Chapter Text
Orientation was the worst-organized, most confusing event Alhaitham had ever had the displeasure of attending. First, there was no parking, even though they had arrived fifteen minutes early, and they had to park a mile away. Then, they didn’t have his name on the list, and he had to argue with the front desk person that yes, he existed, and yes, he had matriculated. Now, he was supposed to be following his group leader through the Daena Library and out to the other side, where they would continue their campus tour, but he had gotten separated after they walked the longest, most meandering route possible through the maze of shelves.
He couldn’t see any of his group members nor his leader’s neon green t-shirt on the sidewalk outside, where they were supposed to be. He sighed and sat on the library steps. He would have to give himself the campus tour later. For now, he could return to his dorm, where his grandmother was undoubtedly unpacking some of his things while she waited.
As he stood to leave, he looked up and caught the eye of a handsome boy with long, blonde, pinned-up hair with a group of people. They were loitering outside the library, laughing about something he couldn’t hear. Despite the balmy summer air, Alhaitham shivered under his gaze. It felt like he was looking into Alhaitham’s soul with his piercing eyes, red and shiny like rubies. But then, the line of his mouth curved up into a smile, his eyes crinkling in a friendly way, and he waved at Alhaitham. Alhaitham didn’t know what possessed him to wave back, but he did. He stared, transfixed, until one of the boy’s friends said something to him that made him laugh, and he looked away.
Alhaitham felt like he needed a moment to catch his breath, and he chalked it up to the long day trekking across campus. To avoid making eye contact with the boy again, he pretended to rifle through his backpack searching for something before finally making his way back to his dorm—at least that, he could find without needing directions. His grandmother had indeed finished unpacking in the time he had been gone.
“You’re back early,” she said. “Is everything okay?”
“I got lost during the tour,” he admitted.
She ruffled his hair like she used to when he was a kid, but she had to reach up to do it now, which made them both laugh. “I’m glad you’re back, because I’m so hungry I could eat a horse. Let’s get dinner. Your RA told me there was a famous pizza place a few minutes away.”
Alhaitham smiled. “That sounds good.”
Alhaitham's grandmother had been a rock-solid presence in his life after his parents’ deaths when he was a child. She was there for him from elementary to high school, never judgmental when he preferred the company of books to his classmates. She was there behind him, tears in her eyes and a warm hand on his shoulder, when he read his college acceptance letter. And now, she was there across from him while they ate dinner, her presence soothing the part of him that was nervous about his new, unfamiliar environment.
After dinner, he walked her back to her car. She kissed him on the forehead and held him by the shoulders.
“Everything is going to be okay, Haitham. I can tell you’re nervous, but you’re going to enjoy college. Just focus on your classes and you’ll have a peaceful life.”
“Thanks, Bibi. I love you.”
“I love you too, honey. Call me if you need anything.”
And with another hug and kiss, she was gone.
Back at his dorm, he prepared to go with his RA and the others on his floor to get late-night cookies and bubble tea. He was indifferent about it, leaning toward not wanting to go, but his grandmother had found out about the event when she talked to the RA and encouraged him to attend, saying first impressions were important. At the very least, she reasoned, he could go for one night and never again.
He could hear laughter from the hallway—had they already made friends with each other?—and had to spend some time psyching himself up. When he finally made it to the lounge, it was empty. They had already left.
He was only three minutes late.
Alhaitham returned to his single room.
It was fine, he thought. He didn’t even want to go in the first place. He could take advantage of the time alone by showering while everyone was gone. The pit he felt in his stomach was simply nervousness, and nervousness was nothing more than unfamiliarity.
Still. Now that the sun had set, the grey concrete walls and single overhead light seemed like they might pose a problem if he were to spend the rest of the year in this room. Tomorrow, he resolved, he would find something to warm the space, something to make it feel less dreary and more like home.
Even with the windows closed, he could hear raucous laughter and music from the street below. It seemed everyone was out and about this night—it was, of course, their last night of freedom before the fall semester started. It kept him up late, the pit in his stomach didn’t go away, and for the first time, Alhaitham wondered if he might not be immune to loneliness after all.
That morning, his first class was linear algebra. At least he could be comfortable there. He had always been at the top of his class, and if anything could help him settle in, it was listening to a good lecturer. He took a seat near the front of the class—close enough to see and hear everything clearly, but not in the front two rows, where he might draw attention to himself.
A familiar face took the seat behind him. Even under the fluorescent lights, he was just as beautiful as the first time Alhaitham had seen him, with those striking red eyes—the kind that were unforgettable.
“Hey, I know you. You’re the library boy,” the blonde said with a self-assured smile. “I would know those eyes anywhere.”
“What?”
“You know, half blue, half orange. What’s that called? Heterochromia, right?”
“Sectoral heterochromia, yes”—Alhaitham paused to collect himself for a moment—“I recognized you by your eyes.”
The boy grinned again. “I do get that a lot. Maybe that’s why I picked up on yours. I’ve never seen someone else with more interesting eyes than mine. What’s your name?”
“Alhaitham.”
“I’m Kaveh. Are you a freshman?”
“Yeah.”
“What are you majoring in?”
“Linguistics.”
“That sounds awesome! I took Spanish in high school, but I managed to test out of the language requirement, so.”
“Linguistics isn’t the same as—never mind. Are you a freshman too?”
“No, I’m a sophomore.”
“What’s your major?”
“Industrial engineering.”
Alhaitham frowned. He had never met such a bubbly, talkative future engineer before, and he had known many in high school. They were all introverts—it was why they had gotten along so well. He was about to voice his objection, but at that moment, the professor cleared her throat and began class.
