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Styxia was already so different in comparison to Aedes Elysiae. He hadn’t even made it to Okhema, which was his final destination, but the imposing sprawl of the ocean-bound city was as overwhelming as ever.
He couldn’t help himself, really. Couldn’t combat the urge to pull over on the bank, his beat-down car coughing in protest as it attempted to make its way onto the shrubbery.
No stops. That’s what he’d told himself.
And yet, there he was, feet in the sand for the first time in his life. It felt different to anything he’d ever experienced before, hotter and more gritty than the dirt on the farm. It felt strange, to be 21 years of age, and to be privy to such a feeling for the very first time. Something that the Styxians believed to be so normal, so mundane, and yet he couldn’t grasp the fact that something like this existed the entire time.
The ocean sprawled for miles. It was, undoubtedly, the largest thing he’d lain his eyes on since the sprawling fields of nothingness that surrounded his home. Aedes Elysiae was landlocked, with a population dwindling more than it was growing, yet Styxia was on the face of the ocean, the entire rest of the world in its grasp.
The water was a deep blue, so unlike the small lakes and rivers he’d encountered before. The waves rose and crashed against each other in a way so violent that it was beautiful, and they dragged dry sand back into the depths with every motion. Perhaps it was a good thing that he never had the opportunity to grow up there. He reckoned the tide would’ve pulled him under a long, long time ago if it had the chance.
But he wasn’t a child anymore. Nor was he a freshly-turned adult, cursed with night terrors of a life he could only recall bits and pieces of.
The sand felt stocky under his feet, and it was difficult to walk, the sheer softness of it consistently trying to trap him in place.
They called the ocean the Sea of Souls. Styxia was the domain of Phagousa, however Thanatos, the Titan of Death, was considered by tales to have an overarching presence over the State. In historical stories and documents that were as likely to be true as they were false, the Sea of Souls was once a river, where those who died but were unable to properly pass to the other side lingered. In other recollections of the narrative, the Sea was a battlefield, where a lone king in the form of a mere child fought off monstrous beasts, staining the water red as far as the eye could see.
Now, it was simply an ocean, with a name that felt more mythical than anything. Along the shore were docks, full of passenger and cargo ships alike, and the ocean was less a symbol of death and violence as it was a route to freedom, a sign that there was more to the world than Amphoreus could offer.
The water whispered with the tide, and he found himself as gullible as a sailor to a siren’s call, toeing the edge of the waves before submerging himself inside inch by inch. There was a chill to the sensation, and the salty composition made his skin burn in spots he knew were littered in shallow cuts. It was so unlike the freshwater he was used to, the gentle trickle of a stream, that he could only gasp before adventuring deeper.
With every step, he found himself pushing further and further away from the place he called home. Aedes Elysiae was, without a better word for it, the only place he had ever known. Not once in his initial 18 years of life had he ever even considered leaving. The farmlands and the open sky and the people he knew were things that made him content, made him happy, to be familiar with. There was nothing but detached curiosity for the world beyond the dirt roads he grew up on, the comfort of his parents and his sister the only thing that really mattered.
On the eve of his coming of age he dreamt for the first time in a manner that awoke him with the rabid beating of his heart, sweat dampening the sheets. He dreamt of a lone battlefield drenched in gold as it was in blood, his blade buried into the back of another, though the other had no face. The only vision that was clear to him was a swordsman, imposing and tall and masked in a black cloak but brimming with the stench of death . And sometimes, when the sleep was incredibly awful, and the following day left him shaken and unsure of himself, he’d stare in the mirror in those dreams and see himself buried beneath the cloak.
The dreams never stopped. Three years later, his subconscious was still plagued with memories that he could not yet piece together. There was a grand city with tall columns and grand baths, a fallen kingdom infested with beasts, a small village burned to the ground. There were others; three young children, a woman with golden threads, a maiden with purple hair, a mad professor, a conniving trickster, a banished prince. There were countless battles, and an inhumane amount of sparring, and sometimes, if he was lucky, a feeling in his chest so full it ached.
It was because of those dreams that his home started to make him anxious. The thoughts of them made him pace holes through the rickety wooden floors of his bedroom, made his mind spin in circles until it went dizzy. He feared sleep because he knew he would experience a life of tragedy so unlike his own before he could wake up once more.
