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The feeling hits him on a warm summer morning, when the grounds are quiet and the people are long gone. The sky overhead is a vibrant blue, dotted here and there with wisps of cottony clouds that drift aimlessly across the horizon like languid sheep upon a periwinkle field.
The grass beneath him is soft and long, a cool green that reminds him of the feather Kaveh keeps tucked behind his ear. The oaken trunk at his back is hard and sturdy, the roots he sits beside thick and strong.
He holds a small volume in one hand, the cover cracked open to some page that he’d longed to return to just hours before. Now, however, he finds that the long, spiraling analysis of a dead language he should be studying is terribly, inconveniently, dreadfully dull in comparison to… whatever it is that Kaveh is doing.
He watches through narrowed eyes as the blonde circles a seemingly ordinary pile of stones, his brow furrowed and his lips twisted to the side in concentration as he stares and stares and then adjusts one stone and then another in a seemingly erratic fashion.
He watches and he watches and he can’t help but laugh when the stones topple over completely and Kaveh shouts wordlessly with frustration.
“Oh, what are you laughing at, you dick?” Kaveh demands, glancing over at him with a scowl. “Can’t you see I’m struggling ? If you had any basic human decency, you’d come over and help, but nooo! You’re just going to sit over there and laugh at me!”
“You didn’t ask me to help,” he says, returning his gaze pointedly towards the volume in his hands. “Perhaps if you did, I would, but that would require you to say please and we all know that’s not a word in your vocabulary.”
“Ex cuse me?” Kaveh cries, throwing his hands towards the sky in frustration. “Since when-?! Oh, I cannot with you. You are insufferable .”
“As you’ve said a thousand times,” he says, staring at the paragraphs without truly seeing them. “What are you trying to do, anyways? You’ve been shuffling those rocks around for nearly two hours.”
“I was trying to do a still life,” Kaveh says stiffly. “I can’t get them right, however.”
“They looked fine to me,” he says.
“That’s because you are not an artist,” Kaveh replies, sighing heavily. “Alright, now come here and help me. Please. ”
He smiles, setting the book aside at last as he gets to his feet. Kaveh’s hands are on his hips as he eyes him dangerously, his bright eyes glittering like rubies in the summer shine, his hair the color of warm wheat and pinned back loosely by haphazardly placed clips. He looks frazzled, as always, and yet somehow purposefully put together in a way that he himself could never manage.
Kaveh has always been like that, the epitome of controlled, unfaltering chaos, an untameable storm that returns to Al-Haitham’s coast time and time again. He cannot seem to rid himself of his senior, no matter how far he runs or how stealthily he hides or how hard he bites.
“How do you want them?” he asks, crouching down beside the pile of smooth stones.
Kaveh rapidly fires off a series of directions, hands flying from his hips to his fold across his chest to tug at his jacket to, at last, settle upon his own hands with a groan.
“Oh, you’re not doing it right,” Kaveh complains, guiding him by the wrist. “Didn’t I tell you to do it like this?”
And then that’s all there is, that feeling of Kaveh’s skin against his own, calloused and warm and electric and so very addicting.
The small smile on his face has not faltered, has not wavered, has not fallen even as Kaveh continues to complain, for the sudden feeling in his chest holds him tightly hostage.
It’s like a sharp knife has been pressed against his heart, not hard enough to make him bleed, but not light enough to let him breathe. He is breathless, floating, untethered to the world as the weight of Kaveh , with ruby red eyes and blonde wheat-like hair and calloused, warm hands, settles against him in full.
The rocks are adjusted accordingly.
Kaveh releases him with a hmph.
He stands and returns to the tree where he will watch his senior toil away for hours more as Kaveh sketches and sketches and sketches.
The feeling in his chest, though now feather-light, has not faded.
-
The sound of pages turning and soft murmurs fills the air like a gentle song, a quiet backdrop to the silence of their small corner.
He watches Kaveh out of the corner of his eye as his senior twitches in his sleep, golden brow furrowing as he chases some illusionary, elusive project that is always, always, always just out of reach.
I can taste it, Al-Haitham , Kaveh has whispered to him when late afternoon bleeds into early night and they are still, still, still in the library. It’s there, it’s waiting for me, I can feel it, see it, taste it, but I cannot touch it. Not yet, not yet, but soon.
