Chapter Text
“The… bitch?”
“No?!” Mydei yells, infuriated. “BEACH. B-E-A-C-H.”
“Oh.” Phainon nods. “That makes more sense. What is it?”
Mydei feels like he wants to slam his head on the table. “You’ve never heard of the beach?”
“I’m supposed to?”
A pause.
“Yes?”
“Well, I haven’t.”
It all started a few hours ago. Mydei was relaxing on the couch, stuck in Phainon’s wings, when a thought crossed his mind. What if they went to the beach? Summer had just started, and it was already so hot he felt like he would turn into a puddle if it got a degree hotter.
So he asked Phainon.
Grave mistake.
Apparently, Phainon had no idea what a beach was (go figure why a god that created the world had never heard of beaches), and Mydei found himself explaining everything in painful details to the man child glued to him.
“So… we go in the water and cool off?”
“That’s the point, yes.”
“And it’s something you enjoy?”
“Yes.”
“So you like getting wet?”
“SHUT UP.” Mydei screams. “DO NOT SAY THAT EVER AGAIN.”
“Oh.” Phainon nods. He has no idea why Mydei had such an intense reaction to what he said, but he sets a reminder to himself to never say that again.
“So we’re going to the beach.” Mydei sighs.
“Okay!”
—
Mydei slaps on a pair of shorts and a tank top before leaving the bathroom. He immediately gets greeted by a clingy Phainon who wraps his arms and wings around him, leading him to the kitchen (or so he thinks, he can’t see a thing). Phainon drops him off in front of the stove, a few eggs waiting on top of it.
Mydei pushes him away. Phainon’s head drops and he goes to sit at the table. Mydei grabs the eggs and takes out a pan. Surely he can’t mess this up right?
Wrong. As soon as Phainon notices the oil cracking, he jumps out of his seat, grabs the nearest glass of water and throws it at the pan.
“PHAINON WHAT THE FUCK?!”
“I saved you!” Phainon smiles. This stupid smile.
Mydei grabs two slices of bread and slaps them on Phainon’s face. “WHAT ARE YOU?!”
“A sandwich?”
“An idiot sandwich. That’s what you are.”
“Oh.” Phainon looks at him with his disgusting puppy eyes. “I’m sorry.”
Mydei sighs. He looks at the eggs. Looks back at Phainon. Then releases the man, grabs the pan and dumps its contents into a plate. He then sits Phainon at the table and serves him said plate.
“You saved me? Now save yourself.”
Phainon nods and starts eating.
The second after, he runs to the bathroom.
What a wild start of the day.
Luckily, Mydei anticipates Phainon’s weird clothing taste and follows him to the bathroom.
“You are NOT putting that yellow shirt on!”
“Leave me alone!” Phainon hisses. “It’s my favorite!”
“Well it’s not mine, and it’s ugly!”
“How dare you!” He sobs.
Mydei facepalms. He grabs the nearest black short sleeved shirt and throws it at the pathetic man rolling around in his bathroom.
“Why is he so attached to this shirt…?”
Mydei shakes his head. He then leaves the bathroom and starts packing up.
Some swimsuits, swimming goggles for Phainon if he wants to look underwater (although he had a feeling that one of Phainon’s powers included being able to see underwater… he was the god that created this world after all.) and a beach umbrella he had bought years ago and never used.
He didn’t really have a reason to use it.
He looks back at the bathroom. He does now. Mydei smiles and goes to the living room to wait.
Phainon comes back out sulking, wearing appropriate clothes, at least. He seems sad about having been denied the ugly yellow shirt. Mydei sighs, pats him on the back and guides him to the door.
Phainon sleeps on Mydei during the train ride. But it’s not just putting his head on his shoulder this time. Instead, Phainon lays his entire body on Mydei’s, finds himself in the most awful, disgusting and uncomfortable position and sleepsthrough the whole ride. Unbelievable, Mydei thinks. And the other passengers are giving him looks. Probably thinking “what is this guy doing?” and Mydei could not blame them.
He spends two hours in this position.
Mydei tries waking him up at first. Tells him that he will wake up and feel pain. But nothing. Phainon’s sleep is the immovable object, and Mydei’s voice is certainly not an unstoppable force.
