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The house was dark when Phainon stepped through the door. Recently, everything had started feeling a little gloomier.
He came home from work earlier than usual that day. He was awake in the morning to eat breakfast with the kids and walk them to the bus before saying their goodbyes. His parents would be coming down to pick them up and drive out to the country for the long weekend, so he made sure the hugs were extra tight.
He walked inside and flipped on the lights to a near spotless living room that didn't look very lived in at all. The blanket Mydei always curled up in while waiting for him to come home was neatly folded over the back of the couch, untouched and unmoved for several days now.
The kitchen was barren. Sink emptied, towels folded, dishes all put away. Mydei used to love cooking a second dinner for the two of them to share when he finally came home, those precious few hours they had to themselves while the kids were fast asleep. Mydei hasn't done anything like that in a while. Phainon learned to stop expecting it. He was a big boy who was more than capable of feeding himself… it just hurt to think about, sometimes. The distance.
Before that, though, came the difficult part. He had to actually find Mydei, wherever he was hiding.
He wouldn't consider their house terribly large. It was a quaint family home on a cul-de-sac, right in front of a wooded cropping in the heart of their lively suburb. It felt like all the stars in the sky aligned when their agent returned with this listing, a happy middle ground between Mydei's bustling city upbringing and Phainon's humble countryside origins, with enough space for the family they always dreamed of starting.
He checked the bathroom, and the bedroom, and the kids’ toy room, but there was no sign of Mydei anywhere he looked. All the kids' toys were put away, their bed was perfectly made up, and the tub was bone dry. It was as though no one had ever been in those rooms to begin with.
Thus left him with only one possibility; Mydei must have been upstairs. He had hoped this wouldn't be the case.
Phainon stalked up the stairs quietly out of habit. He was used to the girls all being home and fast asleep by now, but Enyo always was a light sleeper, and too excitable for her own good. If she were to wake up and see that he had come home, she'd no doubt wake up her sisters with how loudly she'd scream to greet him. Granted he knew none of them were home now, and likely wouldn't be asleep even if they were, he still did his best not to make a sound as he crept up the stairs.
The hallway was pitch black, not even a faint light spilling from beneath any of the doors. Phainon turned the hallway lights on as dim as they'd go, just enough to guide his path as he methodically checked behind each door.
The first was Enyo's. Had they known how rowdy she'd turn out to be, they probably wouldn't have put her right at the top of the hall where she could hear a pin drop at the bottom of the stairs. Her moxie translated well to athleticism, reflected in the rows of trophies and medals tacked up to her walls, alongside posters of all her favorite sports icons. Her stuffed animals were tucked neatly into bed, minus her favorite stuffed chimera. He'd be more surprised if she didn't take Glowfire to Grandma and Grandpa's house. Also unsurprising were the perfectly clean clothes littered all over her floor from when she was packing her suitcase. Phainon shook his head with a small grin on his lips while moving onto the next room.
Across the hall was Eos. When they first bought the house, it only had four bedrooms, but Phainon was no stranger to home renovations, growing up on a farm that needed constant repairs. Granted the girls were close enough in age and young enough that privacy wasn't their biggest concern, Phainon and Mydei both agreed that they wanted their kids to have their own spaces, and Eos certainly made it her own. She was the artsy child, the one everyone expected to see host her own gallery, one day. Her easel was smeared with the beginnings of a painting she hadn't gotten around to finishing yet, plastic tupperwares full of brushes and scrap paper and closed tubes of acrylic paints littered the floor. It only looked like a disaster to him because he didn't have the mind of ‘an artiste’, but even then, it was clear that she cherished her supplies greatly and didn't take any of them for granted. Quality paint wasn't cheap.
Next to Eos was Eris. Only a year older than Eos, she was their jack of all trades. If Enyo's basketball team needed an extra player, Eris was their girl. If Eos demanded a painter's assistant, Eris would jump right in. If Daddy needed an extra pair of hands in the kitchen or Papa wanted a helper in the garden, Eris was more than happy to take up the mantle. She kept her room neat, bed made, desk organized, bookshelves dusted. She didn't have any overt passion like her sisters, and for a nine year old girl, that was just fine. She liked doing a little bit of everything. She was a learner.
For how starkly different all their girls’ rooms were, there was one thing they all shared in common that night; Mydei was not in any of them.