And he will inevitably nod, amused at the words, and turn his attention back towards whatever it is he is doing, be it the analysis of a book or of a scroll or the writing of an essay on dead, ancient things.
Kaveh’s lips purse almost imperceptibly, his artist’s hands twitching around something that only he can see. He watches, entranced, as his senior shifts in his sleep and wonders what it is that he chases so desperately after.
He does not understand the way that Kaveh works in a fundamental sense. Art has never been his forte and he has no desire to understand it, for what good would something so tricky and flimsy ever do him? He has no time to try to understand it either. Smart he may be, but even he can feel the wear and tear of the absolute weight that comes with being a student of the Akademiya.
It is books and it is essays and it is exams and it is research and it is Kaveh, nothing else.
He shuts the book, his gaze straying momentarily towards the window.
The sun is setting, the moon is rising, and the clouds are drifting aimlessly across the horizon like languid sheep upon a periwinkle field. They have been here for hours and could be here for many more yet, though he knows he should return to his dorm and at least try to sleep tonight.
Though he has never been one for letting inconsequential things eat away at him, even he can feel the wear and tear of the absolute weight that comes with being a student of the Akademiya.
When he turns his attention back towards his senior, he finds ruby red eyes boring into his own blue-green-orange ones.
There are dark bags under Kaveh’s knowing eyes, ones that in some ways are worse than even his own because at least there will always be a right answer when it comes to the absolute, the knowable, the tangible.
For artists like Kaveh, there is never going to be a correct choice, a right decision, a set-in-stone path for him to take. He walks upon a rickety, fidgety, deteriorating bridge that swings haphazardly over the bottomless abyss of failure.
If the tethers snap, there will be nothing at all to save him.
And Kaveh knows this. It’s why he chases after illusionary, elusive dreams with such a hungry, desperate passion.
It’s why he spends hours sorting through rocks and redoing seemingly beautiful sketches to ensure that they are perfect .
It’s why he’s looking at him like he knows, knows, knows that he, too, is faltering.
“You look like shit,” Kaveh says, not bothering to sit up from where he’s half sprawled across the table they’ve wordlessly claimed as their own forevermore.
“So do you,” he says with a scoff, stretching slowly. He’s only a little unnerved by the too loud, too many cracks and pops and snaps his bones give as he twists.
Kaveh chuckles and the feeling that presses against his heart sharpens into that of a well-placed razor. “We should get out of here before they kick us out,” his senior says, at last straightening with a groan.
“They wouldn’t kick us out.”
“They might , you never know.”
“Yes I do.”
“Are you really about to pick a fight with me? Respect your seniors!”
“Respect and blind faith do not come hand in hand,” he says, beginning to slowly gather up his papers and books and pens. “Just because you’re a year older than me doesn’t mean I should trust every word you say without a second thought, especially when you have no evidence to back it up.”
“Ha, evidence?! Well, listen here, you-!”
“You two,” one of the librarians suddenly hisses, her head poking out from around the corner of an impossibly tall bookcase. “Out! Your peers are trying to study, have you no shame?”
He scowls and Kaveh smirks.
“There’s my evidence,” Kaveh says smugly, taking the supplies from him and quickly stuffing them inside the deep, blue-green bag that rests at his side. He rolls his eyes as his senior then grabs a hold of this bag, slinging it over his shoulder with an exaggerated grunt.
“You don’t have to carry that,” he says flatly. “I can do it myself.”
“ Gods, what do you have in this thing?” Kaveh demands, wincing as he starts to stumble towards the exit. “It probably weighs more than me…”
“It does not,” he says, chasing after his senior. “Don’t be dramatic.”
“Who says I’m being dramatic?! Ugh, no wonder you’re getting so muscled. This damn bag…”
The sound of Kaveh’s voice, loud and proud and indescribably soothing against the largeness of the empty halls, makes the razor press deeper, hard enough to, at last, draw the smallest drop of blood.
He wonders at it for a moment, twisting and turning and spinning the strangeness in his chest over and over again in the confines of his mind.
He’s felt rage, he’s felt smug, he’s felt proud, he’s felt sad, but this is new. This is strange. It feels like happiness, but it also feels like anxiety, faint and fluttery and finicky, impossible to taste and touch and see. He can certainly feel it, though- it makes his chest ache with something unknowable, something painful.
