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Alhaitham isn’t sure when he realized that this is what he’s always been waiting for.
Maybe it was when Kaveh spit his coffee out at him while laughing one afternoon as he informed Kaveh of his newfound need for reading glasses; or the way they would both rise a little more slowly, a little less gracefully, from their bed in the morning with backs aching and bones creaking; or perhaps it was on the quiet, tender nights in the comfort of their dimly lit bedroom when they would talk about all the new trouble-making youths at the Akademiya, reminiscing on their younger days.
This easy passing of days, months, and years into a peaceful life, as instinctive and helplessly natural as falling in love with Kaveh had been.
“…Thirty, thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three,” Alhaitham blinks, pausing for a moment. “I believe that’s a new record.”
“What!” Kaveh exclaims, immediately tensing. He quickly swivels around to face Alhaitham, and Alhaitham leans back further against their bed’s headboard to avoid getting smacked in the chin by the man laying on his chest. Unfortunately, he is hit with a mouthful of Kaveh’s hair instead. “Thirty-three gray hairs? Really?”
Alhaitham raises an eyebrow at him and languidly moves his fingers away from where they had been softly weaving through Kaveh’s scalp, “My eyesight may be gradually failing me, but I am quite confident I can still count correctly.”
Pouting, Kaveh melts back into Alhaitham’s embrace, his head flopping back against the plush chest as Alhaitham intuitively pats a gentle hand against Kaveh’s hair, smoothing down the blonde locks interspersed with graying strands. They fall into each other’s holds like old puzzle pieces, finding themselves over and over again, even in the hushed solace of their own home.
“That is a new record,” Kaveh admits in a muffled voice.
“Hm. There goes that lovely shade of blonde from our youth.”
Kaveh scoffs, “Oh, that’s rich coming from someone whose hair has been graying since our teenage years.”
“This is my natural color.”
“Exactly.”
“Do you dislike how I naturally look? Shall I change my hair color for you?” Alhaitham teases, but the enamored look in his eyes and the warm strokes of his hand against Kaveh’s head betray any bite in his words.
“Who knows. Maybe I’m getting bored of seeing the same look every time I wake up next to you in the morning. Have you ever considered pink hair?”
Alhaitham smiles, “Perhaps.”
Kaveh chuckles, deep and a little sleepy, and Alhaitham’s chest flutters with the small force of it. He feels the slow push of Kaveh’s cheeks as a smile crawls its way onto his beloved’s face, observing how the corners of Kaveh’s eyes lovingly curve into small wrinkles, a symbol of a life well-led and years filled with laughter.
“Time sure flies fast for us now, huh.”
If Alhaitham can’t help but move his thumb to lightly caress Kaveh’s crow’s feet for a moment, it’s nobody’s business but his own, “Well, I suppose it is as they say — time goes by quickly when you’re at peace and in love.”
Turning around once more, Kaveh pushes himself up to face Alhaitham, grunting quietly as he lifts himself up on his hands to hover above him and ask, “Are you? At peace and in love?” Kaveh studies him while he waits for a reply, meeting Alhaitham’s steady gaze without hesitation as he always does and always will.
Kaveh also hates how stupidly handsome those old-fashioned reading glasses look on Alhaitham, though he never admits it.
“Of course I am,” Alhaitham responds.
And he tilts forward, kissing Kaveh in a manner so tender and sweet as lips he is infinitely familiar with meet his own.
“Do you want to do it tonight?” Alhaitham whispers against Kaveh’s mouth.
He watches as Kaveh grimaces and laughs a bit nervously, eyes flicking to the side of their room, and he knows what the reply is before Kaveh even utters it.
“Ah… you see, I’d love to… but my back’s been killing me since this morning today.”
Alhaitham lets out a long-suffering sigh and allows himself to think out loud, “I could ride you.”
Kaveh’s face visibly lights up.
“—But I’m too lazy for that. I get tired much more easily nowadays.”
“Wh—? Alhaitham,” Kaveh whines. “That’s unfair. I usually do most of the work.”
“Not tonight then,” Alhaitham says decidedly, ignoring him.
Kaveh’s loud complaints fill the room and Alhaitham does what he has always done best during these moments of their long, enduring relationship — tune him out.
Sluggishly, Alhaitham takes off his reading glasses, neatly folding and placing them on top of their bedside table, where they rest next to an old framed photograph of him and Kaveh in Fontaine from a trip many years ago. Then, he reaches over the still-grumbling Kaveh to pick up the abandoned book lying upside down on the covers by their side, and he tidies it back into its place within the drawers. It’s strange, he ponders, how much longer it takes him to finish his usual readings now.
