Chapter Text
Phainon does, in fact, have ingredients in his home, unlike Anaxa had feared.
“I’m happy that you weren’t lying to me,” Anaxa commends, looking over the various items currently in his view. “Then again, it isn’t that high of a standard, is it?”
“It isn’t, but with how some people act around here,” Phainon says, eye-roll practically audible, “you would think they weren’t taught basic manners.”
Anaxa grins. “See? You understand,” he says, trying to think of something simple to make before it clicks. “Do you have any chicken breast?”
Phainon hums. “I should. Salted, middle right shelf. What’re you thinking?”
Anaxa busies himself with searching for the meat. “Souvlaki. Make yourself useful and grab me rosemary, oregano, and paprika.” There it is. “Garlic?”
Phainon groans at make yourself useful, but makes his way to the opposite side of the kitchen to wherever he must keep his spices. “Yeah, but not a lot. How much do you need? I’ll grab it while I’m over here.”
“3 cloves should be enough,” Anaxa answers absentmindedly, racking through his mind for whatever else he needs. He rattles off the rest of the ingredients – olive oil, white wine, a lemon, et cetera – as he searches for a cutting board and knife.
“I’ve never had souvlaki,” Phainon comments as he lays down the requested ingredients. Anaxa waits for him to finish, but after a few seconds of continuing his search for a cutting board in anticipatory silence, it becomes clear that Phainon wasn’t planning to elaborate. “Cutting board is to the right. Knives are in the block behind you.”
“Thank you,” Anaxa sighs, quickly procuring the two items. He puts each item in order, taking his half-glove off, washing his hands before brushing the salt off of the chicken and beginning to cut.
As he begins to chop the chicken into chunks, he takes the time to look around at the rest of Phainon’s home. It’s a nice one – clean, mid-sized, well-planned – and Anaxa can’t help but wonder if Aglaea had to help him with this, too, given that Phainon’s personal sense of aesthetic is abysmal.
The kitchen is organized and well-stocked, with an entire walk-in pantry that looks to be a bit out of place – self-installed after the building was bought, perhaps. There’s a kitchen island in the middle of the room, a stovetop and oven in the corner, and various other edible items on the less cluttered areas of the outer counters.
From his place in the kitchen, he can spot the living room; or, where he’ll be sleeping for the next few weeks. The room is decorated inoffensively, if not sparingly, with a couch, coffee table, and shelf taking up most of the room. A few trinkets and bits litter the surfaces, but that’s the only sort of loose item in the room other than a few extra pillows on the couch.
At the very least, it seems well taken care of. Even with Anaxa’s good eyesight, there’s no dusty film over any of the appliances, and the light grey carpet has no visible stains on it. There isn’t any unnatural wear and tear on the appliances, either – only natural markings indicative of frequent use.
In his observational stupor, he failed to realize that the knife was over his finger until he ended up slicing down, laying a fresh incision onto his finger. He hissed in pain, dropping the knife as his finger throbbed and bled. The blade clattered against the cutting board, catching Phainon’s – who had been leaning against the counter waiting for further instruction – attention as Anaxa cursed.
“Are you alright?” he asked, looking over Anaxa’s shoulder. As he caught sight of the fresh wound, he audibly winced, turning and calling that he’ll go get a bandage over his shoulder before disappearing somewhere into the house to (presumably) go obtain one.
Anaxa scowls, sticking his hand under running water as he waits for Phainon to return, lamenting his carelessness. So much for his observational tendencies, he supposes, suddenly tempted to chew on his nails.
He hears a cabinet open, then shut a few seconds later, Phainon falling back into sight following the latter noise. He carries a small dishrag, a spool of gauze, and some rubbing alcohol in his hand, hurrying once he notices Anaxa watching him impatiently.
“Hand it over,” Anaxa commands, holding his good hand out in Phainon’s direction as he approaches. The latter acquiesces, though not without a look thrown his way, gingerly laying the first two items into Anaxa’s waiting palm and laying the rubbing alcohol on the counter.
