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Some days were bad and some were worse. Today was worse: a day so fucked-up that Mydei dragged his aching bones to a bar on the other side of the city, on a workday no less, to try and drown the latter half of the week in a glass stained by the fingerprints of people who already had the same idea. Now empty, it had been filled to the brim with strong, straight liquor just minutes ago, yet the sour taste of overpriced alcohol did not help wash away his own bitterness.
Mydeimos peers at his blurred reflection in the remaining flat pool of bourbon with a sigh. The sound is drowned by music and chatting voices, a painful reminder he’s sitting here alone, his only partners being the endless problems sticking to the sole of his shoes like shadows. He had thought they would blend in the dimness of the poorly-lit bar; he was quickly proven wrong. Forced to face defeat, alcohol became his poison of choice, and he had devised a plan to get wasted until he’d forget his own name — maybe then, he could pretend to be a more successful, more loved, and less empty person.
His eyes meet the bartender’s, a man about his age with brown hair and a rough stubble, and he slides his glass forward on the counter. “Same thing again, please.”
“Actually, could you put that one on me?”
They both look to his left, seizing the man—the boy—who just spoke. It’s a tall, younger guy. Attractive. Carefree. Clearly out of his league. “And a white russian for me,” he adds with a wink.
The bartender gives Mydei a questioning glance, which he answers with a dismissive shrug. He feels pathetic enough to accept a free drink. The bartender decides whatever happens at the counter is none of his business, and he turns to the rows of bottles neatly sitting behind him on tall shelves to prepare their order.
The stranger promptly sits on the stool next to Mydei’s as if he’s been invited and leans on the counter, palm pillowing his cheek. And then he watches — taking a long, bold look at Mydei, pretty blue eyes stopping at the tie bound up too tight around his throat, then travelling down to his naked forearms, following the red lines of Mydei's exposed tattoos before returning to his face.
“We’ve never met before. Are you new here?” He asks with nonchalance, as if he wasn’t blatantly ogling.
“I just moved.” His story isn’t interesting — a promotion, a new beginning that quickly turns into homesickness and a bundle of doubts and regrets, and a feeling something is missing but he can’t quite tell what.
The bartender saves him from spilling about his failure of a life by returning with both their orders, Mydei’s malted drink red and old and the boy’s white, soft and creamy. He takes a first sip; understands he’s finally getting drunk when he’s able to finally appreciate the taste and let it simmer in his mouth.
“Where were you before?”
Mydei glances at the boy with furrowed eyebrows. The bar is big enough and filled with younger, more captivating people than him. He understands he’s being toyed with, and his words come out sharper than they should. “Does it matter?” In his fist, the drink starts to feel like a poisoned gift.
“No, I guess not.” Mydei gets a forgiving smile for an answer. “What matters is that you're here now.”
Even lacking experience in the relationship department as he is, Mydei thinks it’s quite the cheesy pick-up line. And is this really what is happening here? Hit on by a boy half his age? The longer the conversation lasts and the more it all sounds like a tasteless joke. He takes another gulp, savors the burn as it scours down his throat. Azure eyes shamelessly follow the way it bobs when he swallows. His face starts to burn, and the alcohol is not the only thing to blame.
“And what do they call a pretty thing like you?” The stranger continues.
Pretty has him scoff. There’s nothing beautiful about him. All he has to his name are mistakes from decades ago and crushing exhaustion that nests in the lines under his eyes. Pretty fits the boy more than him.
He has a handsome face, although burdened by horrible clothing choices: a bright yellow sweater that makes him look even younger, especially contrasting the worn down suit Mydei is wearing, and a black choker poking from his collar. Mydei doesn’t think of tugging on it.
“Mydei,” he replies, his name a lot more fitting than whatever pet names the boy chooses to call him; rough, and easy to misunderstand. Mighty. If only.
“I’m Phainon.”
It matters very little. They’ll forget each other soon enough, just the time for Phainon to finish his own drink and realize there’s not much to find in Mydei’s jagged edges except sharp cuts that’ll turn into ugly wounds. There’s still time for him to meet someone more suitable to waste his night with; someone more attractive, and less shamefully inexperienced too. Mydei thinks of his empty apartment with its blank, suffocating walls he doesn’t want to go back to, not yet, and stupidly wishes he was ten years younger.
