Chapter Text
“I swear to Rukkhadevata,” Tighnari hisses, “I’m one abandoned tea bag from banning college kids forever.”
From behind the counter, Kaveh eyes Tighnari, who’s on his hands and knees by the sofas like some rabid animal. He’s using a butter knife to scrape dried filter paper and jasmine leaves from the Persian rug.
Kaveh sighs. “You don’t mean that.”
“I sure do,” Tighnari huffs. “If the Akademiya shuttered their doors tomorrow, I’d be happy enough to blow the Chancellor as a thank-you.”
Kaveh grimaces, picturing Azar’s pruney face. “You definitely don’t mean that.” He grabs a bottle of solvent from under the counter and starts spritzing down the surface. “Besides, if you banned all Akademiya students, you’d never see The Hair again.”
Instantly, Tighnari is upright. Hazel eyes glimmer with enthusiasm, the kind that makes Kaveh’s heart hiccup. “Grad students don’t count, and besides—The Hair finally gave me his name!” Tighnari cups his tea-crusted hands under his chin and sighs, gaze cartoonishly dreamy. “Cyno. So clean and sharp, ugh.”
“Did he also give you his number?”
Tighnari’s shoulders droop like week-old balloons. “No.” Tapping the butter knife on the coffee table, he adds, “I’m still working on that.”
“You could always give him your number.”
“Never give any man your number unless they ask first! Archons, Kaveh, who raised you?”
“Fine, fine.” Kaveh lifts his hands in surrender. “I’ll try to remember that.”
Remember it for much later—Kaveh’s in no shape to play this game of cat-and-mouse with the Sumeru dating pool. Even before moving back to the City a month ago, he’d made a silent pact with himself to swear off all men, ever, and there’s nothing Kaveh takes more seriously these days than promises.
Kaveh swipes a rag from below the register and starts buffing out the cleaner. He’s careful to avoid touching the surface with his leather gloves—he just got this pair fitted a week ago, and he won’t have the money to buy replacements until at least the end of the world, probably. They’re a sleek, caramel-colored pair that cut off right below the elbow—just about where his burn scars melt into normal skin—but paying the tailor sucked up two and a half weeks of café tips. If he were to discolor them with sanitizer now, he might as well just fling himself off the docks at Port Ormos.
They’re leaps and bounds more comfortable than the first generic pair, too. He’d bought those the moment his plane touched down at the Sumeru City airport. That set rubbed his still-healing scars in all the wrong ways, cracked open fragile skin.
These leather ones should be better.
As long as he takes care of them.
Tighnari sighs as he minds the clock. “Fifteen minutes left. No one’s been in for twenty—wanna just close up early?”
“Let’s give it another five.” Kaveh wipes his nose with his elbow. Friday night clientele is always sparse, but— “You never know.”
“If we get one more college brat, you’re taking their order—”
“I take everyone’s order.”
“—because if I have to talk to them, I might just shove our espresso scoop up their ass.”
Kaveh chuckles. “Don’t remember that being on our list of goods and services.”
“Yeah, well, add it to the menu.”
In spite of the color commentary (or perhaps in addition to it), Kaveh counts every shift he shares with Tighnari as a cosmic blessing. When he arrived in the City after his year in Fontaine, friendless and broke as a beggar, Kaveh must’ve grabbed job applications from two-dozen establishments. But it was the frantic barista at Puspa Café, the one with jumbo fox ears and sharp, kind eyes, who hired him on the spot. (‘Fucking Scara didn’t show up for his shift again. Do you know how to use an espresso machine? No? Fuck—okay, but do you like to learn new things? Yes—YES! Oh my gods, I love you. You’re my new best friend. Get back here and let me show you.’) Since their first shift together, Tighnari has treated Kaveh like a long-lost brother, like someone worth his time, and—
Kaveh hasn’t known that feeling for a long, long while.
After scooping the tea-bag carcass from the rug, Tighnari busses the scattered dishes and deposits them in the sink beside the register. He flicks on the tap and squirts soap across the porcelain. “His eyes are so pretty,” Tighnari hums.
