Chapter Text
Everything was perfect.
Phainon woke up most mornings to the soft thump of small feet racing down the hallway, followed seconds later by the warm weight of their six-year-old daughter launching herself onto the bed like a tiny missile.
“Daddy! Daddy wake up! Papa already burned the toast again!” she would announce triumphantly, as though this was breaking news of national importance.
Mydei, standing in the doorway in one of Phainon’s oversized hoodies (the navy one with the fraying cuffs that Mydei had claimed years ago), would roll his eyes with exaggerated offense.
“Excuse me, I prefer the term ‘artistically charred.’” Then he’d pad over, lean down, and press a kiss to Phainon’s temple before murmuring, “Morning, old man.”
Phainon, thirty-four and still stupidly in love, would catch Mydei’s wrist, tug him back down into the tangle of blankets and daughter giggles, and they would all lie there for a few stolen minutes while the smell of slightly over-toasted bread drifted through the apartment. It was the kind of ordinary that felt like a small miracle.
They had built this life carefully.
A two-bedroom walk-up in a quiet neighborhood with too many trees and not enough parking. Bookshelves that groaned under the weight of Mydei’s medical journals and Phainon’s poetry collections. A ridiculous number of plants that Mydei insisted on naming after Greek philosophers (Socrates was currently drooping dramatically). A daughter who had inherited Phainon’s eyes and Mydei’s wicked sense of humor. Friday movie nights with too much popcorn. Saturday farmers’ market runs where Mydei would haggle over heirloom tomatoes like it was a blood sport. Sunday mornings when Phainon would sit at the kitchen table grading student papers while Mydei made pancakes in increasingly improbable shapes.
They had survived long-distance residency years, night shifts that lasted forever, the terrifying first ultrasound, sleep deprivation that should have been classified as a war crime, and every small and large fight that two stubborn people in love are bound to have. They had come out the other side still reaching for each other in the dark.
So when Phainon started forgetting little things like where he parked the car, the name of the new barista who always drew smiley faces on his cup, the word for “that thing you use to chop vegetables”, they laughed it off at first.
“Early thirties crisis,” Mydei teased, tapping Phainon’s forehead. “Your brain is finally catching up to how old your soul is.”
Phainon laughed too. He was tired, that was all. Long hours at the university, prepping lectures, advising grad students, trying to keep up with a six-year-old who had recently decided she was going to be an astronaut-paleontologist-ballerina. Of course he was forgetting things.
Then he forgot Lila’s parent-teacher conference.
He forgot it even after Mydei had reminded him twice and stuck a bright purple Post-it note to the fridge that read:
LILA – THURSDAY 4:30 – DON’T BE LATE, NERD
When Mydei came home that evening to find Phainon sitting at the kitchen table staring blankly at his untouched laptop, the purple Post-it still on the fridge, something cold settled behind Mydei’s ribs.
They went to see the neurologist two weeks later.
Phainon sat very straight in the too-bright examination room while the doctor explained the scans, the tests, the words.
Early-onset Alzheimer’s.
Rare.
Aggressive presentation for his age.
No family history that they knew of.
Disease-modifying treatments existed, but…
Progressive.
Incidental memory lapses would become more frequent.
Then language difficulties.
Then recognition.
Then eventually the person they both knew—the quick-witted, gentle, ridiculously romantic man who still wrote Mydei terrible love poems on Post-it notes—would slowly become someone neither of them could reach the way they used to.
The doctor asked if they had questions.
Phainon looked at Mydei.
Mydei looked back at Phainon.
Neither of them spoke.
Later, in the parking garage, Phainon said very quietly, “I’m sorry.”
Mydei grabbed the front of Phainon’s coat, pulled him close until their noses touched, and answered just as quietly, “Nothing to be sorry for, love.”
They stood like that for a long time while cars rumbled past and lights blinked occassionally.
When they finally got home, Lila was waiting at the door wearing Phainon’s reading glasses (which were much too big) and holding a drawing of what appeared to be a dinosaur in a spacesuit doing ballet.
“Daddy! Look! I made you!”
Phainon knelt, took the paper with careful hands, and studied it like it was the most important document he would ever read.
“It’s perfect,” he said. “You’re perfect.”
Mydei watched them from the doorway. His husband and their daughter, heads bent together over a crayon masterpiece, and felt something fracture quietly inside his chest.
