palate. But he left his mouth open so Mydei’s hungry gaze could devour the sight of his lascivious tongue working.
When Mydei pulled it back in time with his hips, Phainon whined and Mydei pressed both in with the same slowness as the syrup he used to decorate Phainon’s body. He moaned as Mydei nudged his prostrate and he fought not to gag around the honey spilling down the back of his throat while he drooled.
Once the dipper was cleaned of honey and dirtied with Phainon’s spit, Mydei set it aside, hands freed to readjust his grip on Phainon’s thighs. He took Phainon’s legs from his waist to his shoulders, bending Phainon in two as he knelt upon the table to begin cleaning up his own mess.
“Gonna eat me?” Phainon teased, words slurring together.
His tongue swept across Phainon’s clavicle. Right where the cut of his tattoo appeared to bleed into previously unblemished skin until Mydei cleaned it away.
He dipped his wicked tongue into the hollow of Phainon’s collarbones, holding his gaze. “Until nothing remains.”
Phainon moaned and his hips twitched, pleading for attention from Mydei’s cock holding him open and not much else, but Mydei’s focus was elsewhere. A long drag of his tongue left his chest wet and still sticky in the aftermath. He nipped Phainon’s nipple with teeth charmingly sharp on the rare occasion he grinned enough to bare them.
A few more good licks—accompanied by bites and sucks that were complete overkill but Phainon didn’t complain. The opposite as he shivered, thighs clenched around Mydei’s neck—and he switched to the other nipple. He marked him with bruises and bites as though he could somehow leave behind marks, blood rising to the surface, as vivid as the ones flickering on Mydei’s own skin. Proof of their newfound claim upon one another.
All the while, he continued that gentle yet destructive rhythm. Ruining him tenderly.
Mydei reached across the table, hand returning clenched around a dark red husk: a pomegranate, already sliced into a convenient quarter.
“In Kremnos, pomegranates share similar meanings to Okhema’s apples,” Mydei drawled, husky with exertion. “Fertility and passion. Seduction.”
He tore into the pomegranate slice, teeth ripping the seeds from the pith and discarding the husk, before both hands cupped Phainon’s cheeks and Mydei descended for a kiss. As soon as their lips met, Mydei’s tongue demanded entry and Phainon didn’t hesitate.
The pomegranate seeds tumbled into his mouth, hard and sharp where the flesh broke tart juices across his tongue. They stained his cheeks, his teeth, his lips in the same dark hues Phainon had stained Mydei’s skin. Insistently, Mydei shoved them towards the back of his mouth and Phainon playfully retaliated, tongues twisting, but Mydei had all the leverage to force him to swallow.
When Mydei broke away, Phainon sucked in a quick breath and lunged, abdomen tightening where he was already so full it almost made him limply collapse with a moan. But he used his core to land a kiss to Mydei’s cheek where his tinged lips left their mark on his pale skin. A compliment to the small marking beneath his eye.
Phainon’s grin pulled his lips back, exposing the single pomegranate seed he had tucked beneath his tongue and now held between his teeth. Mydei’s eyes narrowed at the challenge and he swooped down. Phainon braced himself for another kiss but, rather than bully the pomegranate seed down his throat, Mydei’s lips grazed against his own. A fleeting touch that ended with his tongue flicking out to steal the pomegranate seed away.
Then he pulled back with a victorious smirk while Phainon’s stained, swollen lips pouted. His thrusts turned shallow, head doing little more than teasing his rim, as he hauled Phainon’s legs up. His weight rocked back onto his shoulder blades as his lower back was suspended in the air and Mydei bowed the rest of the way to mouth the honey smeared through with white off his thighs. It was a race: gold and white creeping down towards the apex of his thighs and Mydei chasing after it.
His tongue burrowed in the crease of his thighs and his heady gaze fell straight down, piercing through to pin Phainon down as effectively as his hands still felt as phantoms holding Phainon’s unmoved hands to the table. His toes curled. The thought of being eaten alive had never pleased him before now.
“Sweet,” Mydei rumbled with a lick of his lips.
Then he turned to nuzzle Phainon’s thigh with his cheek and flick his tongue against Phainon’s cock. His back arched, head slamming against the table so hard he didn’t know if the impact or Mydei’s mouth closing around the head scattered stars across his closed eyelids. He wasn’t given time to figure it out as Mydei hefted Phainon up higher, rolling onto his shoulders to help bear weight, but most of it undoubtedly supported by Mydei’s raw strength, and swallowed him down.