“Cyno’s?”
“No, Azar’s.” Tighnari knees Kaveh in the thigh. “Yes, Cyno’s. Heavenly Principles, I… I don’t know what’s happening to me. I’ve never felt this way about someone before, and I hardly even know the guy.”
“He’s cute, he’s a law student, and he looks at you like you’re gold-plated.” Kaveh shrugs. “Doesn’t get much better than that.”
“I know you’d rather swim through hydrochloric acid than flirt with a man, but—” Tighnari hesitates, weighing his next words carefully, all the way down to the gram. “…did it ever feel like this for you? When you did date, I mean.”
Kaveh lets his mind slither back a year and beyond, prying open memories of Before-Fontaine. Thinking about these years makes his chest pang—but anything’s better than the sharp slice of his more recent memories, ones he’s locked away behind thick safety glass.
“I don’t know,” Kaveh says honestly. “I… I think there’s a thrill in dating someone new, but I was never this excited.” He shrugs. “Maybe we’re just different.”
“Maybe you never found the right person,” Tighnari offers.
Kaveh hums in acknowledgement, then turns his back to open the fridge. From it, he lugs the pre-made batches of iced teas they toss at the end of every shift. His hands ache in his gloves, but he chooses to ignore it.
“Hey, Dehya’s throwing a party tonight, yeah?” Kaveh asks, crouching low enough that his thighs burn. “Should I save some of these teas for the jungle juice?”
“Fuck. Please.” Tighnari’s ears twitch. “Anything to water that shit down, good gods.”
As Kaveh’s sorting the jugs into two groupings—one for the punch bowl and one for the drain—a bell chimes, clattering against the front door.
“We’re about to close,” Tighnari snaps at the customer. Something in his tone suggests that his threat to sodomize someone with an espresso scoop might actually hold water, so Kaveh, ever prepared to avoid a lawsuit, springs to his feet.
He positions himself behind the register.
“How can I help—”
You.
The customer is halfway to the counter when their eyes lock, and time stops. The man’s shoulders stiffen. Heterochromatic eyes—teal and orange, fire and water, familiar as the breath in Kaveh’s mouth, as the freckle above his left knee—widen with shock and a little disbelief. His mouth drops open, slack, and Kaveh thinks, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him speechless before.
Oh gods.
Oh, gods.
Kaveh thought he’d never see Alhaitham again.
This, too, was a slice of his life (more than a slice—perhaps the whole damn pie) that Kaveh had locked behind safety glass, albeit for different reasons than Fontaine. But it shatters the barrier nonetheless, now, carving open his throat and chest and lungs.
Kaveh can’t breathe.
But somehow, he still manages to say, “Are you going to order?”
Alhaitham blinks away the shock. Still, it clings to the sharp cut of his jaw, the pretty flush in his cheeks.
He swallows thickly.
“How long have you been back?”
Even in this punched-out rasp, Alhaitham’s baritone scratches all the itches in Kaveh’s brain—it shouldn’t still be like this. Kaveh clenches through a shiver and says, “A month.”
“Are you… here to stay?”
“I don’t know.”
Beside Kaveh, Tighnari vibrates with curiosity, ears perked high enough to scrape Celestia. He’s got that Someone, get me a bucket of popcorn right now gleam in his eye, and it makes Kaveh want to rip a hole in the floor tiles and bury himself six feet under, because Lord Kusanali, Tighnari’s gonna grill him afterward until Kaveh’s nothing but charred remains. Damnit.
“Are you going to order, or just stare?” Tighnari asks, stirring the pot.
Alhaitham blinks. His eyes blow wide. “Oh—yes.” He glances at the menu for maybe two seconds and says, “I’d like a—macchiato. Vanilla. With… almond milk. And an extra shot of espresso.”
In the decade-plus Kaveh knew Alhaitham, the stubborn bastard never adventured beyond plain black coffee (with maybe a pinch of sugar, if he was feeling brave), so— “What the fuck?”
