Archive of Our Own

His story starts in the middle of the main novel, between the pages already filled with sprawling, swirling ink and neatly sketched pencil lines. The pages are worn, highlighted with pinks and blues, and full of annotations written in small, curly lettering.

Instructions to raise the ceiling by a certain amount, to add more space in the back porch for a small garden to be placed among the wooden slats, and to always, always abide by the client’s wishes; all crossed out and rewritten in swaths of red ink.

Al-Haitham could name the exact date and time of each annotation, if only due to the complaining that was sure to follow every little change and addition and subtraction.

He was never one to trample over his roommate’s business—work was work in the end—but now that he sits in the eye of the storm, he can’t help but be disturbed by the destruction that’s soon to follow: the inevitable crash and burn of someone who’s flown much too close to the sun.

So, Al-Haitham would just tear out the pages and start a new beginning in the margins. The margins are where Al-Haitham prints down his first words of dialogue, and where he puts his first words of description.

Al-Haitham sets down his novel, stretching his arms upward to relieve them of the aches that built up over the few hours he’s spent here, curled up in the dimmest corner of his room. The small lamps he’d turned on to properly see the text before his eyes now burn low, exhausted in their efforts to keep his eyes from straining.

The world around him is bathed in an almost ethereal golden glow. Sunlight floods over his desk, spilling over his full bookshelves and carpeted floor with reckless abandon. There’s dust particles hovering in the air from where the light streams in, and perhaps that would bother Al-Haitham more if he were just a little more dedicated to cleaning his space, but it doesn’t.

It doesn’t bother him because he’s not the one in charge of dusting, of course.

He slips a bookmark into his novel, setting it down on his desk as he reaches up for his headphones. Considering the amount of dust he can see in the air, it would be advantageous for him to tell his roommate as soon as possible, lest the man catch some type of illness from the sheer amount of invisible pollutants in the air.

The noise-canceling turns off with a small click, and strangely enough, Al-Haitham is hit with dead silence.

There’s no manic muttering that echoes through the empty air of his shared living room, no scratching of a meticulously sharpened pencil over textured sketchbook paper, and probably most importantly, no petulant meowing from their precious Mehrak for more treats.

The apartment that’s usually filled with amicable chatter to inanimate objects and nonsensical mathematical rambling is completely silent.

Al-Haitham stands, slipping his headphones down to hang around his neck. Something is wrong.

The wrongness only increases when he opens his bedroom door. He’d spent the last few hours closing out the outside world—for fear of the eventual overstimulation that came along with staying out for too long—but perhaps he’d spent a little too long in his own world this time.

Al-Haitham turns the corner, peering into the office only to find it completely barren of any human presence.

It makes sense. Last he checked, the sun was perched much higher in the sky, forcing heatwave after heatwave into the office until he couldn't take it anymore.

Returning to his room early was simply meant to be a temporary reprieve, though it seems that time has slipped past him a little faster than he’d expected.

Golden light coats every surface it can reach. It warms Al-Haitham’s skin to the touch, a gentle caressing of fading sunlight before it sets. It spills into the living room without a single care in the world, flooding over aged photo frames and haphazardly arranged throw pillows at the edge of forest green divans.

Blinding rays reflect off numerous cans of cheaply bought convenience store beer and soda that sit on the floor, long drained empty of their contents if the sheer amount of them is to be believed.

Books and loose papers are scattered across the top of the living room table, mixing and layering overtop each other in a haphazard tower at the farthest edge of the dark stained wood.

The rest of the space is taken over by several sheets of blueprints, showcasing at least five different redesigns of the same building space; each with one feature more exaggerated than the one beneath, and each with increasingly less precise lines drawn out in worn graphite overtop the original white ink.

Sticky notes decorate each sheet of paper to its edges, covered in curling, messy penmanship. Al-Haitham can spot the fountain pen that left those specific notes behind on the floor, with its green lacquered body and gold metal accents; usually never leaving the safety of its owner’s pockets.

Al-Haitham takes two steps toward the table, a hand reaching out to tidy up some of the mess, and then thinks better of it.

Kaveh would probably have a fit if Al-Haitham messed with his things—going on and on about how he definitely had it organized and neat, despite Al-Haitham’s ability to pull random things out of the pile that he doesn’t remember being there—so, it was probably in Al-Haitham’s best interest to leave the mess be; at least until Kaveh returned.

Streams of lingering sunlight cover the blueprints, turning the sheets an almost sickly shade of green, and Al-Haitham casts a glance out of the nearest window.

The sun is almost halfway down the horizon, throwing out its final goodbyes as it fades below the ground. It must be near dinner time if the sun is setting in such a way.

Has Kaveh eaten anything yet? He looked busy this morning, but surely he would’ve eaten something.

Well, actually, that might be wrong now that Al-Haitham thinks about it. The empty cans that threaten to tip over with his every step seem to speak louder than any words possibly could.

Kaveh was in his room in the morning, hammering away at a new model even when Al-Haitham delivered a small bowl of cut fruit to his desk, and in the afternoon, Al-Haitham was sure he saw him at this very table with a hand in his hair, chewing at the eraser of his pencil instead of any snack that took up space in their pantry.

Huh.

Has Kaveh eaten anything at all today?

Al-Haitham squints against the sun, defiant. He can see birds hovering in the sky, gliding down to low hanging tree branches to lay for the impending night; can hear cicadas and crickets kick up their cries as the shadows begin to cast themselves over the leaves, and yet, by some strange occurrence, Kaveh isn’t here.

He glances back down at the mess of cans, at the pile of blueprints, at the fountain pen that lays still near the leg of their living room table; and his mind forms a story.

One wherein an architect creates a draft he considers perfect for his client, only to get told to revise it, and then revise it again, and then once more.

Again and again and again until the architect cannot revise any longer without risking safety, and until the client no longer wishes to work with him, not until the design can very well defy the laws of physics.

The architect does not scream when the client lets him off. He does not cry out in frustration when the client reaches out to another person in his field of work to begin drafting a new version of their home.

He holes it all up in his chest, burying it beneath his ribs and lungs until he can no longer breathe without a dense pressure weighing down every breath he takes.

And then, when that pressure finally reaches its inevitable peak, he runs. Just as he’s always done. Time and time and time again.

Al-Haitham sighs, and then turns to grab a stray jacket from the back edge of the divan, pulling it over his head.

Jasmine floods his senses almost immediately, but he can’t really be bothered to go find another jacket from his own closet. Time is of the essence, Kaveh will understand.

Kaveh has escaped into the sunset. This, of course, must be remedied.

Leaving the apartment complex is a simple task. Al-Haitham takes the elevator down three floors, takes a left turn, a right turn, and then another left turn, and exits the lobby of the building in no time flat.

His headphones are just as easily pulled back over his ears, guarding him from the noises of the world as he walks through the front doors, silencing everything but his own thoughts.

A swift, late summer breeze greets him as he walks out of the stuffy old building, brushing his hair violently to the side as he vainly tries to hold it in place with his hand, and street lights flicker on and off above him, not quite sure whether it’s dark enough to turn on yet or not. Fading sunlight creeps up their aged supports, turning the rusted silver into a fiery orange.

The road beneath the lights is as desolate as Al-Haitham expects it to be, with it being the odd time of day where it was too humid to walk outside, but bright enough to make the heat of the overwhelming summer sun bearable on his skin.

It’s not hot enough to make him sweat, thank the Archons for that. He didn’t know if he could handle wearing his headphones if he were sweating buckets.

And so he begins his search, just as he always does. If Al-Haitham were just a few years younger, he knows that he would be too overwhelmed to even begin.

There would be too many places to check, too many common spaces to cross off his mental list in one evening; but now, after a few vague first encounters and a few extra years of knowing Kaveh, Al-Haitham knows that there’s really nothing to worry about.

He could make a joke out of it if he tried hard enough. The set-up? A young man gets overwhelmed and flees his home. He leaves behind all of his work, all of his annotations and sketches, his pens and his pencils and his most valued belongings on a whim.

The punchline? The aforementioned young man never strays from his former haunts.

Al-Haitham turns the corner and waits beneath the streetlights, peering down the road to catch sight of the bus.

Within minutes, with his noise-canceling turned up to its highest setting, he sets out into the gold casted evening, following a route only familiar to him and the one he searches for.

They’re college students when Al-Haitham first meets him. He’s just moved into his new student housing, a pristine looking box of a room with nothing but a desk and bed frame occupying the space alongside him, and is out on the first of many walks of his new college student life, taking in the area and exactly what is within walking range.

The sun beats down heavy on his back, easily piercing through the thin cardigan he’d thrown on in a vain attempt at looking presentable. After hours of waiting in several different lines—to collect the keys to his room, to take a tour of his new home for the year, and to ensure he knew the staff that were stationed in every floor to keep students safe from outside entities and themselves alike—Al-Haitham comes to find that the outside world is wearing down on him a little more than it usually does.

Every blast of a car horn makes his ears ring, the hot air that blows against his face is rapidly drying out his skin, and the heat is making his t-shirt stick to his skin in ways that would be considered unholy in any different context.

All he wanted was some quiet, but perhaps he was mistaken in thinking he could find it anywhere within a five mile radius of his dorm?

Al-Haitham takes a deep breath, and quickly sidesteps a young couple walking opposite to him. Archons, why did he decide to take a walk in the middle of summer? He’s not even athletically inclined, what made him think he was up to challenge the scalding sun?

And so, he eventually finds himself slouching on a bench in some park a few blocks away from his dorm, catching his breath in the midst of the uncomfortable heatwave.

The park acts as a type of refuge from the sun, providing small patches of shade for him to leap between as he walks, and benches for him to rest whenever he decides that he’s had enough.

He leans his head forward, huffing and puffing like a child, and swiftly regrets taking a walk when the sun was at its highest.

He regrets waiting so long in those damn lines back at the dorm, and perhaps even regrets his very existence because it is hot and he would much rather be back in some form of air conditioning rather than out here, melting into a puddle on the freshly cleaned sidewalks.

An uneasy silence falls around him, filled only with the gentle rustling of tree leaves and the chittering of the small birds that make their homes in thin tree branches.

The noise and dissonance of the city eventually fades into nothing but familiar background noise, and it’s only then that Al-Haitham can bring himself to open his eyes and survey where exactly he’s walked to in his desperate attempt at escaping.

For all of its silence, the park is not barren; it is not just a field with a single walking trail blazing through its center.

There’s a brightly colored playscape to his right, though there are no children screaming and running within its fencing, and if he were to look to his left, Al-Haitham would find a sprawling community garden, blooming and blossoming with a collection of fruit and vegetables he couldn’t even begin to name.

Directly across from where he sits is a dense smattering of trees and shrubbery, layered upon each other as if they were painted onto a single sheet of canvas rather than planted into the soft soil beneath his feet.

Al-Haitham squints against the many shades of green before him, taking care to not lean too far out of his seat lest he be spotted by some random passerby.

He cannot see the sky at the other side of the trees, so it only makes sense to assume that the trees and shrubbery must expand beyond the small amount he can see, sprawling out into a mess of greenery in the midst of run down concrete and spray painted wire fence posts.

The listless thoughts of forests and their sprawling underbrush are swiftly shoved aside, however, as his eyes catch on a flash of something in the distance, weaving out from behind the trees in a fashion much too fast to be a stray animal darting around in the shadows.

The wind picks up, whipping a breeze through the empty air, and huh. Perhaps Al-Haitham wasn’t as alone as he previously thought.

Upon further inspection, the flash that first caught Al-Haitham’s eyes is from a golden earring hanging off its owner’s earlobes. He supposes it makes sense. The sun is at its highest peak, poking holes through the clouds with ambivalent rays. It makes sense that one would reflect back into Al-Haitham’s eye, as unfortunate as that may sound.

Then, he registers that the earring is, indeed, connected to someone.

Al-Haitham blinks. The sight that greets him is a young man who’s just emerged from the treeline, brushing off the sleeves of his burgundy cardigan with hands decorated in glinting gold.

The man’s hair waves crazily in the wind, exposing gentle, carmine dipped eyes, pouty lips, and sun-flushed rosy pink cheeks. Red enamel hair pins glint in the sunlight, reflecting light back in Al-Haitham’s eyes.

He’s quite lanky too, Al-Haitham notes, with his cardigan sleeves being just a tad bit too short for his arms. He sweeps a hand up, brushing wheat bleached strands out of his eyes in a smooth moment that has Al-Haitham frozen in his seat.

The young man who emerges from the trees is cute.

He’s not looking in Al-Haitham’s direction. His head is bent downward, letting his hair hang freely over his face as he continues to brush off grass blades and leaves from his clothes, but Al-Haitham knows what he sees; knows what he hears.

The world that’s full of noise, of wind that whips the flower petals around his face and eyes, of high pitched ringing only ever present in Al-Haitham’s ears, lessens to a quiet dull pulsing when the young man lifts his face to the sky.

Cherry blossoms do not blossom in Sumeru as they do in neighboring Inazuma. The sun scalds them before they even get the chance to form buds upon their branches, but that does not stop other flowers from taking their place in Sumeru’s sunnier parks.

Instead of the dreamy light pink that Al-Haitham often encounters in the novels in the library, the white petals of crawling jasmine vines are what fall gently around the stranger’s face.

Yet, despite their onslaught, he never once looks down. His eyes seem to be searching for something amongst the clouds, flickering back and forth as he raises his hand up, fingers curling ever so slightly as the jasmine petals cascade down around him, landing in his hair, over the bridge of his nose, over the white collar that sticks out over the top of his cardigan—

—and when he looks in Al-Haitham's direction, eyes bright and full of sparkling life, Al-Haitham feels as if the world has been pulled out from under his feet.

