#fic thoughts

Reader going: “Wait. You’ve been watching me this whole time. Have you ever watched me shower?” would probably make him short-circuit on every conceivable level.

He goes still. “Of course not.” He is flustered and trying so hard to sound dignified.

Meanwhile Reader is now staring. “Wishes, your ears are red.” And then he gets MORE upset because now not only has he been accused unfairly, but his body is betraying him in real time. And internally he is absolutely having the catastrophic realization of: I am, in fact, still a person with human desires. This is deeply unfortunate. What do I do now?

Meanwhile reader is trying not to laugh because this ancient demigod is suddenly acting like a scandalized man in a period drama.

The funniest part to me, though, is that Reader would probably get curious after realizing how affected he is. Because then the dynamic shifts from: “Did you look?” to: “You are thinking about it now though, aren’t you?”

And Phainon, who has spent three thousand years maintaining composure under cosmic torment, suddenly discovering he cannot survive one mildly teasing conversation with reader intact is very important to me personally. (Look, I just love the idea of flustering him…)

Because once he starts rediscovering humanity and touch and desire and closeness in real time… he becomes dangerous. This man has repressed every personal want for millennia and is suddenly discovering he enjoys intimacy, teasing, warmth, being wanted, existing as a person instead of a function… I mean, COME ON.

Here are some scenarios I had in mind while writing:

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Scenario A:

He’s granting wishes, and you’re talking in the in-between moments the way you always do now. And then there’s a crash. Or a sharp word. Or just an emotion spiking through the connection like a struck bell.

And Phainon, who has spent weeks slowly, helplessly learning the texture of your specific emotional landscape and now cannot not react to it… immediately, completely without thinking, tunes in.

You feel his presence go very, very still.

Wishes. Are you there?

Nothing.

…Don’t tell me you just—

More nothing.

I thought you were in danger, he says finally, and he sounds precisely like someone who was not prepared for what he found and would like to not discuss this for the remainder of his very long existence. You were just—

He doesn’t finish. You can feel what he doesn’t say. And also something new in his presence: slightly elevated, very carefully not being named.

Wishes, it’s fine, you say. Just don’t do that again.

A pause.

Understood.

Unless you need to, you say. For safety reasons.

He doesn’t know why you added that last part. He is going to think about the last part for a very long time.

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Scenario B:

He’s been running on empty. The wishes have been worse: the petty ones, the cruel ones, the ones that make him question what, exactly, he’s sustaining.

And you are there in his awareness the way you always are now, this warm thread running through everything that drains him. He tells himself he’s just checking. Making sure you are alright.

He does not examine that very closely.

You are getting ready for bed. It’s nothing. You don’t know he’s there. He knows he should look away.

He looks away. He looks back. He looks away again, faster.

His entire experience of that moment is approximately three seconds of visual information that his mind immediately, helplessly replays in considerably more detail than three seconds justify.

He feels as though he has committed several crimes against decency. He has not felt ashamed of himself like this in three thousand years. Possibly not ever.

He is also, and this is the part that slightly alarms him, not only ashamed.

He keeps a very careful distance for the rest of that evening. When you speak to him later, easy and habitual: Are you alright?

He says: Mm.

You say: You’re being weird today.

He says nothing, which is also a kind of answer.

The dream that follows is eventful. He is more flustered than he has ever permitted himself to be. The careful distance he has maintained has developed a notable crack in it, and he is aware of this, and he blames you, privately, for existing with such consistency.

And he also wants more of this. So much more.

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Scenario C (in a dream)

It comes up naturally somehow.

“Wait,” you say. “When you said you were always watching—you meant literally, right?”

“Yes.”

“Like. Everything.”

A long pause follows.

“Phainon.”

“Yes.”

“Did you see me naked?”

The silence that follows is the loudest he has ever been.

“No,” he says, eventually. “I mean—once or twice it almost—I looked away. Your emotions at certain hours are very—it’s difficult not to notice when something shifts strongly through the connection and I—“

“Phainon.”

“…Yes.”

“Once or twice.”

“I am,” he says, with as much dignity as the situation allows, “extraordinarily disciplined.”

You decide, for now, not to pursue this. Instead you say: “Alright. Let’s just not do that again. Unless I say so.”

He has absolutely already thought about the last part. He has no idea what to do with it. He finds this deeply inconvenient. (And he wishes you would say so)

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Scenario D:

You are lying in the dream wheat fields, facing each other. He has admitted to having seen you naked. Just like that. But he can barely look you in the eye, his ears getting redder the longer you talk.

You wonder what made him watch you in the first place. You think about what might have been different late at night when you had taken that shower. You had felt more raw. Longing for touch more than usual.

“Can you feel it”, you ask, “when I yearn for something?”

He considers this longer than necessary.

“Yes,” he says finally, blushing slightly. “I think so. It feels similar to…” He pauses. “It feels like what I experience when I think about holding you.” He says it evenly. As if this is just information. “And when I think about more than holding you,” he adds, also evenly, “it feels like that too.”

You open your mouth. Close it. Open it again. “Phainon, you can’t just—”

“I know.”

“That’s not how humans—”

“I know.”

“You can’t just say it like that.”

“I am aware,” he says, and his voice has the quality of someone who said it exactly like that on purpose and has no regrets whatsoever. “I have now said it.” He exhales softly. “We can both think about it.”

You both think about it.

The silence between you is not nothing. Neither of you says anything else for a while.

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On part 4 (Stirring):

Part of me could not do this. It’s already 17k words. There are Things that must happen first. The other part of me absolutely had a version where reader showers at some point during the evening and Phainon tries very hard to be composed and nonchalant and is not. Even slightly.

I also wanted reader to tease him about it. I had very specific thoughts…

And then later, lying in the dark with his hand on your stomach and your warmth against him, something about it has him less careful than he means to be.

“I couldn’t stop thinking about how you would feel,” Phainon says into your neck, because he is committed to saying true things tonight, and his hands get more urgent…

Well. Part of why Part 4 escalates emotionally the way it does is because they are both already very aware of each other physically by that point. They’re just trying very hard to remain somewhat sane about it.

Adding something like this into the actual chapter probably would have changed the emotional pacing too much (and somehow made the chapter even longer 😭), but I do think both of them had moments where composure was hanging on by a thread. Soo… it would have ended quite differently than it currently does if I leaned more into this kind of energy… :D

The reasonable writer brain won. With great difficulty. Largely by reminding myself that pacing exists. But I see it. I know exactly where it lives. I am simply being responsible. For now.

And now I’m sitting here wondering whether I should elaborate on some of the thoughts I had while writing certain parts of the series... :D

Thanks again! :)

Lily 💙