“You look like you need a break,” Phainon continues, a glint sparkling in his blue eyes. Like the sea when it’s kissed by sunlight. Like the ocean sleeping in the bay of Mydei’s hometown.
“Is this how young people flirt nowadays?” he retorts, to hide that, yes, he desperately needs one—anything that would help get his mind off everything else. The problem being—he twirls his empty glass between his fingers, watching as the light does not reflect off its opaque facets—that nothing was ever enough. He could get drunk until he'd forget his name, address, and age; the gnawing feeling that something was amiss never vanished, an irritating rash on and under the skin, as if he was born with a defect.
“Maybe,” Phainon laughs. “Maybe I could help.”
The world pauses for a second long enough to make one more bad decision. “Are you offering?”
Phainon's hands dance around the rim of his glass — pale, long fingers and thin veins, and Mydei wonders how they’d look on his strained body. On his neck. On his thighs, pushing his legs open. In his hair, pulling. Molding him into something he’s not. His glass is empty.
“Yes,” Phainon says. “If you’d let me.”
Phainon caging him and roughly pressing him against a wall sounds like both the best and the worst idea he’s ever had.
“If I’d let you,” he repeats, voice thick.
That’s not a thing he does, letting people. In his house or in his heart; he’s far from a people’s person: best left alone with his books or his cooking, most eloquent when he lets his fists do the talking. He’s a loner, no matter how he tries to spin it around. Someone with no names or numbers saved in his phone except for his boss and shady insurance companies.
“I’m good at it.” Phainon says, getting up from his stool to lean in closer, carving himself a spot between Mydei’s legs (he smells like summer when the sun is high and hot, and of quiet times under the shade; dearly missed, freeing memories Mydeimos longs for.)
Phainon looks like the type who knows what he’s doing; the type who makes sweet love, the kind that twists your stomach in fat knots and has your eyes swell up because you finally feel cared for, that breaks you down into unrecognisable pieces to be tossed at sea like ashes.
Mydeimos thinks of how many people Phainon’s hands have touched before him, younger and prettier than him, all gathered at the bottom of these breathtaking ocean eyes, and he thinks he’s not a people’s person but he could see himself becoming a Phainon’s person.
Phainon’s mouth entrusts whispers against his neck, his fingers brushing against Mydei’s thighs, rubbing shapeless lines into his pants. “Don't you want to let go for once? Stop thinking about anything else?” He moves closer, lips pressed against the closed piercing indents in Mydei's ear. “I could do that for you. We could have some fun.”
“I don’t think I'll be much ‘fun,’” Mydei murmurs, staring at dried up stains on the counter to avoid Phainon’s gaze.
“I think you’ll be perfect.” Both Phainon’s hands rest on Mydeimos’ thighs, easily kneading into his flesh as he nudges them open, and when he leans down to speak against Mydei’s jaw his voice sends shivers down his nape. “We don’t have to go all the way,” he continues, nuzzling into untouched skin.
Mydeimos is overwhelmed already, lost to lust and embarrassment—the bar is crowded, and anyone could see—yet he can’t push Phainon away, hands squeezing his empty glass so hard it might shatter before his morals do.
It’s all stupid, really. Yet despite its idiocy the offer remains tempting: not having the pressure to perform or to pretend and let someone take care of him instead. Phainon, who doesn’t know any of his flaws yet; who can imagine him being someone he’s not, the same way Mydei sometimes likes to imagine he isn't Mydei.
Phainon kisses the dry corner of his mouth. Mydei turns his head to meet him and their noses bump awkwardly. Phainon chuckles. Mydeimos is mortified. Clueless despite being the older one, as if he’d spent years stuck underwater and had just emerged. He waits for Phainon to pull back and retract his offer to go and find himself a more experienced lay.
“Your place or my place?” Phainon asks, knee pushing between Mydei’s legs, dangerously aimed for his crotch. Only when it rubs into his groin does he realize the boy is still up for it, very much, according to the honest stretch in his pants. He wonders how long the attraction will last, watching in expectation as Phainon half-waits for an answer, busying his hands in Mydei’s thighs until his pants turn into a wrinkled mess. “What will it be?”
“My place,” he says in a strangled voice. Perhaps nothing matters anymore. He can blame the exhaustion and the alcohol and the loneliness. And Phainon can make fun of him, leave mid hook-up if he wants. And Mydei can sink and pretend he’s not drowning.