He shakes himself, shoving the feeling aside as they near his room.
He takes his bag, opens the door.
He turns and waves Kaveh away, with a promised see you soon.
He’s offered a grim smile in return, utterly out of place on his friend’s normally sunny face.
He ignores the tightening of the feeling, the way it bleeds into something that is concerned, worried, fearful as he watches Kaveh disappear down the hallway.
After a moment, he closes the door.
The feeling, hardly featherlight, has yet to fade.
-
“I have it!”
The words spring from Kaveh’s mouth, infinitely loud in the stillness of his room.
He sighs and rolls onto his side, peering down at the almost feral grin he’s being given as Kaveh all but shoves his sketchbook into his face.
“Look!” he cries, tap, tap, tapping the paper enthusiastically.“Gods, I’ve done it!”
He scowls and shoves Kaveh’s hands away, peering at the mess of charcoal lines and leaden twirls that decorate the parchment. “What is it?” he demands, tipping the book this way and that. “It looks like nonsense to me.”
“Hmph!” Kaveh scowls, yanking his book back. He cradles the sketch against his chest like one might a newborn baby, rocking it slowly back and forth. “It’s a palace!”
“A palace?” he asks skeptically. “ That? ”
“You couldn’t tell?!” Kaveh asks, jerking back. “I knew you were blind, Al-Haitham, but I didn’t know you were that blind! Here, come here, I’ll explain it to you since you’re utterly hopeless when it comes to the fine arts…”
Kaveh helps himself to a spot beside him on the bed, long legs folding over each other neatly as he begins to ramble on and on and on about his beautiful, perfect, utterly exquisite and amazing palace, the likes of which no one has ever seen before.
He listens, as he always does, until Kaveh’s words at last dribble out into a contemplative hum.
“That’s going to cost a lot of money to make,” Al-Haitham says. “And who would even want a palace anyhow?”
“Someone will,” Kaveh swears. “Some day, someone’s going to commission me and then I’ll build it and it will be gorgeous. ”
“And until then?”
“I’ll keep working on it,” he says simply, closing the book with a firm snap. “Now, move over, I’ve got a nap to take. Arting is hard.”
“Nap in your own bed,” he says, inching over so that Kaveh can properly sprawl out on his sheets. “I’m trying to read.”
“You’re always reading,” Kaveh complains. “Maybe you should take a nap, too. It might make you less of an asshole.”
“Get out of my bed,” he says, looking down at his senior disdainfully. He lifts his book with a weary sigh as Kaveh stretches, arms knocking into him carelessly.
Kaveh catches him by the wrist and tugs him down, down, down against the bed and his body with a grin. The feeling rears its head at the contact, tearing his aloofness in two.
He swallows, throat dry.
“Those bags under your eyes are going to be as dark as mine soon!” Kaveh says all too loudly in his ear. “As your senior, it’s my duty to ensure that you get a proper amount of rest before finals.”
“You just want an excuse to lay in my bed because yours is covered in eraser shavings,” he accuses, twisting until he’s at least somewhat comfortable. It’s hard, considering he can’t breathe being this close to Kaveh.
“I do not,” Kaveh says, insulted. “How dare you!”
“Hm. Sure.”
“Whatever. Go to sleep. You’re cuter when your mouth is closed.”
He opens his mouth to shoot something back, but the words trip over themselves and all that comes out is a quiet ah.
Kaveh closes his eyes, face tilted back towards the ceiling with his arms folded lazily behind his head. In minutes, he’s out cold, utterly still in sleep in a way that he has not been for months.
He looks away, heart pounding, and stares at the stack of books on his desk. It would be easier to grab one and attempt to finish his work, since he’s hardly tired and he doesn’t have time to waste, but…
He shakes away the thought. It’s irrational to rest when he’s not tired. What purpose would it serve other than to satisfy the unknowable ache in his chest? There are things to do and read and write and, really, what has gotten into him as of late?
He prepares to sit up, arms bracing, when Kaveh kicks him roughly.
“Don’t even think about it,” he says, eyes still closed. “The books will be there in a few hours. It’s not like they’ve got legs to run away on.”
