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The relative silence in the room feels too loud, like there’s a phantom in his ear where someone else’s soft snoring should be. For the past three years, Phainon has grown accustomed to the rhythm of Mydei breathing beside him. That heavy, radiating warmth in his body, the way he would inevitably steal all the blankets, the heavy arm that always finds its way around Phainon’s torso. Now, there is nothing to accompany Phainon but distantly passing cars, the blinking light of the television, and the sterile scent of hotel linens he is meant to occupy all alone.
This is according to plan. Aglaea has been ruthless about the separation on the night before the ceremony. She has taken over all of the wedding logistics like a general, stepping in at the exact moment she realized Phainon’s decor choices were being considered at all, because Mydei loved him too much to shoot them all down. That, and because Mydei has actively been trying to source enough flour to bake a three-tier cake by himself. Her expertise is desperately needed. But with all the power in her hands, she has banished them to separate rooms on different floors for the night, citing tradition and the young couple’s inevitable nerves.
So now Phainon stares blindly at the ceiling, his heart hammering against his ribs. There's a painting on the wall near the TV, some kind of snowy landscape, but he won’t bother trying to see it. His arms and hands feel too empty. It isn’t working. He can’t turn his brain off to sleep.
Tomorrow. What a monolithic and terrifying word. He swings his legs out of bed, cool air hitting his bare skin as he begins to pace the narrow strip of carpet between the mattress and the window. He reaches out, tugging the heavy velvet curtains open just enough to let a decent sliver of pale moonlight cut across the floor and bed.
Mydei is going to be his husband. Husband. A cold spike of sourness shoots straight through his chest.
He is going to ruin the ceremony; he already knows it. The sheer weight of standing up there, looking into Mydei’s eyes while their friends watch is enough to make his throat tighten, right now. He is going to sob and have a snot-nosed, completely inconsolable breakdown right at the altar, and Mr. Eurypon will probably laugh his booming roar of a laugh while his own father stares on in stiff-necked mortification. He’ll never hear the end of it.
Phainon stops pacing. His gaze drifts to the nightstand, where a small leather-bound notepad sits by the lamp. Stepping over, his thumb traces the edge of the paper where he has meticulously drafted his vows. He has spent weeks on them, carefully scratching out lines and agonizing over every word choice, restarting the entire thing at times, until he has finally produced something he is proud of. The words on the page are honest. They are exactly what Mydei deserves to hear.
But as he stares down at the handwritten ink in the dim moonlight, a horrible certainty washes over him. He can’t do it. There is absolutely no way he is going to get those words out of his mouth tomorrow without suffocating. He knows exactly how to chisel away his own edges, yet here he is, reduced to jitters over lines of ink.
This shaking in his hands is a foreign currency; he does not know how to spend it. They will be looking at him. Every guest sleeping in the rooms below and above and across the hall is a potential witness to what he has spent a lifetime hiding, gathered solely to celebrate a joy he still feels he has stolen from someone else more deserving. Most of all, he is terrified of dropping the glass, the other shoe falling from his foot. Mydei looks at him as if he holds the horizon together, offering unconditional devotion that he still doesn’t quite know how to carry. If he chokes on his own throat he will stain the one beautiful thing he has ever dared to claim for himself.
Phainon grabs his phone from the nightstand where it is charging; it is already at a hundred percent, but he had kept it plugged in anyway, paranoid that it might somehow drain itself to death from disuse overnight. His thumb taps open the browser. Grimacing, he types into the search bar: Is it too late to elope on the night before my wed—
He doesn’t finish inputting the query before a text pops up at the very top of the screen. It’s as if his fiancé has a radar tuned to the exact moment his brain begins to fail him. He clears the half-written search, his fingers flying across the keyboard before he can talk himself out of it.
He hesitates, eyes tracking the space under the door like he’d be able to see a shadow under it. His phone is plugged back into the charger, having lost only 1% of its battery.
The moment the door opens, Mydei’s eyes lock onto him. Without a word, he steps across the threshold, using the heel of his slipper to kick the door shut behind him. The lock clicks back into place, sealing them in the quiet.
Mydei reaches out, his hands catching Phainon by the waist and pulling him flush. The sheer heat of him hits Phainon like a wave, burning away the chill of the hotel room.
“And I thought my room was something. You’re freezing,” Mydei murmurs against Phainon’s chin as he wraps his arms completely around him, burying his face into the crook of Phainon’s neck.
Phainon buries his face in Mydei’s hair, gripping the fabric of his shirt as if he’s trying to anchor himself to the earth. The phantom quiet in his ears is instantly replaced by the thumping rhythm of Mydei’s heart.
“Haven’t gotten much rest,” Phainon confesses, his voice tight. The confession slips out before he can stop it, the raw anxiety of the last few hours spilling over now that his anchor is finally within reach. “I was looking up how to elope, if you’re interested. I’m going to choke on my own throat up there, Mydei.”