“Great,” Phainon’s voice drops to something quieter, secret, almost threatening; something that sounds like he wouldn’t have let Mydei refuse anyways. “After you.”
“There’s a good restaurant down this street. And a library past this avenue.”
Mydei’s car’s radio broke down a long time ago, with him having no plans nor motivation to replace it, and the raindrops tapping over its roof are not enough to make up for Mydei’s lack of conversation.
“What are you getting at?”
It comes out too snappy, each driven mile on the way to his house feeling like one more mistake now that the bar’s lights and music are gone and they’re awkwardly sitting side by side.
“I’m just saying,” Phainon continues, relaxing into his seat and looking through the passenger’s side window to watch the stoplights and neon signs blur as they drive by. “This city is nice. You’ll have a great time here.”
“I might not stay.” The windshield wipers move mechanically from left to right like a tilting scale, stay, leave, stay, leave.
“But you could. Unless you have somewhere else to go? Maybe someone to return home to?”
What is it to you, he thinks, but he goes, “There’s no such thing,” eyes focused on the road and vaguely thinking he shouldn’t be driving in this state—also wishing he could be drunk enough to ease up, to laugh, and not feel a sting in his chest when he’s asked casual, meaningless questions.
Phainon flashes a satisfied smile. “Good,” he says, and then he stops talking and it’s all quiet raindrops and squeaky windshields from here to Mydei’s apartment.
And then it’s Phainon’s mouth on him as soon as he’s pulled the car in the underground parking lot, keys still in the contact.
He devours Mydei with hungry kisses that taste of vodka and cream, and with cold hands that make him shiver when they hunt for his body’s warmth, slipping under and stretching office clothes he hasn’t changed out of.
The next ten kisses in the front seat are the same as the first clumsy one in the bar: Awkward. Clumsy. It takes another hungry ten for Mydei to remember how to tilt his head so he can give Phainon better access and how to breathe through his nose; and by then he’s an empty-headed, flushed mess. Phainon kisses him like he’s out for his life, nibbling at his chapped lips and searching for Mydei's tongue with his own.
When they part for air Mydeimos is gasping and Phainon is staring at him like he’s the world’s eighth wonder, and he feels the horrible need to explain himself and the reason why his face is already red up to his ears.
“I don’t usually- I don’t do… this.”
“You don’t,” Phainon slowly repeats. He doesn't make fun of Mydei. Only slides his hands higher up his thighs and squeezes tentatively. “Then I guess I really am lucky, this time.”
Mydei is being kissed again before he can reply, ravenously with their teeth clashing, and he blindly grasps at Phainon's arms for purchase.
“You’re so cute,” Phainon says. “I’m not sure I can wait until we get to your place.” Mydei blinks wide, panic slipping in. Here? And Phainon notices, and kisses his forehead and whispers, “Just a little okay? Just a bit. Let me make you cum once.”
Mydei lets himself be convinced by the soothing circles Phainon rubs over his inner thighs. Nimble hands work his office pants open and soft lips mouth at his throat with desire so raw he chokes a little, suffocating in the car, capsized under Phainon. Phainon’s mouth dips to his collarbone, revealed by a few hurriedly unmade buttons, then ghosts over his still clothed chest, then lower, then lower, setting sparks in Mydei’s body everywhere it stops until he feels he’s on fire.
The sound he makes when Phainon takes him in his mouth is indecent. High-pitched. Vulnerable. He clutches Phainon’s ugly varsity jacket, trying to push him away before he can embarrass himself further, but Phainon’s tongue circles around his length and makes him whine and surrender.
Blue eyes lock into his and he moans “Phainon,” the back of his head bumping against the headrest, his legs spreading open without his say-so.
“Say it again.”
“Phainon-”
A buzz that has nothing to do with the alcohol travels through him, and with it comes a heat that grows every time he calls Phainon’s name.
The car is filled with loud, obscene sounds almost as overwhelming as the feel of Phainon’s mouth on him. Wet noises and vibrations that go straight to his dick when Phainon moans around it, only stopping when he pulls away to talk, but his low murmurs are even worse: deep rumbles that reverberate against Mydei’s stomach and make his head and heart sway.
“You like this?” Phainon pumps him with lazy strokes, precum dripping over his knuckles, thumb sliding up and down Mydei’s head. Mydei likes it so much he can only whine and clutch Phainon’s clothes tighter. “Yes you do. God, you sound so pretty.”