She seemed like a no-nonsense type of person, like Alhaitham’s favorite math teacher in high school, and he relaxed as she quickly rattled off the course expectations before diving directly into the material.
There was a tap on his back.
“I don’t really understand what’s going on,” Kaveh whispered. “I thought we were just going to talk about the syllabus and get dismissed.”
Alhaitham shot him an annoyed look. “I’m trying to pay attention.”
Kaveh smiled. “Sorry.”
He stopped talking, but Alhaitham still felt those watchful eyes on his back the entire time, rendering him unable to pay attention to the lecture. The 90 minutes dragged on like never before. Finally, when the professor dismissed them, he closed his notebook, the first page now filled with incomprehensible scrawls. The only line that wasn’t utter nonsense was the professor’s name and email. He would have to get that day’s notes from a classmate—and he wasn’t exactly confident about Kaveh’s abilities there.
“So, what dorm do you live in?” Kaveh asked.
Archons, did he never stop talking?
“Redcrest,” Alhaitham replied with just a hint of irritation. If Kaveh noticed, he didn’t let on.
“Hey, me too! Do you want to get lunch at the dining hall together?”
“It’s only 10:30.”
“I know; I’m starving. I even had a big breakfast this morning. Linear really took it out of me. Come with me, and I can tell you what’s good and what should be avoided at all costs.”
Alhaitham checked his schedule. His next class wasn’t until 1:20 p.m. Technically, he had time to kill. The other option was to go back to his dorm room, alone, which appealed to him more. But he recalled the night before, the awful feeling in the pit of his stomach, and frowned at Kaveh. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.”
What Alhaitham learned before lunch on the first day of college:
- Not how to get a matrix in reduced row echelon form.
- The salad bar and the chicken wraps were the best stations at the dining hall.
- The pasta was fine.
- The daily entree was hit-or-miss; one of the worst offenders was overcooked pork chops.
- Kaveh lived one floor below him.
“I can’t hang out after this,” Kaveh said apologetically.
Alhaitham hadn’t asked him to.
“I have differential equations later, and I need to get a feel on how strict the professor is,” he explained. “Tomorrow, my first class isn’t until noon. Do you want to come by in the morning? We could work on the problem set together.”
Alhaitham wanted to say no again, but he hadn’t gotten anything out of the lecture, thanks to Kaveh. “That would be fine,” he said.
He was up at 7:30 the next morning and knocking on Kaveh’s door by 8 for their study session. It took several minutes before Kaveh came to the door dressed in a too-small t-shirt that exposed his midriff and tiny shorts that barely skimmed the top of his thighs. Alhaitham tried his level best not to stare, but he wasn’t, strictly speaking, successful. At least Kaveh seemed too sleepy to notice.
“Hey, come in. This is my roommate, Cyno.”
Alhaitham glanced up at the man sitting up on the top bunk, who also looked sleepy and perhaps a tinge annoyed to have been woken up.
“Hi,” Cyno said. “I’m leaving for class, so don’t worry about me. You can use my desk if you need to. Bye, Kaveh. Nice to meet you, uhh…”
“Alhaitham,” he supplied.
“Nice to meet you, Alhaitham.”
Cyno was in and out of the room several times while getting ready, but finally, he slung his backpack over his shoulder, waved, and left.
Studying with Kaveh was probably a case of the blind leading the blind, but if they bumbled through the questions together, Alhaitham would be no worse off than if he had to do it alone—other than, of course, the fact that Kaveh didn’t seem to know how to be quiet. He had a neverending reserve of facts about campus buildings, restaurant recommendations, and for some reason, departmental gossip (two of the engineering professors were secretly married, which he only found out from a graduate student who attended their Christmas party, who only told Kaveh because he got drunk during a late night at a gaming club event and accidentally let it slip).
Strangely enough, though, Kaveh’s constant chattering seemed to keep his brain quiet. He found himself able to focus even better than before, half-listening to Kaveh’s soothing voice as he went over the definitions of row and column spaces.
“I’m done,” Kaveh said as Alhaitham was in the middle of working through a problem. He was too deep in the zone to notice, so Kaveh nudged him. “Hey, I’m done.”
“What? Already?” Alhaitham checked the number of questions in the problem set. “I’m not even halfway through.”
“Well, hurry! I’m starving. We should get waffles from the waffle bar in Carouses. It’s only open on weekends.”
“How did you finish so quickly?”
Kaveh shrugged. “It was pretty easy.”
It was not “pretty easy,” especially not when he hadn’t been able to focus on the lecture at all.
“Can you help me, then?”
Despite apparently not paying attention in class either, Kaveh had already picked up the material, easily pointing out the holes in Alhaitham’s knowledge when he struggled. Unlike the textbook, he explained it in a way that was intuitive, like he was seeing it from a slightly different perspective that did indeed make everything pretty easy. With his tutoring, Alhaitham’s homework was done in record time.
“Waffle bar? Please?”
He could hardly say no now. “Fine.”
When Kaveh beamed at him, it was like looking directly into the sun, searing hot. Though he had been rolling his eyes just moments before, he suddenly found himself needing to stare at the ground. Somehow the floor became the most interesting thing to him as he studied the lines in the tile, perhaps a subconscious attempt to save face.
(Save from what? The ground? Kaveh’s presence? His own inability to do math?)
Alhaitham cleared his throat and followed him to the waffle bar.