“Oh, and whipped cream on top.”
Take Kaveh out back and shoot him in the head. Is he dreaming? Or just delusional? This man in front of him can’t be Alhaitham.
Kaveh scrawls the order on the side of a to-go cup and mutters, “Archons, this can’t be right.”
“I’ve heard that the customer is always right.”
Tighnari chuckles and returns to dish-washing. “Let me know if you need that extra espresso scoop, Kaveh.”
“Noted,” Kaveh says as hustles to start the order. The quicker he works, the sooner Alhaitham will get his drink, and then Tighnari’s claws will come out as they always do for customers who linger at closing time—yes, yes. He can work fast.
But—his hands scream inside his gloves. They’re always sore toward the end of shifts, and his nerves add extra tremors to his palms, ones that make his fingers nudge clumsily into the wrong spots of the espresso machine. He’s not going to be able to do this. He’s—
“Your hair’s shorter,” Alhaitham notes.
With the hand that isn’t at war with the temperature dials, Kaveh pets along the edges of his mane—not that he can feel the strands through the gloves.
“I wanted it this way,” he lies. (He misses his long hair. It used to curl just past his shoulders—now it falls in tapered layers along his chin, and he has to pin back the front strands so he doesn’t look like a fucking coconut.) “It was time for a change.”
“Moving halfway across the world and back wasn’t change enough for you?” Alhaitham asks.
There’s that incisive bluntness Kaveh knows too well. “Looks like you haven’t changed one bit.” He rolls his eyes as he steams the milk. “Except your fuck-ass drink order.”
“And I’ve grown half a centimeter, too.”
Kaveh laughs without meaning to. He slaps a hand over his mouth, but the damage is done—Alhaitham’s eyes go round as coins, soft but wide with something like awe, and Kaveh thinks, maybe six feet under the tile isn’t deep enough.
(He always hated when Alhaitham looked at him like that. Alhaitham found no one else worthy of that expression—in the rare times his eyes softened like this for his senior, it made Kaveh want to shrivel into nothingness, because Kaveh’s never done a damn thing in his life to deserve something so sweet.)
Kaveh has so many walls up these days, it’d take a fully-staffed construction crew to demolish them all. Even so, he feels himself throwing up yet another one now—he narrows his focus on the almond milk as it froths, then begs his hands to stay steady as he pours it carefully into the espresso.
Alhaitham must put all those brain cells to use, because he infers quickly that something’s wrong. He jars open the silence with a thoughtful hum and points above Kaveh’s head.
“The menu is… extensive. I like the art around the sides.”
“Hmm.” (Why isn’t he asking about Fontaine? He never beats around the bush. It's unlike him to be so gentle with Kaveh now.) “It’s pretty, I guess.”
“You drew it?”
Kaveh shakes his head. “Nilou did. She’s Tighnari’s friend.”
“Ah.” A familiar crease forms his brows. “Are you too busy designing blueprints instead?” He motions to the pillar at the center of the café—an ugly, concrete thing with a concerning web of cracks. “Or, perhaps, diagrams for better load-bearing posts?”
Kaveh’s stomach roils. The insides of his gloves feel like sandpaper. He scoops ice into the cup and declares, tone rigid, “No. I don’t… do that anymore.”
His mouth tastes like ash.
He doesn’t dare spare a glance toward Alhaitham—he knows whatever expression his once-friend wears will flay him alive. Won’t find anything soft and sweet there anymore.
Alhaitham exhales. It’s a shallow, weak puff, like someone just kicked him in the stomach.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean exactly what I said.” Kaveh slaps the to-go cup on the counter. A few ice chips fly out, cracking wetly against the lacquer. “Sorry, Tighnari—can you finish making this? I just remembered I left something in the oven.”
(Puspa Café doesn’t have an oven.)
