06: rattle and shake in the wind that remakes all that time has worn away

When he climbed into bed, Alhaitham pulled on his hearing aids. His head felt like it had been stuffed with cotton, and he was willing to risk Kusanali and his friends' voices in the chance that he may hear Kaveh's splinted foot stumble across the hardwood floor. He may be able to catch his sleep-walking figure before it was too late.

He laid his head against his pillow, expecting to have trouble falling asleep with the feedback now filling his ears. Thoughts and voices were meant to keep him awake as he pondered the interaction with Kaveh and everything before, cataloging and organizing every bit of information he had to reach his final conclusion.

It was all there, all within his grasp.

Alhaitham supposed he was more tired from the agonizing day he had than he had originally assumed. His breathing evened out before any proper thoughts could cross his mind.

He opened his eyes to a steel-blue door, dressed in his usual attire, with his hand reaching for the silver door handle. It was cool under his exposed fingers, contrasting the stagnant, warm air of the evening. A nervous thump in his chest called for him to pause before he went through with opening the door.

Turning around, he eyed Kaveh up and down for a gracious moment. The architect was wearing an outfit slightly fancier than his usual attire — a white overcoat decorated with microscopic silver laces that intertwined into a floral pattern, the collar popped up at his neck, with a loose iron gray shirt underneath it. The collar of that shirt hugged the base of the top of his collarbone, accentuating the ornamental silver necklaces that wrapped tightly around and hung from his throat. His pants, although partly covered by his upper body attire, were black and steam-pressed, ending with polished, pointed black shoes.

He dressed wonderfully, and the way the white overcoat was slightly cinched at the waist made Alhaitham's brain go a little fuzzy. However, Alhaitham found his attraction to lie in the man's blond hair. It hadn't changed at all from his usual style with it being partly tied back from his face, with one part pulled three-strand braid, and the rest being pinned together with red clips. A blue feather stuck out of his hair, which only Kaveh could make look charming.

With the sun kissing the ground behind him, it looked like his hair was a ray of light sent from the star itself, brightening Alhaitham's world right before his very eyes.

The best part, he knew, was that Kaveh's hair was soft to the touch. The comb he had used had taken out his knots, leaving behind a clean waterfall for Alhaitham to run his hands through. Even then, as he admired Kaveh worrying at his lip and furrowing his eyebrows, he had the intense desire to feel each strand underneath his fingers. It would feel like he was touching the sun, instead of the cool door handle his hand was resting on.

"My grandmother won't bite your head off," Alhaitham signed in modified sign language, using a free hand to reach for Kaveh's. They had been fiddling together, trying to erode each other away in the incessant way that he only ever did when he was anxious.

Kaveh squeezed Alhaitham's hand with his own. "If she's anything like you, I'll be more afraid she'll criticize me to an early grave," he sighed back without any aggression. His eyebrows lifted, but his lips and jaw never lost their tension. "Cannibalistic decapitation would be the merciful way to go."

"I always held the belief that she was the more pragmatic one when it comes to the two of us," Alhaitham mused.

Kaveh shuddered with horror, his face twisting to that of a boar before an arrow strikes its heart. "You can't be serious."

His lips quirked ever so slightly. "That wouldn't be very pragmatic of me, would it?"

It was when Kaveh's eyes would alight with emotion, Alhaitham thought, that he felt that he could no longer bring air into his lungs, He was struck by a wave of nerves crashing down onto his ribcage and drowning his heart. It struggled to beat underneath the heavy weight of sea salt and shuddering breaths.

Kaveh laughed, his eyelids squinting and his hand tugging down on Alhaitham's. Even though Alhaitham couldn't hear it, he knew the reaction was born of anxiety rather than genuine humor. The Scribe gently cupped the architect's jaw and rubbed his thumb along the smooth skin of his cheek. Pressing his forehead against Kaveh's, he took one deep inhale, allowing Kaveh time to adjust to his breathing pattern.