They fell into somewhat of a routine, working together almost daily, and Alhaitham began to forego studying on his own in favor of waiting for Kaveh to explain everything. It usually turned out to be faster for both of them, and even though he showed up at the same time (down to the minute) every time, Kaveh would always text a few minutes before to ask where he was and if he was still coming. Rarely, Alhaitham would say no, but all it took was Kaveh texting back “aww 💔” and “why? 😰” and “please? 🥺” for him to change his mind and head over.
Kaveh was as annoying as ever during linear algebra, spending more time passing notes to Alhaitham than taking them, but on this day, he had been quiet all class.
“I’m going home,” Kaveh said as soon as Professor Faruzan finished lecturing. “If I’m not in bed and falling asleep in the next 10 minutes, I’m going to have a mental breakdown.” He was out the door moments later, trying to beat the rush of students heading to their next class.
Behind him, something fell to the ground with a soft thud—a leather-bound book that Alhaitham recognized as his sketchbook. He’d seen Kaveh doodling in it before during class, just flowers and buildings and sometimes wildlife. He said the act of drawing, of doing something mostly mindless with his non-dominant hand, helped him pay attention to lectures, and he would sometimes take notes with his other hand.
Alhaitham flicked through a few pages. The doodles were there, but there were also more focused drawings. Live sketches of people on campus. Black-and-white thumbnails of landscapes, titled “value study.” But most pages were occupied by hundreds of different renditions of buildings in pencil, ink, and what looked to Alhaitham like crayon. There were mansions, cottages, skyscrapers, and fantastical designs he was sure wouldn’t be possible under the constraints of physics. In Kaveh’s skilled hands, they were all beautiful. That much he could appreciate, even if he didn’t completely understand the process. One page had at least ten of the exact same brownstone townhouse, and at least to his eye, there was no difference between them.
He finished packing up and headed down the hallway. “Kaveh,” he called, running to catch up. Kaveh stopped and turned to him. “You dropped your sketchbook.”
“Oh! Thanks.” He took it from Alhaitham’s hands and shoved it into his bag.
“You’re really good,” Alhaitham said.
He laughed. “Thanks. Again.”
“I mean it,” Alhaitham insisted. “I didn’t know you were this talented.”
“Ah, it’s just a hobby.”
“Why the hell are you doing engineering?”
“What?” Kaveh stopped in the middle of the hallway, causing a pileup behind them. “Sorry, sorry,” he muttered, heading outside. He did not stop again.
Alhaitham kept pace with him. “Why engineering? Why not art?”
Kaveh shot him a skeptical look. “Seriously? Aren’t you always going on about how important it is to be practical?”
“I didn’t say anything about practicality. I’m just asking.”
“I want a stable job with benefits right after I graduate. I’m not sure what’s so confusing about that.”
“You really don’t strike me as a corporate guy. Your drawings were so … whimsical.”
“I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”
“I can’t help but think your talents are wasted on engineering.”
“That’s rude of you to say. I assure you, my talents are not wasted at all.” Kaveh sighed and gave him a tight-lipped smile. “Look, if you’re so interested, maybe you can watch me draw. I work in the mailroom at Redcrest on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday nights. It’s always really slow and boring. If you keep me company, I could try to sketch something for you.”
“Okay—yeah, I’ll meet you there today after dinner.”
“See you, Alhaitham.”
His full name suddenly seemed too formal. “You can call me Haitham,” he said hesitantly. “That’s what my family—my grandma—calls me.”
“Ah. See you soon, Haitham.”
Alhaitham moved with more haste than usual. He ate early, showed up before Kaveh had even arrived for his shift, and had to sit on the bench and wait for him. It was half an hour before Kaveh finally rushed in, apologizing to his coworker for being late, and let Alhaitham inside the mailroom.
As promised, it was extremely slow, with long stretches of quiet between each visitor. Only a few people came to pick up packages.
“What do you want me to draw for you?” Kaveh asked, breaking the silence.
Alhaitham hadn’t thought about that.
“How about I draw you?”
“No, I don’t think so,” he said.
“Come on, there’s nothing else around here.” Kaveh gestured to the rows and rows of mailboxes. “I’m not drawing these.”
Before Alhaitham could say anything, he was being put on a stool in the center of the room while Kaveh turned his head this way and that.
“Good,” he finally declared, opening his sketchbook to a new page and starting with broad strokes. “Don’t move!” he warned.
“I didn’t,” Alhaitham said. Kaveh didn’t reply, instead holding out his pencil to eyeball the proportions. Each time Alhaitham tried to crane his head to look at his work, Kaveh would tsk. He was so engrossed in his work, his eyes slightly crossed as he sketched, and Alhaitham found that he didn’t mind the staring—not to scrutinize him, but just to see him. Eventually, Kaveh started to lay down colors, the gentle scratch of pencil across the page lulling Alhaitham into a more relaxed state.
Just as he was about to nod off, Kaveh finally announced he was done. He hopped off his seat and peered over Kaveh’s shoulder so they could look at it together.
People had always called him emotionless. Dispassionate. Robotic. He saw none of that in Kaveh’s drawing. Though his portrait was not smiling, it was not devoid of expression, either. His gaze was resolute, staring at something in the distance, but there was a kindness in those eyes which belied his serious face. His aquiline nose, his two-toned irises, his tousled hair which had gone too long without a cut, they had all been portrayed perfectly, with the artist’s gentle touch. It was so lifelike, Alhaitham half expected it to turn and smile across the page at him.
Through the eyes of someone who liked him, he actually seemed quite handsome.