They lock eyes, Al-Haitham and the stranger, both unmoving. The quiet world around them swirls with white jasmine petals, the wind whipping them around without a care for who or what happens to get caught between.

The man nods toward him, lifting a hand up in an attempt at a wave. And when the petals gathered on his palm consequently cascade to the ground, swirling around the stranger’s legs, Al-Haitham forces himself to look away.

It’s not respectful of him to stare—he can already hear his grandmother’s voice chastising him in the back of his head—so he’s quick to busy himself with the garden roughly ten steps to his left.

Unlike the forestry in front of him, the community garden grows in neat rows and columns, separated from the rest of the park and walking trail with nothing more than a small rope and a few wooden stakes in the grass.

It’s not the most interesting thing, with plants neatly planted in the ground and crawling above into high trellises and wire overhangs, but it does it’s job in keeping Al-Haitham’s eyes away from the stranger across the way.

He doesn’t know how long he sits there, pretending to be enamored with one of the smallest garden patches he’s ever had the courtesy of laying his eyes upon, but it must be a while if the crick in his neck is to be believed.

The wind picks up once more as he waits there, blowing gentle gusts in his face in what Al-Haitham can only believe to be pettiness, or perhaps even a minute defiance.

Al-Haitham brushes a hand through his hair, using his arm as a guard as he risks a glance back at where the young man stands.

Or, really, where the young man was standing.

The only thing that remains there now is the scenery he’d emerged from, all luscious greens and fluttering whites under the blistering hot summer sun. It really is peaceful, a quiet spot in the middle of a bustling college town.

Or at least, that’s what Al-Haitham believes for the solid minute he thinks he’s alone.

A cold sensation presses at his neck, and Al-Haitham instinctively jerks away from it, feeling the hairs on his arm rise on end at the sudden intrusion. He scoots to the far end of the bench, hands sliding down to cover his neck as his eyes shoot up to find the thing that’s intruded on his precious space.

He’s met with wide eyes framed by curling golden hair, a hesitantly extended hand, and a peculiarly tall aluminum can covered in condensation.

The young man from earlier seems just as shocked as Al-Haitham is despite being the reason for Al-Haitham’s sudden recoil.

“Hi. Did I scare you?” The man asks, a sweet smile blooming on his face. He sits himself down next to Al-Haitham, keeping a respectful distance between them as he sets down the soda can right by Al-Haitham’s side. “Want to share? I can’t finish the whole can by myself.”

“You didn’t scare me.” Al-Haitham tries to say, but his words come out in a strange jumble, caught in his throat. Luckily, the stranger seems to find his blunder amusing rather than annoying, brushing it off with nothing more than a smile and a wave.

Al-Haitham looks down at the can with caution, trying to look for any microscopic holes that could be punctured through the top of the can or anything that could possibly be used to alter the effects of the drink.

The young man may be cute, but he was still a complete stranger; and Al-Haitham was not about to become a damsel in distress because of his own stupidity.

“It’s not spiked, I swear.” The young man pouts when Al-Haitham lifts the can up for the third time to inspect the pull tab. The can is dripping cold condensation on Al-Haitham’s cargos, seeping through the fabric at an impossibly quick pace, but still he does not relent in his inspection.

Al-Haitham sets the can down for a second to wipe his hand on his pant leg, and watches the young man picks it back up and offers it to him again. He’s insistent on getting Al-Haitham to take at least one sip, it seems. “Go ahead and open it. I’ll take a sip first if you still don’t trust me.”

“You better not be lying to me.” Al-Haitham says, completely serious as he takes the can out of the boy’s hand. He pops the soda tab off the top, and looks the boy directly in the eye as he slowly pushes the can into his palm. “Tell me your name too, so I can identify you to the police when they find my body in the woods.”

“Fine, I’ll take you up on that.” The man laughs, obscenely bright and loud in the silence of the park around them, and takes a swig of the can in one big gulp.

Al-Haitham watches as he carefully sets the can back down next to his leg, leaning his head back in tandem with the gentle breeze. Al-Haitham can only watch as the wind plays with the other’s hair, blowing strands of molten gold all around the man’s face like a frame of a renaissance painting.

“Are you not going to drink?” The man eventually asks, picking up the can and offering it to Al-Haitham once more. He sighs when Al-Haitham’s eyes narrow, a frown marring his pretty face. “Even though I’ve already proven that there’s nothing dangerous in the can?”

“Are you not going to tell me your name despite me asking you?” Al-Haitham responds without missing a beat, taking the can from the stranger’s grasp and lifting it to his mouth.

He makes sure to drink from the other half of the can’s metal top, breaking eye contact with the stranger for the split second of time it takes for him to lift the can up.

Artificial strawberry coats his tongue in an overpowering wave, swiftly followed by the familiar fizzy sensation of carbonation rising up the back of his throat. The world washes away with a burst of fizzing strawberries, fading out into nothing more than an accumulation of strawberries and the jasmine of a stranger at his side.

He takes a moment to properly swallow the soda down, letting the carbonation do its thing as he lowers the can back down to the bench.

“There.” Al-Haitham says, looking up to meet sparkling carmine eyes. He quickly averts his gaze to the red hair pins that hold back the stranger’s bangs from falling over his face. “I took a sip. Are you happy?”

“Very, actually!” The stranger smiles, picking up the can and taking another sip of his own. The cheap aluminum clicks quietly against the man’s rings, shining gold and red in the light. “It looked like the sun was beating your ass. You looked like you needed a drink, and I would be more than happy to buy you one of your own if you need.”

Al-Haitham huffs, “And to whom do I owe the pleasure of offering me the most heinous drink I’ve ever tasted?”

“It is not heinous! Strawberry is literally the best flavor to come out of this company’s product line!” The stranger complains, holding the offending can close to his chest as if the inanimate object could hear Al-Haitham’s complaints. “I can’t believe we just met and you’re already trashing on the best soda to exist in these cursed college vending machines, freshie.”

“Your name?” Al-Haitham prompts again, a little peeved. That’s about the fiftieth time he’s been called that today, and it’s beginning to get on his nerves.

The stranger blinks—Al-Haitham can almost see the gears turning in his head—and then holds out the hand not currently occupied with a readily draining can of soda. “Kaveh. Lovely to meet you.”

“Likewise.” Al-Haitham does not take the hand extended to him, and instead moves to stand. He doesn’t offer up his own name in exchange for Kaveh’s; mainly because he’s not stupid enough to give out his name to strangers. “I hope you don’t extend these niceties to everyone you’ve known for all of ten minutes, Kaveh.”

He walks away to the sound of Kaveh’s offended scoffing, and pretends to not hear the other man calling out to him via any peculiar nickname he can muster up in his haste.

Though, it seems as if the sun is doing its job at keeping Kaveh at bay, for when Al-Haitham waves a hand over his shoulder in lieu of a goodbye, the man doesn’t rise to follow. He seems to be completely at peace with draining the rest of his soda can there, right up until Al-Haitham turns the farthest corner.

And if he wavers there for a few extra seconds, straining his ears for the tell-tale sound of clicking earrings or a voice calling out to him, that’s no one’s business but his own.

Al-Haitham passes the threshold of the park in less than a minute, mind racing and steps steady. There’s no time to think about lofty what-ifs and pretty smiles. He has to get back to dorms soon. He has to prepare for the upcoming semester, and maybe go out and buy some water, if Kaveh is to be believed about the state of Al-Haitham’s well-being.

….

Oh, but perhaps he’ll go back to the park tomorrow, if only to see if Kaveh returns too.

Presently, there’s a few places that come to mind when Al-Haitham thinks of Kaveh.

He thinks of the park where they first met, the playground in which they spent lengthy afternoons loitering on squeaky, rusted swings, the library where Kaveh spilled a whole jar of purple-green iridescent fountain pen ink over Al-Haitham’s new books, and even the quaint jazz bar they’d both become regulars at just a few blocks away from their apartment complex.

A lot of places have been blessed with Kaveh’s presence throughout the years, but only a few can truly be called Kaveh’s space. Some of them could be considered as their’s, but never Kaveh’s alone.

And, Al-Haitham laments this certain point, only one of these spots can be considered the place where he runs off to when something has gone wrong.

If Kaveh wanted to find a place with no one around, he would go as far as he could; and the farthest he really could go without paying a drastic fee to reach it is the last stop of the bus route at the outskirts of town.

“It” being a run down pool at the end of the bus route, covered in dirt along the walls and bottom and hidden neatly away behind several “no trespassing” signs and an age-old decaying fence that held no chance against Kaveh’s ratty, unlaced sneakers.

Al-Haitham had found it by accident after falling asleep on the bus in his second year. He’d woken up disoriented, an aftereffect of falling asleep with noise canceling on as opposed to simply just wearing his headphones over his ears, and had immediately gotten booted out of the bus when it came to a complete stop.

Which, to be fair, is completely sound reasoning from the bus driver. There is no return route for this particular bus, and Al-Haitham should have known better than to fall asleep a mere three stops away from the one he should’ve disembarked at, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t a little peeved.

Even now, after taking this route so many times in the past few years, the last stop still manages to catch him off guard.

The stop isn’t as well lit as it used to be, with the years chipping away at the worn blue paint and the flickering yellow light, and the grass is slightly overgrown at the edges of the pavement, making it look even more abandoned than it usually does.

“Where’s your friend at today? Are you alright headed out that way at this time of night alone, young man?” The bus driver calls out once Al-Haitham is securely on the ground, drawing his attention by waving a hand in front of the light that projects little circles at Al-Haitham’s feet.

He’s an elderly man, with a thin layer of silver hair poking out from the edges of his blue cap. Kaveh always makes sure to properly greet him every time they ride the bus together, offering him drinks and companionship when he can, and the bus driver always extends the same kindness back in the form of waiving bus fees every now and then. It’s not surprising that the man would remember the two of them, but still it manages to catch Al-Haitham by surprise.

He repeats himself when Al-Haitham lifts one side of his headphones, already used to his peculiar habits with how often he takes this specific route. “I said, are you okay heading that way at this time? It’s going to be dark soon.”

“Ah, yes sir. Don’t worry, I know my way around this area.” Al-Haitham replies, taking a step back from the bus doors to ensure they didn’t close on his feet. “I’m just going to collect someone.”

The bus driver looks skeptical, but he nods his agreement anyway. His hands immediately start fluttering about the bus’ controls, raising the steps back up from the ground and turning to face Al-Haitham fully from his seat. “If you say so, kid. Don’t be scared to call for help if you need it, alright? Emergency services have interpreters for people like you too.”

People like you. It nearly makes Al-Haitham laugh. He’s not hard of hearing in any way—if anything, he feels as if he hears too much rather than too little.

Al-Haitham doesn’t correct him, however, and holds up his phone right as the bus doors begin to close. “I will, thank you.”

He only starts to move when the bus is a good distance away, watching as it turns back onto the main highway before finally beginning his trek. It doesn’t take much effort to find the worn down dirt path in the tall grass, carved there from previous trips made by himself and Kaveh of years past.

It’s not as clear as it once was, with the grass and lichen slowly reclaiming the small strip of dirt, scratching at Al-Haitham ankles with every step he takes. The feeling is not pleasant, but he puts up with it for Kaveh’s sake more than his own.

Unfamiliar flowers wind up his legs, and prickly leaves stick to the hem of his pant legs, but still he trudges on. Maneuvering down the path as if it were second nature to him, stepping over well worn holes in the packed dirt and neatly avoiding the poison ivy that lays just a bit off the way.

The grass eventually opens up to expose the pool, now nothing more than a drained, concrete crevasse in the middle of an area reclaimed by nature.

Ivy crawls alongside colorful graffiti and turns into its own type of art when combined with the crumbled and cracked walls of concrete left behind in its wake.

Al-Haitham already knows to walk around it. Architecture may not be his strong suit, but he’s not foolish enough to put his full trust in something that looks one strong storm away from crumbling in on itself. It would only take one misstep, one foot placed on the wrong chunk of concrete to send him tumbling to his inevitable doom.

He walks carefully around the perimeter of the pool, taking care to step over overgrown vines and avoid any strangely broken chunks of concrete.

If he remembers correctly, the only way down into the pool should be the shoddily built wooden ladder Kaveh had built out of some leftover wood slats from his old projects, but was the ladder still in the same place Al-Haitham remembered it to be?

He’s quick to dash around to the rightmost wall, only to find nothing there.

Kaveh couldn’t have moved it to prevent Al-Haitham from finding him, could he?

Al-Haitham shakes his head at the thought. Kaveh couldn’t have. The other man cared too much to move something so precious to them, even if said beloved object is just a weathered wooden ladder. Maybe someone else had infringed on their spot, changing and moving things to their own pleasure, to fit their own needs.

(He pretends that the thought doesn’t disgust him; that the idea of someone playing around in an abandoned pool that he used to spend long afternoons in doesn’t make him want to chuck a particularly large stick at their head.)

So, Al-Haitham powers on through the bushes and vines, eventually stumbling off the trail that he and Kaveh used to walk along.

There’s no shoe prints visible in the tall grass, but Al-Haitham stalks forward anyway. Kaveh’s shoes never really leave prints behind, especially when he’s trying his best to not be found or followed.

Night is rapidly descending over him, turning molten golds to fading lilacs and shadowy navy blues. The impending night forces Al-Haitham to navigate with his phone in one hand and a random long stick he’d picked from the ground in the other, carelessly smacking at the grass in front of him.

Shadows dance and run under the ray of his flashlight, and Al-Haitham is quite sure that the stick in his hand has collided with at least three different types of solid material that were not meant to be found in grassy fields, but it’s no matter. He would much rather smash a glass bottle to bits than roll his ankle in some hidden rabbit hole.