Their chests moved in tandem, and only when Kaveh pulled himself away did Alhaitham let go. His lover smiled, his skin pulling and eyes shimmering in the way polished rubies reflect light. The entire world's collection of scarlet hues cascaded through his eyes as though it were a waterfall. If Alhaitham were blind, he'd give his eternal soul to the Archons in exchange for the ability to perceive Kaveh's colors.

"Are you ready?" Alhaitham asked, letting go of Kaveh only for the ability to use his hands. His lover nodded, and Alhaitham finally twisted the knob of the steel-blue door.

The scent of old books immediately greeted him as he set foot on the hardwood floor. Their spines lined the interior from corner to corner, only breaking for a window to let in natural light. Behind the dark-wood bookshelves was a backdrop of calm yellow walls, the color of a cornfield. The brown couch has a patchwork quilt draped over the back with two pillows the shade of the walls propped against the armrests. It was a small living room, and the miniature archway opened to the even smaller kitchen.

Alhaitham watched from his peripheral vision as Kaveh, ruby eyes bright and lips slightly parted, took in his childhood home. While he didn't move from Alhaitham's side, the Scribe was well aware of the barely-restrained urgency in his gaze. The architect, living to his true name, would be touching the walls, the decorum, the lamps, marveling at his grandmother's house as closely as he could.

When Kaveh looked back at him, he clamped his jaw shut and signed, "You didn't inherit her interior design skills."

"I have the notion," he resigned, "that you will get along just fine with her."

And Kaveh grinned at him, warm and true, with his anxiety lines dissipated from his brows and lips. Alhaitham was captivated by his presence, so enraptured in his blinding light that he didn't feel his grandmother approach them. It was only when Kaveh's gaze averted and eyes widened did he remember where exactly he was.

He shifted to meet his grandmother, her face wrinkled with smile lines lining her cheeks. Her frail, gray hair was held back in a small bun at the back of her head, and she wore a fine blue spring dress, light in its color with a dark lace accent at the neckline. It draped on her light wood floor.

"I never imagined I'd see that look on you," she signed, her mouth subtly following along with her words. Her miniature smile held nothing but fondness. "How do you manage to get anything done if you're always dazed like that?"

Kaveh went a shade of pink Alhaitham usually only saw when he kissed the back of his hand. "You will soon understand once he starts talking," Alhaitham explained, forcing back a smile when his grandmother gasped and swatted at him.

"It seems living on your own has taken away all of your manners," she signed, even though she knew he'd always been this way and had not made the comment out of malice. She redirected her attention to their guest. "Kaveh, dear, it's a pleasure to finally meet you in person."

"As is mine," he replied, and Alhaitham was pleased to find that Kaveh's nerves had not visibly returned. "Madame," — his grandmother's smile increases by only a fraction — "your house is positively stunning. I have never been more comfortable in a new environment as I have here."

Before responding to the compliment, she regarded him up and down, her gaze flickering back and forth between him and Alhaitham. It was a cultivated silence, one that only Alhaitham could be left to predict what would come out of her hands next. "You'll do nicely with my grandson," she signed. "He doesn't know the first thing about politeness nor home design."

His lover laughed again, and although it fell on the deaf ears of the Scribe, he could tell the difference between this sincere chuckle versus his previous nervous titter. "Madame, I'm afraid I have come to be well acquainted with both of those traits."

She did not question his love for her grandson. Alhaitham saw it on her grin, the one that he never saw this wide — he had thought her physically incapable. It had seemed that the older she got, the lesser her smiles became. This did not mean she was unhappy, necessarily, but she couldn't exercise the same muscles as she used to.

It was not at all surprising to Alhaitham that Kaveh was able to make his grandmother achieve the improbable. Even if it was at Alhaitham's own expense.

"I once asked that child to organize my book collection in any way he liked. Do you know how he chose to organize? By the number of pages, of course!" She signed as they sat down at the small, round wooden table for tea.

Especially at his expense.