“It’s not my best work,” Kaveh said after he was quiet for too long. “It’s been a while since I’ve drawn from life.”
“No, no. It’s perfect. I’ve never—I didn’t know you saw me this way,” he said.
“What way?”
“It’s so … most people find me off-putting, I guess. Not that I care. I learned a long time ago not to put too much stake in people’s opinions. But this is … this is …”
For once, Alhaitham was speechless.
“It’s just a sketch.”
“Can I keep it?”
“Sure.” He tore the page out carefully and handed it to Alhaitham, who tucked it inside his notebook to protect it. A thought formulated inside his head, and his tongue betrayed him before he could think about the consequences.
“Kaveh, can I ask you something? In a vacuum, would you choose this? If you didn’t have to consider stability, would you pursue art?”
Kaveh frowned. “Yes, of course. Ever since I was a kid, I wanted to be an architect. God, if I had a choice, do you think I would ever touch industrial engineering again? It’s everything I hate: soulless, inhuman. I’d rather do something beautiful. I want to make something beautiful, something that people can look up at and say, ‘My life is better now that I’ve lived here, or worked here, or traveled here.’ Not fucking manufacturing layout optimization.”
Alhaitham didn’t quite follow—he couldn’t imagine looking at a building, beautiful or otherwise, and having any thoughts at all—but nonetheless, the main point was clear.
“I hope you can do that someday,” he said genuinely.
“Hah! Thanks, but I won’t.”
“Nevertheless.”
“Yes. Thank you, Haitham.”
In late fall, they were invited to a party—or, more accurately, Kaveh and whoever Kaveh wanted to bring were invited. It took a few hours across the span of a week for Kaveh to break him, but for better or worse, he agreed to go.
“How did you even find out about this party?”
“It’s my robotics club. We throw ragers a few times a year.” Kaveh fussed with his hairpins. No matter how many times he placed them or sprayed them with hairspray, a few always slid out of place. He frowned at himself in the mirror.
“Ragers?”
“Yeah … you know, big parties. There’ll be music. Beer pong. People shotgunning.”
“Shotgunning?”
“Like when you stab a hole into the side of the can?”
“Hmm.”
“You’ve never heard of that?”
“No. That sounds insane.”
Kaveh chuckled. “You wouldn’t like it. That’s why we’re bringing our own drinks.”
“Smart. You said this is your robotics club’s party?”
“Yeah, with some other mutual friends. Why?”
“Just … nerds.”
“You’re one to talk!”
Kaveh finished fixing his hair, and they walked to a house just off campus. He rattled off several names of people who lived there, but Alhaitham forgot them just as soon as he heard them. The front door was unlocked when they arrived, and Kaveh motioned for Alhaitham to let himself inside. Electronic music and the smell of skunk blasted them when he opened the door. He grimaced.
No sooner did he take off his shoes than a woman leapt from the couch to greet Kaveh.
“Kaveh!” she shouted, an enormous smile lighting her face. “Hey guys, Kaveh’s here!”
Her yell seemed to summon dozens of students who all swarmed to greet him, and as they reminisced about the last party, Alhaitham couldn’t help but be captivated by Kaveh’s laugh and the way he told stories. He commanded the room with his beauty and charm, like people were drawn to him magnetically. For the first time, Alhaitham realized this was not his Kaveh, his annoying and sometimes overbearing friend. This Kaveh was the sun, the life of the party, the people’s beloved, and they all clamored over each other to get his attention.
“Do you want something to drink?” the woman from before asked. “We have jungle juice in the kitch—”
“Ah, that’s okay,” Kaveh interrupted. “We brought our own.” But he accepted the cups from her, red Solo cups Alhaitham had only seen in movies (his grandmother refused to serve guests from disposable dishes), and poured them both drinks from the water bottle in his bag.
The flavor was something Alhaitham vaguely recognized as liquorice—which was to say, it was horrible. He coughed and quietly poured the rest of it into Kaveh’s cup. Kaveh flashed him a grin.
“Hey!” a man with long-ish black hair said as he approached. Though they had never met before, Alhaitham realized it was Cyno’s boyfriend, Tighnari, from description alone. Cyno really did talk about him a lot.
“I didn’t think you were going to make it,” Tighnari said.
“I didn’t think I would be able to convince this one.” Kaveh elbowed him in the side, earning himself a glare.
“Can you help us with the keg? No one brought a tap, and we can’t figure it out.”
“Sure. Sorry, I’ll be right back.” Kaveh threw an apologetic look back at him, but he was already running off to the next room, not sorry at all. Several people followed them.
Alhaitham didn’t know what to do with himself. He didn’t know anyone but Kaveh, the music was blaring too loudly and giving him an awful, anxious feeling in his gut, and he wasn’t sure what people did at parties. Luckily, or perhaps unluckily, he wasn’t alone for long before a woman approached him.
“You look familiar.”
“I’m Alhaitham.”
“Alhaitham!” she said. “Yes, yes, you’re Kaveh’s new friend! He’s told us so much about you. I’m Candace.”
“I’ve never heard of you.”
Candace gave him the kind of look that told him he’d been rude. His grandmother would have called it stinkface. He might have apologized, except that the music was still too loud and there was a cheer from the next room that made him wince and he didn’t know where Kaveh was—
“Do you want something to drink?” she asked, evidently determined not to get off on the wrong foot, but Alhaitham shook his head.
“Have you seen Kaveh?”
“No, sorry.” She frowned and tilted her head, looking at him with furrowed brows—apparently whatever she saw in his face pleased her, because her frown slowly turned to a smile. “I can help you look.”
