Work Text:
Wake up
“Time to wake up, my love…”
Mydei stirred, a warm flutter brushing up his spine, drawing him gently from sleep. The sensation paused at a spot between his shoulder blades—then lingered. A slow, lingering kiss pressed against his tenth vertebra, sending shivers dancing through him.
He exhaled softly, melting deeper into the kline as that warmth pooled in his chest. He didn’t need to open his eyes to know who it was, he could feel the affection in every breath against his skin.
“Phainon…” he murmured sleepily, voice thick with drowsy contentment. “You’re up early.”
A quiet chuckle hummed against his back. “I couldn’t resist. You looked too peaceful… I had to steal a moment.”
Mydei stretched languidly, making a half-hearted attempt to dislodge the hyena draped over him. His muscles flexed; his eyes blinked open against the lazy morning light. He rolled onto his back to face him, and there he was.
Phainon, hair tousled from sleep, eyes half-lidded and glowing with adoration. Blue eyes soft as dawn.
Mydei’s breath hitched. He lifted a hand, brushing his thumb gently beneath Phainon’s eye, tracing the lines of his cheek. “You look at me like I’m something sacred,” he whispered, half-awed.
“You are,” Phainon replied without hesitation, voice quiet but certain. “How else should I look at the man I love?”
Mydei’s heart stuttered. For a moment, words failed him. He hoped, so fiercely, that the love he felt, overflowing and aching, was truly mirrored in the gaze watching him now.
So he leaned in, brushing their foreheads together. “Stay like this a little longer?” he asked.
“Always,” Phainon murmured. “As long as you’ll have me.”
Breathless
Phainon couldn’t breathe.
Under any other circumstance, the absence of air would have stirred panic. But here, beneath the weight of him, there was no room for fear. Only awe. Only hunger. Only the dizzying truth that the reason his lungs burned was because Mydei was kissing him like he meant forever.
Mydei’s body pressed him firmly into the rooftop tiles, solid and immovable, as though he intended to anchor Phainon to this moment. The lion’s mane brushed his cheeks, soft and wild, and Phainon swore the world tilted.
“Mydei—” he tried to gasp, but the name dissolved the moment their mouths met again.
It wasn’t a frantic kiss. No—worse. It was deliberate. Slow. Deep. Mydei kissed as though he was memorizing him, as though every pass of his lips whispered, you are mine, you are loved, breathe me in.
Phainon trembled as a thumb stroked along his jaw, gentle, grounding. The other hand—warm, unbearably warm, curved over his ribs, tracing each breath he failed to take.
His fingers curled helplessly into Mydei’s mane. “You’re… you’re going to kill me,” he breathed between kisses, voice shaking with swallowed laughter and desperate affection.
Mydei only smiled against his lips, a low rumble vibrating through his chest. “Then breathe through me.”
And Phainon did. Eyes fluttering shut, he let Mydei steal what little breath he had left, lips parting as the kiss deepened. Sweet—frustratingly sweet, yet ignited with a quiet fire, as if Mydei was kissing him not with urgency, but with certainty.
Every inhale belonged to Mydei. Every exhale, surrendered.
Phainon’s heart thrashed, chest rising unsteadily beneath the broad palm holding him down. The pressure, the weight, the tenderness.
It was too much. It was not enough.
“Mydei…” he whispered, a plea he couldn’t name.
A soft brush of noses. A final, languid drag of lips. And then—
“I’ve got you,” Mydei murmured, voice hushed, wrecked with devotion. “Breathe, love.”
But Phainon only smiled dazedly, fingers tangled in his mane.
“I am.”
Shut up
If there were one thing the entirety of Amphoreus knew about their Strife and Worldbearing heir, it would be this:
Their competition… and their impossible clinginess.
What the people once believed to be a fierce, deadlocked rivalry had, over the years, evolved—first into begrudging companionship, then into torturous mutual pining that everyone and their mother could see, and, finally, in the Era Nova… into a love so openly worn that it stirred envy and cheer in all of Okhema.
Husbands they may now be, but the people never forgot what came before. How could they, when every time they saw the two heirs together, they could still glimpse the old spark, burning beneath all that affection?
Because the competition (mostly instigated by Phainon) remained very much alive.
It began, as it often did, with something utterly trivial.
They were clearing the remnants of shattered marble from a courtyard after training. Peaceful task. Silent work. Until...