“I-”
“No I’s , but’s , or well’s ! Take a damn nap, you insufferable lunatic! If you don’t, I’m telling your grandma.”
“You don’t even know her.”
“I could find her, I’m sure.”
“I highly doubt that. You’re hopeless when it comes to finding things. You almost had a panic attack when you thought you lost your pen, only to find it was tucked behind your ear all along.”
“That was different. I was tired.”
“You’re always tired.”
“That’s because you won’t let me nap with your relentless yapping! Now, lay down and be quiet!”
He rolls his eyes, but lays down once more, if only because he knows there is no way he’s going to be getting any studying or work done if Kaveh throws a fit. Kaveh is stupidly stubborn sometimes, utterly immune to any attempt at reason when he gets himself into a mood like this.
It’s always the strange things that set him off, too. Nap with me, talk to me, let me carry this for you, come have dinner with me. Only these things, so strangely inconsequential, are the things that Kaveh digs his heels in deep on. Even when they’re arguing, there’s always a line with which he at last gives in and will not cross, but for these… The line is blown away. It does not exist. If Kaveh has to pick him up and literally carry him towards the cafeteria or towards a bed to get his way, he will.
It’s insufferable. It annoys him to no end.
It makes the feeling in his chest all the more hungry.
-
The news reaches him on a quick, sharp wind in the form of a hastily written letter.
They’re under a tree, as they sometimes are, and there is no place he would rather be-
Until he reads the letter.
He stares uncomprehendingly at the slanted, shaken script as the seconds turn into minutes. At his side, Kaveh is blissfully unaware of the sudden tremors wracking his body into ruin, the way his fingers nearly tear at the frail paper as the words sink into his skin.
For all his life, it’s always been just him and her. His parents died when he was young- he can hardly remember their faces nor their voices nor the way they held him tightly as they read to him at night. For all his life, it’s always been just him and her.
Quiet mornings spent pouring over emerald covered tomes, late afternoons spent observing the slow passing of seasons, early nights spent scouting the stars-
For all his life, it’s always been just him and her.
He inhales a heavy, ragged breath as the letter falls out of his hand, fluttering towards the ground. Beside him, Kaveh stirs at last, ruby red eyes cracking open as he slowly swivels his head towards him.
“What is it?” Kaveh demands immediately, the midmorning drowsiness dripping off of him in seconds. “What’s happened?”
Without waiting for a reply, he snatches the letter up and scans the contents, brow furrowing, furrowing, furrowing as he takes it in and knows.
He cannot say anything. He cannot stop him. He does not want to stop him. What is there to stop?
She’s dead and he’s alone. She died alone. He should have been there and he was not and yet if he had been home, she would have been disappointed.
She’d always wanted this for him- this privilege, this chance, this life. She’d signed him up for the courses, she’d sent him here, away, away, away from home so that he could fly free.
And now she is gone.
She’d died alone, in their home, with nothing but the small library they’d cherished so very deeply for company.
He inhales another heavy, ragged breath.
His eyes are burning, but no tears fall. His throat is aching, but no sound comes out.
He is hopelessly, painfully still.
Kaveh sets the letter down carefully.
Slowly, slowly, slowly, a white-sleeved arm settles around his shoulders and pulls him close.
“It’s going to be okay,” Kaveh says, as though his words are an indisputable fact and not a hopeful wish. “I’m here.”
He closes his eyes, letting his head fall into his hands as the words settle, settle, settle like heavy iron weights upon his soul. Kaveh’s arm draws him closer as the tears, at last, roll silently down his cheeks.
For all his life, it’s always been just him and her. There’s never been anyone else. He hadn’t ever needed anyone else. She had been enough, she’d been all he had, his only family after an accident he couldn’t remember had snatched his parents away from him in broad daylight.
“I’m here,” Kaveh repeats, a whispered, feverish mantra against his ear as he grits his teeth and bears through the agony tearing his life into two. “I’m here.”
What had he last said to her? He couldn’t remember. How long had it been since he’d last seen her? Far too long. What did he do now?
Arrange… her funeral?
Another ragged, heavy breath tears itself free from his lungs and Kaveh is still whispering, still counseling, still sitting by his side with his arm around his shoulders and his breath fanning against his ear.