“That’s okay, thanks. See you.”
He didn’t stay long enough to hear her response, instead wandering from one room to another. They were mostly empty. In the kitchen, a few people were eating—jello?—from what looked like small plastic containers, the kind that takeout sauces came in. The bedrooms all had signs like ”Khedive’s bedroom, please keep out!” He checked them anyway, but there was nothing except one crying girl surrounded by caring onlookers in one of the rooms. No sign of Kaveh.
With a sigh, he steeled himself to go into the basement. The belly of the beast. The source of the music. As he drew closer, he could feel the bass in his chest, like a jolt with each heavy thud of a beat. He hated it.
He descended the stairs. It was too dark to see, save for the lights that flashed red and green from above. A sensory nightmare. Alhaitham’s personal hell.
His shoes stuck to the concrete floor with each step, no doubt the result of someone—or maybe multiple someones—spilling their drink while dancing. Kaveh was in the center of the room, and thank god he stood out, a bit taller than everyone around him and with that golden hair Alhaitham would recognize anywhere, even under disco lights. As he got closer, he realized Kaveh was dancing with some girl, facing her and holding both her hands as they shimmied back and forth.
He shoved his way in and tapped Kaveh’s shoulder.
Kaveh turned around.
“Haitham!” he exclaimed, a breezy smile on his unfocused face. “I couldn’t … anywhere. I’m glad … find me.”
Alhaitham could barely hear him above the din, and the words he did hear he could barely process.
“I’m leaving!” he shouted. He knew from Kaveh’s confused face that Kaveh didn’t hear him, either, but if he spent one more second in this basement, he would simply explode into a thousand pieces of Alhaitham confetti, so he turned and took the stairs two at a time.
When he burst into the living room, which had previously been too raucous, it felt like heaven. There was steady light, a place to sit, and blessed quiet. The few conversations were nothing compared to the roar of the basement. He sank into the couch—really sank, as the old cushion gave way under him—and took gulps of air. His ears still rang. No one looked at him as they began to crowd around the bathroom door, calling for the occupant—who had apparently been in there too long—to come out.
He couldn’t help but feel a spark of irritation. No, not just irritation—he always found Kaveh irritating, but this was something different. Kaveh had wheedled and wheedled him, begging him to come to this terrible party he didn’t even want to attend, and abandoned him just as soon as they had arrived. It was a mystery that Kaveh wanted him there in the first place. Alhaitham hated the music, the shouting, the attention. Kaveh reveled in it. He had looked so pretty under the disco lights, like they were his own personal spotlight. Like he belonged there in the center of a million admirers. There was no room for Alhaitham, and he didn’t want to be crushed in the sea of bodies, anyway.
His phone was dead, and he didn’t know the way back to the dorm, but he was going to walk until he hit a landmark. He leaned down to retie his shoe—
“Haitham.”
The old couch cushion sank to accommodate another body, and, losing his balance, Alhaitham accidentally leaned into the person who had joined him.
“I’m sorry,” Kaveh said.
“I’m leaving,” Alhaitham responded, separating himself. He was prepared for Kaveh to protest, but he wouldn’t have it this time, wouldn’t listen—
“Okay, let’s go.”
Oh.
“You don’t seem like you’re having a very good time.”
Duh, Alhaitham thought, and it must have been all over his face, because Kaveh said, “I know. It’s my fault. It’s so loud, and I shouldn’t have run off and left you to fend for yourself.”
Alhaitham frowned. “You looked like you were enjoying yourself.”
That gave Kaveh pause. “Oh my god,” he chuckled. “You’re jealous.”
“What? No.”
“You are; you absolutely are.”
“I am not. I don’t care if you’re off having fun. But don’t drag me to parties like this anymore.”
Kaveh leaned into him. His warm breath tickled Alhaitham’s neck, making his arm hairs stand on end.
“I came here with you, Haitham. I always meant to stay with you. I’m sorry I got carried away.”
Alhaitham scoffed.
“And now, I’m leaving with you, so you don’t have to spend another minute in this terrible place. Come on, let’s go home.” Kaveh looked up at him with pleading eyes, and he was powerless to resist. Kaveh must have been used to getting whatever he wanted just by fluttering his pretty lashes, Alhaitham thought, but he did seem like he was being sincere this time. For whatever reason, Kaveh did care—enough to try to make him have fun, and enough to notice when he wasn’t.
“Fine.” He sighed in exasperation, but he still let Kaveh hold his waist for support and listened as he drunkenly sang all the way home.
The days got shorter and the classes harder, until even Kaveh could not keep up with the sheer volume of work. No matter how tired he was, he refused to scale back on club activities and would routinely spend days volunteering at high school robotics competitions right after pulling all-nighters. Alhaitham suspected he had started lying to him, inflating his sleeping hours after one too many concerned questions. Before he could become too alarmed at the behavior or marvel at how quickly the semester had passed, it was already finals week.
Kaveh hadn’t come to class for the past three lectures, and apparently had requested a meeting with Professor Faruzan that he never showed up to, which concerned her so much she stopped Alhaitham as he was walking out of class and asked if he knew if Kaveh was okay. Now it was finals week, and he was still nowhere to be seen. He hadn’t gone 48 hours without texting or calling Alhaitham in all the time since they’d met, but his calls went unanswered and texts left on delivered (not even read).
He texted Cyno asking if Kaveh was okay, but Cyno replied that he had no exams, only essays to turn in, and he had been home in Aaru Village for the past two weeks. Alhaitham would have to take matters into his own hands, as usual. He went to Kaveh’s floor and began to bang on his door.