He gives up after fifteen minutes of shaking Phainon. Falls back in his seat and decides to read. He takes out the book he’s started to read a few days ago, “Pretty Please, Kitsune Guuji?”, a story about an immortal god and a kitsune, greatly appreciated by the public. Mydei decided to give it a try, because why not? So far, he likes the story. The writing style is simple, but understandable, making the story easy to follow and the characters easy to relate to. He understands the book’s popularity, at least.
Not even two hours after their departure, the train stops. Mydei looks at Phainon, groans, and grabs the bag. Then grabs Phainon. He carries him outside, earning an other wave of weird stares from everyone around him.
He feels Phainon moving around in his sleep and, once Mydei is sure he’s awake, drops him on the ground.
“Ow!” Phainon yells out in pain. “What was that for?”
“I’m tired of carrying you. Carry yourself, please.”
Phainon pouts, huffs, groans, goes through the five stages of grief all in one second and starts walking with Mydei.
Soon, they arrive in front of the beach. Mydei looks back at Phainon and smiles as he sees the man’s amazed expression.
“So you’ve really never seen it, huh?”
“Why would I lie to you?” Phainon coughs. “It’s pretty. I like it.”
Mydei takes his hand and leads him to the sand. He watches as Phainon’s face goes from surprise to confusion to discomfort to relaxation.
Phainon relaxes so much he almost falls asleep while walking. Mydei elbows him. He wakes up immediately, yelping in pain.
“What in Kephale’s name?” Phainon groans.
“…huh.”
Mydei takes him to one of the few empty spots on the beach. He takes out the beach umbrella and sets up their camp while Phainon watches, visibly intrigued. Mydei doesn’t take time to explain what he’s doing, he probably doesn’t need to. Once he’s done setting up, he pulls Phainon under the umbrella. The man falls on his back and lays there, his legs exposed to the sun.
“Say, you don’t get sunburns right?” Mydei asks.
“What’s a sun… burn?”
“Nevermind. Disregard what I just said.”
Phainon tilts his head but doesn’t push. “Okay.”
Mydei starts taking off his shirt.
“De, we’re in public!” Phainon jumps at him, a poor attempt at covering him with his arms. “Don’t do that! People will stare at you!”
“Phainon we’re at the beach. Everyone does that. It’s normal.”
“I don’t care about the bitch!” Phainon yells, and accidentally attracts some attention.
“I told you it’s beach, Phainon.” Mydei groans at him, putting a hand over his mouth. “And it’s normal for Nikador’s sake.”
Phainon wants to complain. Mydei can see it.
“So it’s normal for people to stare at you?” Phainon tries to say. It comes out as a weird mess of words and muffled noises because of Mydei’s hand.
Mydei sighs. “Don’t say anything. No complaints. No compliments. Nothing.” He stares at Phainon.
As soon as he takes his hand off, Phainon jumps at him again and slams his head on Mydei’s chest. Then lets out a low growl.
“Seriously?”
“Grrr…”
“…”
Anyways, Mydei thinks. He pushes Phainon’s head enough so that he can take off his shirt despite the other man’s attempts at stopping him from doing so. He throws his shirt aside and falls back, unable to resist Phainon’s weight anymore.
“…why are you like this.” He whispers.
Phainon answers by nearly breaking Mydei’s ribs with how tightly he was holding him.
“I’m going to swim soon. Please let go.”
“Nuh uh.”
“You’re going to break my bones.”
Phainon immediately let go. He looked down like a kicked puppy. Mydei was convinced that if the man had a tail, it would be laying flat on the floor.
“For the last time, this is normal. Phainon, please.”
The aforementioned tail would be flickering in anger.
“You’re attractive.” Phainon declares. “People will be looking.”
“Thank you?”
Wait.
Phainon seems extremely concerned about people looking at Mydei. Mydei is (according to everyone he knew), very attractive.
Is Phainon jealous… of other people getting to look at him?
“You can’t be serious.” Mydei facepalms.
“I’m very serious.” Phainon pouts. “What if someone tries to steal you?”
“Nobody will steal me.” Mydei tells him. “You do know I’d never leave you, right?”
“Mhm.” Phainon nods. He seems to believe it. “Okay then… we can get wet together.”
“PHAINON.”
—
“Hey!”
Mydei jumps on Phainon.
“This is what you get for making me buy hundreds of Honeycakes!”
“But you like them??” Phainon yells. “Ack!” He trips and disappears under the water.
Mydei pulls him out. “What would you do without me, huh.”
“Bad. I’d do bad.” Phainon shakes his head like a dog trying to dry. He lets Mydei hold him above the water.