It’s always been just him and her, just him and her, just him and her. Without her, he has no one left. There is only him and an empty house and a small library filled with emerald spines and charts of glittering stars.
There is only him and the memory of her, which will one day fade just like his parent’s.
Gods. What does he do now? What does he do?
He swallows down the bubble of irrationality that is clawing its way up his throat, that is begging him to break and shatter and fade.
He swallows it down, deep down.
He needs to arrange the funeral. He needs to settle things with the house and with her things. He needs to pull himself together and move forward because that is the only path that he can take.
He needs to see the body.
He needs to say goodbye.
He opens his eyes.
“I need to go,” he says, voice firm and flat and all too normal.
“Al-Haitham,” Kaveh says in warning, arm tightening around him.
“I need to arrange the funeral.”
“Al-Haitham,” Kaveh protests, staring at him with wide, wide eyes.
“I need to settle things with the house and with her things,” he says, shrugging off Kaveh’s heavy arm.
“ Al-Haitham ,” Kaveh pleads, reaching for him.
Kaveh’s gloved hands catch the edge of his uniform, anchoring him to the spot. He needs to go, he knows. He needs to leave and settle things, he needs-
“I need to see her,” he chokes out.
Kaveh shakes his head slightly, his pale lips a thin, drawn line. “You’re not alone, Al-Haitham. I’m here. I’m here and I can go with you, I can help you-”
“No,” he rasps, even as he wishes, wishes, wishes he could say yes. “Not for this.”
This, these things- he must do them alone. He needs to do them alone. They must be done alone.
“I’m here, Al-Haitham,” Kaveh says, releasing him after a long, painful moment. Perhaps he can sense it, the way that he is cracking, shattering, breaking. Perhaps he can sense it, the way he needs to do so alone, far, far away from anything and everything, including Kaveh. “I’ll always be here, if you need me.”
He nods, stumbling backwards a step. He needs to go, he cannot stay, he does not want to go because-
Because then he’ll see her and he’ll know she’s truly, most definitely gone. She will be dead in every sense of the word, her body lined up pale and sickly before him, green eyes closed and gray hair combed and hands crossed over her chest.
She will become yet another memory, a piece of then and not now.
“I’m here, Al-Haitham,” Kaveh murmurs, looking up at him pleadingly. “Please, find me if you need me.”
He inhales again, the breath ragged and heavy.
“I will,” he says, firmly and flatly and all too normally. “I will.”
And Kaveh, for once, does not challenge him.
-
He takes only a week off before he returns to the Akademiya, funeral arranged, things sorted, house settled, and body seen. Perhaps he should have taken more time off, but what good would that have done? He had things to do and the gaping wound in his chest was not going to heal, not anytime soon.
He went through the motions of life in a robotic, detached way. Lectures attended, essays written, dead languages analyzed and added to his growing collection of linguistics… This is the way his days went, for days upon weeks upon months.
Oh, and there was Kaveh.
Kaveh with bright smiles and dark circles and ruby red eyes that sparkled in the morning light.
Kaveh who, somehow, made him realize that he was not quite as alone as he had first thought when his whole world had almost come crashing down with but a simple written letter.
There were lectures and essays and analyses and a growing collection of linguistics, but there were also moments shared beneath the great oak, moments shared within the confines of the quiet library, moments shared atop his bed and at Lambad’s and in the halls between classes.
And he was thankful for that. The normalcy. The unfaltering loyalty, even when it was coupled with pointless bickering and complaining and whining. He was thankful for him, for being there, for sitting there, for shoving meaningless scribbles in his face when he was trying to read.
He was thankful, thankful, thankful-
And then Kaveh was gone.
Really, they were fools to agree to the project- to think that it would work out, despite their camaraderie. The Akademiya has a way of breaking people, of pitting even the closest of colleagues against each other. It’s poisonous ego seeps into the skin of all those that attend, turning house against house and friend against friend.
It whispers in their ear that there is only one right way, one right choice, only one right outcome-
And it breaks them.
It shatters them.
It turns their spines to stone and their wills to steel.
It turns compromise and forgiveness to ash and it breaks them.
Kaveh’s leaving is the product of too many sleepless nights, too many pointless fights. His leaving is the product of the Akademiya’s poisonous ego, paired with their own natural stubbornness.