Mydei can’t help but raise his hips, clumsily trying to meet Phainon’s hand with desperate moans.
“I’m-” ‘close’, he can’t say, both because it’s embarrassing and because it’s too good to talk; ‘a mess,’ the rearview mirror reveals: his tie is crooked across the wrinkled shirt riding up his stomach, and his lips are parted and lustful, as if he wasn’t a normal, bland, old office worker but a porn actor roleplaying as one, like in these adult videos he watches sometimes. He sees his own mouth open on a loud moan before he can hear it, and the sheer shame and excitement of seeing himself has him tip over the edge.
Spreading his thighs wider open, Phainon takes him deep down his throat, surrounding Mydei in tight heat as he comes. Pearly drops dribble down Phainon's chin, and the boy licks his lips and catches the wasted spill with his thumb to bring it to his mouth and swallow; Mydei’s cock twitches to hardness already.
He can’t say anything; can’t think really, fists closed tight in Phainon’s soft hair and clothes and unable to let go. Panting loudly as if he’d run a mile. Phainon moves up to kiss him, the taste of his own semen mixing up with the one of their drinks, lewd and intoxicating, and he hears a -click- before his seat is being lowered and he’s on his back with Phainon hovering above him.
Staring. Eyes glazed over, searching for something where Mydei’s shirt rides up and reveals his stomach, and hips purposefully grinding against Mydei’s knee, dick fat and hard and shamelessly humping, effort pouring out of his breaths. His fingers hook into Mydei’s tie and try—fail—to loosen it, choking him a little instead, making him moan. “I wanna fuck you,” he says, with a hoarse voice and a kiss to Mydei’s healed earlobe.
“Not here,” Mydei manages, because despite how much he yearns to be taken right here, he knows through the amber haze of booze that he won’t survive the next morning if he has to drive to work in a car that reeks of Phainon and of sex. “My place- My place is right here.”
“Okay,” Phainon says but he’s pushing his weight onto him harder, eyes unfocused and hair falling all over his face in disorganized strands. “God, you’re making this hard.” He truly sounds like he’s struggling, dick so hard it’s stretching his pants and shoulders shaking, and Mydei almost gives in. “Let’s go then.”
The feel of Phainon’s tongue and hands lingers even when they separate. He gets up to leave the car, breath hitching when their skins brush and knees weak.
Anticipation builds up as they cross the parking lot into the apartment building. Mydei’s nape burns under Phainon’s stare, and he wonders, don't people usually do this at hotels? He has no condoms or lube at home, only clothes he doesn’t wear anymore and a single bed that’s only known him—for now, his lust-addled brain supplies, providing him with images of their two bodies mingling in his tired bedsheets.
The main door opens, and Phainon’s hand drops to Mydei’s waist and gently steers him towards the elevator. His throat dries so much he can’t argue that his place is only one flight of stairs away even as intent seeps through Phainon’s fingers.
The elevator pings. Mydei is pushed against the wall before the doors close shut, his head tilted up so Phainon can press famished lips against his neck, feasting on the quickening pulse here. “Floor,” he demands, one leg pressed between Mydei’s.
“First one.” He slumps against the wall, Phainon catching his hips and keeping him steady, and he makes the mistake of looking at his reflection in the cabin mirror.
The sight is too odd for his liking: his weathered body, pressed up against a younger, more attractive man; his tired skin starry with kiss marks the flimsy collar of his dress shirt won’t be able to conceal tomorrow at the office. He meets his own teary eyes, and both shame and arousal coil in his chest so he closes them shut.
Phainon nuzzles the crook of his neck. “No,” he says, “Look how pretty you are.”
Pretty. He’d been called that at the bar too, hasn’t he? ‘A pretty thing like you,’ he recalls Phainon’s words marking their ways into his head under the dim lamps and the hushed whispers of the bar, and in his car too—You sound so pretty—and he peeks at his reflection again and looks for the truth in these words. All he finds are lightless red eyes and lips that have been bitten more tonight than in an entire lifetime.
“It’s okay,” Phainon promises with a gentle kiss against his cheek. “I’ll show you.”
Mydei is afraid of believing him, of allowing himself to be led on; still he guides Phainon out of the elevator to the door of his place, almost dropping the key with how nervous he is.