Everything had been perfect.
Now it was something else.
---
The first few months after the diagnosis were strangely quiet, like the world had turned down its volume just for them.
Phainon kept working (stubbornly) at first. He adjusted his lecture schedule, leaned harder on his teaching assistants, started using the voice-to-text app Mydei had bullied him into installing. He still wrote notes in the margins of student papers with that familiar neat handwriting, still cracked the same dry jokes that made the grad students groan and laugh at the same time. He told almost no one about his condition. Too early, he say.
At home, they adapted in small, practical ways that felt both heartbreaking and ordinary.
Mydei bought a set of bright key hooks shaped like cartoon animals and mounted them by the door. “Flamingo for your keys, elephant for your phone, giraffe for your wallet,” he announced like it was the most logical system in the world. Phainon rolled his eyes but hung everything on the right hooks every single time after that.
They started a shared Google Keep list titled simply SCHEDULE in all caps.
- Lila’s soccer practice: Tuesdays 4:30, bring orange slices
- Pick up dry cleaning before Friday (blue shirt for the thing)
- Tell Mydei I love him at least once before bed
- Don’t let Socrates (plant) die again
Phainon added to it religiously, sometimes three or four times a day. Mydei pretended it was just a chore list, but he checked it more often than Phainon did.
Lila, six-going-on-seven and terrifyingly perceptive, didn’t ask many questions at first. She just started doing things differently without being told.
She stopped hiding Phainon’s glasses because it was funny. She began repeating his instructions back to him in a singsong voice, “Daddy said brush teeth AND wash face AND put pajamas on BEFORE story time, right?” like it was part of their game.
When he blanked on her friend’s name during a playdate pickup, she piped up cheerfully, “Her name is Mina! She likes purple unicorns!” and squeezed his hand so hard it hurt.
One evening in late spring, Phainon forgot how to untie his shoes.
He sat on the edge of the bed, staring at them like they were written in a dead language. Mydei found him that way after putting Lila down.
He didn’t say anything at first. He just knelt, took the laces from Phainon’s trembling fingers, and untied them with the ease of someone who had done this a thousand times before—because he had back when Phainon used to fall asleep in his uniform after a long day.
When he was done, Mydei stayed on his knees, hands resting on Phainon’s thighs, looking up at him.
Phainon’s voice cracked. “I hate this.”
“I know.”
“I hate that you have to—”
“Stop.” Mydei’s grip tightened. “You don’t get to apologize for something that isn’t your fault. You don’t get to carry it alone. That’s not how this works.”
Phainon laughed, a small, broken sound. “You’re so bossy.”
“Always have been. You married me anyway.”
Phainon reached out, cupped Mydei’s face with both hands. “I would do it again. Every single time.”
Mydei turned his head, kissed the inside of Phainon’s wrist. “Good. Together forever.”
They stayed like that until Lila’s sleepy voice floated down the hallway.
“Daddy? Papa? Can I have one more story? The one with the fox who steals stars?”
Mydei stood first, offered Phainon his hand. Phainon took it.
They went together.
Phainon told the story that night even though he stumbled twice on the same sentence. Lila didn’t correct him. She just curled tighter against his side, small fingers twisted in his shirt, as if holding on could keep everything exactly where it was.
Later, in the dark of their bedroom, Mydei pressed himself against Phainon’s back, arms locked around him like he could physically keep time from moving forward.
“I’m scared,” Phainon whispered.
Mydei kissed the nape of his neck. “Me too.”
A long silence.
“But we’re still here. Right now we’re still here.”
Phainon turned in his arms until they were face to face. Their breaths mingled in the small space between them.
“Tell me something good,” Phainon said.
Mydei thought for a moment.
“You still snore like a malfunctioning lawnmower,” he offered.
Phainon huffed a laugh against Mydei’s collarbone. “Okay...”
“You still make that little pleased hum when I kiss your stupid neck.”
“Mhmm.”
“You still look at our daughter like she personally hung the moon.”
Phainon went quiet.
Mydei kept going.
“And you still look at me like I’m the only person in every room I’ve ever walked into.”
Phainon swallowed hard. “I always will.”
“I know,” Mydei said simply. “Even when the rest gets blurry, I know that part won’t.”
They fell asleep holding each other, breathing together, two people trying to memorize every second of still-here.
Phainon prayed that time would be gentle for them.