“I’m at thirty,” Phainon announced, tossing another chunk into the pile. “What are you at? twenty?”
Mydei didn’t look up. “Thirty-seven.”
A beat. A dangerous squint. “…You’re lying.”
“I don’t lie,” Mydei replied, calm as stone. “You simply can’t count.”
Phainon scoffed. “Oh forgive me, Your Majesty, I didn’t realize rearranging pebbles counted on the pile. Should I bow for each grain you nudge?”
“You can bow, yes,” Mydei said, still not looking at him. “Preferably while actually cleaning.”
Phainon dropped the slab in his hands with a thud. “I am cleaning!”
“You’re talking.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t know silence was part of the competition. Shall I remove my vocals to make you feel more secure?”
“You should remove something,” Mydei murmured, “but it isn’t your vocals.”
Phainon narrowed his eyes. “I swear to the Titans, I will—”
He never finished the sentence.
Mydei stood, crossed the space between them in three long strides, and without warning, grabbed him by the jaw
and kissed him breathless—firm, full, possessive. A kiss that stole balance and speech, made Phainon’s hands clutch at his shoulders for dear life.
Muffled and brain absolutely not loading in, all of Phainon's intelligence could only say in retort is: “—mmph?!”
Mydei pulled back, lips flushed, expression infuriatingly serene. “You were saying?”
Phainon blinked. Once. Twice. Rage. Love. Rage again.
“I— you— YOU CAN’T JUST DO THAT MID-ARGUMENT!”
Mydei tilted his head. “You were getting chatty.”
“I AM ALWAYS CHATTY—”
“Yes,” Mydei agreed softly. “That’s why I married you.”
Phainon sputtered, fists clenched as if to strike him, but only managing to grab handfuls of his half-worn tunic. “I hate you.”
“I know, I love you too.” Mydei brushed a braid from his face. “I win, by the way.”
Phainon froze. “No. No you do not—”
“There are forty three stones in my pile.” Mydei nodded toward the immaculate stack behind him. “Yours has… forty one. And a half.”
“That half was architecturally significant—”
“It rolled.”
“It was WIND!”
Mydei smiled, wicked and soft. “If you weren’t so distracted, love, you’d have noticed I beat you by a margin.”
Phainon opened his mouth.
Closed it.
Turned red.
“I— YOU—” He inhaled sharply, trembling with offended pride. “Kiss me again or I will start counting everything in this courtyard and deduct from your total.”
Mydei stepped forward, already reaching. “As you command, Hks.”
Post Battle
They had given everything.
The edges of Amphoreus still trembled from the remnants of the Black Tide, the ground scorched and split where divinity had struck. Smoke curled into the pale horizon, and the wind carried the bitter tang of ash… and golden blood.
Their golden blood.
Mydei’s breath was heavy, his chest rising and falling with the slow rhythm of someone who had stood too long in the storm. Strips of luminous blood traced down his temple, already beginning to seal as immortality took hold. He sat, spine curved, shoulders slack as though the weight of heaven itself had finally relented.
Beside him—against him—Phainon leaned, silent. His own body whispered pain with every heave, bruises blooming cobalt beneath his ash-streaked skin. Gold slipped from a cut at his shoulder, stubborn, mortal, refusing to close.
Their exhaustion pulled them toward each other like gravity. No words. No need.
Phainon reached first, fingers trembling not from fear, but from the fragile tenderness that survived even war, thirty three million times over. He brushed Mydei’s cheek, wiping away the cooled sheen of gold, smearing it into his palm like paint. His thumb lingered, tracing the curve of a face he had almost lost too many times. Had lost over too many cycles
Across from him, Mydei’s hands worked in measured silence, wrapping a bandage around Phainon’s wounded shoulder. Each turn of cloth was reverent—slow, careful, as though he feared breaking something sacred. His fingers pressed lightly, anchoring the linen, his touch steady despite the faint tremor that betrayed his fatigue.
They moved in unison, as if stitched by the same ache.
When the last bandage was tied, when their wounds were tended as best as trembling hands would allow, they simply… sank.
Foreheads met.
A breath was shared. Not quite a sigh. More an exhale of survival.
Eyes closed.
The world, distant.
Their noses brushed—gently, slowly. Tracing the outline of devotion without urgency. No hunger. No heat. Just the quiet vow of two souls who had bled and burned and still, always, found their way back to each other.
In the charred silence of the battlefield, they did not speak.
They simply breathed.
Together.