Deep down, he knew where his search would lead him. Trying to convince himself that Mydei occupied his time cleaning up Enyo's messes or folding Eos’ laundry was wishful thinking and nothing more. Because there was only one room Mydei would be in.
The last room at the end of the hall was… recently vacated. He could not bring himself to say that it was empty, because it was not empty. There were still toys on the shelves, and pink blankets on the bed, and a chest full of pretty princess dresses and hand-me-downs from the older girls. Enyo never asked for her pink highland cow plushie back. There was still a picture Eos drew hanging up on the wall depicting her favorite fairytale. Eris gave her Daddy the book it came from when he asked for it. She used to like reading to her.
Phainon let out a deep breath, though it did nothing to relieve the lump in his throat. He touched the doorknob, slowly turning until the door to Ely's room clicked.
They used to joke that she was the reincarnation of her namesake, Phainon’s sister. When Phainon was a kid, he would sneer at how pink and girly her room was. Boys growing up on farms didn't have much in the way of entertainment, so taunting their sisters was the best they could come up with to pass the time. He grew out of it eventually, of course, and learned to miss the color pink when she moved to the big city to pursue her dreams of being a writer, and then learned to miss it some more after she passed away.
His Ely was the embodiment of the color pink. Phainon suspected Mydei may have had something to do with it, making sure all the blankets and baby clothes he bought for her were pink to subtly condition their daughter to love the color, though he denied this most heinous accusation and said it was his sister having a laugh at him from beyond the grave. Every stuffed animal they bought her had to be pink or she didn't want it. Dinner had to be served on the pink plate or she would refuse to eat it. Mydei even had to use strawberries and beet juice to dye her food pink, whether it was birthday cake or salad dressing. At first it was a pain, but he eventually embraced it as part of his karmic retribution for tormenting his sister as a kid. His daughter was the spitting image of her aunt, but he was adamantly against letting her dye her hair pink until she turned thirty.
In the end, the color pink became a great comfort, until it was no longer. Phainon would forever be grateful for the lengths her nurses went to accommodate her demands for pink bandages and hospital gowns. And thirty became five. Her hair was already beginning to fall out by then, and he would’ve done just about anything to see her smile one last time.
Phainon felt paralyzed, standing there motionlessly in the doorway. He could've gone his whole life without ever stepping foot back in that room, and it still wouldn't have been long enough. Everybody grieved differently, he told himself. It was different when it was his sister. They grew up together, went to school together, worked around the farm together, and when Elysia moved away, he already started learning to live without her. They still talked all the time, but they only physically saw each other a few times a year. When she passed, it was a small comfort to know that they had already spent the majority of the time they ever would together.
He mourned the loss of his sister as any brother would. He was sad for a while, and then he pulled himself together because he had to. He was a grown man, and he and his husband already had three daughters to raise with a fourth on the way. He couldn't sit around and wallow in his misery forever.
Mydei was his rock, then, no stranger to grief himself. Mydei had lost his mother when he was young, so he knew a thing or two about learning to live without the people you love. No amount of comfort could ever bring them back, but shared grief was only half a grief.
Phainon did not have his rock this time around, because his rock was just as close to shattering as he was. He wasn't sure it would've made a difference. To lose a mother or a sister was one thing.
But a daughter…?
No amount of experience in processing loss or hospital sponsored grief counseling could have ever prepared either of them for the soul crushing reality of losing a child. Their child. Their baby.
This room, unlike all the others he had checked and hoped and prayed for otherwise, was not empty. There, he found the love of his life, his college sweetheart, the man he vowed to cherish until his dying breath, curled up on the floor beside their daughter's bed. His arms were folded under his head, with a book right beside him as if he had fallen asleep after reading a bedtime story to a girl who wasn't there anymore. The book of fairytales was open to a page containing an illustration Phainon was all too familiar with, a cartoonish depiction of Eros and Psyche finally finding happiness together at last. It was Ely's favorite story. Eos had used the picture as a reference for the drawing she made for her.
Phainon knew he wouldn't want to be disturbed like this, but Mydei would regret it in the morning when he woke up sore all over from being crunched up so long. Ely never had the chance to outgrow her first real bed, low enough to the ground for a little girl with tiny legs to jump in and out of all on her own. Far too low for her six-foot-four father to comfortably recline without bending like a pretzel.