Anaxa nods as a cursory thank-you, shutting off the water while taking the rag and drying his finger before attempting to tie the gauze around it, fumbling as he tries to make a secure wrapping.
Next to him, Phainon cringes. “You aren’t going to disinfect it?” he asks, watching as Anaxa continues to fail at wrapping the cut. “...Need help?” he asks after a few seconds of relative silence.
Anaxa scoffs, gesticulating with his free hand to the gauze now rapidly unbinding from the absence of his hold. “Oh, I wonder. What do you think?”
Phainon just rolls his eyes at the jab, swiftly grabbing the rag and rubbing alcohol while dampening the rag. “I think that you’re being too snarky,” he prods, gingerly taking the gauze from Anaxa’s finger and pressing the rag to it instead, “I’m just trying to help.”
It’s times like these where Anaxa is reminded that Phainon is no doormat; when push comes to shove, no matter how clumsy he may be, Phainon is the Deliverer for a reason – no matter how much he allows himself to be walked all over.
Like this, Phainon is hunched almost comically low over Anaxa’s finger, close enough that Anaxa can count his individual lashes as they flutter with Phainon’s single-minded focus.
Wait. Why is he looking? Why does this even matter? He resolves himself to stop overthinking this before he ends up getting flustered.
I suppose it’s kind of him, he decides, belatedly realizing that a hand is being waved in his face. His brow tics, and he catches Phainon’s hand before he – stars forbid – starts snapping to grab his attention.
“...Apologies,” Anaxa offers, letting Phainon’s hand down after a moment of staring, looking away and picking up the knife he had initially dropped. With Phainon still hovering behind him, he begins cutting the last of the chicken, hyperaware of the feeling of Phainon’s breath at his neck, shaking his head and scowling as he doubled his efforts on focusing.
The rest of the recipe went along with nary a problem; Anaxa busied himself with preparing the ingredients and cooking while Phainon relegated himself to cleaning the dishes as they were dirtied and occasionally chiming in to help Anaxa find something within the kitchen, only saying that he’d rather just get it done now rather than later, and I figured that you’d ask me to anyway, so…
While, yes, Anaxa would have asked him to do so, it feels nice that he didn’t have to ask for something so simple. So, so many don’t understand the simplest things about him – like the equivalent exchange that dictates his philosophy. Really, for an alchemist, it should be expected – but he supposes not, when it is so hard to ask someone he’s helped for a favor.
(It’s interesting, really, but it isn’t surprising; nor has it ever been. For an impoverished, young, orphaned child, when would anyone expect to return a favor or have one returned from him? He’s a zealous heretic, anyway, so it isn’t like anyone is lining up to be indebted to him.
But still, but still. He wills his eyes away from the pristine bandages encasing his knuckle.)
With their combined efforts, it doesn’t take long to finish making their lunch – the skewers are completed in around an hour, with a bit of recipe tweaking. Phainon practically inhales his skewers, but is miraculously still able to taste them, given his glowing review (Ish sho good, he had slurred out, mouth full, to which Anaxa had scolded him over his manners for quite a while after).
“Where did you learn to make these?” Phainon asked after swallowing this time, looking curiously at Anaxa over the kitchen island. “It’s absolutely incredible, by the way. Is it a restaurant recipe?”
Anaxa shook his head, lowering the skewer he was about to take a bite of with a hint of hesitancy. “No, it’s… something passed down in my family. I merely replicated it from what I remember being told,” he said, stilted, “I’m – it’s good to know that you like it.” he ended robotically.
Phainon squints, looking like he’ll follow up, but refrains. The two sit there in not-quite comfortable silence, Phainon continuing to stare as Anaxa finishes his souvlaki quietly. As the stifling hush over the room persists, Anaxa begins to organize his thoughts, taking his mind off of worryingly absent childhoods and sweet-textured memories.
