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There’s a type of protectiveness that only Alhaitham can describe as possessive, curled around the shoulders of Kaveh, and guarding.
When Kaveh chose to be an architect, Alhaitham feared that he’d lose himself to creation. That, the toils for others and never himself, will leave Kaveh with nothing of his own.
The hare runs ahead, Turning and turning of a widening gyre—
Over the pages of his own assignment, Alhaitham can hear Kaveh’s frustration.
The falcon cannot hear the falconer; stuck in the fibres of his being—
There’s scribbling, over more scribbling. The pages of Kaveh’s textbook crumple under his wrath, and again, Alhaitham wonders if he should stop him.
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold—
But occasionally, this worry is placated, when Kaveh abandons his plans for drawing Alhaitham instead.
In a sense, this is the highest honour to be granted. To be his muse, to be his creation, on paper. With every charcoal smudge and stroke, Alhaitham comes alive.
Changed, and as he watches, Alhaitham begins to believe that he understands beauty from Kaveh’s eyes. It lies in his gaze. His posture. From the tip of his nose down to the dips of his cheek.
This is what it means to be an artist’s muse.
Next to the half-built and torn down sketches of buildings, of houses, of whole cities beyond, this is the closest Alhaitham has to Kaveh’s heart. To be recreated by his hands, and with every gentle trace of a curve, Alhaitham is altered.
Silently, Alhaitham wonders if it is the same for him. If a picture paints a thousand words, then surely, Kaveh has said enough, and Alhaitham will keep searching for the next best metaphor, the next best colloquially written word to paint, to draw a version of Kaveh that exists in his eyes.
Pathetically, this will be the fallacy that Alhaitham creates. A Kaveh that is held so dearly to his chest, one that Alhaitham will painstakingly carve a place in his heart for.
And as it heals over, he’ll make sure that it’ll never close. Just like the earrings that’s hooked through Kaveh’s earlobes, there will always remain a space for his beauty.
And on pen and paper, this is the beauty Alhaitham wishes to convey.
But on pen and paper, he can never recreate the strokes or slopes that Kaveh so easily produces.
Kaveh had once laughed at Alhaitham’s anguished hands when he tried his best to draw the blond. In shaky lines, rough edges and too sharp curves, Alhaitham had created a version of Kaveh that he so desperately wishes he hadn’t.
And in his frustration, Alhaitham had written down what he so thought explained the situation the best.
The tools in my hands work differently in yours. They obey no master, but yet, they obey you. Words are merely nothing to a pen, but for you, you create worlds beyond the paper.
Worlds that a pen simply wishes to see.
And just like a pen, Alhaitham can simply only observe as Kaveh creates, believing that there is no other sight that can ever compare to the one before his eyes.
But, just as easily as how whole worlds that spring forth from the tips of his pens, they crumble to dust within hours. There is no correct combination of mere alphabets that Alhaitham can muster from the top of his head that could ever do Kaveh justice.
Would he be closest to God if so? My sweetheart, my love, my light. My little artist.
There are a little less than a hundred and fifty thousand words in the English dictionary, and a little less than a million phrases that Alhaitham could form in Kaveh’s presence.
But in Kaveh's presence, all he so wishes to be is soft and malleable.
But there's nothing but the sharp of his nose, the edges of his elbows and the tips of his fingers and toes. He is nothing but bones.
Nothing but solid and pointed, but in Kaveh's arms, Alhaitham is unlike himself.
The edges that Alhaitham holds away from Kaveh’s body become part of what Kaveh’s hands look for. Tracing, over and over, almost like he couldn't ever get enough of this.
This cursed, accursed, body of his. Lanky, way too lean, pudgy in the ways that should not be conventionally attractive, and in the wrong places.
It's all too wrong, wrong for Kaveh to seek this out, wrong for Alhaitham to try to believe that this is satisfactory.
—mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, on its own.
The sigh that Kaveh lets out mixes and evens out into his consciousness. Alhaitham stops picking at the unevenness of his own heart.
There's a type of protectiveness that Kaveh can only describe as disarming, unfurling what is rolled up in Alhaitham's hands, and amending.