Eventually, once Kaveh is finally satiated with his monologue and has shifted off his chest to settle upon the usual pillow next to him, Alhaitham pulls the covers up over both of them and turns to face Kaveh.
Alhaitham knows, as he watches Kaveh silently, that an old shoulder injury Kaveh has aches once in a while when he sleeps on his right side, but the architect still does so anyway because he wants to fall asleep while facing Alhaitham. And so Kaveh has done this every night as they bundle in for bed together, consistently completed with some healthy amount of bickering in the background.
He knows this in the same way that Kaveh knows Alhaitham can’t stand the sound of Kaveh’s snoring. And yet somehow over the numerous years they’ve spent in each other’s presence, his mind steadily adapted to it, as long as it necessitates that Kaveh’s tranquil, sleeping visage would be the first sight Alhaitham opens his eyes to every morning.
“Kaveh,” Alhaitham says abruptly, “when we were young—“
“You’ve got to stop saying that phrase. We sound unbelievably ancient when you say that.”
“We aren’t that old yet.”
“Precisely why you should say ‘when we were younger,’ not young!” Kaveh protests, sounding ridiculously enthusiastic for being a middle-aged man tucked comfortably in bed with the covers up to his shoulders, hands gesticulating within its limited space. “—And what exactly were you going to say? Let me guess, ‘Oh Kaveh, don’t you remember when we were young — how you would rail me for hours and hours with incredible stamina as if every night was our wedding night? What happened to that Kaveh?' Alright, get it out now, Alhaitham.”
“I do not sound like that. And—“ Alhaitham pretends not to see the expression Kaveh makes at him, “as I was saying, when we were young, do you remember I once showed you what my grandmother’s last wish for me was?”
“Huh? Oh, yes. Yes, you did,” Kaveh thinks for a moment. Then, he recalls, a little softer, “May my child Alhaitham lead a peaceful life.”
Delicately, Alhaitham catches one of Kaveh’s hands in the midst of yet another animated gesture. He takes a heartbeat of time to run his fingers through the rough, calloused skin and palm before stroking the ring that elegantly encircles Kaveh’s ring finger, one that matches his own. And he wonders if perhaps this is what his grandmother may have meant; if perhaps this is what his parents could have had, too.
“What is it, Alhaitham?” Kaveh asks.
In an almost subdued tone, the hushed breath of his words sweep against Alhaitham’s bangs. It brushes over the tiny, nearly imperceptible crook of his nose from when he broke it on a desert expedition gone wrong with Kaveh not long after their honeymoon. Kaveh himself had been the one to set it back into place as they hid in the ruins from the turbulent sandstorm outside.
(“Tell me if it hurts, okay Alhaitham? Let me look at your other injuries too, please."
“I’m fine, Kaveh, this is nothing. Why are you crying?”
“I-I’m not. I’m not crying. We’ll be just fine.”
"Yes, we will. Don’t cry. Your face is going to be swollen for our post wedding photoshoot when we get home and you hate it when your face gets swollen.”
“Oh, shut up!" )
Alhaitham knows that anything can happen at any time. He’s known this since he was young and lost his parents all too suddenly, followed by his grandmother too. But laying here in bed with Kaveh, counting gray hairs and smoothing out growing wrinkles, wedding rings adorning both their hands, he can’t help but think — eventually you get to the age when you start thinking about things you don’t want to be left unsaid, words you don’t want to regret not saying if one day the chance to do so slips away forever.
This, Alhaitham rationalizes, is why he tells Kaveh—
“Thank you for loving me, Kaveh.”
He truly has softened with age, it seems.
Kaveh blinks once, twice, before he lets out a full-body laugh, trembling in delight as the bed shakes with his laughter, “I wonder, who was it that once proudly told me, ‘They say that earnest thanks should be given thrice,’ hm?”
“Do you really need me to say it again? Has your hearing already deteriorated that quickly?” Alhaitham sighs.
“No, I’m just pulling your leg.” Eyes growing fond, Kaveh squeezes the hand holding his own in response. “Thank you, too, for loving me and allowing me to disrupt your peaceful life, Alhaitham.”
“On the contrary, I’m entirely unable to imagine one without you in it.”
Yes, Alhaitham decides with finality (in the hands of his dearest, in the home they’ve built within each other, in the life they cherish as one) — this is it.
To grow old and in love, together.