Cyrene had noticed.
Cyrene always noticed.
She’d shown up with the car, a hunk of junk that would’ve likely been useless to even a salvage yard. It rumbled and stumbled more than an old, creaking willow tree during a thunderstorm, and he’d been incredulous as to how she’d managed to find it in the first place.
His sister only smiled at the question, cheeky in the way that made a dimple imprint on her left cheek, and told him that it was time for him to find his own way.
He didn’t question it. He wasn’t the impulsive type, yet that very same night he left when the house was quiet with sleep, only leaving a hastily written note behind that was as questionable as it was an explanation.
Now, he stood in the ocean, wandering into the murky waters like they held some sort of answer. When the waves hit his stomach he shuddered, moving faster in attempts to chase the cold away with exposure. His elbows went next, then his chest, then his shoulders, until only the shock white pallor of his hair swam above the surface like a buoy.
He wondered what would happen if he went deeper. What would happen if he submerged under the surface, and let his lungs burn until they filled with water and he could no longer breathe. Would the thoughts be quiet, then?
Would he still dream, if he died?
The idea could not go much further than that, his body pulled out of the deep embrace it was in by a force so strong it felt divine. He felt the pressure in his lungs, as if he’d actually drowned even though he’d done no such thing.
His collar snagged around his neck, and the force revealed itself to be a man by the time he’d sobered up enough to look . The man was tall, though shorter than he himself was, and he was staring at him like he was mental.
Perhaps he was. But the man would not know that, for he did not know what he was thinking as he waited for the tide to take him under.
“You tread in these waters like a fool.” The man muttered. His voice was deep, gravelly like the sand on the shore. He could only stare at him in response.
“Is the ocean not for swimming?” He asked in response.
”You do not know how to swim,” the man huffed. “Anybody who has been in the sea before knows not to linger when the moon rises.”
Perhaps he really was out of it. He never realized the sun had even set, too caught up in the experience to notice.
“What’s your name?” The hold on his neckline slid to his shoulder, just as firm.
My name is Khaslana.
“My name is Phainon.” He did not know what that name meant, only that it felt right , forced out of his lips and breathed into the other man's oxygen.
The man stared at him for a moment. He was young, but his amber eyes held age, hardened like stone. He was beautiful, and before another word could breach his mouth, Phainon muttered: “Mydeimos.”
“Your name is Mydeimos.”
The man didn't look surprised. Instead, he nodded, red tipped hair falling over itself upon his face. Despite the fact that he was fully clothed, anticipatory of the slight chill in the wind, Phainon knew that the diamond tattoo below his eye was not the only crimson marking on the man's body. He knew, somehow, that the pattern swirled across his chest, his back, from his biceps down to his abdomen, all the way to his thighs. He knew the shape, jagged yet thorough like a sharp ribbon, intentional in its appearance like a scapegoat on his shoulder blades. Like a target.
He knew what it felt like to hold him back before he even made contact. The man, Mydeimos, was still holding onto him like he was scared the tide would carry him away. And perhaps, if not the ocean, another sort of wave would have carried him away eventually as is. But now he was anchored, held down to the very core of the earth by the harsh grip of the other, the touch burning into his skin like hot metal. When he felt the urge to reach out, to wrap his arm around a bicep and felt the cool, firm ring of gold beneath the wet cloth, he was unsurprised. He knew it would be there, for some reason he could not identify.
He'd never met this man before, but he was familiar. As familiar as the back of his very own hand.
”Yes, it is.” The man confirmed. “Let’s get out of the water.”
He tugged him along like he was on a leash, not looking behind himself and trusting Phainon to follow like a dog. Like he knew that Phainon would.
He wasn’t wrong. Phainon would follow him to the end of the universe, he thinks, the feeling rooted deep in his heart from the moment he was pulled out of the water.
By the time they made it to the shore, their clothes were sticking to their skin, the breeze causing their joints to freeze up, teeth clattering involuntarily.
Beside his car, on the shrubs by the road, was a motorcycle. It was a deep red, like overripe cherries, a shade darker than the markings Phainon knew Mydeimos wore like a second skin. That, if anything, was a sign that the other wasn’t from Styxia either. He was an outlander, like Phainon was too.
