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"You'll recover," Phainon says, "of course." He shoots Mydei a wink, all the boyish, drunken charm in him positively radiant in the sunlight of the Rest Hour.
"HKS," Mydei scoffs in reply, and means, ‘You don’t believe that.’
But Phainon does, though he does not believe Mydei’s heart is hard enough for that. They are both deep in their cups, deep enough that their competitive spirits have gone to sleep in the bed across the room. Mydei stretches luxuriantly out on the plush carpet of his bedroom floor. Phainon sits cross-legged by the coffee table, weighing the last dregs of the third bottle he’s had tonight.
“You’ll miss me,” Phainon smiles, so terribly proud of it that Mydei almost reaches for his spear, inebriation be damned.
Mydei purses his lips, running the words of his weakness over his heavy tongue. But centuries have hardened him against such foolishness as trusting himself when drunk. Instead, he turns his head to face the arching marble ceiling and slurs, “If I died first, you’d miss me more.”
It’s a stupid thing to say; if Mydei dies first, it will be by Phainon’s hand, in which case there would be no reason for Phainon to miss him. The sound of glass on polished wood sounds through his bedroom, followed by the chhk-pop of a new bottle being opened. Phainon sighs dramatically, “Always a competition with you.”
“Says you,” Mydei retorts. They both subside quickly, too tired to take up arms about it.
“You’re right, though.” Phainon cuts himself off with a deep draw from the bottle. He glances down at Mydei, who has turned to him in involuntary surprise. Mydei can feel it in the thin line of his own mouth, the pinch of strain between his brows. Phainon clears his throat and clarifies, unnecessarily, “If you died first. I would miss you more than however much you’ll miss me.”
Mydei’s eyes slip shut. “Is that so, Deliverer?”
“Even before we met, you already came to terms with it. My death. Anyone’s death.”
A cool, steady touch brushes some hair off Mydei’s face. He looks up. Phainon’s hand lingers for a breath longer before retreating calmly, shamelessly. Phainon crinkles his eyes in response to Mydei’s raised brow, tracing over him with a look so reverent it makes his skin crawl. Mydei flings his arm up to defend himself from the scouring.
“What’re you looking at?” he grunts, gruff and tired.
Phainon presses a calloused thumb to the sharp tip of one scarlet mark at the edge of Mydei’s jaw. He drags it down, a slow, ticklish movement that makes Mydei’s skin crawl with some inexplicably frenetic energy. “I have seen you die in battle and return several times over now. And yet, I find myself unable to imagine you truly, permanently gone, dear Mydeimos. You feel so warm.”
Mydei scoffs wordlessly and rolls onto his side, hiding away from the touch and the scrutiny both. What an innocent thing to say. The warmth of the flesh drains so quickly in death. For those who experience the permanent, unending kind, there is no furnace waiting ready to scald rebirth back into one’s veins. He has never asked— really, who would he? —but it is likely that the rebirth steals him back too fast for his body to cool, too soon to stiffen with rigor mortis and adopt the grey pallor of death.
“I’m so drunk,” Phainon says suddenly. He sounds rather surprised by it, though Mydei hears the way he throws his head back to polish off this last bottle anyway. “Oh. I win!”
“Wasn’t a competition.”
“Not the drinking!” Phainon’s laugh rings, warm and low through the air. “And not against you. Just a personal challenge I had almost forgotten about.”
Mydei makes an inquisitive sound, too tired to ask in so many words, ‘What is it?’
“We’re friends now, aren’t we? Look at us, rolling around on your floor like a pair of schoolboys.”
It has been a long, long time since Mydei was a schoolboy. But he thinks, faintly, it must have felt something like this. Competing like schoolboys, fighting, racing, outlasting each other. Talking to each other over bottles of wine, Phainon’s bleeding heart leaving golden stains on Mydei’s rug, Mydei curled on the floor like a cat with his spine curved toward his drinking companion.
“That was your challenge?” he asks, after a long internal debate over whether he should return to laying on his back or continue to rest in his comfortable coil. “Your friendship is uniquely persistent.”
Phainon huffs a sound of indignation. Muffled, but still audible, he replies, “I had to be. You wouldn’t notice me otherwise.”
“I did,” Mydei murmurs, fighting the sudden stupor of half-sleep that washes over him. Phainon doesn’t seem to be doing any better—if anything, he’s much, much sleepier with the fresh bottle of wine in him.
“You didn’t. Not me, me.”
“What’s the difference?”
