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There’s lingerie under his apron. It’s the blue two-piece set, the one he thinks clashes with his tattoos but that Phainon really likes. Mydei knows it’s his favorite because it’s the only lingerie set Phainon hasn’t torn off of him yet. When he saw Mydei in it, he’d taken it off slowly and kept everything carefully intact, like he wanted Mydei to wear it again. The set is cute, he’ll give Phainon that. It’s made of a sweet baby blue lace, with silky straps around his bulky arms and little white flowers patterned along the body.
The only problem is that this damn thong string keeps going up his ass.
“Come on,” Mydei groans, trying to glare at his own backside. It unfortunately doesn’t work. He’s not quite that flexible. Instead he turns back to the stove and aggressively bastes the pork with the rosemary butter again. He’s always been told to cook with emotion, but never which emotion. Anger should do just fine.
The pork is almost done, but the thong string is still bothering him. Mydei spoons the sauce carefully over the pork and hikes his leg up, trying to get the string out.
It doesn’t work. If anything, it only stays more secure.
“Fuck this shit,” Mydei mutters, but he’s not about to reach under his apron while he’s cooking, because that would be wildly unsanitary. He begrudgingly takes his thigh in one hand and bends it up further, until his hips are straining to hold the stretch.
Then, of course, there’s a loud noise at the door.
Mydei yelps and slips off his one balanced foot. He topples to the ground and spills a spoonful of rosemary butter into his hair. Fucking hell. He’s going to smell like rosemary forever, and his stupid boyfriend is going to laugh at him and not notice the blue strap peeking out from under his apron and then he won’t even get railed into the mattress for all his efforts.
Still, Mydei goes to the door. Someone out there is still making noise. This better be worth it.
“What?” he says flatly, throwing open the door. “Do you need me to sign for a… package…?”
And then Mydei trails off entirely.
“Boof,” says the very large white dog sitting at the top of the stairs to their apartment.
Mydei stares at it. He stares some more. Then he stares even longer.
The dog paws at his feet good-naturedly. It looks up at him with those begging eyes, and Mydei usually wouldn’t care, but—that’s exactly how Phainon looks at him when he wants something, and Mydei’s grown weak to him over the years, so.
“Whatever,” Mydei sighs, opening the door wider. The dog leaps for joy and barks again. “Just get in.”
***
So, the thing is, Mydei doesn’t really like dogs.
He never had pets growing up, and although he spent two years rooming with the Detachment during college, none of them had dogs either. Hephaestion had two cats. Perdikkas had a very intelligent rat for whom he built strange little mazes out of toilet paper tubes. Leonnius had a turtle. It was a very ugly turtle and it didn’t really do anything. It was Mydei’s favorite pet in the house.
But he digresses: none of them had dogs. Mydei has never been in close quarters with a dog. He’s never taken care of a dog. He’s barely ever even pet a dog. And now this great big fluffy white thing is in his house, sitting on the floor in front of the couch like it belongs there.
Great.
Mydei leaves it there and turns off the stove. The pork is just about done basting. He was expecting Phainon to get home while he was cooking; he was just going to see his old professor for some kind of favor. He said it wouldn't take long. Yet here Mydei is, done making dinner, and his boyfriend hasn’t even texted. Mydei glares at his phone like that’ll make the text come any faster.
The dog yips.
Mydei sets down the pork and stares at the dog. “You know what,” he decides, because this day can’t get much weirder. “Do you want some pork? Dogs can eat pork, right?”
The dog jumps eagerly and looks up at him.
Mydei frowns. He types in a quick search on his phone (CAN DOGS EAT PORK?) and then realizes he forgot to turn caps lock off, but searches it anyway. The answer is yes. But then he remembers he cooked it with rosemary. CAN DOGS EAT ROSEMARY? Yes. Wait—but he also cooked it with butter. CAN DOGS EAT BUTTER? Not really, but it’s not toxic either, so—
The dog whines and leans down at his feet.
“Yeah, okay,” Mydei decides, turning his phone off. What does he care? He slices the dog a piece of pork and cuts it into little bite-size chunks. He places the chunks into one of their less-fragile bowls and puts it down on the kitchen floor. “Go nuts.”
The dog looks at him sadly. Then it drags the bowl into the dining room and curls up on the floor next to Mydei’s side of their tiny dining table. It places the bowl there and looks at him, like it’s waiting.