“Kaveh!” he yelled. “Open up!”
He pounded on the door again, over and over, for minutes.
A head peeked out from the room across the hall.
“Dude, it’s midnight! And it’s finals week! Can you not?”
Alhaitham ignored the question. “Do you know where he is?”
“Obviously not. Can you please keep it down?”
“No.” He kept pounding on the door, raining blows on it until his fists hurt and he was out of breath. “Kaveh! Kaveh, answer me!”
“Seriously, if you’re not going to be quiet, then I’m going to call the RA! Sorry, man, it’s just that the sound really echoes and I need to sleep! I have my chem final tomorrow!”
He paid no mind to the panicky complainant. But apparently Kaveh did, because the door finally swung open, and Alhaitham barged his way in. It was a mess: loose papers (some crumpled, some not) strewn all over the floor, chip bags and candy wrappers nowhere near the trash can, and dirty clothes on every surface. He could barely see the carpet. Kaveh flopped onto the floor, on a pile of said clothes. He had a pallor to him and dark bags under his eyes, which were bloodshot.
“You look awful.”
“Thanks.”
“Where have you been? Professor Faruzan said she was going to send someone to do a wellness check if I couldn’t contact you.”
Kaveh spread his arms, palms up. “Where does it look like I’ve been?”
Alhaitham cleared a spot on the floor, tossing wrappers in the overflowing waste bin, and sat next to him. “What’s going on with you?”
Kaveh groaned and laid down. “You saw me, okay? I’m here. I’m alive. Tell Professor Faruzan that I’m fine and just go.”
“I am not leaving until you talk to me. I will talk your ear off all night if I have to.”
“Leave me alone.”
“No.”
Kaveh was a stubborn bastard, but what he didn’t know was that Alhaitham’s obstinance far surpassed his. After all, he had never heard the story of 10-year-old Alhaitham changing an entire school district’s policy on banned books after a protracted fight with his teacher, principal, and eventually superintendent. He shot off a quick email to Professor Faruzan letting her know he’d managed to locate Kaveh, who was okay for the time being but might require more assistance, and he would send another update later. Then they sat in silence.
Five minutes passed. Then ten.
Kaveh usually couldn’t go thirty seconds without fidgeting or saying something irrelevant just to fill the silence, but he just laid there, unblinking, looking up at the ceiling tiles.
Twenty minutes. Thirty.
The only noise was the sound of Kaveh’s breathing, faster than usual, and then, eventually, sirens in the distance. Still, neither said a word.
Forty minutes. Alhaitham’s mind wandered to his Introduction to Syntax study guide. He thought of free morphemes and theta roles.
An hour.
“The dining halls are closed,” Kaveh said.
“Yeah. It’s 1 in the morning.”
“I’m hungry. I don’t have any food.”
“You didn’t eat dinner?”
“I had some gummy bears.”
Alhaitham sighed. “If I go to my room to get ramen, will you promise not to lock me out?”
“Yes.”
“Swear.”
“I swear I will not lock you out.”
“Give me your keys.”
Kaveh rolled his eyes but handed them over. Alhaitham went to get the 12-pack of instant ramen his grandmother had left him, saying a silent thanks that she had made him take it even when he’d refused. (“I have a full meal plan, and I don’t like it that much.” “Trust me, it’s a college staple.”) He also brought bowls and forks with him, figuring Kaveh had none. When he got back, as promised, the door was still open. Kaveh was in the same spot on the floor and didn’t greet him, but all the same, he got up when Alhaitham set the bowls down.
“Can you crack an egg in mine?” he asked.
“Do you have any eggs?” Alhaitham said, looking at the mini fridge he knew was empty.
“No.”
“Then what am I supposed to do about it?”
Kaveh heaved an exaggerated sigh and draped himself over Alhaitham’s shoulders. “I don’t knowww,” he whined.
He added the ramen and water and put the bowls in the microwave, Kaveh attached to him like a barnacle the whole time. Normally he didn’t like to be touched like this, and for so long—but Kaveh’s arms over him reminded him of a comforting quilt, warm and weighty, something real. He tilted back and turned his head to the side, burying his nose in Kaveh’s hair.
“I was worried about you,” he whispered.
It was the wrong thing to say. Kaveh pulled away.
“Don’t be,” he said haughtily.
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t concern yourself so much with me.”
Alhaitham knitted his brows together in confusion. “It’s not fair of you to be so hot and cold. You know it’s hard for me to read you like this.”
“Then don’t read me!” Kaveh exclaimed. The microwave beeped, and he, welcoming the distraction, got their bowls out and stirred in the seasoning aggressively.
“You spilled,” Alhaitham pointed out.
Kaveh glared at him and twirled his noodles with the fork, taking entirely too big a bite.
“This would have been better with an egg,” he mumbled, mouth full.
“Sorry, I forgot I was keeping one in my pocket. Let me get it for you.”
Kaveh’s face turned murderous. Alhaitham suppressed a laugh with great difficulty, and they finished eating in silence, apart from the sound of Kaveh’s slurping. Finally, he put down his fork, letting it clink against the bowl.
“You owe me some answers,” Alhaitham said.
“For your instant noodles?” Kaveh scoffed. “I would rather just pay you the 25 cents if you’ll leave me alone.”
“What’s going on with you? Why are you isolating yourself? You’ve barely gone two hours without texting me since we met.”
Kaveh sighed. “It’s the same old shit. Of course I’m stressed during finals week. Who isn’t?”