Mydei’s chest rises and falls in a heavy sigh, one hand moving up to cup the back of Phainon’s head, his fingers tangling gently in his hair.
“Let it be terrible,” Mydei says softly, his thumb tracing a soothing circle against the nape of Phainon’s neck. “Let the whole thing fall apart. Sob at the altar. Snot all over your suit and mine. I don’t care about any of it, Phainon. I just want to marry you.”
Phainon goes silent in Mydei’s arms. Just a few months ago, he had been the one holding Mydei when he proposed, acting as the anchor he wanted to always be. Now here he is, embarrassing himself.
Mydei shifts his weight forward, starting to guide Phainon backward toward the bed. Phainon, digging in his heels just enough to stall their slow momentum, looks up. “Really, Mydeimos?” he asks incredulously, even though his tone isn’t as lighthearted as it could be. “Trying to get me in bed premaritally?”
Mydei stares down at Phainon, nodding at the side of the room where the desk is, occupied only by his cufflinks and watch.
“Fine. You can go sit in the cuck chair all night and stay cold.”
A startled, breathless laugh escapes Phainon before he can choke it back. Defeated, he obliges, breaking away from Mydei’s grip just long enough to climb back into the massive bed. He slips under the covers, immediately lifting the edge of the duvet and holding the spot next to him open in invitation.
Mydei watches him with a softening expression. He shuffles over to the side of the mattress, systematically kicking off his fluffy chimera slippers before sliding into the bed beside him. The moment Mydei settles into the mattress, he lets out a long, contented sigh, his entire posture instantly relaxing as he pulls Phainon right back into his chest where he belongs.
Phainon shifts beneath the covers, turning his head so his cheek rests against the soft cotton fabric of Mydei’s shirt, right over one of his pecs. The steady rhythm of his breathing is already so comforting, but there is tension in Mydei’s shoulders too.
“What’s keeping you up?” Phainon asks cautiously, his sullen voice barely louder than a whisper.
Mydei stares blankly at the ceiling for a long moment, just like Phainon had been doing before he arrived, his chest rising and falling. “I don’t know,” he murmurs, his tone carrying a distant quality. “I can’t really fathom that this is actually happening.”
From past experience, Phainon knows Mydei gets hit with bouts of imposter syndrome, leaving him feeling untethered and floating away from his own reality. In moments like this, Mydei prefers to be held down to earth, given the human equivalent of a weighted blanket, and talked back into his own skin.
Without a word, Phainon rolls Mydei onto his side, facing away from him, and then presses his entire body flush against Mydei’s back. He drapes his own arm over Mydei’s abdomen and places his chin right between his shoulder blades, pinning him safely to the mattress. He feels Mydei let out a long breath, and thinks back to how incredibly serious Mydei had been when he announced his plan to cook. He had been completely dead set, convinced he could handle the pressure of feeding their entire guest list on top of getting married.
Phainon smiles faintly into the fabric. Thank the gods Aglaea had stepped in. There is an alternate reality where Mydei is running on three hours of sleep, worrying about prep and timers at this hour of the night. “You’re here,” Phainon says, tightening his grip, applying just a little more pressure. “It’s you and me. And nobody is baking a cake right now.”
Mydei lets out a low chuckle, his hand reaching down to cover Phainon’s fingers where they are laced across his body. “Yeah,” he whispers. “I’ll have to find something else to do with my hands tomorrow.”
Phainon groans, the soft vibration rumbling against his fiancé’s back before he shoves his face directly into the crook of Mydei’s neck. He noses along the warm skin there, grounding himself in the scent of him. In response, Mydei moves his hand absently, his fingers tracing over Phainon’s knuckles. Phainon can’t see them in the dark room, but he can feel those familiar calluses scraping gently against his skin as he waits patiently, keeping his heavy weight against Mydei’s spine as his fiancé takes exactly what he needs.
After a few quiet minutes, Mydei’s chest expands with a deep breath. “I was having déjà vu just now,” he says into the shadows of the room.
Phainon hums a soft, questioning, “Mmm?” into his back. He shifts his weight slightly, readjusting his leg because the angle has left it starting to fall asleep against the mattress.
“Seriously,” Mydei whispers, his voice growing heavier with exhaustion as the grounding pressure does its work. “It feels like I’ve dreamt of this before. Sneaking into your room the night before our wedding. Are you sleepy?”
“No,” Phainon says, his voice flat and honest in the dark. “I’m wide awake.”
“Tell me.” Mydei shifts his head against the pillow, his profile catching a sliver of the moonlight.
“I’m just stuck thinking about it. I don’t know how I’m supposed to make it through everything without losing my composure.”