The ladder ends up being located in the backmost corner of the pool’s walls, the red of its rungs sticking out like a sore thumb against the bluish grays of the surrounding concrete. It’s nowhere near its original position at the very center of the rightmost wall, but Al-Haitham doesn’t exactly want to think of why exactly that is.

Al-Haitham wastes no time in clamoring down the rickety ladder, hissing when sharp chips of flaking red paint dig into his palms. He’d told Kaveh all those years ago that the ladder didn’t need to be painted, but the other had insisted that painting it was better than leaving it plain.

He can only laugh when he thinks about it now. He should have been a little less lenient about this certain tidbit. His hands are suffering the consequences as they speak.

The bottom of the pool is deathly quiet. Unlike the top where flora flourishes and grasses thrive, the former pool floor is covered in long discarded shards of glass and old crushed aluminum cans. They covered the entire floor at one point, but now they rest against the side of the wall, making it a little difficult for Al-Haitham to navigate around the pile at the bottom of the ladder.

He resorts to roughly kicking the cans and bottles to the side, letting Kaveh know of his presence by simply becoming a disturbance. It’s something similar to what Kaveh does for him, if flicking lights on and off repeatedly and waving at the side of Al-Haitham’s peripheral vision to get his attention count.

Al-Haitham walks around leisurely, kicking aside cans and bottles alike as he shines his phone light in every possible direction.

Kaveh was never one to loiter around in the dark. Even in their college days he was always to be found near some source of light, like a moth to a flame.

His blueprints were always drawn out by lamplight, his models built under fluorescent white lighting in the school labs, and his very existence lit up under a spotlight, bright and shimmering for all to see.

It doesn’t take very long for Al-Haitham to find Kaveh laying on the floor, his mustard yellow high tops drawing attention just as the bright red of the ladder did.

He doesn’t flinch when Al-Haitham kicks aside another glass bottle, but his eyes do eventually shift over in Al-Haitham’s general direction. A dull red amidst a world of watercolor blue.

“Hey.” Al-Haitham greets leisurely, walking over to Kaveh’s side with careful steps and a soft lilt in his voice. He sits down at Kaveh’s right, extending his legs out and letting the other man adjust himself to his sudden presence. “It’s getting dark out.”

“Yeah, it is.” Kaveh responds, sounding more exhausted than anything else. He doesn’t move from his place on the floor, doesn’t even look Al-Haitham in the eye. Instead, Kaveh’s gaze remains stubbornly affixed to the rapidly darkening sky above.

Al-Haitham does nothing but mimic him, craning his neck upward to peer into the purpling evening sky.

It’s not dark enough for the stars and galaxies to be visible to the naked eye, which truly is a shame, but that doesn’t stop Al-Haitham from noticing the singular spot of white in the sea of darkening navy blue.

Venus, named after the Roman goddess of prosperity and victory, shines bright; just as bright as the man at Al-Haitham’s side.

Kaveh burns bright even in the dim lighting. Red enamel hair pins shimmer in the dimming sunlight, pinning back a careful braid at the leftmost side of Kaveh’s scalp and framing the gentle sloping of his nose. His eyes shine a vicious shade of red in the light, as brilliant as rubies when they meet Al-Haitham’s gaze.

They linger a little on the collar and sleeves of the jacket Al-Haitham has hastily pulled over his arms, but Kaveh does not comment on it. The thought makes Al-Haitham feel a little smug, if anything.

“Why are you here, Haitham?” Kaveh asks instead, bringing a hand up to wave. His elbow brushes against Al-Haitham’s leg with the movement. “It’s late, even for you.”

Kaveh’s right hand twitches when Al-Haitham scoots closer, his pinky barely brushing up against Al-Haitham’s own when it returns to the floor. Smothered flames reaching for air, for the oxygen lacking in Kaveh’s lungs.

Were you looking for me? He seems to ask. Did you come out to find me?

Kaveh has always burned bright, but Al-Haitham knows that not everyone can acclimate to such a strong flame.

“Have you been out here long?” Al-Haitham asks in lieu of an answer, to which Kaveh shakes his head. His hair drags against the dirty ground, picking up dust and clumps of moss as he moves, and Al-Haitham wishes he could reach over and tie it up; braid it back into a small, cascading waterfall of gilded flame.

Kaveh’s head eventually stills, his eyes shifting to meet Al-Haitham’s own. Bleary scarlet locking with questioning teal. “Just long enough to see the sunset.”

Silence falls over them, a familiar companion in the midst of swirling thoughts. Al-Haitham knows this routine, knows that if left alone, Kaveh would simply lay here until nightfall, sorting through options and frustrations like a well worn novel’s pages, visiting old regrets written in curling black ink and scratching down new ones in vibrant blue.

Client complaints, to the state of his wallet, to hours upon hours of lost time talking, negotiating with the very people he was drafting for; Kaveh has every reason to be upset, but he never once voices it out. It stays locked up behind cheery smiles and optimistic redesigns, hidden away from all eyes but Al-Haitham’s.

There’s simply no hiding it. Under the benevolent smears of evening—the careful probing, all exposing nature of natural lighting—the eye bags under Kaveh’s eyes appear as an unflattering shade of bruising purple, and even to the naked, untrained eye, Kaveh is much too thin for someone of his height and stature.

There may be concealer patted into the pores of Kaveh’s skin, ashy crimson kohl smeared at the corners of his eyes, and blush placed high on his cheeks; Al-Haitham can see right through it all.

Kaveh looks tired. Kaveh is tried. Sickly, even, if Al-Haitham were to reach that far. He walks with the very weight of the world on his shoulders, dragging his feet one after the other, and Al-Haitham can see it all.

But he holds himself back. He holds himself back for the sake of Kaveh and his generous heart. His precious, soft spoken, ambitious self; wanting to help as many people as he can with his skills, to give them peace with a space that truly, wholeheartedly felt like a home rather than just a place to live, a stop along a long bus route. A place to rest a tired head and a heavy heart.

“What’s on your mind?” Al-Haitham asks, unable to contain the slight unease that lingers in his tone. He coughs, clearing his throat.

What has you all the way out here on your own? He responds to Kaveh’s own silence in kind. Why have you run so far from my reach?

Kaveh raises a hand to the sky, his hand splayed open as if to reach for an invisible tether. Venus vanishes from view under Kaveh’s palm, a bright light extinguished with a single movement. “Nothing.”

Al-Haitham raises a singular eyebrow at that one, to which Kaveh frowns.

“I just,” he starts, his mouth drawing into a line before he sighs, “Do you think I’m too much, Haitham? That my designs are too loud?”

Al-Haitham tilts his head, “I—”

Kaveh cuts him off before he begins. “The—oh, sorry.”

“No, no, continue.” Al-Haitham cedes the floor to Kaveh, waving his hand to pass off the responsibility of speaking to the one who lays prone on the floor. “I’ll listen.”

Kaveh frowns, but continues. “The clients that hire me keep dropping me midway through the project. They say my designs are too grand, too loud to fit their purposes.” He pauses, taking in a deep breath and bringing his hand back down to the ground. “The man I was working with earlier threw my own designs back in my face. Shouted and yelled and everything.”

His voice cracks a little at the end, and Al-Haitham pretends he doesn’t see the wince that follows. Kaveh does not like being seen as vulnerable, so Al-Haitham will abide by his wishes, no matter how much it pains him to do so.

“So, I just had to get out for a bit. That’s all.” Kaveh shrugs, his eyes flickering back to the sky.

Al-Haitham doesn’t respond. Not because he doesn’t have anything to say, but more because he doesn’t know what to say.

It is not Kaveh’s fault that his clients want things that he is not inclined to provide. They hire him with just a basic knowledge of his reputation, never looking at the pieces he’s completed in years prior, and it is never enough to capture the lines and strings that make up Kaveh’s existence.

To Al-Haitham, Kaveh is architecture defined, an artist smearing acrylic and watercolor overtop a barren plot of land, building it up into something worthy of a home.

He dedicates his life to making spaces feel personal, as if they truly were an extension of the client instead of another one of Kaveh’s own achievements, and still people say that he is too much. His designs are too loud or too colorful for their daily lives,they claim, and normally Kaveh is able to shrug off the comments he overhears.

And yet here he lies: defeated by the world. It makes Al-Haitham feel almost vengeful on his behalf.

What had that man said to him? And how dare he speak on the intricacies of Kaveh’s art? Who is he to say such blasphemous things to someone who clearly works hard—almost too hard, actually—on his projects?

“Are you sure you don’t want to head back?” Al-Haitham probes, changing the subject and glancing down at the man to his left. Kaveh has his eyes closed, the wind blowing his bangs every which way, but Al-Haitham can tell that he’s listening. “We can stop by the convenience store a few blocks away. They restocked your soda; the strawberry one you like? I passed by on the way here.”

Al-Haitham actually didn’t see it on his way here, but that’s no matter. Kaveh doesn’t need to know that Al-Haitham stops by the particular store every afternoon after his shift at their old college library—checking in with the manager and eventually even the store owner to know exactly when they would be restocking the strawberry monstrosity—and he absolutely did not need to know that the owner had agreed to save a few cans for him when the delivery truck came in a few days prior.

Kaveh opens his eyes, slowly taking in Al-Haitham’s relaxed posture with reasonable suspicion. Unfortunately for Al-Haitham—and perhaps fortunately for Kaveh himself—Kaveh is not a fool. “And how did you know that, Haitham, if the convenience store is not along the bus route to get here?”

“I saw the delivery truck on the way home the other day.” Al-Haitham lies, pulling his eyes back to the sky in case Kaveh finds falsehoods in his gaze. Kaveh’s always had a habit of being able to read him to filth. It is not very fun being on the receiving end.

The moon is out, a spot of hazy silver in a sea of lavender, and Al-Haitham briefly considers what it would be like to walk with Kaveh under such a breathtaking sky, hands interlocked and laughter echoing through the streets.

Only briefly, of course, for the next thing that comes out of his mouth is: “I thought you might want some, considering the amount of cans that litter over our living room floor.”

Kaveh sighs, exasperated and familiar, and Al-Haitham knows that he’s got him. He’s essentially grabbed Kaveh by the collar and hoisted him out of the bog of his thoughts with the promise of soda and food, and it’s worked. Hook, line, and strawberry flavored sinker.

“I can’t ever win when it comes to you, huh?” Kaveh laughs, quiet, but still more lively than Al-Haitham’s heard him all evening. He considers it a win. “I suppose we’ll have to go get some more then, if you’re so insistent on my drinking of them.”

Kaveh pushes himself up with a dramatic groan, stretching his arms up above his head and leaning just a little too close to Al-Haitham’s side as he tries to stretch his back. Al-Haitham catches a whiff of jasmine from Kaveh’s collar, but it’s gone just as fast as it reaches him, following its owner as he rises to his feet.

Together they stumble over hidden cracks in the pool floor, one ever so slightly ahead of the other, step by hesitant step until they’re clamoring up the rickety ladder, out into the overgrown flora and fauna once more.

Al-Haitham glances behind him, taking in the sight of Kaveh against the greenery.

This time, no flower petals fall from the heavens, nor does the other man reach out a hand to the sky. He walks slowly, hands tucked away into his pockets and hair flowing freely out of its usual braid. His red clips have been hastily adjusted to keep his hair pinned out of his face, a little messier than normal, but the same nonetheless, and deep purple eye bags do nothing to deface the beauty Al-Haitham sees.

Kaveh is just as beautiful as he was all those years ago, Al-Haitham muses.

Al-Haitham returns his gaze forward when Kaveh’s eyes rise to meet his own, easily letting his face fall into a gentle smile. “I don’t suppose you mind a little walking, do you?”

Kaveh groans, stretching his arms up. “Please, I wouldn’t have come all this way if I did.”

And just like that, night is upon them.

Every story must have a beginning, and this one is no exception.

After their first meeting, it quickly becomes apparent that Al-Haitham cannot escape the memories of glimmering blond hair against vibrant greens and whites no matter how hard he tries.

The man—Kaveh, his mind fills in—exists in every part of his mind. From the moment Al-Haitham rises, to the last minutes of evening when Al-Haitham rests over his tough school provided spring mattress, all he can think of are those warm carmine colored eyes and the sickeningly sweet taste of artificial strawberry flavoring on his tongue.

It’s as maddening as it is frightening because Al-Haitham cannot remember the last time something or someone has invaded his mind in such a way. He thinks of the other when he passes by the flowering jasmine vines in the campus common areas, and returns to the park every so often to hopefully run into him once more like some type of lovesick school girl.

Whenever he walks around campus, he inadvertently finds himself searching for golden hair and clicking earrings in the crowds. His head perks up whenever any name similar sounding to “Kaveh” passes over his head in the middle of class.

Hell, he even goes out of his way to wear his headphones around his neck more often, just in case he by chance hears word of where Kaveh might be, only to put them back over his ears when he reaches crowded spaces all the same.

So, of course it makes sense for their second encounter to be here: in one of the few places where Al-Haitham tunes out the world in favor of pages of worn text and roughed up parchment.

The House of Daena is the largest library on campus, with good reason. Its seven stories are filled from wall to wall with shelves of texts, ranging from simple children’s books to years and years worth of dictionaries and atlases, and there’s a cafe located on its bottommost floor, allowing for students to refresh and rehydrate themselves amidst numerous hours of study. Study rooms litter each floor, sparse in their availability, but there nonetheless for those who cannot study within the confines of their dorms.

These state-of-the-art features, however, are not what draws Al-Haitham here to the fifth floor, sitting at one of the few open tables right by the windows.