“To be friends, we can’t just fight each other…” Phainon’s retort is whiny, barely intelligible and characteristically adorable in that wheedling way that makes him irresistibly, effortlessly persuasive.
Mydei feels amusement curl his lips up slightly as he breathes, “Alright.”
The silence blankets both of them, their breathing evening out to match each other. Mydei counts: one—two—three—up to fifty, then forces his limbs to move. He feels sluggish, awfully ill-equipped to fight any battle would there be any such sudden calling. His bed is an enticing concept, and he lays himself gracelessly on its plush softness.
Phainon does not twitch a muscle at the movement. The Deliverer looks cold on Mydei’s coffee table. Mydei is still feeling rather warm. He curls a fist in the blanket stuck beneath him, weighing up the effort for a breath or seven—a micro-nap, maybe—before he pushes himself back to his feet. With light, if unsteady, footsteps, Mydei tiptoes over to his guest, blanket bundled in his arms. Phainon’s back rises and falls with each breath, and Mydei matches the drape of fabric with a long exhale. Phainon smacks his lips contentedly in his sleep.
Mydei stares down at the Deliverer for a while longer, at the soft, relaxed smile of his mouth in his sleep, grey hair almost glowing. Time gets away from him, standing there in his half-asleep daze; it bleeds into ages and no time at all, a forever kind of moment that Mydei knows will haunt him long after Phainon’s body has disintegrated in the ground. As if in protest of the haunting thought, Phainon snuffles and buries his nose into the crook of his elbow. Into Mydei’s blanket. Mydei kneels by him and leans over carefully, moving the empty bottles out of reach of any potential soporific twitching.
He rises to his feet and gently eases himself back onto his own mattress. With the turn of the season, tonight’s weather is fine enough to go without a blanket, even for a Kremnoan—even more for one with wine still flushing his gold veins—so he sprawls in the night sunlight. Mydei pulls one of the spare pillows to his chest and curls around it, staring down at his guest. He will have to say goodbye to this man eventually, this brilliant, bright demigod of a mortal man who could die before Mydei even starts to develop a forehead wrinkle.
How dare Phainon talk about things like missing Mydei? He will be long dead before any circumstance for missing him will abound. No one will miss Mydei if he dies; he plans to outlive everyone that would, now that Strife stokes battle-ready heat inside him. Even with Phainon in his bedroom, the sounds of the man’s breaths audible in the silent night, Mydei already mourns him.
Mydei closes his eyes and deepens his own breathing, retreating from the void-hungry pull of those emotions. He has already come to terms with losing Phainon to the rapids of time. He can already feel the wound. There is nothing to be done about it, except to sleep.
***
There is something about befriending an immortal prince that gives one a strange, comforting sense of their own mortality. The permanence of it soothes him. At least, he will not reawaken in the same life, to look down on his failures. Phainon knows he will die before Mydeimos does. It is unfair, he knows, but he cannot help it; the guaranteed presence of Mydei at his funeral is a bone-deep reassurance. His heart, the bleeding heart that his fellow Chrysos Heirs tease him relentlessly for, swallows Mydei whole. Phainon can’t help it. He’s hopelessly attached.
It is so easy to love Mydei. It is so easy to love the man that cannot die. Phainon watches Mydei stride onto the battlefield over and over again, and does not fear loss—not of this man, at least. They fight each other, each other’s enemies, anything and everything that is a challenge or a threat or both. Mydei unleashes shards of crimson that gouge gaping holes in enemy flesh. Phainon dances over the gemstones and carves the lucky survivors apart with his blade.
“My weakness,” Mydei says one day. Phainon feels his stomach twist with unease. But he is the only one that knows, so all he has to do is watch Mydei’s back for stray shots, and the immortal will stay immortal. Mydei is strong, otherwise, and fully capable of defending himself. It is such a specific weak spot that Phainon isn’t entirely sure where it lies on Mydei’s back. He makes a personal point not to look for the thoracic vertebrae in any anatomy texts, would he ever stumble across one, so he himself stays somewhat unaware of it.
As Phainon leaves his fellow heirs, he knows some of them might die—there is always the chance. They have already lost people; there is no chance at a perfect victory anymore. He’s mentally prepared for bad news, for terrible news even, though he has faith in his friends. Mydei throws a gauntleted hand back with a snarled, “Go!”, even as Phainon’s feet lurch forward. He shoots Mydei another glance, forcing himself to leave with the trailblazers; there is no point wasting time or breath on any lengthy ‘see you later,’ he reassures himself, when they will both come back alive.