His leaving is the product of one misplaced phrase.
And then Kaveh is gone.
-
He graduates, eventually.
He moves into the house, a product and living reminder of then , and moves all of the books and charts and things that he had kept of her into it, too.
It’s not the same. He doesn’t expect it to be the same, but at least the books are there and they’re close and now he can read them whenever he wants to because he is free of the Akademiya’s binding chains for the most part.
As Scribe, there is very little for him to actually do. He’s free and paid well and he can keep an eye on things without being bothered too much.
It’s nice.
It’s lonely.
It’s fine.
The days turn into months and slowly those months turn into years. He settles into the routine of going to work and going home and reading and exploring and doing whatever the hell he wants without much consequence and it is nice. It is lonely. It is fine.
And then they meet again on a warm summer morning.
He finds him sitting on the cracked stone steps before a bar, ruby red eyes staring at nothing in particular as the sun slowly drifts overhead. There’s a bottle in his hands, half empty and verdant green, and-
Kaveh looks older. More haggard. Tired, in every sense of the word.
He pauses before his senior, waiting for… a reaction. A shout. A smile, a sneer, a laugh, anything at all but the empty-eyed stare he receives in return.
It’s like Kaveh is looking right through him.
“You,” his senior says at last, voice hoarse and low and but a whisper.
“Me,” he says, looking down at the hollow husk of a once vibrant, colorful man.
Kaveh’s eyes slowly drift away from him and towards the horizon, his too pale face awash with golden light. The highlight makes the panes of his face all the more sharper, all the more crueler, all the more sickly.
Something in his chest twists painfully as he carefully sits beside his former friend.
“I did it,” Kaveh says suddenly, his bitter laugh a vicious bark. He’s still staring at the sky, the birdsong overhead so vividly beautiful in contrast to the grating sound of his broken voice. “I built it, Al-Haitham. Somebody wanted a palace.”
He nods silently. He knows this. How could anyone not? It’s all that the city has been talking about- the great palace of Alcazarzaray, the finest the world has ever seen built by the best Kshahrewar Architect the Akademiya has ever produced.
The Dendro Archon herself seems to be singing his senior’s praises.
“It’s taken everything from me,” Kaveh whispered, slowly turning. His eyes are sunken, his lips chapped, and this is not Kaveh. This is not the man he remembers so vividly in his memories.
This is a drifting ghost, sucked dry of all that is light and lovely.
“I have nothing left , Al-Haitham,” Kaveh continues, a pained, tired smile splitting across his face. “No inspiration, no passion, no mora- I’m broke. I got evicted today, did you know that? You were right, the palace did cost a lot. It cost everything. I have nothing left.”
He sits, still as stone, and listens through ringing ears as Kaveh suddenly sobs, still smiling, still wide-eyed, still ghostly in that broken, shattered way.
His heart is bleeding out onto the stones beneath him.
They might have parted ways on the worst of terms, but he never, never, never would have wanted this for his friend.
Never.
“I don’t know what to do,” Kaveh continues, breathless. “I have nothing left. I have nowhere to go. I-”
He cuts himself short with an audible swallow and raises the bottle to his lips. He takes a swig, a long, long drink that empties the bottle just a little bit more.
He watches through cool, detached numbness as he reaches over to grab Kaveh’s arm and tear the bottle from his lips.
He says on a cool, clipped tongue, “Stay with me.”
Kaveh drops the bottle.
It shatters upon the stones, the red liquid bleeding into the cracks of the pavement.
“What?” Kaveh asks, stealing a small sad glance at his lost wine before he turns his wide-eyed stare back towards him.
“Stay with me,” he repeats. “It’s logical. The house was built for two, after all, and you need a place to stay. I’m not there half of the time anyways.”
Kaveh is still staring, staring, staring at him in disbelief. He doesn’t blame him.
How long has it been since they last saw each other? Too long.
What were the last things they’d said to each other? Nothing kind.
But that was then and this is now.
The past can be reflected upon, but at the end of the day it is simply the past. It cannot be changed. It cannot be altered.
The future, however, can still be forged.
“Stay with me,” he says again.
And Kaveh blinks.
“Okay,” he says and that is that.