“This goes a little beyond stress.”
“Maybe for you, but most people handle difficult periods of life a little poorly. Not all of us can be Alhaitham, the perfect student, with his great time management skills and loving his major and—”
“Kaveh.”
“What?”
“Tell me.”
Kaveh patted his mouth clean with a napkin and picked at his cuticles before he finally spoke again.
“What do you want me to say, Haitham? School is hard. Finals are hard. Nothing I’m doing will ever be worth anything. I spend all these hours studying, all these sleepless nights worrying, and for what? To get a diploma in a field I hate to work a job I hate until I fling myself off a bridge?”
“Kaveh.”
“Don’t ‘Kaveh’ me. I’m being realistic. Aren’t you always the pragmatic one? Tell me, where in my assessment am I wrong? What do I have to live for? I would love to hear it.”
Alhaitham didn’t answer him.
“Well?” Kaveh demanded.
“Well, what?”
“You made me tell you what I was thinking. Don’t you have anything to say?”
“You need to change majors.”
“As if I’m going to take career advice from some freshman,” Kaveh scoffed. “We can’t all study whatever we want. Some of us have to think of how to support our families after we graduate.”
“What do you mean, support your family?”
“My mom. After my dad—after him, we really struggled. I’m the only one making sure we stay afloat. I can’t afford to just flit from major to major. There are more important things in life than my self-actualization.”
“That’s not fair.” Alhaitham’s face softened. “She’s an adult. It’s not your job to be the parent.”
Kaveh collapsed into the butterfly chair in the corner. “I know, but I still have to take care of her. She’s my mom. If she didn’t have me…”
“It still isn’t fair to you.”
“Be that as it may, this is what I have to do. It’s not like I’ll be the first artist in history to give up.”
“And I’m telling you not to. You’re too good to give up. I’ve seen your work.”
“You’re not exactly an art critic. I doubt you could tell my drawings from a child’s if we put them side-by-side.”
Alhaitham gave him an unamused look.
“Have you ever had sleep for dinner?” Kaveh asked suddenly. “Like, you check the fridge and there’s only a gallon of milk and some ketchup, so you just go to bed before the sun even sets?”
Slowly, he shook his head.
“I didn’t think so. Your grandma always took care of you. You couldn’t possibly understand. Look, I know I’m good. But that isn’t enough. I’d have to be lucky, too. Thousands of artists with my skills—better, even—are out there marketing themselves as we speak. Maybe two or three will get enough patronage to make a living.”
“And as an engineer, you would make a living? I would hardly call it that if you spend every waking hour wishing you were dead!”
Kaveh winced at that.
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” he said quietly.
It was true, what Kaveh had said—Alhaitham didn’t have the perspective he perhaps needed to understand the situation. But that didn’t mean he was wrong. He wanted to push back, to make Kaveh see the error in his reasoning, but Kaveh fixed him with a dead-eyed stare that went straight through him, and he wavered.
“Haitham, I’m tired. I’m so tired of it all.”
“I know.”
“I need to study.”
“Have you even slept all week?” Kaveh shook his head. “Go to bed now, and when you wake up, I’ll help you.”
Kaveh lay down. “Will you stay with me tonight?” He sounded scared.
“I’ve never said no to you before,” Alhaitham replied, meaning “Of course, do you even need to ask?”
“Are you going to start now?”
“No,” he said softly, tucking in the sides of Kaveh’s blanket. “Go to sleep.”
Alhaitham sat on the bed next to him, careful not to take up too much room. Despite his own fatigue, he stayed up until he was sure Kaveh was asleep. Only when Kaveh began to snore did he allow himself to doze off, still upright on the bed, his feet on the floor.
During winter break, he received a phone call with the good news: straight A’s, as always. Despite everything, Kaveh was incapable of anything less.
When he returned to school, Kaveh was sitting in front of his door playing a game on his phone.
“What the hell,” he said. “How long have you been waiting here?”
“Couple hours,” Kaveh said casually.
“Okay, well, I’m here, so you can stop guarding the door for me.”
“No.” Then he said the fateful words: “Wanna get drunk tonight?”
Because of Kaveh’s evening nap needs, it was well past 3 a.m. when they finally left. He insisted he knew a secluded place with a great view, and as they walked up the block, Alhaitham realized he was being led to the library.
“Absolutely not,” he said. “We are not drinking in the fucking library.”
“No,” Kaveh laughed as he dragged them into the stairwell. “We’re not.” He pointed to a sign at the top, in bold red letters: NO ROOFTOP ACCESS.
“Not to worry.” He brandished a key on a long lanyard. “Tighnari gave me this. He does research with a biology professor, and he works in the greenhouse on the roof all the time.” He turned the key.
“There’s a greenhouse up here?” Alhaitham asked, and Kaveh pushed the door open, revealing a beautiful rooftop garden space—the greenhouse to the left, rows upon tidy rows of seedlings visible even from afar, and on the right, all sorts of potted flowers and trees.
Kaveh spread his arms wide. “This is one of my favorite places on campus. Not many people know about it.” He half jogged, half skipped to the far end, teetering dangerously close to the edge. In the moonless night, only the city skyline was illuminated.
Sometimes he forgot there were millions of people in the city, just a bus ride away. It was easy to stay in the bubble of campus, the 12 square miles where all he thought about was reading and—usually against his will—Kaveh.
“We’ve never been,” he said, gesturing to the wide world beyond them.
“Do you want to?” Kaveh asked. “We could.”
“I think you’re meant to—explore the city when you go to college here, I mean. But I was only making a point, not requesting something.”