There’s a book perched in his hands, open specifically to a very colorful illustration of an ancient temple off somewhere in the sands of the Sumeru desert, but Al-Haitham isn’t paying it any more attention than he is to the people milling about on the ground below.

The fifth floor of the House of Daena, you see, is a special floor. With its special dedication to architecture, a magnet for those in the Kshahrewar darshan, and corresponding 3D printing lab aside—neither of which are among the topics of Al-Haitham’s respective point of study—the fifth floor is the one and only floor dedicated to complete silence.

Al-Haitham doesn’t have to wear his headphones here, which is ideal when he inevitably needs to find a place to escape the noise of his thin dorm walls and the loud chattering of his fellow students. No need to needlessly drain its precious battery life when the room is already quiet enough to hear a metal pin clatter across the floor, after all.

Unfortunately, this also means that it’s quite easy to get distracted by his own thoughts while he’s studying. His headphones hang around his neck, but no music plays out of their speakers to keep his mind on track.

Sitting by the window does nothing but make the distraction worse, with Al-Haitham interrupting his analysis to glance down at the student body below, eyes searching for red enamel and sunset golden hair.

“Oh,” a voice whispers urgently, begrudgingly pulling Al-Haitham’s attention away from the window, “what are you doing here?”

Al-Haitham looks up from his book, words of reprimand already curling at the tip of his tongue, and—

—oh, indeed.

Kaveh stands at the edge of his table, frowning down at him from behind a precarious looking stack of loose papers and thick textbooks. His hair is pulled back into a ponytail today, with his signature red hair pins tucked just above his ears rather than at the front of his face, and his bangs loose over the sides of his face.

“Hello?” Kaveh whispers, readjusting the stack of books in his arms with a wince. The stack does look quite heavy now that Al-Haitham gets a better look at it. “Earth to the stranger sitting at my table? I need to put these down eventually, you know?”

Al-Haitham blinks, and belatedly scoots his book over to his side of the table just in time for Kaveh to toss all of his worldly possessions over the other side.

Pens fall upon loose papers which then fall upon thick textbooks, making the loudest noise known to man when their covers crash on the wood lacquered surface of the tabletop.

Kaveh’s not wearing the same cardigan from the park—that’s to be expected considering how that encounter was about two weeks ago at this point—but somehow the cream colored button down he wears now draws Al-Haitham in more than the maroon-red cardigan ever could.

The top two buttons are left unbuttoned, exposing a little more collarbone than what should be appropriate for a library of all places, and the sleeves are rolled up to Kaveh’s elbows, exposing the several leather braided bracelets that adorn his wrists.

It would be so easy for Al-Haitham to follow his arms up, to trace a hand past his elbow up to his collarbone—

Al-Haitham does nothing more than avert his eyes.

The silence that envelops them isn’t as awkward as Al-Haitham initially expects. He returns to his work just as easily as Kaveh begins his own, fluttering back and forth between textbooks and loose reference papers with a gold metal accented fountain pen in his hand.

Its metal tip scratches along the surface of Kaveh’s papers, but the sound doesn’t bother Al-Haitham too much. A constant scritch-scratching hovering at the sides of his mind as he continues to read, flipping pages back and forth just as fast as Kaveh fills them.

It’s through this sudden appearance that Al-Haitham learns that Kaveh’s very presence is loud.

The other doesn’t speak, as per the rules of the fifth floor, but he sighs and mouths curses to himself under his breath as he crosses out the last line of calculations on the page in front of him. His fingers drum silent rhythms over glossy textbook pages, and his earrings click every time he turns his head to investigate something he seemingly didn’t understand.

Al-Haitham flips a page in his book, and then another, and keeps learning. Kaveh doesn’t sit with his feet planted on the ground, seemingly more content with swinging them back and forth and inevitably colliding with Al-Haitham’s shins more than once.

He uses pen instead of pencil to complete his calculations, and simply changes the ink cartridge inside when he finishes a certain problem to differentiate between equations. His hair falls out from behind his ear when he leans too far forward, and spins his pen in imprecise circles when he gets stuck.

Al-Haitham could sit there for eternity if he could, basking in the little details that draw up the man before him. But alas, the longest he can manage would be the few hours left of the day, barring, of course, the impending night.

“Excuse me, sirs.” A knock on the side of the table draws their attention, with Al-Haitham simply looking up and Kaveh accidentally flipping one of his textbooks shut over his head at the sudden intrusion.

The librarian in charge of the fifth floor smiles down at them, waving a set of keys in her hand. A glance around the room reveals them to be the one people left in the immediate vicinity, and suddenly, time catches up to them in dimming rays of sunlight piercing through worn glass windows.

Al-Haitham turns to look out at the sunset, and sees Kaveh doing the same in his peripheral vision. What was previously a bright afternoon has been reduced to a dim evening, and it seems Kaveh is also just realizing how late it’s gotten, if the shock on his face is of any indication.

“The library is closing soon. I would recommend beginning to pack up your things and checking out the texts you still wish to read during our off-hours.” The librarian says, disregarding her own rules of conduct and tapping her finger on the outer cover of one of Kaveh’s textbooks. “These textbooks, however, are not available for checkout. Would you like me to take them for you?”

“Ah, sorry, give me a moment.” Kaveh says, his brain rebooting itself at just the right moment to shut his books. Al-Haitham is content with watching him scramble about, pulling pages out from each book with the grace of a bull in a fine china shop before sliding them all into the librarian’s awaiting hands. “Thank you.”

“It’s no problem.” The librarian nods, hefting up the pile with seemingly none of the same issues that Kaveh was having earlier that afternoon. Her arms don’t even tremble under the weight as she readjusts them. “Have a lovely evening, you two.”

And just like that they’re left alone to their own devices once more.

Kaveh is collecting all of his papers into a singular binder, sliding them into the pockets of his dividers with practiced ease. It’s only then that Al-haitham realizes that Kaveh’s papers are actually connected into one massive sheet, held together by small pieces of tape at the seams.

“Did you really need to use all of that paper for one drawing?” Al-Haitham asks, seemingly unable to keep his mouth shut for the remainder of the time he has with Kaveh.

Kaveh sighs, a frown on his face. He’s carefully folding the paper upon itself, following the seams as best as he can without creasing or bending anything extra. “The professor wanted us to draw to scale, so yeah, I did.”

The conversation unfortunately ends there, as Al-Haitham cannot bring himself to utter another word and Kaveh looks too busy to respond anyway. But still, neither of them move to leave once Kaveh is done packing his things. They simply stand there like fools, waiting for someone to take the lead.

“Say,” Kaveh starts, spinning on his heel and taking the first step toward the elevators. Al-Haitham rushes to follow, falling into step at Kaveh’s right side. “I never did get your name back then; at the park I mean.”

“For good reason.” Al-Haitham responds, reaching out and pushing the silver call button on the wall to bring the elevators back up from the bottom floor.

The both of them immediately glance up at the red indicator at the top of the metal doors, slowing ticking upward digit by digit. “Why should I give out my name to someone I’ve just met? Have you not heard of the concept of common safety?”

The elevator arrives at the fifth floor with a quiet chime, inviting them in with a slide of its metal doors. Kaveh is the one who pushes the button this time, taking them both down to the ground floor.

The doors close once more to the sound of Kaveh’s voice. “But we’re hardly strangers now, are we? We shared a soda between the two of us, and just now we studied together for hours. You know what I study, and I know what you study.”

“Both of which were against my will, mind you.” Al-Haitham responds, sneaking a glance at the man to his left as the elevator jolts into movement.

Regrettably, Kaveh is not looking in his direction. He’s watching the LED display of the floor levels instead. “What do you mean I know what you study?”

Now that gets Kaveh’s attention, whipping carmine eyes like magnets to Al-Haitham’s gaze. “You mean to tell me that during the last few hours I felt your gaze on me, not once did you happen to look down at the work I was actually doing? Didn’t once take a little glance as to why I was drawing straight lines for,” Kaveh pauses to look at the time displayed at the very corner of the elevator’s display panel, “four hours straight?”

“...Mathematics?” Al-Haitham guesses because, no, he hadn’t once thought to angle his gaze downward at the work Kaveh was completing. His eyes were much more occupied with the way Kaveh pouted in concentration when his calculations came out wrong and the way his hair never once stayed back behind his ear.

But again, Kaveh doesn’t need to know that.

The elevator arrives at the bottom floor right as Kaveh turns to him. They exit in an awkward shuffle, with Kaveh turning to walk backward to ensure Al-Haitham hears him properly. “No dice. Kshahrewar, architecture.”

“You were drawing an entire building to scale?” Al-Haitham asks, disbelief coating his voice. They’re walking past the main front desk now, and both of them have to pause in their tracks to wish the main librarian a good evening and night, respectfully.

He only continues after they’re just out of earshot, lengthening his stride to keep up with Kaveh’s steps. “Why not just use a modeling program?”

“Because, my dear silver haired menace, the assignment was to draw it to scale.” Kaveh says, pointing a singular finger gun in Al-Haitham’s face. Al-Haitham shoves the hand away. “Anyway, unlike you, I did take a few glances at what you were reading. You’re studying literature, right little Haravatat? King Deshret’s poems to the Goddess of Flowers, Nabu, were in your book.”

Al-Haitham readjusts the bag that hangs on his shoulder. Night is falling over campus like a blanket, coating well worn sidewalks and aged brick buildings in dancing shadows. It coats Kaveh in a thin layer of shimmering starlight, making him shine even when he turns back to face forward. “How did you—”

“No one studies King Deshret’s love poems of their own will. Most will study the design of his temples dedicated to Nabu due to the mosaics and tile work along the walls to get a better idea of his lovesickness.” Kaveh says, reciting the words as if he were reading out of a book instead of speaking his mind.

Al-Haitham can see the shadows of his hands moving on the concrete below, contorting into different shapes and forms as he speaks to no one in his line of sight. “Or, at least, that’s my opinion.”

“King Deshret’s poems do have substantial evidence of his love, though.” Al-Haitham finds himself swept up in the discussion, following the gentle tones of Kaveh’s voice as they continue walking forward.

They walk side by side now, Kaveh’s eyes burning a hole into the shell of his ear. “The flowers that he mentions are all ones of love and desire: red roses, pink carnations, and white gardenia being among the few I’ve read over.”

“Have you read about the jasmine vines yet?” Kaveh butts in, turning his head just enough for Al-Haitham to see the carmine of his eyes focused back on him. “The flower that is thornless climbs high over my heart, curls over my veins, and swallows all rains. White petals dance in the warm breeze, gathering in my palms and caressing my skin in a way that reminds of your touch; gentle and fleeting, soft and hesitant.”

Kaveh says the lines with such reverence, the careful vowels and tones of Ancient Sumerian rolling off of his tongue as if he were meant to speak in them, as if they were his own words and writings.

The low timbre of his voice has Al-Haitham nearly tripping over himself to respond, his brain scrambling to recall what exactly came next.

“The truth I never knew, and you never told. To swallow the grotesque swells of red roses that prick at my fingers, to renew the sides of the hills and mountains we lay. At the very mention of your name, jasmine falls from the heavens anew.” Al-Haitham recites, pausing between lines to roughly translate Ancient Sumerian into something more familiar on his tongue.

The irony of Kaveh saying these words without one stumble as a person of the Kshahrewar darshan is not lost on him, but he chooses not to bring it up at the risk of his own pride. “I did a few papers about it in high school. Nothing too drastic, though.”

“That’s it? No analysis of word choice or structure or anything?” Kaveh asks, pausing in his steps. He turns his head to face him, and Al-Haitham very well believes that his heart has leaped up to his throat. “Nothing more from the stranger who spent four hours reading over one poem? And here I thought the Haratavat student would have more to say about such a lovely piece of writing.”

Oops. Had he been staring at one poem the entire time Kaveh sat across from him? He’d been flipping pages for sure, but surely he hadn’t been staring at just one poem?

”I did not spend four whole hours reading one poem.” Al-Haitham deflects, crossing his arms and decidedly taking a step forward.

He takes another step, and then tugs his headphones back over his ears, not wanting to hear whatever response Kaveh will think up. “And you said we’re not strangers anymore, right?”

Kaveh gasps, bringing up a hand to his mouth in faux shock as Al-Haitham begins to speed walk away. Not that he gets very far—Kaveh is still taller than him, and does have a longer stride to accommodate for it.

His voice is almost static under the noise canceling; his hands mere shadows in Al-Haitham’s peripheral vision. “Oh, what’s this? The stranger who won’t tell me his name is finally admitting that we’re no longer strangers?”

“Yes, yes, whatever.” Al-Haitham says, speeding up just a little more so Kaveh has to put in more work to catch him. It only takes the other a mere second to match his pace, a mirthful smile dancing on his face under the silvery moonlight.

“Whatever, he says.” Kaveh laughs, easily catching up to Al-Haitham’s rapidly dwindling energy levels and stepping right into his path. He places a hand on Al-Haitham’s shoulder and then another, forcing him to stop in his tracks. “Come on then, not-stranger, who do I have the pleasure of discussing poetry and literature with on this fine evening?”

They’re standing close to each other, barely a few centimeters away from stepping on each other’s toes. Al-Haitham has to look up at him when they’re this close, Kaveh’s hands placed on his shoulders, his eyes boring down into Al-Haitham’s own.

Like this, Kaveh looks almost angelic. The moon creates a halo behind fiery blond locks, silvery moonlight shining in such a way to highlight Kaveh at the very center of Al-Haitham’s vision, contrasting with the sun-kissed existence of Kaveh’s very self.

“Haitham.” Al-Haitham says, his voice coming out much softer than originally intended. But is that really his fault when Kaveh is looking at him like that? With moonlight shining over his hair and stars dancing in his eyes? Al-Haitham doesn’t believe that someone could look so ethereal after rotting away in the library, but living proof stands before him: light personified.