-
“Al-Haitham, what the fuck is this decor? It’s positively hideous. Here, let me…”
It’s early mornings spent listening to his voice, loud and boisterous and self-assured.
“You! Now, I know for a fact that you were not about to steal my keys…”
It’s having someone there to see him to the door and welcome him home at the end of dark days.
“Al-Haitham, come have a drink with me! Yes, I know this is technically your wine, but I carried it here so therefore I feel like I’m entitled to a glass…”
It’s having someone to share a drink with on hot afternoons when the sun is blazing down upon them and setting his golden hair a glow.
“Move over! C’mon there’s room for two in this bed. Why aren’t I sleeping in my own? Well… it’s covered in eraser shavings. Oh, don’t laugh at me, you bastard! It’s not funny…”
It’s a warm body pressed against his own in the dead of night.
“Is this alright? We don’t have to-”
It’s red-hot lips upon his own and warm, calloused hands on his skin as whispered words fan against his ear, dragging him down, down, down into the throes of wanting and loving and having.
There are trips and there are meetings and there are nights spent together with warm lips on his and there is Kaveh, just Kaveh, there and never leaving.
He’s sitting in his seat beside the window, one leg crossed and a book in hand and the song of quiet bird song ringing in his ears when Kaveh pokes his head in, eyes narrowed suspiciously.
“What?” he asks flatly, looking up slowly.
Kaveh squints at him harder. He stares back unflinchingly.
“You…” Kaveh says slowly, contemplatively, too smoothly to be hesitantly.
“Me,” he says, raising a brow.
“Is this really you?” Kaveh asks, lifting up a small picture frame. He taps the glass, pointing at the small, round-faced child in the photo. “Gods, what happened? You were so cute!”
Al-Haitham closes the book with a snap.
Kaveh bolts.
And there is that.
-
“You know, I think I love you,” Kaveh says on a cool summer night.
They’re lying on the rooftop, a bottle laying unopened between them as they stare up at the inky blue sky. The tiny white stars are shining brightly tonight and there’s nowhere else he’d rather be. The breeze is cool, the sky is beautiful, and the silence is pleasant against the shell of his ears.
He turns his head slowly, studying his roommate’s profile as the feeling in his chest writhes.
“I know we fight a lot,” his roommate continues, fiddling with a clip in his hair, “and sometimes I honestly cannot stand you, but you’re always there for me. Sure, you might act like a dickhead sometimes, but even if I manage to royally piss you off, you still carry me home from Lambad’s. You still tell me my sketches are fine even when they’re not. You still let me stay here after I drink all the wine and get charcoal on the sheets.
“I know whatever we have is just for relief,” Kaveh continues, perfectly content to bask in the silence. “The kissing, the sex, the… Everything. I know you don’t mean it in that way and I understand if you want to stop now, but I just wanted to throw it out there.
“I love you, Al-Haitham.”
He blinks, still staring, still watching, still studying. Kaveh turns his head as though he senses his gaze, a small, sad smile tugging at the corner of his chapped lips as red meets green-blue-orange.
“Kaveh,” he says, reaching for him.
Kaveh lets him, eyes half opened and glittering in the dark.
“Kaveh,” he repeats, fighting past the tightness in his throat and in his lungs and in his heart as the knife sinks in and is then pulled out. “Kaveh, I’ve loved you for years.”
His roommate blinks. “Oh,” he says, a whispered word that is all too loud in the silence.
And then he reaches over and pulls Kaveh close, the bottle forgotten as he crushes his lips against his senior’s, inhaling the scent of grapes and flowers and wood and Kaveh as if his life depends on it.
-
It’s trips and meetings and analyses and research.
It’s hands in his, lips on his, a body pressed against his own in the dead of night.
It’s a shared meal, a knowing look, a pointless argument that is forgotten within minutes.
It’s here and now and then and there and-
It’s simple. It’s hard. It’s nice. It’s a familiar face and a polar opposite.
It’s an outspoken opinion and a hastily scrawled, angry note upon a message board.
It’s a night at Lambad’s, a night not so alone.
It’s him and Kaveh, green-blue-orange and ruby red gold, black and white and darkened gray.
It’s his dearest friend, a splash of color against the monotones of life.
It’s his, hopefully soon to be, husband.
It’s Kaveh, Kaveh, Kaveh .