Work Text:
“Haitham…” Kaveh sighs, holding up his index finger to show the clean cut he’d created with the kitchen knife in his other hand. Alhaitham recognizes the metallic scent well, so he didn’t even need to turn his head to know that his roommate had hurt himself again.
“I told you to leave the chopping to me,” Alhaitham says, an exasperated tone hanging from his voice. Blood drips down. “But you never listen, do you?”
Kaveh watches the exact moment crimson red replaces the deep green of his eyes as Alhaitham walks over and catches the droplet with his tongue, wrapping his lips around the cut, careful not to graze the skin with his fangs. It might even be considerate.
He huffs, pink dusting his cheeks as that sly tongue moves around his finger, sucking eagerly. “Don’t act as if you don’t enjoy licking up my blood.”
Everyone starts somewhere — that’s the principle of learning. Kaveh graduated with honors and stayed at the top of his class for the entire academic period, but somehow seems to mess up every attempt at cooking dinner. Not everyone can be good at everything, Kaveh would say, then Alhaitham would roll his eyes, call him a parasite for sleeping under his roof without paying rent or doing any sort of housework at all, but end it with a smile.
(They both know they are incapable of ever walking away from each other’s lives.)
Kaveh, for one, is essential to Alhaitham’s livelihood, and Kaveh is in too deep to rip himself away from him at this point.
“I don’t enjoy seeing you hurt,” Alhaitham says as-a-matter-of-factly. It’d be a kind and flattering thing to say if it were anyone else, but Kaveh only rolls his eyes because this was Alhaitham— stupid, handsome—
“You hurt me all the time.” Kaveh rolls his eyes.
“You love it when I dig my fangs into you,” Alhaitham deadpans. Kaveh watches as green returns to his eyes and the cut on his hand healed thanks to whatever healing reagent vampires are granted. “Also, it’s not all the time. I don’t quite want you to die yet.”
“Ugh, you—!”
Even after years of living together, it feels as if Kaveh hasn’t learned his lesson that arguing with Alhaitham is ultimately pointless, because Alhaitham always has a smartass thing to say and aims to drive Kaveh’s emotions to irrationality so that he would stumble over his words and fail to counter with whatever he had to say.
(The thing is, it always works, and he’s always right in some way.)
They do nothing but stare into each other until Alhaitham sniffs something in the air and hums. “By the way, the meat’s burnt.”
*
Some days, it’s easier — days where they don’t have to argue for once.
“You smell good,” Alhaitham mumbles into the crook of his neck, and Kaveh knows he isn’t talking about his new expensive perfume (that he bought with Alhaitham’s money, no doubt), much to his chagrin.
Rather, that’s usually how Alhaitham prefaces the next thing he does, and this, too, is a form of reimbursement:
Kaveh tilts his head to show off the pale expanse of his neck, up to his Adam’s apple and the golden strands that lay messily on the pillow. Alhaitham, in turn, eagerly leans closer until his lips are on Kaveh’s skin, so soft as if tempting him to sink his fangs already into the veins that linger below. Instead, he parts his lips to lick up a patch of skin just under his jawline, not missing the way Kaveh attempts to suppress the whimper that escapes him, and Alhaitham doesn’t give him a chance to say more than a sigh of his name as sharp fangs pierce the flesh.
It only stings for a moment before melting into numbness, an addicting kind of feeling that Kaveh can’t get enough of, though intended to soothe and lull a vampire’s prey into yielding, he thinks this must be what bliss feels like.
He trusts him, treading his fingers through gray strands as Alhaitham traps him under his own body, licking up every drop of blood that spills down to his collarbone, not letting crimson ruin his stainless white robes or the sheets.
When Alhaitham pulls away, the bed shifts as he holds himself up on one arm, eyes dark red with no short of hunger swimming in them. “You look good like this, Kaveh,” he murmurs in a low timbre, brushing the other’s hair away from his face. “So pretty.”
He must look like a mess — blond locks splayed messily, face flushed, chest heaving in bated breath, eyes unfocused — it takes him a few seconds to come back to reality, blinking back into focus with a soft sound that stirs something raw, almost carnal in Alhaitham.
“Are you asking for seconds? A rather poor attempt at that.”
“Why would you ever suspect my praise as ingenuine?”
“Because they always are.”
“You’re right,” Alhaitham smirks, a hand stroking Kaveh’s cheek. “Because you’re always the prettiest.”
*
Some days, Alhaitham’s cravings come at random periods.
“I wish I was a vampire,” Kaveh says out of the blue, one day, crumpled clothes and discarded pages of a sketchbook as Alhaitham pins him down on their couch.
“I can only wonder what makes you say that.”
“Well, maybe I’ll stop being your juice box.” When Alhaitham responds with nothing but a hard, unreadable stare, Kaveh swallows and averts his eyes with a small smile. “Then again, I can’t imagine you’ll enjoy anyone else’s blood as much as mine.”
“You love to hear yourself talk,” Alhaitham marvels, tipping the other’s chin up between his fingers.
“Am I wrong?” Kaveh asks, a quiet whisper. “Tell me I’m wrong, Haitham.”
‘Lie to me,’ hangs off his tongue. Alhaitham disregards it.
“You aren’t,” he mutters. “That’s exactly why.”
‘I need you to myself,’ goes unsaid.
Kaveh sighs. “I think I love you,” he says, his tone light and whimsical, laced with laughter. It fades into white noise in Alhaitham’s ears. Because he cannot return it—much less to a mortal— ‘til death do us part being nothing more than pretty words in fictional novels Kaveh is fond of.
Kaveh is idealistic; romantic, a foil to Alhaitham’s rationality. He will always pine after the beauty of yearning, all warm and soft like sunlight through the blinds of a window, or flowers dancing with the wind in a cozy little meadow. Alhaitham likens himself more to a cold, starless night, gazing into the dark, endless void that seems to stretch on forever into nothingness.
(Kaveh gives him more than enough light in his sky. It’s why he cannot return his feelings.)
For now, this is enough. He’s okay with this back-and-forth between them, dancing around a word that is foreign and ever so distant from him, but Kaveh showers him with it like it’s all he was ever meant for.
(He hopes Kaveh won’t mind it as he leans down and bites hard again, piercing skin and giving way to a hot rush of red. It tastes as sweet as the first time.)