As long as the lights stayed off, the room didn't appear very pink. It was a dark navy at best.
Phainon stepped in, and it was like a cold chill wrapped around his shoulders. He wasn't particularly superstitious, but he knew a room that would rather not be disturbed when he felt one. Mydei must not have felt the same, because Phainon had found him here every other night of the week, too. Rarely did he ever have to come in to wake him.
He shuffled towards the bed, where the sound of feathery snores grew louder and louder. The light from the hall barely reached him at the other side of the room, but Phainon could see just enough that he could navigate around Mydei's extended legs to reach his shoulder. There, he hesitated. He already knew exactly how the conversation would go, but it was less the journey and more so the destination that mattered. Perhaps Mydei would heed his advice, perhaps not. But he had to try.
So, Phainon gave his shoulder a light nudge, and Mydei began to stir from whatever dream he was having where they had four daughters again, and woke back up to a far less forgiving reality. His body tensed with a stretch, reflexively straining the kinks out of his neck and spine with a quiet grunt while blinking exhaustion from his eyes.
“Good morning,” Phainon whispered while the hour hand on his watch ticked towards a seven.
Mydei groaned, lifting his head up with a yawn. “Morning,” he hummed back. “I must've dozed off. Sorry. I was going to make dinner, but-”
“It's okay,” Phainon swiftly interjected, nevermind the fact that this was the fifth time he heard the sentiment that week. “I decided to come home early. I figured you wouldn't want to be alone all night.”
Mydei moved his hands towards his face to rub the tension from between his eyes while he adjusted to what meager light reached them. Originally, he was wary of the suggestion to send the kids to his parents’ house for the weekend, which would be a day longer than usual. He always did thrive with a solid routine, and with the kids subtracted from the equation, he was left floating minute by minute with no purpose… but he also knew very well they both needed the break. His parents, as well as Mydei's father, travelled all the way to Okhema for the funeral, and both wound up staying an extra week to help out around the house and with the kids. It had been a month now, and they were overdue for some time alone together.
“I'll be done in here soon. Just give me a few more minutes and I'll come sit with you,” Mydei said.
“Why don't I believe you?” Phainon was quick to respond.
The silence that filled the room was suffocating, and all Mydei could do in response was let out a breathless chuckle, because he knew Phainon was right not to.
“At least you're laughing, I guess,” Phainon shrugged.
“I'm sorry,” Mydei responded. He wasn't laughing anymore. “Sorry. You know I just… I don't like it when she's alone.” Phainon sucked in a deep breath, but before he said anything, Mydei shook his head, almost like he was shaking the sense back into himself. “I know what you're going to say. And I know. She's already gone, and she's been gone for over a month now. I'm not crazy, and I don't think that sitting here will magically bring her back,” he said. Spoken like a man who was covering all his bases to avoid therapy at any and all cost. They were always two peas in a pod in that regard.
“Mydei, do you know how long it's been since we've slept together?” Phainon asked.
Mydei fell silent once more, shifting uncomfortably, straightening his back out so he was no longer leaning on the bed. “I don't know how you could think about something like that right now.”
“I don't mean it like that. I mean physically. How long has it been since you've gone to sleep next to me?” Phainon reiterated. And before Mydei could get smart with him, he further clarified; “And not by accident on the couch. When was the last time you came into our bedroom and got into bed next to me?”
Mydei took his time to process this question, with only the soft ambiance of chirping bugs and a humidifier Mydei emptied religiously filling the gap in time.
“You don't ever come in here to sit with me, either,” Mydei whispered, intoned with an accusatory bite.
Phainon's nostrils flared. He was hoping they could've started their weekend off on a better foot.
“You know why I don't. It doesn't help me.”
“And avoiding it does?” Mydei pressed. Phainon didn't respond, only stood motionless while blood pooled in his ears. “I don't want to argue with you, Phainon, and I'm sorry that you don't like the way I cope with things, but sometimes it feels like you aren't even trying to at all. You've already decided to move on, so now you're just waiting for me to, like it's some kind of inconvenience to you that I'm still grieving my dead daughter-”
“Don't call her that,” Phainon suddenly snapped.