“Can you swim?”
“I don’t think so. Can you?”
“I’ve been taught to back then. Do you want to learn?”
Suddenly, Phainon wiggles out of Mydei’s arms and falls disgraciously in the water. He stays in for so long Mydei has to pull him back out again.
“What the hell??”
“Mydei!” Phainon smiles. “I don’t think I need to learn. I can breathe!”
“…” Mydei stares at him. “Did you really have to make it seem like you were drowning?”
“Probably not.”
A sigh.
—
“Phainon, come here.” Mydei calls out.
After spending some time in the water, getting jumpscared by Phainon randomly emerging from the water holding various marine species (which Mydei got very mad about, Phainon unfortunately had to put the animals and plants back where he found them), he considered teaching him the joys of building sandcastles.
What he did not anticipate was Phainon burying himself in the sand. His head poking out.
“What… have you done.”
“Mydei!” The sand moves a little. “I’m fusing with Georios!”
“I forbid you from doing that. Now get up.”
“Mydei, decorate me!” Phainon squeaks.
“What?”
“You said you wanted to make a castle right? You can make it on me!”
Which was somehow not the stupidest thing Mydei has heard coming from him. Go figure why.
“Well… if that’s what you want…”
He takes his bucket of wet sand and starts piling it up on top of Phainon’s body.
“It feels warm.” Phainon says, looking like he’s melting into the sand. “Yellow is a pretty color. Look, it matches with my hair!”
Hold on.
“Phainon what the hell?!”
Mydei realizes that the black thing poking out from the sand close to Phainon’s head isn’t a random piece of algae but the tip of his wing.
“Don’t worry!” Phainon smiles. “I’m sure people won’t notice a thing! They don’t even notice my head. Someone stepped on it not too long ago!”
“That’s not something to be proud of.” Mydei huffs.
“They apologized after that. I told them it was fine.”
Mydei finished his sandcastle without a word.
—
“What’s ice cream?” Phainon tilts his head.
“Cold dessert.” Mydei explains. “It’s sweet. I think you’d like it.”
“Oh!”
“Do you want one?”
“Sure. Do we have to make it?”
Mydei looks at the ice cream stand ten meters away. Looks back at Phainon.
“I’ll go buy some. You wait here and don’t do anything stupid.”
He gets up.
Looks back at Phainon who was trying to eat sand.
He sighs and throws his hat at the man.
He returns a few moments later with two strawberry ice creams. Unfortunately, they had no pomegranate ones… Mydei told himself he would buy some when they went home.
He hands one of the ice creams to Phainon. The Titan takes it and almost drops it on the ground.
“It’s cold!” He complains, way too loudly.
“Yes?”
“Warn me next time! I almost had a heart attack!”
“There’s ‘ice’ in ice cream, genius.”
Phainon huffs. “How do I eat this?”
Mydei looks at him. Then licks his ice cream. Repeats the process. Phainon watches, intrigued. Probably a little confused, but he understands what Mydei was trying to say. He cautiously opens his mouth and lets his tongue come in contact with the ice cream.
“EEK!”
Mydei almost spits out what was in his mouth. “Excuse me?”
“I think… I think my brain is going to freeze…” Phainon whispers. “Is this what I get… for teasing Hy- Phagousa…?”
“Phainon?!” Mydei yells as he notices the Titan who was about to pass out. “You okay?”
“Mydeimos… I’m sorry… please take care of the kids when I’m gone…”
“The what.”
Phainon dramatically falls to the ground.
It would look convincing if his left arm wasn’t up in the air holding the ice cream so it doesn’t fall.
—
“So.” Mydei says, putting the beach accessories back in their usual spot.
They had gone back home after a very long train ride. Long for Mydei. Phainon, once again, slept through it.
“Did you have fun?”
Phainon pouts. “You’re seriously going to ask that?”
“…” Mydei stares at him. The kind of stare that meant ‘you haven’t answered my question, I’m kicking you out if you don’t’.
“I’m sorry.” The message had been delivered. “Well… it’s the most fun I’ve had in a while.”
Mydei looks away. Hides the small face that formed on his face.
“I’m glad.”
He’s suddenly assaulted by two giant wings that wrap around him and pull him backwards.
“You promised me cuddles.”
That sounds like a threat. Mydei feels his heartbeat rising.
“Surely you won’t break your promises, right?”
Ah, well. Now he can say goodbye to his plans for the night.