Mydei doesn’t offer him any hollow reassurances or quick platitudes. Phainon knows Mydei understands him too well for that. A simple “oh no you won’t” or “everything will be perfect” would just slide right off his skin. Phainon needs to look at the problem piece by piece to actually move past it, and Mydei knows it too.
“What specifically is on your mind?” Mydei asks. The question instantly pulls a warm memory from the back of Phainon’s mind. Their first date, where Mydei had asked him something similar, and Phainon had stumbled through a plainly fabricated answer. Back then, all that had been on Phainon’s mind was Mydei.
Though it is sort of the same challenge, now. “I just don’t know how to do this right,” Phainon admits, his voice dropping lower. “The vows, especially. There’s so much I want to say, but I’ll stumble through it in front of a crowd with only five minutes for it.”
Mydei seems to have grown more present in his body. He shifts onto his back, but he makes sure Phainon stays right on his side, anchoring him so that Phainon remains slightly leaning over him. “Okay, hit me with them,” Mydei says softly. Phainon lets out a quiet laugh, thinking his partner is joking. He leans down and kisses Mydei’s forehead. “Haikas, I meant it,” Mydei grumbles. “If it’s driving you up a wall, let’s practice it so you know what to expect.”
Phainon stares down at him, incredulous. “As if Aglaea wouldn’t already kill me for you being in here, you pull this? I can’t keep anything hidden from you, can I?”
Mydei just smirks, reaching up to poke him firmly in the side of his ribs. “You wouldn’t have proposed if you wanted to.”
“Shut up,” Phainon mutters, throwing a fake elbow into Mydei’s chest in retaliation.
Mydei catches the elbow with a low chuckle, his fingers wrapping around Phainon’s forearm. Phainon rolls his eyes, shifting his weight to reach over Mydei’s shoulder, his fingers searching the wooden surface of the nightstand until they wrap around the familiar edge of the notepad. He holds it up close and squints at the page, tilting his wrist slightly to angle the paper so the thin sliver of moonlight cutting through the curtains hits the ink just right. It takes a second for his eyes to adjust, difficult enough without his glasses or contacts, but the pale silver light helps.
He clears his throat as someone’s car honks in the distance. He doesn’t have to look at the page; he knows the opening lines by heart anyway, having scratched them out and rewritten them until the pen’s ink bled through the back of the paper. “I didn’t know what it was to want,” Phainon begins. “Not really. Not until I started wanting you, Mydeimos.” He looks down from the page, searching for Mydei’s impassive face.
Under his hand, he can feel the slight shift in Mydei’s posture, the way his breathing hitches just a fraction at the sound of his full name. Phainon quickly looks back to the paper, his thumb tracing the cover as he reads the next lines. “Before, I couldn’t tell my pinks from my reds, my yellows from my golds. And then you came, and suddenly I knew all those words, the crimsons and scarlets. You brought the colours with you. I have never known an existence that I wake up more excited about than the one I have now, just knowing I’ll see your golds in the hairbrush we share.”
Mydei lets out a classic exasperated hmph of his, the ticklish vibration of it radiating into Phainon’s side.
Phainon swallows against a faint smile, his eyes tracking down to the next sentence. “Your silvers in the keys you hang next to my front door. Your peach, in the colour across your cheeks when I tell you how much I adore you. Your scarlets when your hands are in mine, warming me in the cold…” The room is silent for a second before Phainon takes a slow breath, his voice dropping to a softer, more protective register. “I know I’ll have my doubts about myself in things sometimes. And I know you’ll have your moments where things aren’t so tangible.”
The hotel mattress gives a low creak as Mydei moves just a fraction closer. Phainon lets his thumb rest heavy against the edge of the paper. “But the one thing I will always believe in is that I love you more than these words can say. And I promise you, I will always show you how much I care about you.”
The moonlight catches the final, unedited line at the very bottom of the page—the sole one he hadn’t crossed out, the one he hadn’t dared to alter since the very first night he sat down to write. “If the horizon ever falls apart, Mydei,” Phainon whispers, his voice clear, stripped of any lingering hesitations. “Let it. I’ll be right there to catch the sky with you.”
Phainon sets the little notebook down on the nightstand, the quiet rustle of the thin papers breaking the thick silence. He leans a bit closer to Mydei, his gaze searching his partner’s face in the pale light.
“Uhh,” Phainon murmurs, a sudden touch of self-consciousness returning to his voice. “So how was that?”
Mydei stares up at him, his eyes misty and gleaming. It’s clear the words hit him deep, right where Phainon needed them to. He swallows hard, but a familiar, gentle warmth creases the corners of his eyes. “…You should have incorporated the sun theming earlier in it,” Mydei says as he tries to maintain his composure. “It really comes out of nowhere in the end.” Before Phainon can even process the critique or defend his writing structure, Mydei catches Phainon by the shoulders and pulls him downward until he is lying flat atop Mydei’s chest. He’s locked in a crushing hug that presses all the remaining cold out of his body.