Their drinks were warm and sweet, fresh out of the steaming kettle and poured to them by his grandmother's unsteady hand. It came with age, her shakiness, hunched back, and various aches and pains that prevent her from standing and walking longer than necessary. However, with that time she no longer spent walking and cleaning, she spent divulging in every book on her shelf.

Alhaitham let them do most of the talking — the whole point of the get-together was for Kaveh to properly meet her, after all — and watched them closely. He wasn't analyzing their interactions deeply, but rather, he noticed the way they acted so at ease with each other. It was as though they'd known each other their whole lives, rather than the half-hour timespan that they'd been conversing in.

They talked in length about the various Sumerian infrastructures and buildings Kaveh had a hand in designing, and not once did his grandmother let him speak poorly about himself or express any unresolved regret. She didn't make an indication she'd known anything about him previously, outside of what her grandson had told her, although both he and Kaveh were well aware that could not be the case with how famous he was in Sumeru.

It was when the topic shifted in his grandmother's favor — literature, involving both old and modern authors — that Alhaitham had a sudden sinking weight in his stomach.

"There is one book I have given Haitham, though I should say the author is himself. It was a journal," she signed, then tilted her head in Alhaitham's direction. Her smile is light and ever-present, as it had been the entire evening. "Do you still have it? Remember what I wrote?"

And that was an odd question, wasn't it? She hadn't asked with curiosity if he remembered, because she knew he wouldn't have forgotten. Instead, her question was less of a question and more of a prompt, wanting to her hear own words parroted back to her.

His grandmother was dead.

It rushed to his mind at the same time that the table freezes, Kaveh's wide, imploring stare and his grandmother's smile which had only gotten shorter as she had gotten older, were left as complete statues at her kitchen table. The one that belonged to a different family, as Alhaitham had sold it some years into his Akademiya education.

Alhaitham wakes up in his empty, pitch-black bedroom with an unrelenting ache in his chest. His hearing aids rang with quiet static, substituting the silence of the sleeping world for his unhearing ears.

He recalled his grandmother's face, her hair, and the way she shook. Somehow, it looked entirely different from how he remembered her. She had never made it to the age where she was mentally debilitated. Rather, her death had been a result of her weak immune system. It was something she had fought since her childhood.

The grandmother in his dream looked like how she would have if she had made it to see her grandson become the Acting Grand Sage.

She would've loved Kaveh. Alhaitham rested a hand on his face, trying to steady his overwhelming longing for someone that was gone. It intensified with the reminder of the person that was still within his grasp, but fading away all the same.

Do you still have it? She had signed to him. Remember what I wrote?

Of course he still had it. There was nothing that he owned that was more invaluable to him than the journal she had given him as an 'early graduation gift' all those years ago. By that time, her skin had paled and her lungs made the sound of a dying cat. She had been stricken with illness. There would be no recovery.

Alhaitham pulled himself out of bed, not bothering with his slippers as he made his way across his house in the dark. It felt cold and unfamiliar in comparison to the comfort of his childhood home. Anything he'd found significant from his grandmother's he'd taken with him to his current residence, yet he hadn't been able to bring her.

Maybe that was the reason when he turned on the lights, he wanted nothing more than to repaint every wall to a cornfield yellow and replace all the blankets and rugs with patchwork quilts. He wanted to walk into his living room and catch the scent of old books and steaming tea in the kitchen.

It was the smell of coming home.

Alhaitham plucked his journal from where it rested next to his other five notebooks, all filled with notes on various topics. The emerald-colored cover once sparkled, but over time and usage, it became dull and smokey. Alhaitham didn't mind. The fingerprint smudges and frayed edges proved the years of love from its owner.

The journal weighed heavy in his hands as he sat on the edge of a couch, running his fingers over the spine and cover. His grandmother had lived a simple life, spending most of her money on food and books rather than needless personal items. Alhaitham had inherited both her small wealth and minimalist lifestyle, and it left him with that emerald notebook as his only remaining gift from her.