“Well, we have two more years for that. We’ll make plenty of trips off campus.” Kaveh pulled a bottle from his backpack. “Look, I only brought you the best. Peach Taaka.”
Alhaitham gagged.
“If you wanted something better, you should’ve brought it yourself! We aren’t making fancy cocktails here; we’re trying to get drunk.”
“You don’t have … I don’t know, beer?”
“Nope. But look what I do have!” Kaveh flashed him a grin and pulled something else out—a row of red Solo cups.
“I’ve drank from those before. At the party.”
“Oh. Right.”
Kaveh seemed dejected, so Alhaitham grabbed them from his hand and poured out two drinks. “Cheers,” he said. “To my second college experience.” They clinked cups and both took a swig. Kaveh’s expression was decidedly even, but Alhaitham gagged again and spat out the mouthful. “That’s vile.”
“It’s an acquired taste.” Kaveh poured himself another.
“How did you already finish that?”
“Like I said, acquired taste. Don’t worry; the drunker you get, the easier it’ll go down.”
Alhaitham took another sip, making what he was sure was the sourest face known to man, but then he took another, and another. The artificial peach flavor was revolting.
“I don’t think I can finish this,” he said, putting the cup down.
Kaveh laughed. “A gentleman should never let his companion drink alone.”
“My companion?” Alhaitham raised an eyebrow. “Is that what you are?”
“Ah. I’m not drunk enough for this.” Kaveh averted his eyes and turned toward the skyline. “Are you worried? About not experiencing what’s out there?”
“No,” Alhaitham said after a pause to consider. “I don’t feel the need to rush. If I can enjoy my time here, and learn about everything that intrigues me, I’ll be satisfied. There won’t be much time to focus only on studying after I leave school.”
They talked for what felt like hours about anything and everything as they watched the sun rise over the city. What Alhaitham remembered of his parents, Kaveh’s long-standing feud with his classmate Jazari, which professors to avoid next year. When the conversation finally lulled, Kaveh sat on the ledge, legs crossed, and Alhaitham copied him. If either of them took a tumble, it would be quite a long way down, and though he wasn’t particularly scared of heights, the idea of Kaveh falling turned his stomach.
“Let’s move back a bit,” he suggested, and thankfully, Kaveh agreed without arguing.
“Can I try some of that again?” He had already thrown away his cup, so Kaveh offered his own, and he took another tentative sip. “Terrible,” he complained, and drank another mouthful anyway.
They passed the cup back and forth, Kaveh refilling it twice when it got low. Alhaitham didn’t keep track of how much he was drinking, but it must have been far too much, because he was emboldened enough to ask something he had been curious about for months.
“Why wouldn’t you leave me alone the first few weeks after we met? You must have known I didn’t like you.”
“Of course I knew,” Kaveh chuckled. “You thought I was so annoying. You would do this funny little frown every time I tried to get your attention after class.” He tried and failed to imitate the look, the effort making him laugh harder.
“But listen … you looked like you needed a friend.” Kaveh turned to him with a serious face, now—as serious as he could be while this deliriously drunk and coming off a laughing fit. “You did, didn’t you?”
Alhaitham was on the verge of saying no, the easy denial on the tip of his tongue. He had never needed a friend before. He had his grandmother and his books and his happiness. But Kaveh had managed to entangle himself in his life. Like a fever he couldn’t sweat out, Kaveh clung to him, imposed himself on him.
Kaveh made him feel ill at ease with the status quo.
“I’ve never wanted a friend.”
“I didn’t say wanted; I said needed.”
“Then … I suppose you were not entirely off-track,” Alhaitham admitted.
“It may have helped that you were so lost and so cute.” Kaveh ducked his head behind his elbow, but Alhaitham could tell he was hiding a grin.
“Really?”
“Yeah, in a dorky sort of way.”
He made eye contact and smiled at Alhaitham before his gaze flicked away. In the early morning light, he was devastatingly beautiful. The sun peeked through his hair, even through the tips of his ears, turning them fiery red.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he said.
“Like what?”
“Like you want to kiss me.”
His words and his tone didn’t match. A sneaking suspicion, some intuition Alhaitham had never had before, told him Kaveh might be inviting him to look at him that way. Or inviting him to …
Alhaitham blinked in surprise.
“Have you ever kissed someone before?”
“No.”
“Have you ever wanted to?”
“No,” Alhaitham said truthfully. He swallowed hard. He had never thought about it before. Maybe kissing in the abstract, in the way his high school classmates used to giggle and lie to each other about making out with someone last weekend, and look at him with pity as if to say, “You wouldn’t get it.” And he would turn away and wonder if there was more to it than that. If he would ever find the idea appealing with someone real, someone flesh and blood, someone whose lips were so pretty pink when wet with bad alcohol.
“Yes,” he amended.
What came next was more natural than he might have envisioned, if he’d had time to think about it. He leaned in until their foreheads touched, then held Kaveh’s chin in his hand, tilting it up toward him. Their lips met.
He’d intended it to be a quick peck, fitting for a first kiss, but Kaveh pressed in and kissed him harder. Always so insistent, so demanding, and in that moment Alhaitham wanted nothing more than to acquiesce to him. His whole world shrank to the size of the man in front of him. Outside the bubble, the city was waking, rush hour starting, but there was nothing of value out there—only Kaveh, persistent and irresistible and precious to him.
The feeling surged within him until he couldn’t hold it back anymore.
“I think I love you,” he breathed.
“So cute,” Kaveh said, and kissed him again.