Kaveh slips into the back room, but voices carry through the door. Alhaitham’s baritone, choppier than it ever should be, scratches at his ears like cat claws. He closes himself into the supply closet. Crouching on stacked bags of coffee grounds, Kaveh focuses on breathing, breathing, breathing. Inhaling the spiced, earthy air—exhaling Alhaitham’s name from his lungs. In, out. Push, pull.
When Tighnari finds him minutes later, Kaveh’s vision is swirling with white motes. Tighnari gets him some water, squats beside him and says, “Holy shit.”
Kaveh’s hands tremble like an earthquake. Only half of the water he tries to sip down ends up in his mouth—he dribbles an embarrassing amount on his shirt. Archons, he’s a mess. (But what’s new.)
“I know you have questions,” he tells Tighnari, wiping sweat from his forehead.
“Oh, you bet I do, but now’s clearly not the time.” Tighnari pats him on the shoulder. “I’m gonna finish closing up the place. Help if you’re feeling up to it, but you don’t need to.” He grips Kaveh by the twiggy biceps and lugs him upward. “At least sit on the couch where I can see you and make sure you’re okay.”
Kaveh’s head bobs dazedly. “Yeah. Alright.”
“We’re still going to the party afterward,” Tighnari warns. His gaze, somehow, is both comforting and relentless. “You’re not getting out of that one. Sorry. I’m gonna bug you until you tell me everything, so you better start getting your story straight, like, now.”
Dehya’s apartment smells overwhelmingly of incense—white sage and lotus flower—but it’s not enough to cloak the chemical stench of bad booze. It never is. Kaveh appreciates that she tries, at least.
“Peace offering!” Tighnari announces as they enter, holding his batch of iced tea above his head like a baptized baby.
Nilou claps her hands together in prayer, bowing. “You two are a godsend.” She waves them over to the punch bowl. “Hurry.”
On either side of the bowl, Tighnari and Kaveh dump in the leftover tea—Kaveh’s jug is honey lavender, and Tighnari’s is hibiscus (maybe? Scaramouche wrote the label, and his handwriting is chickenshit), so the punch is going to taste a bit like a flower shop, but so be it. Anything’s better than furniture polish.
“My jungle juice was fine before!” Dehya pouts. “Y’all are a bunch of fucking weenies.”
“Weenies who work in the morning,” Nilou says somberly as she stirs it all together. Then Dunyarzad rises from the couch and grabs a fresh solo cup, cheeks blazing the color of Dehya’s crop top, and it’s over. The party host makes a wailing sound, almost like she’s being actively waterboarded.
“Not you too!” Dehya moans, groping at Dunyarzad’s hips and trying to pull her back. “How could you betray me, of all people?”
“I like your jungle juice, sweetheart,” she assures in the gentle, doe-eyed way Dunyarzad does best, and Kaveh almost believes her. “I just… really like… tea.”
Scaramouche grabs a cheese stick from the fridge and slams the door, condiment bottles rattling around. “Everything you make is shit, Dehya.” His glare sweeps across the room, casting the widest net possible as he accuses, “And all of you are complicit. Piss-poor friends you are for never calling her out.”
“Love you, too, Scara,” Tighnari cooes as he dips two red solo cups in the newly-revitalized punch—one for Kaveh, one for himself. He fills Kaveh’s only halfway and says, “You’ll earn the rest once you tell me what the fuck happened tonight.”
Only Nilou overhears Tighnari’s barter. Which is for the best—she and Dunyarzad are in a dead tie for the Nicest Friend superlative, which means Kaveh can trust her to be discreet, unlike some of the others. She keeps her voice low as she asks, “Are you okay?”
“Better now that I’ve got this,” Kaveh says, taking a hearty swig of alcohol. It still stings a little on the way down, but it doesn’t taste like total ass, so, score. “Just had an… uncomfortable interaction at the café. I’m fine.”
She studies him with a gaze as blue as the sky, soft as pillow down. “Do you need to talk about it?”
“He’s going to, whether he wants to or not,” Tighnari cuts in. His ears angle forward as he faces Kaveh. “You clearly have some shit to process. I took, like, two psychology classes freshman year, so I’m basically a therapist.”