He thought, as he gently opened the journal and made a cracking sound of sorts, that he would not have graduated if not for her. The reason he had begun his education at the Akademiya was from her insistence, not for the sake of his parents' legacies. In truth, he had hated it. There had been a reason why he had chosen homeschooling over early enrollment, and his opinion hadn't changed all that much in his second attempt at the Akademiya. However, she had given him a blessing — the words he could no longer recall — and the journal, and he stayed until he graduated higher education and applied for the position of the Scribe.

At the bottom of the first page, where he was meant to sign his name and address should the journal be lost, was a short sentence written in loopy cursive. The ink was faded and nearly hard to read, but Alhaitham hardly needed to see it in order to recall what it was. He'd spent so much time in his youth reading and rereading the same eight letters until he had seared it into his brain.

He dragged one finger across the high loop of the capital M and the lower loop of the y's, following it all the way to the end period. May my child Alhaitham lead a peaceful life.

Alhaitham's face tightened, lips pressed together, and he tilted his head back so his tears wouldn't stain the worn title page.

He missed his grandmother.

When she had died, he was sixteen. They had already worked together to plan his course of action to prevent any panic and chaos once he was alone. He'd agreed to return to the Akademiya, and she had smiled at him, small and incapable of making her cheek muscles work in the way they used to. He planned her funeral with part of her fortune, inviting her friends and no relatives because there weren't any. It had just been grandmother and grandson for as long as he could remember. His parents were dead, his grandfather had drowned in a sinking ship, and neither she nor he had any siblings to speak of. Alhaitham hadn't been aware of any cousins, nor aunts and uncles. If there were any, they hadn't cared to step forward.

Even though everything was straight, and there was no room for him to worry about when or where his next meal would come from, nor where he would sleep or pay for hygienic products, Alhaitham lived the following year of his life as though the world had already ended. And for him, it practically had.

He'd abandoned the hearing aids he'd made to hear his grandmother's small laugh and wise words. He had sold his childhood home to keep himself afloat while he worked a low-wage, part-time job and paid for all other living and education expenses. Her library had been packed into cardboard boxes and stored in the apartment he rented with a roommate he rarely ever saw. His tea held no warmth nor sweetness, every meal lacked her flavor, and reading became a near excruciating task.

Alhaitham turned his head slightly, meeting the wide ruby eyes of the man standing in the hallway, his stance rigid and prepared to flee at the faint sound of a pin dropping, and wondered if that was why he cared so much.

It was a year after his grandmother died that Alhaitham had his first conversation with Kaveh. Not every student in the Akademiya knew sign language, but he did. They sat together at lunch, with Alhaitham's bland sandwich and cold tea, and Alhaitham saw color for the first time again.

It was his eyes. Because of course, no matter what Alhaitham did or however many people he met, he'd never found a color more captivating than what Kaveh naturally possessed. He'd never even cared about red before, but suddenly he found himself chasing after every red-ish hue the world had to offer. And it was all in one person.

A month into their friendship, Kaveh had made Alhaitham tea. He'd expected to be greeted with bitterness and an unfriendly cold liquid that he had become acquainted with since his grandmother stopped boiling it in her kettle. But when he had brought the cup to his lips, closing his eyes and resigning to his fate, he was surprised to find a gentle burn on the tip of his tongue.

Kaveh had been upset. He'd assumed Alhaitham's dazed reaction meant that he'd found the tea repulsive, and he even tried to pry the mug away from Alhaitham's hands. It had only been a misunderstanding, but Alhaitham had come to the sudden and intimate realization that his world was no longer lifeless.

It was when he started wearing his hearing aids again did his world finally right itself. With Kaveh around, it felt wrong to keep himself deaf. He could hear his friend's voice, his laugh, his angry mumblings about essays and complex trigonometry and ancient languages that were hard to grasp. The original person the hearing aids were made for was dead, but perhaps the simple fact of being made to hear a loved one remained.

When their friendship had fallen apart, Alhaitham did not return to the intense state he had before. There were remnants of it, like not wearing his hearing aids for a month, and he avoided staring at anything architectural for too long, but it was not like how it had been with his grandmother. Maybe it was because he knew Kaveh was never truly gone, or he assumed that one day they would reconnect. What he did know for certain was that he had told himself one blissful lie:

He never truly loved Kaveh like he'd loved his grandmother.