Kaveh smiles, his voice all velvety smooth under the moon and stars. “Lovely to meet you, Haitham.”

And, of course, Al-Haitham feels his heart leap up to his throat. A veritable consequence to his actions.

He pays it no mind. “Likewise.”

The nightly summer chill weaves in between them as they trek to the convenience store, descending upon Al-Haitham’s skin like a parasite to his body heat.

His hands are freezing within a five minute distance from the pool’s concrete walls, a feat that Kaveh has dubbed as almost corpse-like on multiple occasions. Al-Haitham usually just says that he has permanently cold hands, and leaves it at that most of the time.

Kaveh stumbles along at his side, his left hand jammed into the pockets of his jacket while his right swings freely at his side, colliding with Al-Haitham’s hand every so often. Each collision stings his skin, sending a wave of pins and needles up Al-Haitham’s left arm, but neither of them move to put more space between them to stop it.

It’s a bit of a comfort, if anything, because at the very least it means that Kaveh is here willingly. He’s here, hiking to the convenience store not because Al-Haitham suggested it, but because he wants to—

—sort of. He’s not looking Al-Haitham in the eye, and his steps are soft, almost hesitant at Al-Haitham’s heels. But Al-Haitham counts it as his win either way.

Al-Haitham walks with his head down to disguise the strange smile that comes onto his face, watching his step just in case a stray insect finds its way under his soles.

Their shadows blend together under the amber tinted lights, creating one long, lithe creature that forces bugs to skitter away on the concrete with their every movement, and his stomach feels as if it’s turning inside out with every step he takes in tandem with Kaveh.

Al-Haitham shakes his head, lightly jostling the headphones around his neck. That was most certainly something to be thought about later; when Kaveh was feeling more like himself rather than an unsightly coffee stain on an abandoned pool’s floor.

The convenience store comes into view after a good while of walking, a beacon of light amidst the darkness of the night. Good, thank Celesia. Perhaps it would do them both some good to get some food in their stomachs, instant ramen or otherwise.

Al-Haitham picks up the pace ever so slightly, desperate to get out of the chilly air, only for a sharp collision at the back of his hand to slow him right back down.

He hisses in pain when Kaveh’s hand knocks against his for a second time, briefly entertaining the idea of throwing his own hand into a wide arc to strike Kaveh with the same amount of force before a familiar warmth is curling against his palm, interlacing their fingers together in a tight grip.

The grip is just a little painful—Kaveh is holding onto him as if he were an anchor in the sea, the only thing keeping him from floating away in the hasty waves—but Al-Haitham only adjusts the angle of his hand when they reach the next streetlight, properly fitting them together like the centermost pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

He doesn’t have to look hard to see a pale wash of red coat Kaveh’s cheeks, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that when Kaveh blushes, it lingers.

Kaveh’s cheeks remain flushed in that pretty shade of pink up until the moment Al-Haitham pulls him up the aged wooden ramp and through the automatic doors of the convenience store, greeting the lovely old woman who works behind the cashier’s counter with a curt bow.

“Haitham! Kaveh, dear! Oh, Celestia, it’s been weeks since you last came by!” She croons, waving a hand to bring them both closer to the counter.

She pulls her glasses over her eyes when they do approach, with Kaveh dragging Al-Haitham along behind him not unlike a dog on a leash. “How have you been? My husband was just saying that your soda was going to be gone if you didn’t stop by soon, you know?”

Kaveh laughs, bringing a hand up to scratch at the back of his neck. A nervous tick that they share, it seems. “Sorry, Auntie. I’ve been so busy lately in the city with all of the new building sites and things that I haven’t had a chance to stop by like I usually do. I’ll make sure to buy a lot today to make up for it.”

“None of that now.” The old woman tuts, shaking her head. Kaveh seems flustered at this, not exactly sure what to say next at the woman’s blatant rejection of his apology. The sight makes Al-Haitham want to laugh, just a little. “Me and my husband are indebted to you for building that ramp outside all those years back, Kaveh. Don’t be silly.”

She then turns her attention to Al-Haitham, eyes dropping to the headphones around his neck before rising back to meet his eyes with a content smile. “Take whatever you need and make sure to bring it here, alright? I can’t have you paying full price at the self-checkout without telling me.”

“Yes, Auntie.” Al-Haitham says, dutifully ignoring Kaveh’s displeased squawks as he attempts to pull him away from the counter.

He just manages to push Kaveh into the ramen aisle, sending a quick thankful glance to the Auntie who watches over them with warm eyes. “We’ll be just a moment.”

Some of the shelves have been rearranged since Al-Haitham was last here, but overall the layout was still the same. The machines to cook the prepackaged ramen are in the corner across from the cashier; Al-Haitham believed that the placement was purposeful, but Kaveh rebutted him every time, and the little gacha machines filled with mini collectibles still collected dust on the far corner of the cashier’s counter.

Drinks are in the fridges along the back wall, labeled with fake neon signs at the top of each section to differentiate soda from sparkling water and alcohol from refreshers, and the lighting hasn’t changed from the fluorescent white that coates all Al-Haitham’s memories in a blinding haze.

The place was a little old and rundown back then, but that didn’t stop a younger Al-Haitham and Kaveh from coming every other day to mess around and slack off when they got the occasional break from their respective classes and assignments.

There’s memories embedded in the walls here—whispers of shared instant meals in the early morning, and of carefully analyzed blueprints and essays beneath white fluorescence.

In the present day, they usually come here when they want a break from their busy lives or when they want to spend a little time to themselves. Al-Haitham usually leaves it to Kaveh to make the trip all the way out here, as most of his work requires him to travel all around town anyway, but alas, sometimes it takes the other man in the complete opposite direction.

Even now, as Kaveh peruses through the aisles of instant foods and snacks, he seems to be just as confused about the new shelf layout as Al-Haitham is. His hands reach up to grab something off the top shelf, only to glance at the label again and think better of it, dropping the package right back where it came from.

This happens a few more times before Al-Haitham decides to step in: once with the ramen, once with some type of seaweed cracker snack that Kaveh had mentioned wanting to try a few weeks back, and once more with at least three separate bags of chips, each a different flavor, a different brand from the ones Kaveh tends to reach for when he’s not feeling well.

Okay, perhaps Kaveh wasn’t as okay as he initially thought. It’s nothing that Al-Haitham can’t work with, though.

“Do you want to go grab the drinks, Kaveh?” Al-Haitham suggests, gesturing toward the soda section of the fridge wall with his free hand when Kaveh turns to look at him. And when he still looks unsure, Al-Haitham pushes a little harder. “The sodas we came for, Kaveh. The ones that were out of stock when you stopped here last month?”

“Oh,” Kaveh says, blinking rapidly as if to wake himself up from an eight hour long nap on the divans. He shakes his hand loose from Al-Haitham’s and takes a step back. “Right.”

He then spins on his heel, and knocks right into the next standing display to his left.

Al-Haitham winces for him. So Kaveh really, truly, wasn’t all there just yet.

Kaveh walks away, followed by nothing but gentle chiming as he beelines straight toward the soda. He’s always been a little indecisive—always ready to dash an old idea for something better and brighter—so this is nothing new, but sometimes, his talents work against him.

Al-Haitham thinks to the way Kaveh’s hair is only half braided, with the rest being physically pinned back into place with his hair pins, and the way he’d been rocking back and forth on his heels, eyes flickering between a few bags of ramen laid out in front of him.

The blueprints scattered across their living room table, covered edge to edge in pastel and neon sticky notes denoting changes upon changes to be measured and completed, and the disarray of his old college work in the library all showcase it.

When Kaveh feels lesser than the world around him, decisions become paralyzing. The world turns into a living calculation, a puzzle with all of its edge pieces missing, and Kaveh is the one unfortunate enough to stand at its very center, unable to continue and unable to finish.

This is where Al-Haitham comes in, of course.

He picks and chooses through where Kaveh has left his options, grabbing at the few bags of snacks he recognizes from their pantry space back home, and easily selecting two packs of instant ramen from the multitude of colors and flavors before him. It’s the one Kaveh has a full box of in their pantry, so surely he can’t go wrong with it.

Al-Haitham rejoins Kaveh near the ice cream freezers, four cans of soda cradled in his arms as he peers down through the frosty glass.

His earrings shine like diamonds under the bright lights, and his smile even moreso when he spots Al-Haitham there at his left. It’s all encompassing in its warmth, and Al-Haitham wants nothing more than to bottle up that joy, to always make sure Kaveh wears it.

“Should we get some ice cream too?” Kaveh asks, his voice battering through Al-Haitham’s thoughts like a bullet train through the countryside, sounding a little shaky, but excited nonetheless. “I think I remember Collei telling me about a new flavor she found at the grocery store the other day with Tighnari and Cyno, and I think it’s that strawberry one right there, but if you don’t—”

“Let’s grab two then?” Al-Haitham suggests, sliding open the freezer with his free hand and hovering aimlessly over the display of frozen goods.

The freezer mist turns his fingers to ice almost immediately, but it’s no matter because he’s already reaching down into the negative temperatures. “Which one did you say it was? Strawberry?”

Strangely enough, there’s no response to his enthusiasm. Kaveh is frozen stiff at his side, hands still and eyes wide in what Al-Haitham can only parse as surprise.

Or, well, maybe there’s some apprehension there too, hidden in the way Kaveh’s hands curl inward and the slight frown on his lips.

But why? Al-Haitham hasn’t done anything to warrant such a reaction. At least, he doesn’t think he has?

“Kaveh?” Al-Haitham calls, frowning a bit when the other man blinks himself back to reality. His eyes don’t look dazed or anything, but it seems Kaveh is more out of it than Al-Haitham originally thought. “You wanted the strawberry one, right? The popsicles?”

“Huh, oh, yeah.” Kaveh says, albeit absentmindedly. He smiles, but Al-Haitham can see the strain behind it. “Yeah, those are the ones Collei told me about. We don’t have to buy them right now, though. There’s always next time, if you so wish.”

Al-Haitham narrows his eyes, tracking the exact moment a faint red begins to make its way up Kaveh’s neck, leaking into tan cheeks and overflowing to the tips of his ears in less than a second’s time. Now Kaveh is trying to dissuade him from buying the things? Something is wrong here.

“What’s wrong? Did you not want them after all?” Al-Haitham asks, straightening his back from the hunch he’d assumed to grab the popsicles from the bottom of the freezer. He’s a little glad to get his hand out of there, to be completely honest, but that’s besides the point. “You like strawberry things, if I’m not mistaken?”

Kaveh snaps out of his shock then, pointing right at Al-Haitham’s chest. They both don’t mention the way Kaveh’s hand shakes in the air before making contact. “Sorry. You don’t like strawberry flavored things, right? Why should we buy them if you don’t like them, Haitham?”

“But is this for me right now?” Al-Haitham fires back, sliding the freezer door closed and crossing his arms.

It would be foolish to assume, but Al-Haitham could make a pretty good educated guess as to why Kaveh suddenly changed his mind about buying the popsicles. “Kaveh, I’m grabbing them because you wanted them. It’s something you like that I’ll happen to have a share of.”

“You don’t have to do that.” Kaveh says, his voice barely loud enough for Al-Haitham to hear. He has to take a step closer to him to better hear his next words. “Don’t waste your money on such a silly little thing.”

Don’t waste your money on me. The unspoken plea echoes through the air, wrapping around Al-Haitham’s heart and veins like suffocating vines of jasmine.

Kaveh shrinks a little into himself, and ah. That’s what this is. Al-Hatham should have known. Kaveh has never once let him buy anything for him unless they both needed it, after all.

Because Kaveh is not only architecture personified, he is empathy and understanding, emotion pulled right from the heart and thrown out into the uncaring world around him. He is Venus; prosperity manifested through carefully constructed palaces and archways, beauty in his gentle carmine eyes and fiery golden hair, victory in the projects that tower over various city skylines—

—and the epitome of Al-Haitham’s long worn desire.

The belated realization just spurs Al-Haitham on further. There’s a puddle of condensation beginning to form at their feet, dripping down from the cans Kaveh holds in his arms with vice-like grip, but Al-Haitam could care less.

Why must Kaveh be the one to suffer at the hands of the choices of others? Why must he be slighted in such ways after weeks upon weeks of work? Why must he be the one cheated out of the money he so rightfully earned? And who is he to ask Al-Haitham to not buy him things he truly deserved?

“Kaveh, when was the last time you bought something for yourself without someone else’s prompting? Like the snacks you want to try, or a new set of ink for your fountain pens?” Al-Haitham says, his voice crackling and fizzing in a way he didn’t know was possible himself. “Have you bought anything of your own will, no, for your own happiness?”

“I—” Kaveh starts, getting cut off almost immediately by Al-Haitham’s need to get his thoughts out before they explode. He doesn’t think that he’s ever been this angry, not since that day back in their college years, and he’s starting to realize exactly why.

It’s all encompassing, almost overwhelming, and Al-Haitham’s mouth is awfully, incredibly, out of control.

“Why must others’ needs come before your own?” Al-Haitham asks, sounding much too pained for this anger to be anything but. He clears his throat and takes a step closer, watching Kaveh press his lips together. “When was the last time you let yourself be selfish, senior?”

Silence falls over them like a thick, uncomfortable blanket, and it’s only then that Al-Haitham manages to reign in the animosity that’s already spilled out onto the floor between them.

Kaveh isn’t looking at him anymore, but to be fair, Al-Haitham doesn’t think he would want to look himself in the eye after saying such things.