Unfortunately, he’s right, and Kaveh knows it—not about his credentials, but about Kaveh needing to talk it out. Kaveh’s always been a verbal processor—once upon a time, he could rant and rave for hours beside Alhaitham, and that would be enough. When was the last time he truly laid his feelings bare?
Before Fontaine, at least.
(And probably to Alhaitham.)
With Nilou and Tighnari in tow, Kaveh sighs and trudges to an empty divan. The other sofa is occupied by the resident lovebirds—Dunyarzad’s prepping Solitaire on the coffee table, and Dehya’s watching on, starry-eyed, like her girlfriend’s card tricks are a new brand of porn. Scaramouche is to their left. Like a cat, he’s curled up in the battered recliner with his cheese stick, tapping furiously into his phone—it’s anyone’s guess as to whether he’s bitching someone out, flirting, or playing some gacha game. (It’s best not to ask.)
“So, who was that guy?” Tighnari asks as he settles beside Kaveh. Nilou perches on the other side of him, listening patiently.
Kaveh presses the curve of his solo cup against his forehead. He begs for cool relief, but the punch is room temperature, because of course Dehya forgot to add ice.
“He’s—Alhaitham.” The name tastes like rat poison on his tongue, but also ambrosia. “He was my roommate.”
Tighnari cocks a brow. “No shit. For how long?”
“Two years.” Kaveh takes another desperate swig. “When I graduated from the Akademiya, he—well, his grandmother had left him her house when she died. He’d lived there for a while. Let me stay in the spare room.”
Nilou sighs, face softening. “So, you were friends.”
Something tight twists in Kaveh’s chest. He might be nodding, though his body feels too far away to tell.
“We went to the same boarding school when we were kids. He’s two years younger than me, but we were slotted in the same advanced classes as each other. I went to the Akademiya when I was eighteen, and… he followed.”
Tighnari’s thigh presses against Kaveh’s, warm and assuring. “So, you were best friends.”
Kaveh lifts a hand to his scalp and twists his fingers in the roots. He wishes he could feel his hair through his gloves—wishes he could feel anything beyond flame and soreness and ache. Something to ground him.
“Yeah. We were,” he says. “And I fucked it up.”
Nilou studies him like he’s a child, bawling over stepping on a ladybug. She pats his shoulder. “I’m sure it wasn’t as bad as you’re thinking.”
“I told him I never wanted to see him again,” Kaveh says. “I told him I hated him. I left Sumeru City and blocked his number—I made him think I didn’t care if he lived or died.”
Tighnari puffs out harsh air. “Okay, so maybe it was as bad as you’re thinking." He pries at Kaveh’s hand, extricating his fingers from his roots. “But he’s clearly forgiven you to some extent. He saw you in the café and didn’t walk out. He chose to stay.”
“And make fun of my hair.”
“He didn’t have a single mean thing to say about your hair! And you and I both know he ordered that frilly drink just to stall you. He wanted to talk to you, Kaveh.”
If he did, then Alhaitham’s a galactic idiot. “I’m sure he just wanted to know if I was still alive. Now that that’s all cleared up, I hope he stays away.”
Across his lap, Tighnari and Nilou share a look of perplexed concern, and it makes Kaveh’s cheeks broil.
A few cancerous moments tick by before anyone speaks.
“Kaveh,” Tighnari murmurs. “What happened to you in Fontaine?”
Kaveh collapses back into the divan cushions. He prays for the upholstery to swallow him whole. Right now, Kaveh just can’t tell Tighnari the whole truth—it’s not because Nilou’s here, or because Scara’s a filthy eavesdropper, or because of anything other than his own cowardly tongue, his own mangled brain. Saying these things out loud makes them that much more real, and Kaveh’s still in the business of pretending, especially if it keeps him numb.
He’ll give Tighnari an inch, though. Just one.