And what a convincing deception that was. At the very least, it kept him afloat until graduation and up to when he caught wind of an architect that never left Lambad's Tavern. When he had shared a drink with him — and later in the month, tea — and felt the smooth edge of sweetness on his tongue, he realized that he hadn't been able to taste sugar since their relationship collapsed.

Kaveh's face was frozen in a state of mortified shock, and his body slightly leaned from the splint elevating his foot. One hand gripping the edge of the wall as tightly as it could, while the other curled into his night pants. At the very least, he wasn't sleep-walking. Alhaitham swiped under his eyes as his tear ducts slowly closed. Salt clouded his tastebuds from where his tears had trickled into his mouth.

"I- I'm sorry," Kaveh started, his eyes stuck on Alhaitham. "I couldn't sleep, and I saw the lights turn on—"

"I dreamt of you and her," interrupted Alhaitham, turning his own gaze back towards the eight-word sentence. He couldn't bear that trembling voice ringing in his hearing aids any longer. "We went to her home and had afternoon tea and, if I had been asleep for longer, dinner. If I had not known better, I would've assumed you had known each other for years based on how well you two conversed."

Alhaitham could feel his roommate's stare on the back of his head. The air between them settled into a tense silence, save for the static that only Alhaitham could hear from his hearing aids.

She was dead. Alhaitham will never drink her tea again, watch her read books on the brown couch in the living room, watch her hands move as she bestowed upon him wisdom that only a woman like her could possess. She will never have the pleasure of meeting Kaveh, talking to him, learning and understanding all of the reasons why Alhaitham fell in love with him.

"I have spent months trying to understand why I care about you. It hadn't made any sense; the only person I have ever loved is my grandmother, and she has passed on. I don't bother myself with other people, with their emotions, or their aspirations. I don't care. I shouldn't care. If their lives aren't affecting mine, then I leave them alone. So why, when I saw you at Lambad's Tavern, did I ask you to live with me?" Alhaitham paused and looked up at Kaveh, observing the way his hand dropped from the wall and eyebrows furrowed into an expression akin to confusion.

"And these past few days, you've been hurting yourself. You're hiding and I want to help you, but I couldn't figure out why. Why are you the exception to every rule I've ever made for myself?" He took a shuddering breath. "I've learned that I've been focusing on the wrong part. It doesn't matter the reason. I love you, Kaveh, and I have waited far too long to tell you that," he said, and his breath hitched as he continued. "And I am quite afraid of losing you, too."

He closed his eyes, trying to prevent more tears from slipping past his eyelids. It had been in front of him all along, but his attention had been averted to the root cause rather than the problem itself. Perhaps he had been scared of admitting this, because if he said it out loud then it had to be true. The only other person he loved in his life was disappearing faster than he could reach out and pull him close.

The sound of Kaveh's splint hitting the floor resonated with Alhaitham's labored breaths, and he was sure there was a joke somewhere in there that he was missing. The couch dipped with the added weight of another person. It was quiet, but not in the same way it had been before. The silence had no anticipation, no expectation of an outburst or confession. After all, Alhaitham had already popped that bubble.

When Alhaitham pried his eyes open and swiped at the tear that had managed to escape, he watched the way Kaveh studied his open palms with intense faux interest. The skin on his neck shifted when he swallowed, and the silence shifted with it.

Kaveh's lips quivered before he spoke. "When I was eight years old, I was kidnapped. Plucked right off the street when my mother wasn't looking, and I was too enticed by the idea of a free Aranara carving to notice what was really happening." He sighed. It was shaky and painful to listen to. "I was organ trafficked for a week."

Alhaitham didn't prompt him for anything more, because if he learned anything from the death of his grandmother and the slow suicide of his best friend, it was that listening was the best way to offer help. Just being there in the same space, breathing the same air, and hearing — or if they are signing, watching — what they need to say provided more comfort than a thousand words ever could.