“I’ve been plenty selfish in my life.” Kaveh’s glare could cut through the thickest of concrete with the way his eyes narrow in Al-Haitham’s direction. He’s angry now, fists shaking and eyes dripping with well reigned fury. “Perhaps you should learn a thing or two, Haitham. Empathy is a simple thing.”

Echoes of a time long past race through Al-Haitham’s mind. Of Kaveh, shining bright as he helps his classmates piece together their architectural models, fluttering back and forth across from him in the library, throwing himself over that ridiculous stack of textbooks he insisted on needing. All because someone asked. Because someone needed help and because Kaveh has the brainpower to lend a hand.

Empathy is a simple thing, self-sacrifice is not. And Al-Haitham can’t quite figure out how to make that clear without Kaveh potentially shoving him to the floor in a fit of rage.

It’s only fair that Kaveh walks around him then, he supposes. It’s only fair that he follows Kaveh to the checkout, where they both silently unload their items onto the belt and make quick small talk with the Auntie behind the counter.

It’s only fair that Al-Haitham presses his phone against the payment screen before Kaveh can count out his physical cash, and it’s only fair that he bags everything up with heavier items at the bottom and light snacks at the top, just as Kaveh likes it.

It is not fair, however, that Kaveh takes all of the bags and walks out of the store without him, stalking off into the night as Al-Haitham rushes to follow all while shoving their receipt into his pockets.

Chasing him into the darkness, ugly memories rear their heads in the back of Al-Haitham’s mind.

And for the first time in years, Al-Haitham is enveloped in the records of his past mistakes.

It doesn’t take very long for him to find out Kaveh is a genius.

Al-Haitham has heard rumors, yes. Rumors about a man two years his senior who studies in the Kshahrewar darshan, who blew all of his entrance and midterm exams out of the water on his first tries, circle around, but Al-Haitham has never really cared for things like that.

He does his best to mind his own business. Studying at the House of Daena helps with that, of course, with its constant silence as his most important companion.

He works on his essays and analyses, cross referencing several ancient texts and structures to better make his points clear and tie them back to his thesis. Al-Haitham doesn’t care for the quiet rumors whispering up a storm in the corner of the study space. He really, truly, doesn’t.

Or at least, he’s never really cared until the main source of the rumor sits right across from him to study, sharing a table on the fifth floor at the House of Daena.

He and Kaveh have built a routine over the past few months. One of them will arrive first, usually Al-Haitham as all of his classes are set in the early morning, to claim their table on the fifth floor.

He greets the floor monitor every day with a nod, and every day she forks over the near irresponsible stack of textbooks that Kaveh insists he needs at all times to Al-Haitham to bring to their table all the way across the study space.

From there, Al-Haitham has an hour or so to himself to get settled. He takes up all of the space he needs, spreading out his work over the wooden surface and beginning on his editing and writing right as Kaveh drops his entire body weight into the seat across from him, looking like death on his feet.

“That’s the fifth time this month you’ve shown up looking like that.” Al-Haitham admonishes, rummaging through his bag and passing Kaveh a pack of saltine crackers he’d snuck from the dining hall.

The plastic crinkles under his fingers as he tears the pack open, but Al-Haitham doesn’t bother picking up the crumbs that spill over his lap. “Eat something before you actually pass out and die here.”

Kaveh rolls his eyes, taking the saltine crackers and sweeping his bangs out of his face, pinning them back in one unfairly smooth motion. “Only you would say something like that to me.”

They continue their studying in silence. Kaveh pulls out whatever he has to work on and gets to it, turning into a familiar whirlwind of movement as he looks back and forth between textbook and drawing.

The constant shuffling of pages, the scritch-scratch of Kaveh’s fountain pen, even the occasional fervent muttering are all routine to him now. Al-Haitham can’t imagine a week without it.

Kaveh is from the Kshahrewar darshan, but that does not limit him in his studies whatsoever. When he’s not working on his models or drawings, Kaveh is calculating angles of trajectory and analyzing some of the previous models from years past for essays and bonus points.

Al-Haitham could blink and Kaveh would be off frolicking between the shelves, digging around for some Spantamad references to better understand some of the texts in Al-Haitham’s books, or he’s in the 3D printing lab, refilling the plastics with Al-Haitham observing to make sure he doesn’t lose a finger or chunk of hair to the expensive machine—more for the machine’s sake than Kaveh’s really.

He even helps with some of Al-Haitham’s work on occasion, pointing out small details in some wall art that he would have missed otherwise and collecting textbooks to show him information that he hadn’t known before because apparently Kaveh also knows the fifth floor like the back of his hand.

So, yes. Kaveh is a genius. What does that have to do with Al-Haitham, you ask?

Well, in Al-Haitham’s third year they decide to do a project together. They’re not the only ones in their group, of course. That type of workload put upon two people would more easily kill than push them to pursue more information, and the Archons above know that Sumeru doesn’t need the sudden death of two of its most promising scholars due to mere schoolwork.

It’s here, underneath the suffocating white light of a second floor study room, that Al-Haitham succumbs to his anger for the first and final time.

Al-Haitham takes a shuddering breath, and angles his head upward toward the blistering, blinding lights above.

Their bodies do not perish here among the library’s oldest texts, but a part of Al-Haitham feels like it’s shriveled up to a third of its original size after it’s all said and done—after he looks at the torn up shreds of their work, littered upon the ground they’d stood and danced upon for so long.

Their group in particular had more than ten people, all promising scholars of different darshans, all willing to take on their part and responsibilities to learn and hypothesize about King Deshret and Nabu’s dedication to each other in all art forms available to them.

And to be fair to them, they had played their parts quite well. Papers were properly quoted and cited, and their index was well organized when all was said and done.

Once it got to the analysis, however, to the breakdown of where, why, when, and how, no one was able to keep up. Kaveh and Al-Haitham bickered and splattered like oil and water, throwing out theories and crossing them right off the whiteboard just seconds later with nothing more than a simple nod and shake of the head.

People couldn’t keep up, but then again, it wasn’t like Kaveh or Al-Haitham themselves were making it any easier.

It was only inevitable that some of their group mates would leave, but with every head that left came the overwhelming burden of picking up the slack on the leftover work.

And that was the main issue.

The other members either didn’t understand enough about the other darshans to properly work on some parts, or simply didn’t want to take up the extra work and kept to their own standards.

That left most of the remaining work to fall on him and Kaveh. They halved it most of the time, but even they can only handle so much. Al-Haitham, personally, doesn’t want to see another unit circle in the next ten years. Kaveh seems eager though, so they keep working and working. Another person drops, and they pick up the slack. And then another, and another. Again and again.

And where does that lead them when their last group member leaves in a brilliant flash of falling papers and scowling teeth?

Here: on the second floor of the House of Daena, one set of footsteps echoing down the hallway, and one set stock still in the middle of the room.

The study room is a mess, covered in papers and toppled ink and crushed soda cans, and Al-Haitham stands at its very center. All of their work surrounds him, laughing at him, mocking and cruel. Every printed word screeches at him, the edges of the loose papers pierce his skin, and suddenly, Al-Haitham begins to feel wrong.

Kaveh’s words still echo in his head now, loud enough to ricochet around the small, soundproof study room.

“I wish I’d never taken pity on you that day. What good is someone who cannot understand the plights and suffering of another?”

But it’s only fair, he supposes. Because it was only Kaveh’s retaliation to what Al-Haitham had started. His own words had been unfairly harsh, so much so that not even the thickest coat of sugared honey could have saved him.

“Why must you take on the work of everyone else? Do you no longer care for the state of yourself? Is it guilt? Grief? What morals does the Light of Kshahrewar operate by to bring himself to such a sorry state?”

The blame doesn’t lay with Kaveh, it stabs Al-Haitham in the sides instead, digging uncomfortably under his skin as he picks up every paper on the floor, rubbing at his eyes with rough palms and even rougher breaths.

It wouldn’t have killed him to be a little nicer. Wouldn’t have done him any trouble to simply sit back and think before opening his mouth.

It’s only after he crosses his name off of the Kaveh’s torn up research paper that he truly lets himself grieve. Mourning the times that will soon be long faded memories, a simple blemish upon Al-Haitham’s lengthy academic career.

But for now, Al-Haitham smears over his name with Kaveh’s favorite fountain pen ink, purple-green iridescence turning blurry under his tears.

Al-Haitham isn’t letting it happen again. Memories of spilled ink and torn paper shreds haunt him, and he’s not going to let it happen again.

He’s intent on it, practically breaking out into a brisk job to catch up to where Kaveh is blazing down the sidewalk, hair waving in the light breeze, glinting under the amber burning streetlights.

He’s got their bag of snacks and drinks slung over his shoulder in such a way that reminds Al-Haitham of how Kaveh used to stubbornly carry around those heavy textbooks of his in one tote bag, readjusting the strap on his shoulder every time they threatened to spill over the sidewalk.

Al-Haitham’s headphones jostle uncomfortably against his neck with every step he takes and his boots are making an obnoxious clicking noise on the concrete, but he can’t afford to slow down to deal with any of that. He can’t slow down because, for someone who was previously laying completely still for presumably several hours straight, Kaveh walks fast.

“Kaveh.” Al-Haitham calls, much to Kaveh’s apparent disdain as the other man actually speeds up instead of heeding Al-Haitham’s words.

Stop running. He wants to plead. Stop bearing weight you don’t need to carry.

“Are you truly going to be this petty?” Is what actually comes out of his mouth, as Al-Haitham is apparently incapable of saying anything that is truly on his mind. “Will you not turn around and talk to me?”

Fortunately, that is what makes Kaveh stop in his tracks, turning to face Al-Haitham beneath one of the many streetlights. The sudden stop jostles the plastic bags over his shoulder, rattling their purchases like loose rice grains in metal tins. Cicadas and crickets cry out from the nearby trees and grass, filling the air with something almost nostalgic.

It reminds him of the past, of nights spent walking out of the library doors, trekking across campus with nothing but streetlights and Kaveh’s questionable sense of direction to guide them.

The irony of reminiscing of their shared college days with Kaveh right in front of him is not lost on him. Yes, it’s been a few years since they both graduated, even more years since that certain day, but Al-Haitham can’t help but think back to it every now and then. Thinking of what could’ve been done differently.

Thinking of how he could have kept Kaveh close.

Kaveh scoffs, the petulant sound echoing into the busy night. “Petty? Please, I know how much I can carry, Haitham.”

Al-Haitham stops beneath the streetlight just before the one Kaveh stands in. They’re about five paces away from each other like this. It’s the perfect distance to ensure Al-Haitham doesn’t encroach on Kaveh’s space while still being close enough to hear him without the need for excessive yelling.

He takes a deep breath, the direct opposite to Kaveh’s rapid, erratic breaths. The other man’s face is flushed pink, but this time it’s most likely from exhaustion rather than anything Al-Haitham could be the cause of.

His hair is gilded gold underneath the streetlights, tangled and knotted up around his hair clips with a few strands falling out of his braid, and his gaze is alight with popping flares, blended crimson and carmine dancing jauntily alongside the sway of his earrings.

Without the steady wind, the night is humid, almost sticky. It pastes Al-Haitham’s bangs to his forehead, and weighs a little heavy on his lungs, but still, still Kaveh is beautiful.

Kaveh cannot catch his breath, but he doesn’t make a move to run either. A different approach is necessary. Something that will let Al-Haitham ease up to Kaveh’s side without setting off the alarm bells in his head.

So, he settles for something simple, and holds out a hand. “Can you hand me a soda?”

“Huh?” Kaveh asks, his face scrunching up in a strange mix of anger and genuine confusion. His grip tightens on the handles of the plastic bag ever so slightly before loosening all over again, unsure of what Al-Haitham is getting at. “What?”

Al-Haitham gestures toward the bag slung over Kaveh’s shoulder with his extended hand. A peace offering, a hesitant olive branch held between them in the form of splayed fingers and an exposed palm. “A soda.”

“But why—”

“Kaveh. My hand is beginning to grow tired.”

“Yeah, alright, alright. Hold on.” Kaveh sighs, pursing his lips and digging down to the very bottom of their bag. He’s muttering under his breath again, anger near forgotten as he no doubt curses Al-Haitham’s name, shoving aside snacks and ramen packs alike.

Kaveh does emerge victorious in the end; a singular, strangely elongated can in hand. Condensation drips down his fingers, falling to the concrete below and creating a mess in the bottom of the bag. His eyes do not rise, preferring to linger on the can as opposed to Al-Haitham at the other end.

“Here.” He says, shaking the end of the can ever so slightly when Al-Haitham doesn’t grab it in time. Like dangling a string of yarn in front of a cat. “Hurry and grab it already, my hand is cold.”

Al-Haitham takes the can, and without a moment's hesitation, cracks open the soda tab and takes a long swig of the liquid inside.

Artificial strawberry floods his mouth, coating his teeth in miniscule fizzy bubbles that come with a carbonated drink. It’s still as awful as he remembers, unfortunately, but he drinks it all down anyway, no matter its taste.

The can is back in Kaveh’s hand in less than a second, only a quarter drained of its contents.

A gust of wind blows Kaveh’s hair out of its pins, throwing his bangs in his eyes as he brings the can close to his chest. He sweeps his hair back, and his voice is soft, almost shaking with emotions Al-Haitham cannot begin to name when carmine eyes lock with teal. “What are you doing?”

“Drink,” Al-Haitham says, his voice sounding a little strange after quite literally chugging down carbonation he hardly ever drinks of his own will.

He coughs a little to clear it up, much to Kaveh’s apparent despair, and continues with his self imposed script. “It’s not spiked or anything, and you can’t finish a whole can by yourself, if my memory serves me right.”

He’s lying through his teeth, of course, but this doesn't stop Kaveh’s eyes from lighting up at the familiar words. He almost laughs, a muffled sound behind his hand as he lifts the can upward.