He barely has the time to close the door behind them. Phainon boxes him against the wall, pressing against his back with his hands roaming over Mydei’s stomach and chest. Mydei breaks a little here; lets out loud moans that can be heard from the hallway.
Deft fingers making their way down his abs, his belly, his chest—Phainon marvels God, the tits on you, as he gropes them and plays with Mydei’s nipples—and he would have completed his initial plan of forgetting his own name right there if Phainon wasn’t constantly calling it to shower him with endless praise.
Cold fingertips draw over the even colder pearl lodged within his navel. “Thought I saw something earlier,” Phainon says. Mydei’s stomach pulls back in; the fingers chase after it. “So you do have one.”
“I got it a long time ago.” He doesn’t even know why he tries to explain. Why he’s never considered removing it either; just let it settle like he did the tattoos, a reminder of who he once was. Phainon’s fingers sprawl over Mydei’s abs and lower stomach and settle there, and Mydei wishes he’d go lower.
“Turn around?” Phainon asks. Mydei obliges. Phainon gives him a satisfied smile and drops to his knees, tonguing Mydei’s piercing as if he wanted to fuck it with his mouth. The titanium orb disappears behind sharp teeth, rolling along Phainon’s tongue, and the sound that leaves Mydei’s throat is mortifying.
“Phainon-” he tries. Phainon holds up his shirt.
“Put that in your mouth for me,” he says, his attention entirely focused on the shining pearl, and Mydei does, obediently catching the fabric between his lips to grant the younger man better access to his bare stomach.
Phainon’s gaze trails up to his chest, followed by a silent fascinated laugh when he sees tribal tattoos unfold, tracing them with both his eyes and his tongue and learning the inky lines like a musician reading a score, with Mydei’s moans playing to his melody.
“You like that? Does it feel good?” Groping Mydei’s ass and molding the shape of his fingers into it, he chuckles. ”Ah, sorry. I forgot you can’t talk.” A wet spot made of drool spreads where Mydei is holding up his shirt and he distantly realizes maybe getting fucked in the car would have been a better option than being turned into a whimpering mess in his apartment entryway; too little too late.
Eventually Phainon abandons his stomach to come back up, his attention turned to Mydei’s chest. He licks and kisses at the plumpness there until Mydei’s nipples grow sloppy with saliva and erected, and when his mouth isn’t busy breaking Mydei’s body apart it seems seems hellbent on being remembered until the next lifetime, saying things Mydei has never heard before and doing things he'll never forget.
Mydei’s shirt is eventually torn off him when Phainon figures out how to remove his tie. He cups Mydei’s chest with both hands, thumbs rubbing slow circles around hard, pink nipples and head tilting to dive under shaved armpits, licking the smooth expanse of skin here; unexpected and wet and filthy and Mydei, oversensitive, cries out his name with a shudder.
Phainon pauses then, glancing at the wet spot rapidly staining the front of Mydei’s pants.
“Did you come again, love?”
The pet name has him shake as he rides the aftermath of his orgasm. He gives a pathetic nod, teary-eyed, wet all over, and wanting more.
“Are you okay?” Phainon asks, voice sweet and caring, and Mydeimos thinks No, what is happening to me’ yet he sagely nods again. “Can I keep touching you?”
He thinks of what will happen if Phainon does, of how much more these gentle fingers of his will break down with ease, of how he will end up longing for soft eyes and softer kisses he'll never experience again, and he urges, “Don't stop.”
Phainon kisses him slowly, helping him come down from the high of his release. They're still at the entrance, he thinks as he suppresses a moan, but he also thinks of being fucked here where anyone could hear and his thoughts collide like two ice cubes tossed in the bottom of a drink.
“Phainon,” is all he can manage.
Immediately Phainon whispers: “I’m here, I'm right here. What is it? What do you want?”
Mydei doesn't know what he wants. Maybe he never has. What he knows is he needs the cold, tortuous burn of Phainon's touch, unable to resist when the boy seems to know everything he likes before he has a chance to learn it himself; like a story only of them has read before.
“Tell me,” Phainon says, fleeting doubts obscuring his irises. “Please?”
“I told you,” he tries to explain again. “I’ve never done this before.”
“Yeah, you don’t seem the type to pick up strangers from bars,” Phainon says affectionately, hand brushing sticky hair away from Mydei’s forehead as if he genuinely cared. Mydei tries not to lean into the touch and fails miserably.