Mydei frowns. But he slices himself a portion and goes to the dining table anyway.
The dog makes a pleased whine and promptly begins tearing into the pork. Its tail wags obnoxiously hard, knocking into the dining table leg over and over again in a rhythmic pattern. Mydei watches it, amused. He cuts his pork slice and eats it slowly.
He’s been working on learning to cook it, and his efforts have clearly paid off: it’s delicious. He eats all of it happily, and he doesn’t even like pork that much. It’s Phainon’s favorite, maybe because he grew up on a farm. Their neighbors had pigs and would bring pork meat to every holiday celebration.
“You know,” Mydei says aloud, maybe to the dog. “Phainon told me he played with the neighbors’ pigs sometimes. And yet he still likes to eat them. What the hell?”
The dog makes a strange half-whine and keeps eating, face-down in the bowl of pork.
“I thought he would have been horrified when he found out he was eating them,” Mydei continues. “I probably would have sworn off eating pigs for life. But no.”
The dog doesn’t respond.
“At least chickens are annoying,” Mydei mutters, cutting himself another bite. “I don’t mind eating chicken, because chickens are little bastards. I guess pigs might be little bastards too. I haven’t met very many pigs.”
The dog looks up and nods emphatically. Maybe it knows a lot of pigs. Maybe it’s a farm dog. Mydei doesn’t know what farm dogs look like. He thought they’d be a little… dirtier. This dog is pure white, like it’s been bathed by a horde of attendants to remain pristine.
“You know, I’ve never met a dog before either,” Mydei says, inclining his head to the dog on his floor. “You’re setting the standard for your whole species.”
The dog suddenly sits up straight and looks up at him eagerly. Its tail slows to a less annoying wag speed, no longer bonking into the table leg. Mydei glances down at the bowl. It’s already eaten all of the pork, but somehow it hasn’t made a mess at all. The hardwood floor remains neat and spotless, free of drool or crumbs or any of the filth he usually associates with pets.
He’ll admit, this dog has passed every test Mydei could think to give it.
Mydei huffs and looks back at his plate. “You’re okay, I guess.”
The dog beams up at him.
Mydei knows what it wants. He pushes his chair back. “Come on, you big baby,” he says, motioning for the dog to follow. “Phainon’s caught up with Professor Anaxa. He might be there all night. You can have his portion, too.”
The dog actually spins around in delight. Its tail whips around at lightning speed.
Mydei looks at it, amused. “It’s just pork,” he says, but he can’t help the smile that tugs at the corner of his mouth. At least he knows the recipe is good. If the dog is a fan, then surely his dog of a boyfriend will love it.
***
It becomes apparent, as the night goes on, that Phainon will not be coming home. Mydei keeps an eye on his phone, but no text ever comes. Not even a reassurance that he’s fine. Eventually he gives up and decides he’ll just get ready for bed. If Phainon comes home late, that’s on him.
And the first thing he does, of course, is get that damn lingerie set off.
Mydei groans and wrestles himself out of the stupid thong and the top. He chucks the blue fabric onto the bed in a lump and sighs in relief. He doesn’t mind wearing it, especially not if Phainon’s just going to take it off again, but it’s pretty impractical cooking attire. It’s refreshing to put on his plain boxers again. He was starting to miss them.
But when he pulls out his t-shirt, the dog suddenly bounds through the doorway and barks at him quite loudly.
Mydei glances over at it. “What?” he asks, like it can understand him.
The dog trots over to him. It sniffs at the shirt, then curls up sadly at his feet and whines pathetically.
It really does remind him of Phainon. “You don’t like the shirt?” he says instead, because that’s a more reasonable thing to address. Maybe. Talking to a dog is a pretty low bar, as far as ‘reasonable’ goes, but Mydei will take what he can get.
The dog’s tail perks up. It skips over to Phainon’s dresser and nudges its nose incessantly at one of his drawers.
Mydei has nothing better to do, so he follows it. He doesn’t usually go poking through Phainon’s dresser, because most of the clothes in there will just piss him off, and then he’ll hold them up and tell Phainon he ought to just go nude at this rate, and then Phainon will actually go nude, and Mydei has learned the hard way that having a nude boyfriend in his house makes him much less productive. Anyway, he doesn’t know what to expect inside the drawer. Ugly shirt after ugly shirt, most likely.