“I was engaged,” Kaveh says, though Tighnari already knows this tidbit. What he doesn’t know: “My fiancé wanted us to move to Fontaine to work for his family’s architectural firm. Alhaitham didn’t trust him, but I ignored his warnings, and—he was right. My fiancé wasn’t the man I thought he was, and things ended badly. So I’m back here.”
On either side of him, Tighnari and Nilou are both silent—silent in the way songbirds are in a storm, or mourners at a wake. Their wordlessness makes Kaveh want to claw out of his own skeleton. He’s been Tighnari’s friend for a month now—the others adopted him quickly, too—and he’s spent these last few weeks lulled into this sense of calm, this sense of belonging, but what if it’s all been phony? What if it's been unsustainable from the start? Because how could anyone actually want to be friends with someone broken like him, especially now that they know about—
Tighnari plucks Kaveh’s cup from his hands.
“Can you get him water, Nilou?”
She takes the cue to give them some privacy, and Tighnari tips in close. Honey lavender, hibiscus and bottom-shelf whiskey swirl in the air between them; Tighnari grabs Kaveh by the cheeks and holds him still.
His grip is firm and dogged. It gives Kaveh’s flailing consciousness something to latch onto.
“I’m very glad you’re here,” Tighnari whispers, eyes more dark and intense than Kaveh’s seen from him before. “I wish the circumstances weren’t so shitty, but you’re a part of us now.”
Kaveh tries to swallow, but his throat is too thick, too tight. He manages a nod, though, and rasps out, “Thank you for being my friend.”
Tighnari’s grip on his cheeks goes gentle. He removes one hand to tap Kaveh on the nose. “Thanks for being mine.”
Nilou returns with the water. Tighnari supervises several heavy gulps before he knocks knees with Kaveh.
“Maybe you should reach out to Alhaitham,” Tighnari suggests. “Salvaging that friendship could be good for you.”
Kaveh chokes and sputters. More water dribbles down his shirt—someone, get this man a bib. Seriously.
Tighnari just rolls his eyes, irritated. “Don’t be a drama queen. He seems nice enough.”
“Nice enough—Nari, you don’t even know him!”
“I saw his concern for you, which spoke volumes. Besides,” he says with a wicked smirk, “that man is a smokeshow.”
It feels like someone just shoved Kaveh’s face into fresh embers.
“What the—archons, why would that even matter?”
“Some wholesome attention from a cute guy couldn’t hurt you. And if one thing led to another…” Tighnari shrugs noncommittally, but Kaveh can see the mischief churning behind his gaze, like sea-waves in a typhoon. “Hmm.” He closes his eyes. “I bet he’s got a huge dick.”
Kaveh jolts back so hard he knees himself in the nose.
“Tighnari!”
From across the room, Scaramouche perks up. “Who’s got a good dick?”
“No one!” Kaveh swipes his knuckles under his nostrils, expecting blood. He whips to face Tighnari and hisses, “I take back what I said earlier. I hate that we’re friends.”
“You’d agree with me if you saw the dude, Nilou,” Tighnari says, ignoring Kaveh completely. “Huge hands. Broad shoulders. Practically made-to-order from the Hunk Factory.”
Wide-eyed with awe, Nilou nods along attentively. “Oh, wow.”
“Assuming proportions hold true, that guy is packing.” Tighnari taps his temple. “Trust me. I just have a sixth sense for these things, and—”
“Oh my gods,” Kaveh wails, “you’ve got it all wrong.”
Tighnari’s brows pinch together.
“Wait, is it small?”
(Kaveh regrets ever being born.)
“I—I haven’t seen it, I don’t know—”
“With how long you were friends?” Tighnari deadpans, unimpressed. “I don’t believe you.”
“What, do you know what all your friends’ dicks look like?”
“I sure would if I went to the same boarding school as them,” Tighnari scoffs, like Kaveh’s a world-class idiot for agreeing. “You can’t convince me you never caught a peek in the showers—”
“Then I won’t even bother trying,” Kaveh huffs. He crosses his arms petulantly and sinks into the couch. Rukkhadevata, please turn him invisible this instant.