“No, I mean- I don’t do,” he vaguely gestures, “this.” Phainon obviously doesn’t understand, stopping just before he’s about to kiss him again and blinking slowly. “I haven’t- I’ve never-” The words plummet.
“You’re a virgin,” Phainon spells out. The same clock guilty for their age difference stops ticking for one dreadful second; not enough for any of them to catch up. “Really?”
His gaze darkens. Mydei looks away and nods for the third time, brows furrowed in shame and anger at himself for not being everything he isn’t. He expects Phainon to tease, to make fun of him, but the laugh he gets in return is relieved, buried in the blooming hickeys of his neck. “So you saved yourself for me all this time? A pretty thing like you?” Phainon’s laugh makes his shoulders shake. “I guess I really am lucky.”
They turn into a tangle of limbs that somehow manage to tear itself from the door to move onto the bed, navigating the scattered papers on the floor and the orphaned socks. Phainon tosses Mydei on his back, his breath knocked out of him as he hits the mattress, and he raptly watches the younger boy finally remove his own sweater, revealing the pale, muscular body concealed under loose clothes. Phainon grins when he catches Mydei staring, and by now Mydeimos is convinced his face must be glowing in the dark with how red it has become.
Phainon grabs a condom from the back pocket of his jeans before removing them as well. Mydei tries not to think of how many people he must have done this with; of all the experience he has and all how the words he says are sweet nothings he’s not the first one to be lured by. Again, he wishes he was someone else, Phainon’s age, more pretty, less lacking. Better, or at least good enough to give his partner good memories of the night before dawn comes and inevitably shines on his face, revealing the dark purple eyebags like dim bar’s lamplight and the body that is not as pliant as it should be.
“If you don’t undress I’ll do it myself,” Phainon fake-threatens, still smiling, still removing his clothes, his fingers wrapped around the button of his jeans to finally free his dick.
Phainon watches him do the same, unblinking while he slides the condom on and strokes himself in a languid pace, charged, breathy moans echoing in the room, chest heaving hard as he captures Mydei’s struggling fingers. “Where did you get these tattoos,” he asks, leaning down so they’re face to face again, pleasuring himself shamelessly, the tip of his cock spilling pre over Mydei’s pants. “I told you to remove them,” he says sheepishly, and Mydei tries but if only his hands could stop shaking-
“A long time ago,” he replies. Phainon drinks every word from his mouth like they’re still at the bar and he’s poured another glass. “I don’t remember.”
“I’m sure you do,” Phainon insists, in a voice that doesn’t sound like he wants an answer but rather that he knows Mydei knows. If Mydei was any less drunk he’d question it; tonight, he’s accepted that whatever Phainon says is law and if Phainon says he remembers then he does, and if Phainon says he’s pretty then he is.
Phainon wets his fingers, tongue coating them in a sheen of saliva that links his digits when he spreads them in a V shape, and Mydei forgets what he’s supposed to be doing.
“Come on, take them off,” Phainon laughs.
He does, at least. He’s being rewarded with kisses and slick hands probing at his entrance, working him open and empty-minded, Phainon telling him ‘You’re doing so good for me,’ and ‘Good boy,’ all the while, easing him up into the foreign feelings.
Phainon’s knuckles push deeper, until his fingertips bump into a sensitive spot. Mydei’s pupils grow wide and he lets out a long, keening noise, back aching. “What’s wrong?” Phainon coos, nothing but delight in his eyes.
“I can’t think,” he cries out, already close again.
“Isn’t that great, beautiful?”
Is it? He can’t tell anymore, letting his body be used and explored however Phainon wants to, aching muscles pliant underneath the younger man, the strong burn down his stomach having nothing to do with alcohol anymore. Embarrassing noises spill out over and over and he turns his head away when Phainon tries to catch them into a kiss.
“No-”
“Why?” Phainon murmurs, that gentle smile of his resting against Mydei’s jaw.
“My lips- people will notice at work tomorrow.” He can tell they’re swollen and abused, ready to tell tonight’s story to the whole world.
Phainon laughs, an uncaring, happy sound, as he spares Mydei and settles for a kiss on the cheek instead. “See?” he says. “You can still think just fine.”