But—
Mydei blinks. The t-shirts on the top layer of the dresser are… surprisingly reasonable? In fact, there’s a deep blue shirt that looks super soft. It doesn’t even have a stupid pattern or a dumb whale cartoon on it or anything. It’s just a shirt.
The dog barks.
Mydei frowns down at it. “You want the shirt? You can’t have it.” If Phainon’s finally decided to get nice clothes, he’s not letting some dog ruin it for him. He’s spent three years trying to get this to happen.
The dog bows its head down, avoiding the hem of the shirt. Instead, it nudges at Mydei’s feet repeatedly, gently booping its nose against his socks.
“You think I should wear it?”
The dog leaps up so enthusiastically that it bonks its head against Mydei’s outstretched hands, still holding the shirt. Mydei suppresses a yelp. Instead, he brushes a few strands of long white fur off of the shirt and holds it up.
He and Phainon are about the same size. They should, theoretically, be able to have tons of shared clothing. It’s a cute couple thing, isn’t it? Sharing clothes? Mydei had looked forward to that when they first got together, before he realized Phainon’s sense of style was absolute ass. This shirt, however, passes Mydei’s tests. It’s soft, cozy, a nice color, and it even smells good. Like—
“Smells like that perfume he wears when we go on dates,” Mydei says to the dog. He slips the shirt over his own head and settles into it. “He still does that, you know? He still tries to impress me. We’ve been dating for three years; he probably knows I’m not going anywhere. But he still wears that damn perfume when I take him out.”
The dog bows its head at his feet. It walks in a slow circle around him, like it’s comforting him.
“I like it,” Mydei admits quietly. He’s never said it aloud before, but he’s thought it, many times. “I like that he likes me so much. I like how much he cares.”
The dog presses against the side of his leg and snuggles into him. It rests its peaceful face against his thigh. Its eyes are scrunched shut in delight.
“I changed my mind,” Mydei says, already going back into the living room. “I’ll wait for him. Let’s go watch a movie or something. He’d like it if I’m here when he comes home.”
The dog barks eagerly and follows him, like it’s never thought of going anywhere else.
***
Nine minutes into The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Director’s Cut), the dog starts licking Mydei’s hair.
Mydei groans and leans away. The dog follows him.
“What the hell,” Mydei mutters. He hits pause on the movie, freezing the characters happily in the Shire forever. No grand adventure for them. “Stop that.”
The dog looks at him through pathetically round eyes. It sticks out its tongue and looks up at him pleadingly.
“No,” Mydei says, appalled. “The boyfriend eyes won’t work on me this time. You’re not going to lick my hair. Why would you even want to lick my hair? That’s—”
Then he remembers. The knock on the door. The spoonful of basting butter with rosemary in it. He spilled it into his hair, didn’t he? Oh, fuck. Fuck. And it’s been over an hour since then. He was joking about smelling like rosemary forever. This is dire.
He leaps up from the couch and runs to the bathroom.
The dog, of course, skips alongside him and jumps into the bathroom with him. Mydei starts the shower immediately. They have a really nice bath-shower combo; Phainon insisted upon it because he’s a little too fond of taking their showers together. But this time Mydei doesn’t think twice. He just turns on the shower and strips off his clothes like his life depends on it. He gets in and soaks his hair as fast as possible.
Ah. There! The smell is washing out of his hair. He grabs his floral shampoo and lathers up his hair with it, just for good measure. He’s a morning showerer, and he already washed up today after he hit the gym, but this is an extenuating circumstance. He can be a little extra clean tomorrow.
At last Mydei finishes shampooing the rosemary out of his hair. He sighs in relief and tries to take a step back.
“Boof,” says the soaking wet dog.
Mydei blinks. He stares down at the dog, which has settled in behind him. This shower is too damn big. He didn’t even notice it was there until it made a sound. “You… went in the shower with me?”
The dog wags its tail, pleased.
“That’s not a good thing!” Mydei splutters, crossing his arms. “The only person who showers with me is Phainon. My boyfriend. You’re not joining the list.”
The dog doesn’t look at all affected. It just wags its tail harder and curls around one of his legs.
Mydei looks down at it. Under the harsh lighting of the bathroom, its fur no longer appears quite as pristine. Maybe it wants him to wash it? “I can’t shampoo you with people shampoo,” Mydei points out. “I’m pretty sure dogs need different shampoo.” Hephaestion’s cats definitely needed special shampoo, at any rate. Granted, they were extremely spoiled cats.