"I wasn't the only one. There were— I believe there were twenty of us in one room. All children. I think that was the worst part. We were all young, innocent children who shouldn't have yet deserved to see how cruel the world would be." Kaveh paused, then shook his head. "No. The worst part was that I left them all behind. Those that were still alive and those we buried. I— I couldn't take them with me. I don't know what happened to them after I escaped. And that's… it's terrifying."

His skin was pale, near translucent in their living room light. He hadn't gotten out much since the nightmares started, Alhaitham figured, and he wondered if that came with a fear of being kidnapped again. Plucked off the street as Kaveh had put it.

Kaveh glanced to Alhaitham and back, his lips pressed together and hands fiddling with each other as though they were sentient creatures. It was a bit more of those back-and-forth glances before Kaveh was able to muster up the courage to grab the edge of his shirt and shift his body so he was facing Alhaitham more directly. A heavy heartbeat later, he lifted the hem of his shirt to reveal his stomach.

It was just enough to see a dark, jagged scar run across the middle of the otherwise empty space between his side and naval. Small atrophied dots followed closely to the scar, telling that the wound had once been stitched closed. It looked fresh, as though he had received it only a week ago. Alhaitham had the odd urge to touch it as though feeling it would confirm its authenticity.

"They removed my kidney on my third day there," Kaveh confessed quietly, his sorrowful gaze trained on his abdomen. "They were going to take the other one when I escaped. There had been a—" he swallowed, "— an incident of some kind. I don't…. remember all that well. But the person holding me let go to take care of it and I— I ran. We were shackled when we weren't being handled so I… it was my only opportunity."

His ruby eyes were clouded in a thick mist, like early morning fog permeating a forest. It was a second before he let go of the hem of his shirt and slowly soothed out the wrinkles. "If I had stopped to help any of them, I wouldn't have gotten out. I was—" Kaveh cut himself short, eyebrows furrowing in frustration. "I was a child."

Alhaitham knew he was fighting his unrelenting guilt. If encouraging his father to participate in a tournament was enough to set his unrealistic and selfless ideals for the rest of his life, Alhaitham could hardly imagine what abandoning twenty or so scared and abused children was doing to his psyche.

"I shouldn't have survived my escape," he continued, now reaching down to rest a hand on his other assumed injury. "Remember what I told you about fences? It was the same kind that my traffickers had built. Nobody was chasing after me because they knew I wouldn't be able to make it past the palisade. It was tall and I was only four days out from previous surgery. I was either not going to be able to scale it or I would get impaled at the top.

"But you know," he shrugged and let go of a shuddering breath, "if I didn't try to cross it, I would die anyway."

Alhaitham trained his attention on the hand curled on the fabric above his thigh, and the final piece clicked in his brain. On any other day and with any other person, he may have been satisfied with coming to the correct conclusion before he was told. He may have been proud, even, of what he'd accomplished. However, all he could feel was bitter and thick bile rising up his throat.

It wasn't satisfying. It was morbid.

"All of my stitches from the kidney surgery had ripped open from my sprint across the field and my unconventional method of climbing a fence, so my hands slipped as I was pulling myself over and I," he tilted his head as a shine joined his foggy red eyes, "I impaled myself straight through my thigh. I should've bled out. On the fence or when I managed to collapse on the other side. But I kept going. I lost a lot of blood, but at some point, both my thigh and kidney wound healed into the scars they have today. And I don't… my dreams haven't provided me an explanation for that."

Alhaitham knew how it happened, and from the tone of his voice, Kaveh must have had the inkling as well. However, Aranara were elusive to adults. If they didn't want to be seen, then their presence wouldn't be known. It was extremely hard for grown-ups, even ones as intelligent and observant as Kaveh, to break the Aranara mind game. Alhaitham likely had his own experiences with Aranara growing up that he could no longer recall with clarity, either.

When Kaveh redirected his gaze back to Alhaitham, the Scribe was struck with amazement. Even on the verge of tears with his mind half-gone in the distant past, he still managed to look beautiful. Alhaitham thought he would never escape those damn eyes, so dark and contrasting against his smooth pale skin.