They hug for a bit. Phainon sinks into him, his chin hooked over a shoulder, and that intense, clingy desire claws its way up his throat. No matter how close they are, no matter how many hours they spend tangled up like this, he will simply never have enough of it. The time they have already shared feels like a mere drop in an ocean he wants to throw himself in.
Against his ear, Mydei’s deep voice rumbles through his chest. He really could have been a voice actor. “Did you memorize it already?”
“Yeah, mostly, it’s just the middle lines I mess up when I practice it. Did you memorize yours?”
“Mhm,” Mydei hums. “Are you expecting a taste of them now?”
“Wellll,” Phainon begins, intrigued. “We’re soon to be wedded equals. It would only be fair.”
Mydei takes a moment to gather his thoughts, staring up at the blanket they’re cuddled under as if reading the words off the threading. When he finally speaks, his cadence shifts into that slightly more formal, rhythmic way of speaking that marks his family’s heritage, yet it remains just as raw as everything he does.
“I have spent my life preparing for conflicts I could predict,” Mydei begins, his hand moving up to firmly cup the back of Phainon’s neck. “Building walls up, tending to the ones that were already there, and ensuring everything else stayed in its proper, dictated place. But when you entered my life, you made it all worth defending. You are the truth I have never questioned.”
Suddenly, Mydei cuts himself off halfway through the sentence. He stops, a deliberate, wicked grin breaking across his face as he looks down at Phainon. “There’s a taste of it, like I said. If you want the rest, you can’t get cold feet for tomorrow.”
Hadn’t he been listening? There was no conceivable universe where Phainon, worried sick or not, would stand him up at the altar. None. Phainon scoffs, tapping along the bone of Mydei’s jaw with his fingers. “Ahtt-aht. Cold feet was never part of the calculation, just eloping. Which you would be a part of, genius.”
“Is that so?” Mydei chuckles, giving Phainon’s shoulder a firm shove. Phainon doesn’t let him push him away, instead using the momentum to sink right back down, nuzzling his face securely into the warm center of Mydei’s chest, the last remnants of his dismay gone. He had all kinds of spa treatments administered to his face yesterday, but nothing could compare to this intense feeling of calm.
He wants to publish a thesis on the exact frequency of Mydei’s low, sleep-heavy laughs and defend a dissertation on the specific manner those rough, calloused thumbs can pull him back from it all. He wants to memorize every micro-expression, every dip in his cadence, and every single rhythm of his breathing until he is the absolute leading expert on the man holding him.
They stay like that for a long while. Phainon watches the rise and fall of Mydei’s chest until he catches his breathing falter—a heavy dip that marks the edge of consciousness—and then return to normal. A second later, it happens twice, a telling stutter that means Mydei is losing the fight to stay awake.
Phainon decides it is finally time to sleep. He pushes himself up, but Mydei blinks his eyes open, a sudden look of panicked realization breaking through his drowsiness. “Wait—” Mydei rasps, looking toward the door. “No. She’ll kill me.”
Aglaea’s wrath, material or not, is an effective alarm clock. Phainon quietly slips out of bed, grabbing his phone to light their steps to the door, and walks Mydei out into the hallway toward the bank of elevators.
They stop right in the open doorway, the quiet corridor deserted at this hour. Mydei pulls him close for a final kiss. As they lean into each other, Mydei’s massive slipper steps on Phainon’s foot, but the fleece is so fuzzy that it doesn’t even hurt; it’s just a soft weight pressing against his skin. Phainon still doesn’t have his glasses or his contacts in, so without the lenses, the entire hallway is a blur and Mydei’s face looks fuzzy, too. But the rough, calloused hand cupping his chin is solid. It is heavy, it is real, and the shared life waiting for them just beyond the sunrise is the most real thing he has ever known. He falls asleep without plugging his phone back in.
The heavy double doors of the ceremony hall swing open, and the world narrows down to a single point. The guests are a colourful, indistinct wash in Phainon’s peripheral vision, a murmuring crowd framed by the solid stone architecture. But Phainon’s eyes skip past them entirely, his boots rooted firmly to the floor.
And then, Mydei takes his first step down the path before them. He is immaculate. The moment their eyes meet across the distance, his posture shifts. The impassive mask he carries for the rest of the world melts away in an instant. His shoulders drop. His eyes, focused, lock onto Phainon. It makes the entire room drop away too.
Phainon takes a slow breath, his throat tightening, but it isn’t with the suffocation from the night before. With his contacts in, the edges of the high ceilings and the faces of their friends are still a beautifully soft, blurred landscape, but Mydei is perfectly defined.