The dog barks. It flops on the floor of the shower, soaking its fur deeply.
What happened to pets not liking water? Mydei looks down at the dog and sighs. “Get up,” he says, leaning down to pull it upright again. His hands settle in the fur by the scruff of its neck. “You can’t just lay here and…”
And then he does a double take.
He’d assumed the dog had no collar at all. If it was someone’s pet, surely they’d have come looking for it. But now that its long, vibrant fur is wet, Mydei can see a hint of black peeking out from beneath the fur of its neck. He frowns at it and parts the dog’s fur, revealing the collar band. It’s…
Mydei stares at it. It looks suspiciously like Phainon’s favorite necklace, the thin choker made from leather from one of his neighbor’s cows.
Mydei’s heart races. He turns the collar around, looking for a tag. Dog collars have metal tags on them, right? With contact information and a name? But he spins the collar around, and there’s nothing there. No information. No name. Just the same leather band Phainon likes to wear, on a dog with pure-white fur and a penchant for getting in the shower with him.
Mydei drags a hand over his face. Maybe he really is losing it.
He ignores that thought and turns off the shower. “Come on,” he says, not looking at the dog. “I’ll dry myself off, then we’ll dry you off too. Then I’m going to watch the damn movie for real this time.”
The dog barks eagerly.
Mydei doesn’t like that he’s started learning the dog’s attitude. Two hours ago he’d have had no idea that bark was eager. “Desperate times,” he says, mostly to himself. He gets out the blow dryer and lets the whirring of hot air drown out his sorrows.
***
Twenty minutes later Mydei finally returns to the couch, this time rosemary-free. He’s accompanied by the dog, freshly fluffed-up and now quite voluminous. Its fur is, admittedly, very nice.
When Mydei settles down on the couch, the dog hops up next to him and curls into his side. It’s so soft from the toweling and the blow-drying that Mydei doesn’t even mind. He just lifts his arm and makes space next to him for the dog to stretch out. It makes a happy whine and nudges its nose into his waist.
“Clingy,” Mydei accuses, though he’s smiling. He grabs the remote and hits play again.
The dog nudges at his side and looks up at him with pleading eyes. Then it looks at the screen, then back at him.
Mydei huffs. “I know we’ve seen this movie a dozen times. I like it.” He elbows the dog like it knows what he’s saying. He’s gentle enough that it can’t hurt much. To the contrary, the dog only looks happier. It lays its head in Mydei’s lap and headbutts his thigh.
“Yeah, yeah,” Mydei says, already zoning out. His hands fall into the dog’s fur, idly petting its head over and over again. “Shut up.”
The dog, too pleased under his touch to do anything else, obeys.
Mydei really has seen this movie a dozen times. Maybe more, actually. In any case, he’s tired, and he doesn’t think Phainon will be getting home anytime soon, and the dog is warm and soft in his lap like a big blanket, and really, it’s not even his fault that he falls asleep forty-five minutes in.
He thinks he feels the dog shuffling around, dragging a pillow beneath his head, but that can’t be right. That’s what Phainon does. That’s how Phainon takes care of him.
“Night, idiot,” Mydei mumbles, and he habitually drops a kiss on its paw.
The dog makes an odd sound, and then cuddles over him again, warm and soft like a weighted blanket. Mydei has the vague thought that it feels heavier than before, but he’s tired and comfortable and safe, so he doesn’t think about it too hard.
He sleeps peacefully.
***
Mydei wakes up on the couch alone.
He blinks, disoriented. The couch cushions are arranged neatly around him, framing his body and keeping him comfortable. The blinds are drawn on the windows, but bright daylight peeks out from beneath them. Has he been asleep for that long?
And… the apartment smells like toasting bagels?
Mydei sits up and rubs the sleep from his eyes. He opens his mouth to call the dog’s name, but then he remembers he doesn’t know its name. Instead he just calls, “Hello?”
“Bark,” says someone from the kitchen.
Mydei frowns. That’s… not exactly the same sound he remembers the dog making. He wraps the blanket around his shoulders and drags himself up. Then he peers into the kitchen.
“Hi,” says Phainon, grinning at him brightly.
Mydei frowns a little. “You… got home late?” he guesses.
Phainon laughs. “Nope! Got home right on time. The pork was great, by the way. Although the sauce didn’t taste quite as good in your hair as it did on the food.”
Mydei blinks.
