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Alhaitham sighs, letting the evening chill his lungs before releasing it into silence. His eyes have long since given up on translating the lines in the book he took to bed. Now he simply lies on his side, head pillowed on one arm as his other stubbornly holds the faded brown cover open before him.
The air shivers along with the restless body behind him as it repositions ever so slightly for the hundredth time, obvious despite its attempts at stealth.
“The least you could do is stay still, seeing as how this is your own fault,” Alhaitham states mildly, not bothering to turn around.
The bed shakes with the sudden shift in weight as Kaveh shoots up, and Alhaitham doesn’t need eyes in the back of his head to know that Kaveh is glaring at it. “In case you’d forgotten, you asked for this!” Kaveh hisses. Even in his indignation, he graciously remembers to keep his voice in check while Alhaitham is without his earpieces.
Alhaitham sighs a second time before replying, “While it is no business of mine what you choose to do with your free time, I still struggle to comprehend how you thought that experimenting with elemental energy and paints in your room was a good idea.”
Kaveh collapses back to the mattress and rolls to the edge as if to escape the source of his discomfort, though is only able to put a few inches between them. The bed obviously wasn’t meant for two. “It wasn’t one of my best moments,” he admits. “But how was I to know that paint has enough hydro in it to form dendro cores?” He rolls his eyes at the suspiciously amused-sounding huff behind him, but continues. “That aside, no one asked you to force me into your room in the meantime.”
“I do not believe offering a bed constitutes forceful coercion.”
“It does not. However, delivering such an offer while staring down judgmentally at my attempts to clean up the mess– without offering any help nor leaving after I politely refused several times– is borderline harrassment.”
“If I had known I would be exchanging a lack of peace due to your complaints of a sore back for a lack of sleep courtesy of your incessant movements and pointless comments, I would have left you to the couch.”
Now it’s Kaveh’s turn to sigh, which he does rather dramatically as he rocks back and forth precariously as if to prove a point. “You’re impossible.”
Alhaitham’s lips curve up silently when Kaveh tellingly doesn’t make any efforts to get up.
As the evening stretches on, Kaveh’s fidgeting slows and his breaths lengthen. Alhaitham reaches over to place his book on the nightstand and smothers the lamp. He lies still, listening to the steady inhales and exhales of the man behind him. He was honestly surprised that Kaveh had agreed to share his bed— temporarily, of course, the architect insisted loudly. Kaveh is one of the few who matches his stubbornness, but perhaps the relative ease with which Kaveh had relented hints at something more. Alhaitham files that thought away for later, along with many other difficult thoughts, all of them labeled “Kaveh.” He does not trust his mind to wander when the source of the twinges in his chest lies a mere handbreadth away.
~~~
Tonight had been one of those rare instances when the architect had chosen to sleep early, trailing a few minutes after Alhaitham and hesitating at the door before working up the resolve to cross the threshold. Alhaitham turns his neck just enough to glance behind him and has to turn back around quickly to hide the smile tugging on his lips at the splash of green on Kaveh’s cheek. Evidently he had been so set on cleaning his room that he did not pay as much attention as he usually does to his own appearance.
He senses the gears turning in Kaveh’s head until: “What about blankets?”
“You are free to share. But I do expect you to share and not steal all of them in the middle of the night.”
“You–” Kaveh splutters even as he slides under the covers. “That was one time. Besides, your frigid personality precludes the need for warmth.”
“Hmm.”
Alhaitham’s heart does odd things when the bed tilts behind him, and he tries not to think about why Kaveh might have chosen tonight in particular to sleep early. It wasn’t as if he had never shared a bed before, but the last time was so long ago, long before it should have held any significance. And yet it did, given that it had also been Kaveh, both of them exhausted after spending too many sleepless nights in the House of Daena to study for upcoming exams and neither of them caring where they succumbed to unconsciousness. He sometimes misses those days, foolish though that may be. When the stress of exams was enough to hold back any of the awkwardness that tended to arise when dealing with his senior. Awkwardness that said senior no doubt noticed despite Alhaitham’s nascent efforts at weeding it out of the personality he so stringently cultivated.
~~~
A hitched breath breaks through Alhaitham’s reminiscence. He snaps back to reality and listens, wondering if he misheard. Another shaky inhale and barely distinguishable muttering sends cold tendrils through his limbs.
“I’m sorry,” he hears. “… didn’t mean to. Don’t kick... Don’t leave...”
Kaveh’s words dissolve into unintelligible mumbles before he lapses back into restless slumber, breaths uneven.
Alhaitham’s mind races to process the nightmare-speak. If anyone were in danger of leaving, it was Kaveh. This is, after all, Alhaitham’s house no matter how much of a home Kaveh had made it. And kicking Kaveh out? Surely that isn’t what Kaveh thinks of him. Yet he cannot deny the evidence trembling in his bed. As it so often happens with matters surrounding his not-quite-friend but more-than-roommate, Alhaitham finds himself uncertain. A very unpleasant sensation. He finds himself grateful that Kaveh is most assuredly asleep and gives in to the urge to offer some manner of comfort in the secrecy of night. He thinks of how often Kaveh seeks out the touch of others: a firm handshake with a client, a one-armed hug with a friend, and the rare graze of knuckles against his that used to send Alhaitham’s thoughts into a spiral but he now understands as a request for apologies after a particularly fierce argument, for an affirmation that they are still okay.
Slowly, he tenses his arms and slides back until he brushes against a shaking form, now separated by mere layers of thin fabric which might as well be the wall of Samiel by how insurmountable it seems.
He pushes further until the curves of their spines press together comfortably, warmth seeping back and forth as he wonders what it will take for Kaveh to finally understand, if not accept. As the shaking subsides and sleep softens the edges of his self control, he reaffirms for the thousandth time that he will never again willingly abandon Kaveh, no matter how many colorful dendro cores explodes nor how many nights he has to half-drag, half-carry a wine-flushed architect home.
He allows himself another indulgence in the promised safety of unhearing ears and whispers those words he has spent years rehearsing in his deepest thoughts. As darkness embraces him, he dares to dream of the improbable as Kaveh does every day. Besides, he has learned that with Kaveh, even the fantastical can be set in stone.