Currently, the next item on his mental to-do list is to find a way to have his house cleaned. He doesn’t have much of a choice, unfortunately, as much as he would love to do so himself – a simple rune to clean just won’t do. He doesn’t know what to do with the toxins once they’ve been cleaned, and Okheman law dictates that legally, he has to have registered professionals dispose of any harmful waste.
Not that he really cares about following the law all too closely, but he digresses.
After clearing up his plate and giving Phainon a clipped goodbye, I’ll be back later tonight, he joins Okhema’s streets once again. Unsurprisingly, his search is heavily impeded by the fact that most of the people he talks to are absolute idiots.
Despite advertising themselves differently, most of the companies he goes to don’t offer hazardous waste services, which is both as a waste of his time and his patience. By the time he finds a place that actually lives up to its advertised services, the difficulty they give him through their lengthy regulations and ramblings, Anaxa is nearly ready to march up to Aglaea, completely willingly, and convince her to change the law so that nobody ever has to deal with this amount of foolishness again.
“I’m losing it,” he realizes out loud on his way back to Phainon’s residence, surprising himself with how he didn’t figure this out earlier.
By the time he returns, it is already dusk, though the Dawn Device illuminates the sky all the same. It’s long since become a normality, but the relative darkness that the permanent night of the Grove still occasionally gives Anaxa a bit of whiplash when he wakes to blistering sunlight during what should be the middle of the night.
When he reaches the threshold of Phainon’s house, he vaguely hears the tail-ends of humming and catches the (admittedly, very tantalizing) scent of pita and meat.
“I’m back,” he calls as he steps into the house, frowning at the completely unlocked door. All of the sounds and scents he had noticed only get stronger as he enters, and it is a rather good temptation for a man who’s barely eaten anything in the past twelve hours.
“Hi, Professor,” he hears Phainon call, sounding distracted, “I’m in the kitchen.”
I am well aware, he almost voices, I’m not stupid. “You should probably lock your doors next time,” he says instead, making his way over to Phainon, “I wouldn’t want you to be robbed. Especially when my belongings are also at stake.”
“And leave you standing out there until I can make it to the door?” comes the immediate response, “I’ll pass. Besides, this is a nice neighborhood, and I can defend myself and my belongings — I’m not at risk either way,” he finishes, just as he comes into Anaxa’s view. As he leans over the counter, Phainon turns around, skillet in hand, waving haphazardly with his free hand. “And I don’t have a spare key, before you ask,” he tacks on, looking sheepish.
“Why on earth do you not have a spare key?” Anaxa asks, incredulous. Shaking his head in mild disappointment, he pushes the topic aside and looks over to what Phainon has next to him: pita, lettuce, some other vegetables, and leftover tzatziki from earlier in the day. “Gyros?”
“Mmmhm,” comes Phainon’s noncommittal response, tone a bit petulant. “Anyway, I don’t have a spare key because I never lose mine. Besides, even if I do lose it, I can just go in through a window or something. What if I put it under the welcome mat, or something, and it gets stolen? And if it’s inside, what’s the point?”
Anaxa blinks, wondering for a second if his brain has finally decided to give up on him just from the sheer amount of contradictions he just heard. “Are you serious?” he asks dumbly, because what?
“...Yes?” Phainon responds after a second, sounding far more lost than he should.
Anaxa makes a low, vaguely distressed sound, facepalming at the sheer absurdity of his day. Evidently, Phainon realizes his mistake a few seconds later, if the sounds of his own embarrassed groan and the sound of Phainon’s hand making contact with his face are anything to go by. Anaxa takes a deep breath, intending to calm himself down, but is instead bombarded by the acrid scent of something burning.
“...Phainon,” he says slowly, looking up at where Phainon’s face is still buried in his hands, then over to where the meat is charring on the skillet. “Our meal is burning.”
“...Oh, FUCK!”