Al-Haitham watches with a fond smile as Kaveh takes a sip from the other half of the can’s rim before his face drops into what Al-Haitham assumes as Kaveh’s best impression of him: a blank face with narrowed eyes.

“I took a sip.” He says, raising an eyebrow when Al-Haitham gestures for him to continue. “Are you happy?”

Yes, Al-Haitham muses. Yes, he is.

That’s all it takes, really. Al-Haitham traverses the five steps between them, like crossing a bridge, like nothing happened, and plucks the can back out of Kaveh’s hand.

He’s completely relaxed now, his shoulders dropping down instead of hitched up to his ears, and Al-Haitham has no trouble standing next to him, basking in his lingering warmth, smelling the jasmine sprayed at his collar. “Very.”

The walk back is quiet. In fact, there’s almost a sense of normalcy to it all.

They walk along streetlight-lit sidewalks in silence, with nothing but the gentle clinking of Kaveh’s earrings and the heels of Al-Haitham’s boots filling the air around them. The soda can gets passed back and forth, back and forth, until it’s drained empty.

It’s mostly Kaveh’s effort that empties the can, in the end. Al-Haitham can only bring himself to take small sips of the monstrosity.

Kaveh crushes the can underfoot and tosses it into the nearest trash bin. He misses—quite terribly, mind you—and has a near conniption when Al-Haitham tosses the retrieved can into the bin on his first try.

They continue walking. Silence doesn’t weigh heavy on them. It’s light, as light as Kaveh’s hand brushing against his, constant reassurance and constant reminders of warmth, but still Al-Haitham feels the need to speak.

He turns to Kaveh, takes in the shadows that make up the gentle slope of his nose and the sharp corners of his eyes, the metallic shine of his hair under amber streetlights, and feels his breath hitch.

Kaveh is artistry defined, the goddess Venus peering down at them from the sky. He is beauty and victory, prosperity and desire. Al-Haitham looks upon him only to feel poetry dance across his tongue and sonnets take away the breath in his lungs. His heartbeat stutters and skips, and his cheeks fluster and pinken. All at one glance of Kaveh under the moonlight.

And then, as they round the corner to their apartment complex, Kaveh interlaces their fingers once more. His hand is warm and rough, decorated in a myriad of calluses from his constant woodworking and model crafting, and despite all of that, it fits into Al-Haitham’s palm like a puzzle piece.

Two parts of a whole, interlacing and holding tight, just as it was always meant to be.

Al-Haitham feels as if he can breathe again. He angles his head upward, takes in a deep breath of humid, sticky air. He chokes.

Kaveh catches on almost immediately, as he always does. Observant to a fault, eyes always looking for ways to help. “What’s going on in that head of yours?”

A breath, and then a foolish stumble. His tongue is loose, perhaps, or maybe he’s more tired than he originally thought. “You’re precious to me. I don’t like seeing you throw your money around so easily for others when you can barely afford to buy things for yourself.”

A moment’s hesitation, and then: “I don’t have to be selfish to be a good person, Haitham.”

Kaveh’s voice is not angry, just tired. Exhausted, even. “If the people need help, and I am capable of lending a hand, I will.”

Al-Haitham squeezes Kaveh’s hand, pulling him closer. They nearly crash into each other like this, their feet nearly overlapping with every other step they take, and their arms pressing up against the other’s. It’s uncomfortable, but neither of them move to step apart. “To you, empathy and self sabotage exist on one plane. The people are capable of handling themselves without you emptying your wallet at their first inquiry.”

“Don’t let the people walk over you. Don’t set aside your well being for another’s.” Al-Haitham tilts his head up once more to meet Venus in the sky.

He can feel Kaveh’s arm pressing against his own, and can see Kaveh starting to worry, his eyes burning a hole into the side of Al-Haitham’s face. “Just stay happy, please.”

There’s no answer, not until they walk a few more steps to the next streetlight, flooding Al-Haitham’s vision with amber tinted light. “I’m not up there, Haiyi. Look at me?”

“Hm?” Al-Haitham hums, bringing his eyes down as requested of him. The nickname isn’t new. Rather, it’s something that remains of their former time together. A small, little detail that Kaveh never bothered to forget, and never truly had to put in the effort to remember to correct.

Kaveh steps in front of him. He places a hand on Al-Haitham’s left shoulder, and then his right, forcing him to stay in place. They’re centimeters away from each other, close enough to nearly step on each other’s toes, but this time, Al-Haitham looks down at his senior.

The moonlight doesn’t halo him like it once did all those years ago. It dances at the corners of Al-Haitham’s vision, dainty silver mixing with the copper-amber spotlight of the streetlight above them.

His hair is falling in loose strands all around his face, and it takes no effort for Al-Haitham to reach out now, tucking wheat gold blond back behind Kaveh’s ears with a gentle touch, securing it all with a single crimson hair pin.

His hand finds a place on Kaveh’s cheek as the other begins to speak, soft but sure. “I’m not up there among the stars, Haiyi, but that doesn't mean I’m not happy.”

“I’m happy here, living with you and designing beautiful things for people who request them.” Kaveh continues, raising a hand up from Al-Haitham’s shoulder to cover the one Al-Haitham has against his cheek. He looks tired still, but Al-Haitham can only see fondness in his eyes and the beginnings of a smile at the corners of his lips.

Kaveh stands before him, with light dancing across his hair and stars sparkling in his eyes; light personified. He tilts his head ever so slightly, practically melting into Al-Haitham’s palm.

“You’ll always chase me when I go too far, won’t you?” Kaveh asks, a coy smile playing on his lips. “I’m never far from your reach.”

The world is cruel, Al-Haitham decides, for giving him such a kind person to love. His heart stutters the same as his words would, turning staccato to Kaveh’s gentle steady rhythm.

He wants to press his lips against Kaveh’s right then and there, to wrap his arms around Kaveh’s waist and hold him to his chest, to drink the air from his lungs and swallow the breathless prose that falls off his tongue.

Oh, how Al-Haitham wants and wants, but never acts.

Instead, he smiles and pulls back his hand, watching Kaveh’s cheek flush with a beautiful shade of rosy pink. “Fortunately for you, you never seem to run very far.”

And so it goes. Al-Haitham and Kaveh become singular, with each name being uttered without its counterpart; the moon without the sun, jasmine without crawling vines.

Life goes on, moves on. Al-Haitham doesn’t.

He finds traces of Kaveh wherever he can. Arguing through academic paper critiques, bantering across annotations in books only the two of them would pick up and read for fun rather than for research, and admiring the many feats that begin to appear in the city under Kaveh’s name.

He sees him in the ink pots at the stationery store, purple-green burned into his irises as Kaveh’s ink of choice. Kaveh is in the mourning flowers that bloom out in the desert fields. He is in the aisles of the convenience store, the echo of his voice reverberating through the snack aisle when Al-Haitham even dares to pick up the spicy chips that Kaveh had a history of disliking.

Life goes on, and the echoes of Kaveh haunt him.

Which is why, here, in the dim lighting of the jazz bar closest to his apartment complex, Al-Haitham believes that he’s hallucinating when he spots a head of extremely familiar blond hair, pinned back with a veritable smattering of red enamel hair pins, nursing a tall glass of beer in the corner of the room.

Faint music dances over Al-Haitham’s ears, just loud enough to be heard, but not loud enough to properly decipher.

Not that he was going to try, anyway. Normally, he would have his headphones over his ears to drown out the ambling, rising tones of soft jazz music, but tonight they hang limply around his neck, dead with no chances of charging until he returns home.

It’s how he’d managed to spot Kaveh in that dim corner. Kaveh’s voice is a little deeper now, more sultry and velvety than when Al-Haitham last heard him speak, but it’s still unmistakably Kaveh speaking.

Kaveh looks almost no different from the time they last spoke. His blond hair is well kept, grown out just past his shoulders now, and his smile is still just as brilliant as he speaks to the bartender, hands flying all around his face to better get his points across.

His smile doesn’t dim once throughout the entire night. Al-Haitham knows this because he keeps his eye on him as the hours pass, with the sky outside shifting from gold, to purple, to navy, and eventually, inevitably, the inky black of late nights. Al-Haitham would, on a normal night, be in bed at around this time, but this is not a normal night.

It’s not a normal night. Not when Kaveh sits a mere ten paces away from him, smiling and laughing with the bartender like he used to do with Al-Haitham all those years ago.

There’s concealer patted under his eyes, a light strike of gold highlighter on his cheeks, and crimson kohl smeared along his waterline, and just like all of the times before—in the library, the study rooms, and even in the park at the crux of summer—Al-Haitham is enamored.

Al-Haitham brings his glass to his lips, downing a gulp of alcoholic bitterness as time wears on. Kaveh doesn’t notice him once, not until they’re the only two left in the bar, ten steps apart from each other’s seats.

“Haitham?” Kaveh asks, looking at him as if Al-Haitham were the one out of place here.

Al-Haitham hums, lifting his glass up to his mouth before spinning in his seat and staring back into widened carmine eyes. Speaking the name that’s haunted him for so long. “Yes, Kaveh?”

And then they speak. They speak as if nothing has changed between them, bantering and shoving and poking until their voices grow tired, turning scratchy and rough by the time the bartender rightfully boots them out of his establishment well past midnight with a hefty tab paid by Al-Haitham’s card.

Al-Haitham finds out where Kaveh has been living for the past few years, learns about some of the grander projects he’s been a part of and of the smaller ones that he takes on now to keep himself afloat. Because despite being the most demanded architect in Sumeru, the people who contacted him for grand projects oftentimes dropped him soon after, calling his ideas preposterous and overly artistic.

(Kaveh had raised a hand up to the jazz bar’s ceiling in that moment, reaching for invisible stars underneath the moonlight. “Is it so wrong to want my clients to gaze in awe at carefully arched and carved doorways? I want them to marvel at the beautiful gardens of their backyards, and to bask in fading sunlight from stained glass windows. I want them to be happy. To truly enjoy life, to ensure that their memories are highlighted in the very design of their walls and ceilings and carpets.”

His hand fell back to the table in front of them, carelessly landing over Al-Haitham’s leg, palm facing the wooden slats above. Al-Haitham resists the urge to interlace their fingers, firmly keeping his hands down as Kaveh continues to speak over the gentle music.

There’s a lengthy pause, and then: “I just want to make beautiful things for people, Haiyi. Is that so wrong?”

Al-Haitham just shook his head.)

“You live out this way, Haitham?” Kaveh asks, tilting his head upward to meet Al-Haitham’s eyes as they meander along the sidewalks of town. He’s got a pretty red flush to his face, a byproduct of the alcohol no doubt, and his eyes are wide and pleading. “Do you mind if I crash for the night?

To be loved is to be changed, Al-Haitham muses, walking alongside Kaveh in the dimly lit darkness of night.

There’s a few changes between them. He’s taller than his senior now, and cannot get enough of being able to physically look down on Kaveh’s petulant pouty lips when he reaches the same conclusion. Kaveh’s hair is longer, but the braid and hair clips remain the same.

“Haitham.” Kaveh calls, wrapping an arm around Al-Haitham’s and tugging like a petulant child. “Haiyi—”

Al-Haitham’s heart drops when Kaveh’s voice wavers at the end of that old nickname of his. Kaveh looks up at him again, all watery eyed and absolutely drunk from the sheer amount of alcohol he’d consumed in the past few hours, but all Al-Haitham can register is the smell of jasmine underneath the musk of sweeten alcohol, and lingering traces of something strawberry in his breath.

A coy smile plays on his senior’s face, and Al-Haitham wants to dig a hole and jump straight into it. Who was he kidding? Kaveh hasn’t changed a bit.

And neither has he, apparently. Because here he is, frozen with just a simple smile and easy words.

“You can crash. I don’t mind.” Al-Haitham says, running a hand through his hair—part in frustration, the rest in acceptance.

Perhaps it's the alcohol doing its thing in his veins, but Al-Haitham has no trouble opening his home to a man who left him stranded in a study room, surrounded by the torn shreds of their hardest work. But then again, Al-Haitham has never quite been able to hate Kaveh for it.

It was simply an unfortunate occurrence, one that could easily be soothed with time.

(“You can stay for as long as you need.” Al-Haitham says the next morning, sitting down in the kitchen when Kaveh comes bumbling in, rubbing his eyes until the whites turn a light pink with the force.

The gray throw blanket Al-Haitham lended him is wrapped around Kaveh’s shoulders like a shawl of some sort, its embroidered jasmine vines dragging along on the floor behind him as he meanders over to where Al-Haitham sits, bleary eyed, but thoroughly rested.

Kaveh blinks, thrice, and then nods. His loose ponytail bobbing along with each movement. “I’ll hold you to that, Haiyi.”)

According to the digital clock on Al-Haitham’s nightstand, it is twenty minutes past two in the morning when he decides that he cannot take it any longer.

He can’t stop thinking of Kaveh, which is nothing out of the ordinary, but specifically Al-Haitham can’t stop thinking about the way he’d so carefully laid a hand over the one Al-Haitham had pressed against his cheek. The sounds of crickets and cicadas singing along with the sultry smoothness of Kaveh’s voice, the way he’d so easily leaned into Al-Haitham’s touch.

The door to his bedroom swings open with a bit too much force, hitting the hallway wall with a thud that will absolutely have their neighbors knocking at his door in the morning with a noise complaint in hand. Al-Haitham winces, and then swiftly decides that he doesn’t care enough, and continues on his way down the hall.

Perhaps it’s guilt that leads him to Kaveh’s door, something embedded deep enough in his chest to only reemerge now, in the middle of the one of the longest nights Al-Haitham has ever had. Or maybe it’s simply the need to ensure Kaveh is okay, hammering away on his models and sketching out blueprints like he always, normally, is.