But the sign was unnecessary. Phainon could tell, just from the look of the man, that he did not hail from the land of Phagousa. He was rough around the edges, beaten and bruised by the fate of the world, and his composure screamed of Strife. He was a Kremnoan, a descendant of Nikador, clear as day. And even without visual clues, Phainon knew, because somehow, he knew this man.
He looked at him, washed out by the moon. He was the type of man that would thrive under the warm rays of the sun, bright and bold and imposing in his presence. But beneath the moon he was pale, skin and clothes and hair unsaturated. And yet he was still beautiful, despite it all. Despite the fact that he looked almost sickly, drowned out by the sorrow of the moon and the universe and the reflection of the water.
Phainon wanted nothing more than to drown in him , if he was not allowed to drown in the ocean.
“You’re not from here.” He stated the obvious, and Mydeimos smiled gently, eyeing the motorcycle on the hill.
”No, I’m not.”
There was a strange trust between them, strong and so unusual for two should-be strangers who met at the beach. But it was all unusual to begin with, considering one had saved the other from drowning without intention.
Mydeimos’s motorcycle fit in his trunk like it always belonged there, and the countless roads and highways to Okhema passed by in an array of flying colors as they did nothing but talk about things that didn’t matter. They discussed food and movies and books, instead of intricacies like their names and families and what on earth they were both doing so far away from home, traveling to Okhema like it held salvation.
They took turns driving, the other sleeping in the passenger seat, though it never lasted long. On the one hand, the dreams had only gotten stronger. Phainon could feel it all so much more vividly, the death and the fight inside his dream self’s chest constricting until it was painful. He was mourning people he couldn’t recall the faces of like they were family, and most of all, the banished prince swam beneath his eyelids like a prayer.
He was tall and strong, and his skin was unmarred save for the tribal red swirls that marked him as royalty. Phainon could not tell if the prince was starting to eerily resemble Mydeimos, or if Mydeimos was starting to eerily resemble him. His mind was not as clear as he’d hoped it could have been.
On the other hand, he wanted to spend as much time with Mydeimos as he could, head and heart focused on little more than the road ahead and the gorgeous man that managed to occupy the tiny spot beside him in the universe with a simple tug.
Sometimes, when they’d talk, Phainon found himself thinking of the ends of Mydeimos’s sentences before the man himself had even finished speaking. He knew things about him that he could not explain, like the fact that Mydeimos’s biggest inspiration was his mother, that his father hated him without knowing him, that expectation hung around his neck like a noose. He knew Mydeimos liked to bake. He’d reached for the pomegranate juice at the gas station before Mydeimos could even request what he wanted him to grab. He watched the way Mydeimos cracked his knuckles before grabbing hold of the wheel once again, and knew what his fists looked like on the precipice of a fight, before tearing flesh apart and counting up the numbers to victory.
From Styxia to Okhema, the roads dissolved and took them to Janusopolis. They’d gotten a shoddy room in a motel for the first night since meeting, and for the first time since Phainon left home.
There was only one bed, like that overdone trope in romantic comedies, and Phainon offered to take the floor. Mydeimos glared at him with all of his might, and lifted him up by his collar from his spot on the ground just like he’d done to him in the Sea of Souls.
Phainon could do nothing but stare into those golden eyes, so familiar in a way that juggled his memories and made his heart hurt. Mydeimos was wearing nothing but a tank, cut open at the sleeves, and the red lines that snaked along his skin held Phainon in a state of hypnosis. He knew how they tasted, knew the way the muscle beneath them could bunch up when faced with the warm sensation of a tongue running along the surface.
Mydeimos looked at him knowingly, hungrily, like he knew what Phainon knew, even when they’d never once lain together. His fingers thumbed at the golden sun on his neck, a marking he’d gotten etched onto his skin in the first town he found when he left home. Phainon was powerless to stop him as the blonde leaned in, nose bumping against the tattoo, inhaling his scent as if he was searching for something.
He could only gasp as Mydeimos kissed the skin gently, reverently, like he was worshipping him. He’d muttered something then, something that closely resembled the name of a Titan that no longer existed, banished to the shackles of mythology along with the rest of them, but Phainon did not catch it fully, too busy gasping at the feeling of being touched so gently and so intimately by a man who could probably move mountains if he tried hard enough.
