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The terrible thing about summer is that the warm nights are too warm, and then they remind Kaveh of the last time he felt like that, warm and cozy and full . Summers aren’t the same anymore. They never will be—nothing is quite like being young, or just plain old younger, because it’s only been so many years since he’s graduated from the Akademiya and gave up his summers but it feels as if he’s sacrificed something much heavier.
Things used to be better. They’re good now, but they used to be better. That’s what the summer nights make Kaveh think of; they whisper about how things used to be and then they take it away with the next breath and the next breeze. It’s funny how Kaveh used to live constantly in the future because he was so afraid of what was to come for him, and now he can’t help but think back to the past and miss the way it was.
He doesn’t think he’s supposed to be walking around with such a heavy weight on his shoulders all the time . Everyone else seems to be functioning just fine—is Kaveh the only one who’s always drowning? Is nobody else suffocated by the uncertainty of having his entire future unfolding before him?
It’s only that he’s haunted by what he could have been, and the people he could have kissed or cried with or celebrated, and the fact that the stain of the moon against the sky makes him think about warm milk at night during his childhood and chalk on the concrete. Kaveh doesn’t know how to bury the body of the past and continue living as if he doesn’t grieve every damn day.
He’d opened a window in the evening when the sun was dipping just below the horizon of the city, melting into the sky as if a child had taken their finger and dragged it through paint, reds and oranges and yellows and purples. Now, the air doesn’t do anything to make the room any less stuffy, even as the open breeze circulates through the room.
The curtains flutter, and Kaveh picks up the faint sound of insects croaking in the trees. It’s summer and it’s sticky and the clock doesn’t seem to move any further even as the hands continue their slow trek , and all he can think about is the strange tugging in his gut, the feeling that something isn’t quite right under his skin.
It’s all the nothing dragging its fingers across his body and digging into his chest so it can mess with his heart. His breath comes short, too, as if his lungs are clenched in a vice grip. It’s the grief.
Kaveh lays stomach up on his bed and brings one hand over his head, his fingers reaching up to the ceiling or Celestia or whatnot , and there’s no mistaking the trembling in his body. It’s difficult to bring himself back to himself when he gets like this. When it feels as if nothing is real, anyway, so he might as well just tear himself apart at the seams and dig into his skin, and then maybe he will feel something, even if it’s just the same plain old hurt. Sometimes he thinks that there’s something wrong with him, and other times he figures that he doesn’t have the time to think about it, so he just doesn’t.
The sheets stick to Kaveh’s skin uncomfortably, so he gets up in a flurry of movement, throwing off the blankets in a mad fit of frustration. Standing in front of the bed, chest heaving in deep breaths, it comes to him that this is probably partly Al-Haitham’s fault—stupid Al-Haitham and his stupid house and his stupid guest room that has walls that want to suffocate Kaveh alive.
The thought flutters in his head: is Al-Haitham this restless as well? He’s the one who lives in a house that’s been painted over in the past, so he has to live that every day. Doesn’t it bother him? Isn’t there regret also sinking into the marrow of his bones, or is it just Kaveh?
The floorboards never creak when Kaveh walks across them. It makes him uneasy. The house is too silent, even with all of Al-Haitham and Kaveh’s everything taking up space. The floorboards never creak and the doors are too well-oiled and Kaveh is tired of living as if the house is made of tissue paper, tiptoeing around in fear of disturbing the memories beneath his feet.
The floorboards don’t creak now as Kaveh exits his room quietly—always quiet—and stands in front of Al-Haitham’s door across the hall. He can’t tell if the other is awake or not , but he can’t tell if he cares, either. Al-Haitham should be used to Kaveh disturbing him by now.
If Al-Haitham had been asleep, Kaveh can’t tell, because he stirs as soon as Kaveh takes his first step into the room, rising among a pillow of white. The moonlight doesn’t spill into Al-Haitham’s room the same way it does in Kaveh’s room, so it takes him a little while to adjust to the light.
When he does, Al-Haitham’s eyes are dark and trained on Kaveh.
“Al-Haitham,” Kaveh says, suddenly tired and a little forlorn , taking small steps to Al-Haitham’s bed. “Why are you awake?”
“I could ask the same of you,” Al-Haitham counters. He blinks, just once. Kaveh can’t decipher the look on his face in the night. “What are you doing here, Kaveh?”