It was different from being inside him. Not as snug but wetter and more controlled as Mydei bobbed his head, shallow like the grind of his hips because that was the best this awkward angle could do. Half of his length was still exposed and neglected but his extremities tingled, sparks carried in his blood back towards his core.
But he was still so sensitive and Mydei grazed him with his teeth, tongued at his slit, sucked and swallowed like he knew Phainon was on a precipice more dangerous than the last and personally wanted to shove him over just to watch him shatter at the bottom.
“Close,” he hoarsely cried out, voice stifled by the odd angle crushing his chin to his collarbone. “Mydei, I—“
He broke off into a ragged gasp as his admittance pulled Mydei from his cock. He shivered at the spit cooling all over the sensitive skin, whining mournfully at the loss and then the stretch of Mydei bending him until his knees were to his own chest: folded in half. An ache soon forgotten because Mydei slammed himself fully inside. Rough and filthy.
He scrabbled at the table, nails searching for purchase in the wood before he flung his hands over his head to grab the edge lest Mydei shoved him off with the forceful snap of his hips alone. Phainon’s legs kicked, back sliding up the table, but there was no space to struggle. Only take as Mydei kept him firmly in place for the next thrust straight into Phainon’s stomach.
He was so deep, withdrawing until the tip teased his rim only to spear him open again and again with an insatiable vigour Phainon spurred on with each warbling cry and broken mewl. He could feel his body being reshaped, his brain reconfigured, so he could only be satisfied with Mydei inside him and mournfully empty when bereft of him.
And Mydei laid a hand over his stomach like he knew it too. “Phainon, you’ve been good for me. Now let go.”’
The blunt head nudged the heat that had pooled in his stomach and it finally, finally, unravelled.
A strangled noise escaped him and the next noises rushed out in an incomprehensible mess to his hazy mind—tongue heavy with slurred, incoherent mutterings as his eyes rolled back. His body seized, back arched and legs crossed behind Mydei’s head. He barely registered the warmth sputtering across his chest, his chin, as something vaguely resembling Mydei’s name was squeezed out of his spasming body.
His mind emptied of everything except the sound of water mingling with the blood pulsing in his ears. He panted for breath, more exhausted than any spar or battle. He hardly noticed as Mydei lowered his legs to lay limp on the table.
It took Mydei’s full weight collapsing over him for his mind to reconnect with his body enough to feel, for the first, the heated release slowly trickling out from where it was nestled so deep inside him he could almost taste it on his tongue. Sluggishly, he looped his arms over Mydei’s shoulders, face burrowed in his neck. Hearts racing and slowing to the same rhythm, they basked in the aftermath.
Only once Phainon’s breathing and heart rate had steadied did he smile, raising the skin along Mydei’s throat. “Same time tomorrow?”
Mydei pinched his side but he was too tired to yelp. “Did all the blood drain from your head? We have our spar on the rooftops tomorrow.”
“And?”
Mydei’s head rose, eyes narrowed at Phainon’s sly smirk, and he pushed himself upright. “Shameless.”
Despite the chastisement, Mydei scooped Phainon from the table and dropped them both backwards onto the seats. From there, they finally used the baths for their intended purpose and took turns scrubbing each other down, too exhausted to find pleasure in two fingers scraping their insides cleans, letting the waters wash away the sticky mess of various fluids.
Phainon hooked his arms over the lounge back and sank down with a blissful sigh while Mydei slouched, arms crossed, at his side. On the surface it was as though nothing had changed but Phainon had the aches to prove that the boundary between them had finally been irrevocably crossed.
Beneath the water, he hooked his foot around Mydei’s ankle, simply because he could. “You knew about the apples,” he said, too lethargic to be an accusation.
Mydei pushed a damp hand through his bangs, slicking them back in way Phainon rarely saw, before he loosed his mussed hair. “Not that first time. On the training grounds.”
His arms cascading water, glistening with it, as he retied his hair. The short hairs stuck to his nape in tantalising lines and curls, elongating his bare neck that Phainon had never found particularly tempting until now, urging Phainon’s fingers to tug and twirl.