"For all these years," Kaveh started again, knocking Alhaitham out of his momentary stupor, "I have avoided looking at these scars in the mirror. I couldn't remember where they came from. I didn't wear any revealing clothing because I couldn't explain to anyone what happened. Even my mother— after everything happened and I reported it to the Matra, my memory of it completely disappeared. She tried to explain it to me, once, what the scars were from. I guess I just… hadn't believed her."

It sent an ache into his chest to hear Kaveh's voice strain in the effort to keep himself together.

"I don't know if the Matra had ever busted the ring, or if anyone else had escaped. If there was any attempt to reach out to me, I don't recall it." His whole body trembled as though an ice cube had been shoved down his shirt. "I don't know what all I haven't remembered. And since this is all coming back, the thought is a little terrifying. That my nightmares aren't all there is to it. That… that I might have seen more than I am being allowed to process."

Alhaitham knew it wasn't something he was ever going to fully understand. He knew grief, he knew longing, but the loss and sudden regain of traumatic memories wasn't an experience he had ever gone through. His life had been relatively easy up until his grandmother passed. He was only three years old when his parents died — the details of he was still uncertain as nobody had any records outside of mangled bodies that were then cremated — and at sixteen his grandmother died in the hospital at a time when Alhaitham hadn't been allowed to visit.

It had been traumatic in its own right to watch her slowly wither away. But his memories hadn't been forcibly removed and stuffed away in an untouched compartment of his brain like Kaveh's had. His trauma had been slowly and gradual for years until his last remaining family member had passed, while Kaveh's had been a shock to his system. It was an unfamiliar environment with constant intense traumas surrounding him over the course of a week, and then some until he'd forgotten every last bit of it.

And the way Kaveh looked at him now, with his head falling a bit forward and shoulders slumping, Alhaitham knew the dam had finally broken. "I don't—" his words hitched and he put a hand over his mouth, "What if there's more?"

Alhaitham did what he thought Lesser Lord Kusanali would've done. He did what he thought Kaveh deserved. With two hands, he reached out and drug Kaveh into his chest, holding him tight and pressing his face into his neck. Kaveh wrapped his arms and clung on immediately, and he released the sobs he'd been holding captive for far too long.

He rubbed circles into Kaveh's back, trying his best to be as placating as possible. Total body physical contact was difficult. A forehead touch or holding hands or his fingertips tracing or running through a head of hair was easier to manage. It was small amounts of another person. A chest against his, knees grazing his, a nose in his hair, and hands pressing against his back all at the same time was harder. But for some reason, he was crying, too. He held Kaveh impossibly closer and didn't want to let go.

And somewhere, between both of their sobs, Kaveh choked out: "I love you, too."

Alhaitham kept his tear-stained face buried in a head of sunlight-blond hair.

They decided to try something new. Instead of sleeping separately, Kaveh suggested they share the same bed in order to prevent another sleep-walking incident. Perhaps if it had been a day earlier, there would've been a furious blush on his face and a stammer in his words. And maybe Alhaitham would've teased him for it. He would've said that they should recreate one of Tighnari's dreams while they were at it.

However, it was not the day before. The only redness on Kaveh's face was from his sobbing confession of the nightmares he'd been having, and Alhaitham had not wasted a second in agreeing. It may calm your mind a little to have me there in the first place, he'd replied, to prove you're no longer alone.

They'd pressed comfortably together under the covers as though they'd been practicing it for years. For once, Alhaitham did not feel uncomfortable with the contact. He did not hold Kaveh needlessly tight, and he made sure none of his bare skin was touching Kaveh's aside from his nose against his neck. And with his roommate — his lover — this close, he was able to abandon his hearing aids on the side table.

He wasn't sure when they fell asleep or who drifted off first. But for the first time since Lesser Lord Kusanali had freed her people's unconscious minds, Alhaitham did not dream, and neither did Kaveh.