“Your house is too quiet,” Kaveh complains. He takes another step closer. “Move over.”
Surprisingly, Al-Haitham obliges—if he’s wondering why Kaveh has suddenly shown up and demanded to sit with him in his bed, it doesn’t show on his face. He’s too good at hiding his emotions, even if at one time Kaveh was capable of reading his every thought. He’s rusty at it.
“It’s supposed to be quiet at night,” Al-Haitham says. “What, would you prefer to live in an older house when the sound of the pipes running would never give you a moment’s peace?”
“It doesn’t feel like your house is alive,” Kaveh says. “It’s only filled with dead things.”
Al-Haitham is silent for a long moment. “Dead things?”
“Like—” Kaveh makes a useless hand motion. “You know. Ghosts and remnants of the past and dead things. It makes it hard to breathe. You literally sleep in the grave of our project, Al-Haitham. Have you not noticed?”
“I’m used to the quiet,” says Al-Haitham, and for some reason, that makes Kaveh feel suddenly, unbearably lonely.
“Oh,” Kaveh says, his voice cracking over the singular syllable. “Al-Haitham, that’s kind of sad.”
“Is it?” Al-Haitham turns so that his face is shrouded by the shade now. “I’m not a very loud person. And I never grew up in a lively household.”
Kaveh thinks back to a home filled with laughter and cheering before it suddenly stopped one day, and he thinks he knows what Al-Haitham means. But he doesn’t like living like that. The years after were a little less quiet. A little more tolerable.
“You can’t like that,” Kaveh says.
“Can’t I?” Al-Haitham is still facing away. “It’s been less quiet as of late.”
“Yes, but—” Kaveh shifts impatiently. “It’s still strange. I can’t sleep like this. I can’t sit in this heat. I feel like this house is wearing me down.”
When he speaks next, Al-Haitham’s voice is softer. “Do you want to move out?”
Even with all of that, Kaveh had never seriously considered that alternative. There’s a part of him that’s still painfully, stupidly attached to Al-Haitham. “No. I just —” He changes the subject. “Al-Haitham, do you ever get tired of pretending that we hate each other? Because I do. I’m tired all of the damn time, and I think it’s the heat getting to me, but I just miss this. I miss you. I miss when we could be friends and not have to compensate in some way in order to prove in some convoluted way that we were supposed to fall apart all those years ago.”
Al-Haitham takes a small, hitched breath, a fraught, fragile thing in the warm summer air.
Kaveh barrels on. “And maybe I’m just an overly sentimental person and there’s nothing to go back to, but—” he pauses to collect himself, swallowing, “—I’m so lonely, Al-Haitham. I don’t know if I can bear this alone.”
“Kaveh,” Al-Haitham says, his hand twitching closer to Kaveh’s. “You don’t have to do this alone. I’m only in the room over.”
“You’re so close, but it feels as if I can’t even reach you,” Kaveh whispers.
This time, Al-Haitham does reach out, one hand over Kaveh’s. Somehow, it calms the twisting feeling in his gut, the urge to undo himself just a little bit more quelled. “I feel it. Kaveh, I feel it too .”
“I miss talking to you,” Kaveh says suddenly, a rush of words spilling out of his mouth. “I miss going to the tavern at midnight and sneaking into your dorm to talk about life and the future and cooking dinner by your side. You make existing a little easier, somehow. In some strange, inexplicable way.”
“Me too,” Al-Haitham says, soft.
Kaveh swallows. “I miss holding your hand in the back of the library.”
Al-Haitham inhales. Kaveh feels a scythe hang over the precipice of something, of everything, and holds his breath as the blade swings down.
“Me too,” Al-Haitham says, and Kaveh breathes.
It’s all he needs to say. He settles down into Al-Haitham’s bed, uninvited, and flutters his eyes shut. He can still see the outline of Al-Haitham through his eyelids staring at him before the sheets shift around him and he lays down beside him. Al-Haitham still hasn’t let go of his hand.
With Al-Haitham by his side, Kaveh can now hear the rustling of the leaves on the trees outside and the quiet creaking of the walls and the small shifts of the bed as Al-Haitham moves slightly. Huh. It’s a wonder how Kaveh couldn’t hear it before.