That feeling was familiar too. Those lips, slightly chapped but still so soft, nosing at the skin on his nape and gliding lower, nipping at his collarbones in warning.
When Mydeimos let him lay him down that night, pliant and willing, Phainon could not help himself. He would never forget the way Mydeimos let him strip him of his layers amongst the sheets, exposing inch after inch of mouth watering skin, the way that tan complexion shimmered under the golden glow of the lamp on the beside. How he’d let Phainon explore every inch of him, relearning the curves he already somehow knew, and how Phainon’s fingers itched to touch that part of him. How they turned Mydeimos over and slid down his spine ever so gently, and how they pressed into that godforsaken tenth thoracic vertebrae.
Phainon had never learned anatomy, but he knew what that spot was called.
Mydeimos had gasped, so soft, so sensitive, as if Phainon was plunging a blade inside and twisting the knife as he went. It reminded him far too much of his dreams, of that banished prince that held his soul in his gauntlet-clad hands. The prince that died by his hands, by his sword, buried in that exact spot.
Phainon had shushed him, gentle, and splayed his palm over the spot protectively. He’d taken him apart slowly, holding him by the neck with his other hand and pressing them close together, forehead to forehead as they breathed in the same air. He pressed their lips together reverently, like Mydeimos was a God to be worshipped, strong and ethereal as he was. He relished in the taste of that sharp tang of the juice he’d bought him again earlier that night, the actual fruit so foreign to his simple village-boy palate, yet so intimately entwined into his tongue from the simple kiss.
Mydeimos had shed a tear, fat and round as it slid down his face, mouth thrown open in the throes of pleasure but his heart beating erratically at the feeling, like he was being cut open and sewn together with every confident thrust of Phainon’s hips, over and over and over again. They danced around each other like they’d done this before, hundreds and thousands of times, licking into each other’s mouths like lifetimes hadn’t passed since the last time.
Phainon kissed the tattoo beneath his eyes, sucked bruises into the hollow of his neck and behind his ears, grazed his teeth along the golden cuff on his arm, and it felt like home. Felt like a tender embrace on a bed without a proper mattress, and with the light of an artificial sun shining fervently behind blackout curtains. And as Mydeimos got closer to the edge, as he tightened around him and his moans turned to aborted gasps, Phainon pressed on that spot, hard and firm, and watched him fall apart beneath him, like a prince ascending a throne.
But then, he got the luxury of watching him come back. Of watching him catch his breath and open his eyes, of watching his body relax with the feeling of pleasure. He got this, instead of the vision ingrained inside his mind, where the other’s eyes closed and his body slackened as his soul stopped fighting back against the current of the River of Souls.
Mydeimos could not die. The prince was immortal, losing countless lives before breathing his last breath. But this Mydeimos—this human, mortal Mydeimos—could not die. Not yet, not now, and not for as long Phainon was allowed to stand by his side. He would not let him. He would hold that spot on his spine like he himself would fall apart if anyone else was to get to it.
Mydeimos was his. He was written into his soul, he knew so from his very own dreams, and he would not let him go. Not like he had before, not like he’d let the prince go without a true, proper farewell.
It made him dizzy, sickly, knowing that he knew this. He knew Mydeimos so intimately, and he was the only person in this life, or in any life predating this one, that knew of this spot, and how it made Mydeimos’s breath catch in his throat in a way that was so gorgeous it was incomprehensible.
When they made it to Okhema, it was just as he’d expected. It was a city bigger than he’d ever seen, and he’d seen many so far on this journey.
But it wasn’t as terrifying as he’d expected it to be. Not when the answer to every question that started this journey was standing right in front of him, and he was just a step behind—a grounding presence behind that strong, strong back.
And when they’d gotten the keys to their apartment from a woman with golden hair, and after they’d met their neighbor who was a girl with lilac hair and ribbons inlaid on her dress, they stood in the entryway for a moment, taking it all in.
Aedes Elysiae would always be important to him, the place he grew up and a place he’d once mourned with his very being. But now, it was only a phone call away, and his heart told him home was wherever Mydeimos was.
In the quiet of their new beginning, Phainon muttered a single phrase:
“ I feel like I’ve loved you before. ”
And Mydeimos called him that godforsaken nickname— Deliverer— which had no origin or meaning to him in this lifetime but fit like a glove nonetheless, and said:
“ Me too. ”