Yet his body was already sore and there was little chance he could get his blood to pump where he wanted—though not as low as nothing. Not when Mydei’s body was truly unparalleled in every aspect and now Phainon was free to appreciate it however he pleased—but he forced them to curl around the seat before he incited more than he could handle and fainted in the bath’s heat. He needed to work on this new form of endurance, and he had a partner who would surely be eager to help out.
“But you became so flustered,” Mydei continued, heedless of Phainon’s internal struggle. “I couldn’t understand why and sought out Castorice for any insights.”
“So she told you?”
“And recommended some texts for reference.”
Throwing apples was a ploy at seduction.
Phainon resisted the urge to drop his face into his hands. The only consolation was that Mydei’s equal desire for him was, somehow, undeterred by his humiliatingly desperate and undeniably strange behaviour these past few months.
“You’ve known all along,” he bemoaned.
“I was uncertain,” Mydei admitted and Phainon couldn’t blame him.
Each apple toss was practically the same as Phainon inviting Mydei into his bed only to bid him a goodnight and leave the room to sleep elsewhere.
“When you first started signalling your desires but never acting on them, I assumed you were as clueless as I had been. If you were anyone else, I would have thought you were mocking me, but you’re too soft-hearted for that,” Mydei teased despite all the trouble and emotional turmoil Phainon put him through for months.
Months of a back and forth he thought was contained to his own unlabelled wish and fraying self-restraint. But Mydei had been responding to him all along and he had been too caught up in himself to realise the answer was within reach all along.
“No,” he sighed. “Merely a coward.”
Mydei kissed his teeth. “Cease with your self-deprecation. Even I…” He trailed off; so unlike his steady, unflinching self that Phainon raised his disparaged gaze to witness Mydei scowl. It wasn’t directed at Phainon, only himself. “Have made similar mistakes.”
He blinked, all their interactions from first meeting until now playing behind his eyelids between his glimpses of red tinting Mydei’s ears. “What?”
He steeled himself, gripping his own arm tight, and met Phainon’s eye. So deliberately blank and disinterested, unwavering, that it could only be a mask over his consternation. “One way in which Kremnoans convey interest in a potential marriage partner is by sparring with them and only them several times in a row. Twice is enough to start rumours. Anymore than that is…”
He shook his head, answer evident in itself and even Phainon’s stuttering mind caught the implication like an apple fallen into his unsuspecting hand.
“Ah.”
So Phainon had made a fool of himself for months, and Mydei had done almost the exact same for even longer. He tried to flit through the memories but he truly couldn’t recall the first time Mydei had agreed to spar without any other partners in between. He hadn’t given it much thought at the time, and it had been so long since that the detail faded into irrelevancy.
“I wanted you. Even more than that, I wanted to wait for you,” Phainon admitted, since they were both being honest, stripped bare of every elaborate metaphor and ancient tradition. “To be ready. Even if you never were. I know how burdensome your role is with—“ he waved vaguely. The future of his people, the city-state he abandoned, the city-state he found himself in now, “—everything. I didn’t want to add to your troubles.”
He had been naked this entire time while Mydei pried out his reactions—his likes and his dislikes, his wants and his needs—from his body at its most honest. Yet only now did he feel exposed, and vulnerable for it.
But Mydei looked at him with an exasperation softened by an overwhelming, undeniable fondness. “I’m the one who decides my troubles. You could never be a burden to me, Phainon.”
His eyes prickled, inexplicably misty, and he cleared his throat of any obstructions that could warble his voice. “That’s fantastic to hear.”
While Phainon blinked hard to dispel the burn, Mydei dragged his discarded chalice and an unused spare to the table edge along with the decanter of pomegranate juice. Due to the heat of the baths, there was no goat’s milk in sight but Mydei peered inside and frowned, likely at how much was left, then began to pour.
Mydei waved the chalice at him. “I was more concerned about you.”
Their fingertips brushed together as Phainon took the chalice without much thought. He fiddled with the stem, rolling it between his fingers still tingling at the contact. “Me? Why?”
Mydei swirled his chalice, observing the dark liquid swish up the sides and almost crest the edge before inevitably falling back down. As he gazed past the columns to the ever-blue skies, a quiet thoughtfulness settled over his features, distinguishable from his usual stoicism only by the hint of melancholy.
Yet his voice was steady as always. “When I first joined the Flame-chase, Aglaea and Tribbie were forthcoming about the goal we were working towards. And its difficulties.”