Kaveh’s door is closed, but Al-Haitham can see a gentle haze of golden light seeping through the cracks between the door and the wall.

(It makes sense, Kaveh has always been the type to need down time before falling asleep. Insomnia came and went, but Kaveh did his best to scare it away when possible.)

Al-Haitham raises a hand to knock upon the wood. Then lowers it again, taking a step back from Kaveh’s door to properly assess what he’s about to do. There’s a half baked plan forming in his head—as there always is—but this time he cannot mess up.

Kaveh was able to heal from wounds from long in the past, but this time, who knows what he would do? Al-Haitham knows that Kaveh has never had a significant other during his time in college, barring the occasional fling with some of the guys and girls at the bars he frequented, so maybe the best course of action would be to simply let Kaveh take the lead?

But then how would Al-Haitham even get to that point? Would Kaveh be willing to hear him out to the very end? Does Al-Haitham even have a sound point to start this off with?

The answer to this is no, of course. Al-Haitham knows nothing of romance or love. All he knows is that Kaveh has always made him feel out of breath, with his heart tumbling and flipping in his chest and his brain always allowing Kaveh to get away with things others certainly wouldn’t even have the guts to try with him.

Al-Haitham could do this. It’s just a conversation with the man who’d accompanied Al-Haitham through many of his school years, and even more of his adult life. Plain and simple. Nothing could go wrong. Absolutely nothing.

He raises his hand once more. Archons above, his heart feels like it’s going to burst out of his chest—

—and then the door swings open because when has Al-Haitham ever been known for his luck with emotional talks?

“Haitham? What are you doing out here?” Kaveh asks, looking up and down the hallway with curious eyes. There’s a slight frown on his face, and his hair now hangs freely around him, just barely poking at his eyes in its newfound freedom. Al-Haitham has to stop himself from tucking it behind Kaveh’s ears.

He takes a breath, shallow and unsteady in a way that has Kaveh’s eyebrows furrowing with worry. “Couldn’t sleep.”

“Ah, one of those nights, is it? Well don’t just stand there. At least come in.” Kaveh complains as he pulls Al-Haitham past the threshold of his bedroom doorway with ease, shutting the door as soon as Al-Haitham is fully inside.

Warmth washes over him almost immediately, and Al-Haitham is not surprised to find a small heater situated at the center of the room, blasting heat waves at full power to ward off any traces of lingering chill permeating through their thin apartment walls.

Kaveh has always run a little colder than the average person—Al-Haitham used to claim that it came from his seniors exercising habits or lack thereof, Kaveh complained each time—so it comes as no surprise to him when Kaveh sits him down upon at least three layers of blankets at the very edge of his mattress. Al-Haitham doesn’t think it’s cold enough to break out the heater, but apparently Kaveh does.

“You can take one of the blankets there, Haitham.” Kaveh says, leaping onto the bed and pressing his back up against the far wall. He’s behind Al-Haitham like this, out of sight, but presence still felt by way of his gaze burning holes through the back of Al-Haitham’s head.

Al-Haitham does what’s asked of him, if only to get Kaveh to stop worrying for a moment. The blanket he ends up reaching for is a soft blue-gray color, buried beneath two more folded layers of crimson and gold themed fabrics, and soft to the touch. It doesn’t take him much convincing to place it over his shoulders.

Jasmine washes over him in less than a second, enveloping his every sense in a thick layer of…well, jasmine.

But there’s something about this particular softened floral scent that makes Al-Haitham pause. Jasmine leads into bitter citrus, stinging and sharp in a way that Al-Haitham couldn’t describe to anyone but those who have smelled it before, like an open embrace, ready for Al-Haitham to fall into its arms.

It’s absolutely Kaveh. Overwhelmingly soft, all encompassing warmth.

“Why do you still have this?” Al-Haitham asks, looking down at the embroidered daisies at the hem, each painstakingly hand embroidered and carefully upkept in a way that Al-Haitham could have never managed on his own.

The last time Al-Haitham had seen this blanket, the embroidery was already beginning to unpick itself from the gray hemlines. He’d been too scared to even put the blanket in the washing machine, too scared of losing one of the last pieces of handwork his grandmother completed in his youth, but now as it sits in his hands, Al-Haitham can’t help but notice that the unraveling threads have been pulled back through the gray fluff.

Each wavering, dotted vine has been reattached to its neighbor, and each flower petal has been carefully stitched back down into itself, filling in any of the holes that had unraveled in the years past.

It’s not hard to tell where the new thread replaces the old, clean white standing out against timeworn off-white and forest green blending almost seamlessly with faded dark green.

It’s almost synonymous with the way Kaveh had come back into Al-Haitham’s life, stitching and pulling and patching at the holes once filled with people who are no longer there.

Warm gazes paired with midnight snacks, playful bantering across silent libraries, overheated midsummers remedied with ice cold artificial strawberry. Al-Haitham’s life, stitched with a dull gray thread, has, completely, fully merged with red and gold metallics.

His voice is shaky when he speaks again, lifting the blanket closer to his face to better inspect the wobbly stitching against his grandmother’s steady handwork. “Kaveh.”

“Yes, Haiyi?”

“You fixed it?”

Kaveh tilts his head, his hair falling off his shoulder. “Of course I did. It’s important to you isn’t it?”

Carmine rises to meet teal, dripping with warmth. “I’d rather die than ruin one of your most important memories.”

And then Al-Haitham is advancing. Inch by inch by inch, up until he’s at Kaveh’s side, casting a hideous black shadow over Kaveh’s pretty face. The light is working against him, just as his hands are when they raise upward to Kaveh’s face, forced to hover awkwardly in the air.

The emotions tumbling around in his chest, once flattened and muffled, now expand tenfold—no, they expand by a hundredfold—filling his entire being with uncontrollable wants. There’s no reason here. Not when his brain has finally pieced together what his heart has been working hard to relay.

“Kaveh.” Al-Haitham says, his throat suspiciously dry. He shuffles closer, and then leans down, taking up much more of Kaveh’s personal space than he really should.

He settles his hands on Kaveh’s shoulders. Kaveh doesn’t push him away.

Instead, Kaveh hums, leaning back to meet Al-Haitham’s eyes hovering above him. Al-Haitham looks away.

The heater running at his feet feels like it’s on its highest setting. Heat rushes up Al-Haitham’s entire body, rolling in waves over his arms and crawling up his neck. Everything is hot and red and boiling.

“Haitham?” Kaveh calls, cold hands rising up to rest on Al-Haitham’s shoulders, causing gooseflesh to ripple down his arms. “Look at me?”

Hands slip down to rest around his waist, pulling him forward in such a way that has him balancing precariously on Kaveh’s lap, and Al-Haitham is met with the warmest gaze when he turns his head.

A smile warm enough to melt permafrost, and a touch soft enough to turn the coarsest fabrics into smooth silks and comfy cottons. A gaze hot enough to scorch Al-Haitham’s skin. Jasmine rolling over him in waves, golden sunlight dancing over red hair pins; again and again, over and over, Al-Haitham is enamoured.

“Am I allowed to be selfish now, Haiyi?” Kaveh whispers, sending shivers down Al-Haitham’s spine.

So much for talking. This is criminal. It’s an interrogation set up against him; from the hands on his waist to the way the man in front of him takes him apart, looking through him rather than at him. Al-Haitham can’t meet his eyes, but that’s not an issue, not when Kaveh’s gaze dips downward.

Well, not exactly downward. Kaveh is actually eye level with Al-Haitham’s lips like this, but that doesn’t stop Al-Haitham from noticing the way Kaveh cannot stop looking, or the way he has to fight to actually look Al-Haitham in the eye rather than the other way around.

Sometimes, the only way to get past something is to leap right into its open maw, and this time, just this once, Al-Haitham abandons all reason.

They say actions speak louder than words, and when Al-Haitham leans in, Kaveh meets him in the middle.

It’s nothing big. Not life altering or a tilt-the-world-off-its-axis type of shocking. It’s almost like Al-Haitham is free falling through the outer layers of the atmosphere, crash landing right into Kaveh’s arms.

The softness of Kaveh’s lips against his own, plush and warm for the split second they collide, and open in shock when Al-Haitham pulls back. Gravity swallows them into their own corner of the universe, secluding them from the world outside of Kaveh’s door.

He tastes of strawberries, unsurprisingly. Artificially sweet, and overwhelmingly Kaveh. Al-Haitham practically drowns in it, tasting leftover sugar on Kaveh’s tongue and sweet soda at the back of his teeth.

Al-Haitham comes back to his senses when Kaveh smiles at him, eyes sparkling. His arms rest lazily along Al-Haitham’s waist, and Al-Haitham can feel his fingers toying with the bottom hem of his t-shirt, twisting and rolling the fabric deftly in his hands. Al-Haitham tries not to be pulled in, but he discovers that it’s much too late.

He is completely, overwhelmingly enamored by the man in front of him. His long hair tangled in Al-Haitham’s hands, his peachy pink cheeks and pouty lips will be haunting him in his dreams, Al-Haitham is sure. And he is sure that Kaveh isn’t much better, not with the way he’s smiling at him, as if Al-Haitham was the moon to his sun and stars.

“Was that selfish enough for you?” Kaveh leans close to his ear again, tapping a finger at Al-Haitham’s waist. “Did I take enough for myself this time, Haiyi?”

Al-Haitham pauses, letting silence weave its way between them. He wants Kaveh to be even more selfish, really. To let Kaveh keep all of Al-Haitham’s being for himself, to have the man before him use all of the money in his wallet before draining him of every ounce of love he can offer. He wants to have Kaveh at the tips of his fingers, always within reach.

Unfortunately, when words fail him, the only thing that comes out of his mouth is something reminiscent of: “I suppose you could take a little more.”

Kaveh pouts when he thinks too hard. He also pouts when he’s concentrated. It makes it hard to distinguish exactly what he’s feeling, but it does reassure Al-Haitham that something is happening in his head. Something more than just blank eyed staring, of course.

He’s rewarded with a quick peck to his lips, a faint wisp of jasmine following him when Kaveh pulls back. “Greedy.”

“Only for you.” Al-Haitham says, and yeah, maybe he deserves the light punch to the shoulder for that one.

They’re sitting around the dining table, the afternoon sun bearing down on them through the kitchen window, when Kaveh seemingly remembers something.

“Oh,” Kaveh snaps his fingers, trading his soda can for a freshly iced cookie from Al-Haitham’s platter. Icing leaks over the edge of this one, but that’s a problem that’s fixed by shoving the entire thing in his mouth. “I never told you that I liked you, or vice versa.”

Al-Haitham looks at him, handing him another icing cookie when the one in his hand disappears in a shower of crumbs. Kaveh’s hair is pulled back into a half ponytail. Tighnari calls it a little strange; Al-Haitham thinks it’s the prettiest thing he’s ever seen. “Wouldn’t it be considered strange to confess now? It’s quite late.”

Kaveh frowns, shoving another cookie in his mouth. It was the one that Al-Haitham was actively icing, yes, but oh well. “I think we’re okay like this, though? Do we really have to do things in a set order?”

Al-Haitham hums, idling. The cookie icing in his hand threatens to drip red icing over the counter, and he mindlessly sticks his hand underneath the opening to catch the droplets.

Kaveh’s voice breaks through the silence. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to, Haiyi. It was just a thought.”

“That’s good, I didn’t have any pretty words planned anyway.” Red icing drips onto Al-Haitham’s finger, nearly landing on top of the counter with the way Kaveh snatches the icing bag out of his hand.

Al-Haitham watches him set the icing bag down, carefully balancing it on the edge of the cookie platter.

“I didn’t think you did.” Kaveh laughs, reaching for Al-Haitham’s hand. He interlaces their fingers, leaning close. “You’re not the type to do things like that without something pushing you to.”

Al-Haitham sighs, picking up a cookie. He’s careful to avoid Kaveh’s open can of soda, lest it spill all over the carpet and hardwood floors in a big, sticky mess. “Thanks for putting faith in my inability to write prose and poetry.”

“You’re welcome,” Kaveh smiles, looping an arm around Al-Haitham’s shoulders and pulling him close.

Kaveh is quick to take the chance to rest his head on Al-Haitham’s shoulder. His hair poking and tickling at Al-Haitham’s neck.

Al-Haitham turns to face him, breathing in the citrusy jasmine settled around his collarbone. “My message made it through in the end, didn’t it?”

“Because someone decided to bring himself to my room and throw himself over me?”

“I’m a greedy man, Kaveh.” Al-Haitham shrugs, then leans his head overtop Kaveh’s own. “I hope you don’t mind me being selfish every once in a while.”

“Never.”

Al-Haitham knocks their heads together. “You can be greedy too. Take everything that you want from me, Kaveh. Leave nothing behind.”

Al-Haitham has never been one to meddle in his roommates affairs, but perhaps now, he finds more enjoyment in placing himself at his roommate’s side. Lining up a new, dark green highlight among long worn pinks and blues.

“Don’t worry,” Kaveh laughs, squeezing Al-Haitham’s hand and grabbing another icing cookie.

He wiggles it in Al-Haitham’s face, pulling it back and snickering when the man tries to take a bite. Half of it disappears in an instant, vanishing to the sounds of Kaveh’s muffled laughter as Al-Haitham reaches for Kaveh’s soda can.

Artificial strawberry fizzes on his tongue, as sweet as the sound of Kaveh’s voice as he shouts a steadfast declaration out to the air. His voice cracking at the very end, reminiscent of a version of him years younger, holding out an elongated can in greeting to an overheated boy on a bench.

“I’ll be sure to take my share and more.”