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Alhaitham can’t remember a time when he wasn’t in love with Kaveh. Quietly, madly, deeply in love. But he’s so used to the ache of loving him—loving him and not being able to do something about it—that when Kaveh confesses his feelings one day, out of the blue, all at once, the sentiment nearly knocks Alhaitham unconscious.
“What?” he says stupidly. It’s the stupidest question he’s ever asked in his life, and he knows it.
“Alhaitham,” Kaveh says, his voice strained almost to breaking. He’s trembling, Alhaitham realizes too late; he’s trembling so violently that his shadow, long and dark across the bookshelves in their office, looks like it’s fading in and out of existence. “Say it back.”
But he doesn’t. How can he? How is he supposed to summon the words that have buried themselves so deep in his lungs that they’ve lost all meaning, all shape? He knows the words by heart, by touch; by the sound and weight and colour and taste. He could paint a thousand rooms in a thousand buildings, floor to ceiling, wall to wall, with the depth of what he feels. The complexity.
But now? How is he supposed to say aloud the one thing that has redefined everything he is? Something that remade him?
How does he explain that he lives and loves and dreams of Kaveh when it’s all he’s ever been able to do?
His senior’s fists are clenched at his sides. His eyes are wide, and his lips are red and vibrant, the skin caught between his teeth. It almost looks like he’s trying not to cry. Like he’s trying not to run.
Alhaitham stands. No, he is standing. But he doesn’t remember pushing back his chair or putting down his book. He doesn’t remember what he was reading or when he first entered this room or when Kaveh walked in or—well, much of anything that happened today. Probably because nothing happened today. Nothing unusual. Nothing noteworthy.
Just this.
Just the single most important moment in his entire life.
And he’s fucking it up.
Alhaitham always assumed he’d never confess his own feelings. That he would live and love and die with the years of pining and care and admiration left unspoken between them, unsaid. It was easier that way; there was no risk of losing Kaveh (again) to a bad reaction. To the awkwardness of having to say, I could never love someone like you.
“Alhaitham,” Kaveh says again, and now his voice is so hard that it doesn’t sound anything like him at all. “I guess I thought—Archons, I’m a fool.”
He turns, then, on his heel, and leaves the room, taking everything good and warm and bright in the world with him.
Alhaitham follows after him a moment later, catching him in the hallway, their hands finding each other’s in the dark. His right, Kaveh’s left. They clasp each other so tightly it’s like either of them might pull away, but neither of them do.
Kaveh won’t turn back towards him, not even when Alhaitham asks him to. “Break my heart,” Kaveh says instead, in reply. It’s a whisper, so faint it shivers out of his body. “Do it quickly. And then we’ll never have to talk about this again.”
Alhaitham sees his chance. He doesn’t know how to take it, but he wants to. He wants to so badly that it’s killing him.
He squeezes Kaveh’s hand. Says, imperfectly, “There aren’t enough words in any language to describe how I feel about you.”
Kaveh stills. Time stills. Then he sighs, so bone deep and weary that it ages him. He wheels around. “What does that even mean?”
Alhaitham breathes in. His chest fills with a million things he’s known since he was a boy. How to be alone. How to grieve. How to miss someone. How to need. How to endlessly and agonizingly hope.
He realizes, after all these years of pining, that he never learned how to love someone back. How to be loved. Not like this. Not like—
Alhaitham breathes out. “Kiss me,” he says. “It would be faster than explaining.”
“Faster than—“ Kaveh blinks. Swallows. “You’re unbelievable.”
But still, he grabs the front of Alhaitham’s coat. He pulls them close.
Alhaitham holds his breath.
Kissing Kaveh, he realizes, is a lot like drowning. All his senses collapse into his body, into a pinpoint no wider than his face. He feels the moment Kaveh’s lips touch his, but can’t hear anything, his vision blurring.
He waits, just a second, in case Kaveh pulls away.
He doesn’t.
So Alhaitham turns and cages him in against the wall.
He deepens the kiss with a mix of tongue and breath, pushing into Kaveh’s mouth until he moans, the sound greedy and loud. Alhaitham slides his knee between Kaveh’s legs, nudging him closer, his hands pulling at Kaveh’s hair.
Alhaitham feels like his skin is on fire. Like the house is on fire. Kaveh moans again and wraps his arms around Alhaitham’s neck, pulling their bodies flush against each other.
He’s hard. They’re both so hard that it’s impossible to think past the grind of Kaveh’s hips against his thigh. “Fuck, Alhaitham,” he whines. “This isn’t—“
Alhaitham breaks their kiss, his teeth finding the soft skin of Kaveh’s throat, teasing out a sound he’s never heard his senior make before. “Isn’t what?”
Kaveh claims his lips again, hungry and deprived, bucking into Alhaitham’s hand when Alhaitham slips his fingers beneath his belt. “Am I just a quick fuck?” he asks, breathless. “Is that what we’re doing?”
“Kaveh,” Alhaitham says.
I love you.
I need you.
I want you.
I crave you.
“You’re everything to me,” Alhaitham says.
“Archons,” Kaveh says again, blushing furiously. “You’re a terrible flirt.”
He is. He knows he is. But he smiles anyway. “And yet, you love me,” he murmurs, pressing the words against the shell of Kaveh’s ear. “A terrible decision, really.”
He thinks Kaveh may have started laughing, but when he hikes Kaveh’s legs around his waist, lifting him inelegantly from the floor, the sound is lost in a muffled groan.
“The first of many terrible decisions tonight,” Alhaitham says, turning them towards his bedroom. “So you best prepare yourself.”
“You could’ve just said, I love you too,” Kaveh mumbles into his shoulder.
I love you too, Alhaitham thinks.
Instead, as he drops Kaveh onto his bed, chasing his lips again with his own, he says, “I’m not going to tell you something you already know.”