There was no reason for them to lie. Only those committed to the highs and lows of the Flame-chase, traversing its steepest mountains to the strenuous pinnacles only to be met with the lowest valleys, would be able to fulfil the role of a Chrysos Heir and rise to the status of a demigod.
When Phainon had first arrived in Okhema, Aglaea had peered at him with unseeing eyes and proclaimed with all the humanity others claimed had long eroded: losses are a constant on the Flame-chase. Beyond some appreciation that she cared enough to caution him, her warning had meant little. After all, he had already lost everything once.
As for Tribbie, she had regaled him with the prophecy bestowed by the Titans: one person alone shall witness the miracle. The harbinger of Era Nova. The one to deliver the dawn of tomorrow and end Amphoreus’ suffering. To shoulder that responsibility was to bear the burden of Amphoreus’ hopes and wishes, its future, and Phainon had never shied away from being the Deliverer.
“I didn’t want to cloud your judgement. For you to make a decision you would come to regret.” The harsh swirl of Mydei’s chalice spilled the pomegranate juice over the rim, dripping down his skin and staining his hands in red. He didn’t seem to notice even as his lips pulled. “To become another regret of yours.”
His only wish was to fulfil everyone else’s wishes. To ask for anything more was to invite disaster, so Phainon didn’t have a wish—he only carried others wish of deliverance into tomorrow.
So Phainon had believed, or wanted to believe, about himself. He had strove for that ideal of heroism, harboured it within himself to nurture. But he had fallen short the moment he longed, even unknowingly, to fall into Mydei’s arms.
He smiled, reflected faintly in the dark surface of his chalice, at his one wilful foolishness and vowed, “You won’t. I swear it. If, at the end of this journey, I am forced to reckon every decision I’ve ever made, the only thing I would come to regret is never having you out of cowardice.”
It would have remained true if they never lost their battle of wills and rationality to passion, and it held even greater truth now that they had. These things Phainon would have left unnamed until the true dawn arrived—devoid of want, desire, a wish—had, in mere moments, become so precious he couldn’t live without them. With the knowledge of the ardour shared equally between them, he didn’t think he could survive a lifetime without it.
“Besides, humanity has sought the Titan’s Coreflames for a thousand years. Who knows how many more will pass until Era Nova arrives. There isn’t any need to hold back so much for my sake,” Phainon reasoned. There was little more to be said and had grown tired of the dour subject, so let his smile grow crooked to match the tilt of his head. “Unless you aren’t confident in your ability to make it to the end.”
Rarely one to be knocked off-kilter, Mydei rose to such a blatant challenge with a smirk. “Bold words, Deliverer.”
“Phainon,” he interrupted quicker than he could think it through. Now that he knew the exact way his name rolled from Mydei’s tongue, he couldn’t be content with anything else.
Mydei’s smile softened and he raised his chalice. “Phainon. Ensure you make it to the final act. I’ll hold to your word no matter where I am—across Amphoreus’ wilds or plunged into the depths of the Sea of Souls.”
He raised his chalice. “I expect nothing less from you.”
The chalices knocked together with the soft clink of metal but, rather than end it there, Mydei hooked his arm around Phainon’s own. It drew them together, peering over the rims to meet the other’s assured eye, before they drank.
Once their chalices were empty and set aside, the rising steam brought a silence. A pause more than an end as it waited for more to come.
Slouched in his seat, Phainon nudged their shoulders together. “Was that the entire conversation?”
“It would seem so,” Mydei said, equally… confused? Overwhelmed? Underwhelmed?
Phainon tipped his head back, gazing up at the high ceiling, before he rolled his neck to gaze at Mydei’s profile as he asked, “Did you really propose to me?”
His expression did something complicated and he crossed his arms. “No more a proposal than those apples of yours. The sparring arrangement signals an interest in beginning a proper courtship.”
“Which leads to a formal proposal.”
“Not always.”
“But.”
“But what haikas courts someone without intention to marry,” he snarked.
Phainon tipped his head back, laughing to the ceiling and skies beyond. “We truly are Amphoreus’ biggest fools.”
“Love turns the wisest and hardiest of warriors irrational. We happen to be as foolish as each other.”
Neither of them had yet to use that particular word. Out of the names Phainon had claimed, want and desire, passion and ardour, that name chosen by Mydei was more befitting of the stirring in his chest than any other—love.