His friendship with Alhaitham… it was never like that. The two of them squabbled like rivals, challenged and insulted and enchanted and soothed each other more than anyone else ever could, but it never extended beyond friendship. Whatever they had between them was messy but perfect—Kaveh would’ve never risked its ruin with things like feelings or attraction or sex.
(And if, at some point, he did stumble on some attraction, there’s no way he’d unlock the door and let those feelings out to play. Everyone Kaveh’s ever loved left him eventually. He couldn't let that happen with Alhaitham: Alhaitham was too precious to him.)
A loud sucking sound pops open from the other couch, drawing the small group's attention. At Kaveh’s side, Tighnari shrieks.
“Ew, disgusting!”
Kaveh blinks himself into the moment to find Dehya and Dunyarzad playing tonsil-hockey on the sofa, Solitaire forgotten. Dehya tears their mouths apart just long enough to yell over her shoulder, “Don’t be homophobic!”
Tighnari’s seconds away from popping a blood vessel. “We’re all gay here!”
“I don’t think I am,” Nilou says quietly.
“Not yet,” Scaramouche mutters around a bite of cheese. “We’ll get you eventually.”
“And how about you two get a room,” Tighnari hisses at the lovebirds.
Dunyarzad has the decency to look a little embarrassed, at least. Dehya just flips off Tighnari and snaps, “This is my room.”
Tighnari groans and shoots up off the couch, stalking toward the punch bowl.
“If I ever act like this when I finally get with Cyno,” he tells Kaveh over his shoulder, “promise to cut off both my ears.”
Lately, Kaveh’s been dreaming. A lot.
Although—
Most of the dreams devolve quickly into nightmares. In sleep, Kaveh’s mind splices together the whole gambit of bad memories: it juxtaposes burning wood with harsh screams, sandstorms with weatherworn headstones, shadowed corners with stripped beds.
When Kaveh drinks, the nightmares are worse. But he remembers less of them when he wakes—so, it evens out. Tonight, after he stumbles home from Dehya’s apartment, he collapses onto the mattress, exhausted and expecting the worst.
But tonight’s dream is different.
Above him stretches a canopy of stars, sky clear enough to picture Celestia. Old flannel warms his back, soothes the skin on his arms, softens down the cool grass underneath the blanket. Kaveh’s fingertips twitch to the left—they brush against chapped knuckles.
“What are you thinking about, Kaveh?”
Constellations. Unfinished term papers. Hormones. The astringent aftertaste of moonshine, a jar of which his dormmate had given him for the night, right before he and Alhaitham snuck off campus to stargaze.
“You should try some booze,” Kaveh suggests now, nudging the mostly-full vessel toward Alhaitham. “It might loosen you up a little.”
Beside him, Alhaitham sighs, low and steady. He shifts his hips and scoots closer until their shoulders brush.
Kaveh feels electricity all the way down to his toes.
“I feel plenty relaxed already,” Alhaitham says. “Unless you think I need to unwind more?”
Alhaitham can always handle being a bit looser. At sixteen, he acts like he has a meter stick shoved up his ass ninety percent of the time. (The other ten percent, it’s just a standard ruler.)
Though tonight, Alhaitham certainly does seem more relaxed than usual. He gets this way whenever he’s alone with Kaveh, whenever they’ve slipped beyond campus bounds and prying eyes. The thought melts and sweetens Kaveh’s mood more than it should—sugar and cream left to caramelize on the stove.
He rolls on his side to face Alhaitham. His soft skin looks like porcelain in the moonlight, and his eyes blaze with fractals of color Kaveh’s never seen in anyone else.
“I don’t think it’s necessary,” Kaveh murmurs, smiling in the shy way that always makes his junior blush. “I think I like you just the way you are now.”
In the morning, when Kaveh wakes up, he remembers it all: dream, reality, and everything in between, down to the soft brush of wind-chapped knuckles.