He wasn’t home in time for dinner. No one ate the dinner. No one but him and…
Phainon turns around to get the bagels out of the toaster. He continues talking, unbothered. “And the shower isn’t as pleasant with all that fur—it’s really heavy when it’s wet, you know?—but I loved being blow-dried and getting headpats, and—”
“You were a dog,” Mydei says flatly.
“Uh huh.”
“Professor Anaxa… turned you into a dog? That was the favor?”
“Yep.”
Mydei gapes at him. He can’t even begin to imagine what kind of experiment would require that. “Why?”
“I asked him to. Hey, what kind of jam do you want on this half? It’s a sesame bagel. I got ‘em this morning from the bakery down the—”
“You asked him to,” Mydei repeats slowly.
“Yep,” Phainon says, already opening the jam. “Anyway, the remedy was true love’s kiss, and you kissed me, so obviously I was fine after that. …Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Mydei says incredulously. “Maybe because you asked your professor to turn you into a dog?”
“It was only for a day,” Phainon protests, holding up his hands. It’s made less effective given that he’s still holding the jam-covered butter knife. “The true love’s kiss thing was a joke. It’s supposed to wear off after twelve hours. Anyway, yeah, he needed a tester, and I wanted to do it, so.”
Mydei looks at him in disbelieving silence.
“I made a pretty good dog, though, right?” Phainon says, suddenly sounding a little desperate. “I showed you where my nice shirts are and I pointed out the rosemary in your hair. And then we cuddled and I didn’t even complain when you watched Lord of the Rings for the eight millionth time.”
“You licked my hair,” Mydei says flatly. “And got in the shower with me.”
“But did you like me…?”
Mydei looks at him. He’s doing the stupid begging eyes again. The same eyes the dog gave him. Urgh. “Yes,” he admits, sighing. “Yes, you were a good dog. And you made good company.”
Phainon lights up. He places a plate in front of Mydei: one sesame bagel top, one poppy seed bagel top, each one with fig jam and cream cheese. His own plate has the bottoms of both bagels, topped with almond butter and honey. They both look surprisingly good. Phainon likes to joke about not being able to cook, but this, at least, he can do.
“But,” Mydei says, smiling a little, “I like you as a human better.”
Phainon blinks through his giant bite of almond-butter bagel.
Mydei grins. “Welcome home, idiot.” Then, quieter, “I love you.”
Phainon’s mouth is still full, but he quickly makes a heart with his sticky hands. Mydei besottedly watches him fumble with his fingers and feels at peace. He takes a bite of his bagel: perfect.
***
“So does this mean we can get a dog?”
Mydei blinks. “What?”
“Because you liked me when I was a dog,” Phainon says eagerly. “So you’d like a pet dog too, right?”
“Phainon, we live in a no-pets apartment.”
“It could be a really good dog,” Phainon protests, his eyes wide. “A really really good dog. The best dog, even. I love dogs.”
Mydei groans and throws his head back. “Don’t give me those eyes. Give them to the landlord. This isn’t up to me.”
Phainon, accepting his word as truth, sulks.
He really is pathetic, Mydei thinks. He sighs and stands up from the breakfast table. “But,” he says, louder, “if you wanted to ask Professor Anaxa to make you a dog again, I wouldn’t mind.”
Phainon lights up. “Really?! Will you give me a dog bath? I keep seeing these videos of dogs getting little spa treatments where they put, like, a bell by their ears and then put cucumbers on their eyes and little face masks on their noses and stuff. It’s the cutest thing ever in the whole world, actually. Wait—you have to see how cute these are, or else you won’t believe me. Hold on. Hold on!”
Phainon scrambles for his phone. Mydei sits there in the kitchen watching him run back to the living room and feels, not for the first time, a gentle satisfaction in his chest.
Maybe this year, for Phainon’s birthday, he’ll get him a ring. Not a big one, he thinks. Nothing too showy. Just a little band. Something faintly Kremnoan, so everyone can tell who gave it to him. And he’ll make sure it can attach to Phainon’s favorite choker, hanging off his neck like a dog’s collar tag. If lost, the ring will say, return to Mydeimos.
“See?!” Phainon yells. He skids back into the kitchen, brandishing his phone. It’s playing a video of a shiba inu getting a spa treatment. “Aren’t they just perfect?”
“Yeah,” Mydei says, barely looking at his phone at all. He smiles. “Perfect.”