The air in the room froze, filling his lungs with a frosty chill. His fists were bound tight at his sides, shirt fabric clinched between his fingers. His shoulderblades popped while tension drew his shoulders taut. That brief flash of anger was eclipsed by the wave of grief that slammed into him once he saw the pity Mydei had for him in his eyes.
“She… she was my daughter, too,” Phainon squeaked, like he was pushing out the last little bit of air in his lungs.
Mydei's eyes widened with the realization of what he'd said, and the effect it had on his husband, albeit unintended. “I'm sorry. Oh, Phainon, I didn't– Here. Come here.” His husband jumped up to his feet, throwing his arms over Phainon's chest and pulling him in close before he collapsed entirely. Phainon wordlessly buried his head in Mydei's shoulders, and when he sank back to the floor, he took Phainon with him.
They huddled up beside the bed while Mydei gently rocked him back and forth as if he was quelling a tearful child. But Phainon wasn't tearful. He just stared at the empty bed over his husband's shoulder.
“I didn't mean it like that. I didn't mean it like that at all,” Mydei repeated. Phainon knew he didn't. If he were in any other room of the house, it wouldn't have cut so deeply. But they weren't in any other room. They were in their daughter's bedroom, and their daughter wasn't there with them anymore.
“I miss her every day,” Phainon let out a shaky breath. “I still look for her sometimes, after I walk the girls to the bus, you know. I expect to see her on the couch, playing dolls with the nurse and asking me to join before I have to leave for work. And when she isn't there, then I just tell myself that she's just up here, and I can't see her because she's sleeping, or her treatment made her too tired to make it down the stairs. She's not really gone. She's just resting. And I'll see her when she's better.”
Mydei carded his fingers through Phainon's hair while that lump in his throat grew heavier, and the tears gathering in his ducts spilled to the corners of his eyes. His voice grew more nasally. He had to sniffle and swallow before he could continue.
“I'm glad that being in here brings you comfort. I don't want to take that from you… but I just can't do it. Because when I'm in here, and she's not, it feels like losing her all over again. It feels like losing both of them again.”
Phainon reached over Mydei's shoulder to pull Eris’ rehomed book of fairytales closer, flipping to the next page. After Eros and Psyche had their picture perfect happy ending, a far more tragic love story would play out. On the flipside of their eternal love was the beginning of the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice. Ely always skipped over that one. It was too dark to read the words on the page, but he could just barely make out the illustration of a man playing his lyre while his wife happily hummed alongside him as if unaware that they were in a tragedy. Ignorance was bliss, he supposed. As was avoidance.
Mydei remained silent, forcing Phainon's thoughts to fester. He must have known Phainon had more to say that he didn't want to say, but had to. He didn't know when or if he'd ever get the chance to say it again.
“And… I miss you, too. I miss our family. It feels like we've been falling apart ever since Ely first got sick, and it's so frustrating because you're still here and it still feels like I'm running out of time with you. Like I'll go to work one day, come back home and you won't be here at all. There’ll be no one to pick the girls up from school, and it’ll just be me, here. Alone.”
There was no comfort to be found in the admission. Everything he swallowed down all these months, grieving a girl who wasn't gone yet and denying it when she was, finally spilled out in the form of an ugly sob. Mydei rubbed his back while tears soaked his shoulder. Phainon clutched around him like he'd break away and fly off otherwise. No stronger was that impending sense of doom that followed him everywhere he went than that very moment. He was going to lose him, just as he had lost his sister, just as he had lost their daughter. Mydei was going to die in this room, he was sure of it, just like–
“Take a deep breath.”
Phainon listened, drawing in a quivering breath. He didn't even realize how quickly he was breathing, sucking down the same cold air over and over again until his lungs felt tight.
“Now stand up with me.”
Phainon nodded, clutching onto Mydei's wrist while they both stood off the floor. Mydei gestured forward, and Phainon shuffled over to the door, clutching onto him like a lifeline while navigating turbulent waters. He nearly tripped over the fuzzy pink carpet.
When they made it back out into the hall, Phainon finally felt like he could breathe again. Fresh air flooded his lungs, blood thick like sludge began pumping again, the pounding in his head began to dissipate. The tempest of emotions blustering within him abated, replaced by a flood of relief as Mydei turned up the lights in the hall and presented Phainon with irrefutable proof that his husband was still alive and not going anywhere as he stood right in front of him, waiting for Phainon to catch his breath.