The fingers slip out of him only to be replaced with something girthier, warmer, something that slowly breaks him apart in both pain and pleasure. His blunt nails dig into the skin of Phainon’s shoulders. “Does it hurt? I’m sorry,” Phainon kisses his nose, dutifully avoiding the lips he’s been chastised from. “Don’t cry.” Mydei hadn’t realized he was, but he feels them now, the stinging tears burning the corner of his eyes. “I got you, I’m here. Made you wait, didn’t I?”
It should not make sense yet it does, the weight of isolated decades where Phainon was not born yet lifted up within his arms, the empty space in his body filled up by all of him, like a missing puzzle piece that’s finally been found and slotted back into its rightful place.
Through the blur of his tears, the whole world he was so concerned about reduces to Phainon and to the devastating fire spreading to his body. “Breathe,” Phainon says, nuzzling into Mydei’s neck. He obeys, a dangerous shiver running through him when Phainon rewards him with a “Good job,” as he exhales, slowly being conditioned to covet praise.
One hand using the headboard for support and the other stroking Mydei’s dick, Phainon rolls his hips once--and breaks him. Mydei’s toes curl into the bedsheets, hips raised and head thrown back, hand slapped over his mouth to stop himself from uttering any more pleas, and already he spurts a weak splatter onto his own stomach.
“You’re doing so good, beautiful,” Phainon coos. “So good for me. Won’t you give me one more?”
He sobs, and gives in as demanded. All that matters anymore is what Phainon asks of him, anything as long as the tantalizing softness doesn’t stop, as long as he can continue to feel loved and cared for. Phainon pounds him through his orgasm, surrendering long exhales each time he bottoms out and drowning Mydei in the sound of his own name, so he can’t forget anymore, has to accept who he is and it’s the same person Phainon is embracing so lovingly, so maybe it isn’t all that bad. ‘You’re so pretty, Mydei,’ ‘Can you feel me here?’ as he palms the bulge in his stomach where his cock is buried.
“You’ll remember this, won’t you, Mydeimos?” Phainon punctuates each word with a snap of his hip, his pace increasing until Mydei can do nothing but whine and whine and take it, nerves ablaze and thoughts melted to nothingness. “Don’t forget how I feel. Don’t forget.”
He doesn’t think he can, not when it’s the best he’s felt since forever, all shadows gone to leave space for two shiny diamonds that belong to him only, even for just one night. A meaningless one-time night that his heart will shatter and rebuild around.
Something more to yearn for, when he wakes up and it’s gone, and he tries to convince himself it won’t hurt too much.
In the darkness, the blinking red numbers of his alarm leniently tell him a few hours stand between now and when he needs to get up and get ready for work. He learns from the lack of weight against his back and the brutal coolness of the bedsheets that Phainon has left. Not that he was expecting otherwise, but the sting is more painful than he expected it to be. He still hears Phainon’s voice calling his name, still feels his touch and remembers every mark he’s made. He laughs, a hollow, pitiable thing, and turns around so he doesn’t have to see the minutes pass on the rectangle screen. Everything is sharper in the punitive aftermath of the alcohol; his head is swarmed by a nasty headache and his limbs are heavy.
He wants to sleep. He closes his eyes shut, and wonders if Phainon will gloat about it to his friends, say I fucked an older guy, mockingly, whereas Mydeimos will spend each following night craving for meaningless kisses that he won’t be able to forget. His hand reaches for the still warm pillow next to his -- and lands on a folded piece of paper.
He frowns. Retrieves his phone again to shine its blue light over it. There’s a phone number scribbled on it twice. The first time hurried and the second time cleaner, with rounder, easier to read characters, as if Phainon wanted to make sure he’d get it right, and underneath is written ‘Call me.’
It doesn’t have to mean anything. Another quick fuck to make the night less empty, and a promise that he can be good and pretty again--and it’s already a lot more than he bargained for. His fingers shake when he adds the number in his contacts, his mind screaming that he’s making a terrible choice, and his heart squeezing in his chest with anxiety and lust and maybe something else, too. Winning at the casino and putting another coin in the slots, knowing everything can be lost so easily yet chasing for that high again.
He locks his phone and tucks it back under his pillow, knowing he won’t find the courage to reach out until the next time he’s buzzed and desperate, the next day that’s not simply bad but worse.
There are a few hours of sleep ahead of him, if he can manage to push the memories of last night at bay; if he even wants to. He’s not sure he does.
He closes his eyes to the memory of Phainon saying Mydeimos, failing to realize he’s never told him his full name.