“Feel better?” Mydei asked, thumbing over the top of Phainon's hand.
Phainon sucked in a deep breath with a few half-hearted nods. “Yeah.”
Mydei's face softened, his resting scowl replaced with a sympathetic frown.
“I think it might be time to look into counseling again,” Mydei aptly suggested.
“I think you might be right.”
“Aren't I always?”
Phainon sharply exhaled, breath and lung function finally returning to normal. “Usually,” he concurred.
Mydei scoffed. “Back talking is no way to get your husband to sleep with you again.”
“Sorry,” Phainon sheepishly muttered. “I'm… sorry, Mydei. I really am. I don't ever want to make you feel bad for the way you grieve-”
“You haven't,” Mydei said, before Phainon even had the chance to blame himself for something needlessly. “We just grieve differently, and this time, it is in a way that is incompatible.”
That word felt like a knife through the chest. They were supposed to be the perfect couple, compatible in every single way. They both wanted the same things; A college degree, their own home, a big family, and just one son couldn't hurt, but they would always love their girls like the moon loved the stars. Mydei cooked, Phainon cleaned, Papa sent the kids to school and Daddy picked them up. It was perfect. They were perfect… until a simple stomach ache upended their picture perfect lives forever.
When everything up until then had gone so perfectly, it was hard not to feel like the world itself was coming to an end with it.
“And there's nothing wrong with that, either,” Mydei said, dispelling Phainon's unspoken doubts. “We need help. Both of us. Together and separately. No more putting it off. We owe it to the three girls we still have to get through this together.”
Phainon slowly nodded. He was right, no matter how often Phainon playfully tried to deny it. Phainon tried every distraction he could, picked up more hours at work, spent more time in the garden. Anything to keep his mind off that empty room at the end of the hall and the reality that she just wasn't coming back, all while pushing his husband away in the process. Truthfully, he couldn't remember the last time they felt like a real couple before this very moment, with Mydei holding both of his hands while walking backwards towards the top of the stairs.
“Good. Now come on, you have a shower to take, and I have dinner to cook.”
Phainon stumbled forward with him, pupils filling out his irises while he watched the subtlest of dimples form on Mydei's cheeks. He was smiling, an infectious grin that Phainon felt tugging at his own lips.
“You could shower with me,” he blurted like they were young, dumb twenty-somethings again, without a care in the world for who was watching or listening.
Mydei hummed thoughtfully. “Let's see where the night takes us. Do we still have that bottle of Liatiko from your mother?”
Phainon gasped, a hand over his chest, which began beating faster than normal, pumping blood in an entirely inappropriate direction. “Mydeimos, bite your tongue! You don't drink!”
“Mmm, no. But you do,” Mydei winked, stopping right at the stop of the stairs and turning around to face Phainon. “And we have the house to ourselves all weekend.”
Phainon felt a chill lick up his spine, the same shivers Mydei used to give him back when they first met. He was a real temptress he was, even back then. It was no wonder Phainon fell for him so hard and so quickly. But before that, before any of it, he was also kind, and gentle, and thoughtful, and perhaps the best Daddy four little girls could ever ask for. Maybe it was that initial charm Phainon fell for, but it was the rest of him that kept Phainon coming back for more, until he was just about certain he could never live without him. And every day since Phainon got down on one knee, Mydei had proven it over and over again, and he would keep proving it for as long as they both lived.
Phainon leaned forward, and Mydei met him halfway for a tender kiss. Sparks went off behind his eyes, and Phainon got the creeping suspicion that they would never make it to the kitchen or the bathroom that night.
He knew the morning would bring more difficult conversations and emotions Phainon wasn't ready to feel, but as long as they had each other, he was sure they could get through it. It was baked into the very essence of their beings, a competitive nature that would allow neither of them to yield. They weren't ready to give up on each other just yet.
They would get through this. Just as Eros and Psyche had overcome trials and tribulations set before them by the Gods, transcending mortality itself to be together eternally, Phainon and Mydei would survive their grief and be made stronger for it.
And, when the time finally came for them to reunite with their daughter, they could tuck her into bed again with a love story of their own to share. One that would put Eros and Psyche to shame.