Work Text:
The process of death can be rationalized. The aftermath of it—not so much.
Alhaitham does not dwell in the aftermath the mortals call grief. The rawest form of love, a rope to the neck, a drop of water on lips long bones.
As one of the Sages of Death, emotions aren’t tolerated. It is a job to be exercised with indifference because death does not discriminate. Death collects those who are willing and those who should never come so close to his gloved hand reaching out from the afterlife. Fingers so small they vanish in his palm, fingers so broken they can’t grab at him on their own. Alhaitham is not there to offer comfort—because death, as much as humans try to weave it into something eternal and romantic, often is bleak and dark. It’s absence, not relief. For the most of them.
He guides them past the veil, those souls about to be reaped. And then forgets about them, turns to the next. Because, even though mortals possess quite impressive technology to tamper with the time of his reaping, they cannot stop him entirely. They also don’t want to—that’s what Alhaitham thinks whenever he walks in between ruins smelling of black smoke and burned flesh.
His job rarely leads him to the beautiful spots on Earth. So consider him surprised when he one day enters the most dreamlike place he ever visited.
The atelier is a burst of color against Alhaitham’s pale skin. Walls are plastered with paintings, bleeding emotion all over the canvas to the floorboards, dabs of paint leading up to the artist in the middle of the room, where daylight pours over him like a stream of gold, setting him aglow. Blond hair pinned up to a hasty ponytail, an afterthought, like the sprinkles of blue and red on cheeks, neck and a flowy white shirt. A bold choice considering the unpredictability of his workplace but one glimpse tells Alhaitham that this particular shirt has already taken part in a lot of these afternoons. Old, bleached traces of paint litter it from the hem to the broad collar.
The artist doesn’t notice Alhaitham. But then, mortals rarely do before it’s too late.
He’s immersed in his work, paintbrush gliding over the canvas like a lover’s caress. There’s a soft furrow between his brows, a little crescent moon challenging the sunlight he is basking in. The tip of his tongue snatches between pink lips as he flicks the brush in an unhurried dance, the palette perfectly balanced in his other hand.
Alhaitham takes a step closer and watches goosebumps sprouting from the artist’s neck down to his collarbone. The brush stops moving and he leans back.
“Hello?”
Long, golden lashes swing upwards and red eyes meet his. A gasp wrenches from Alhaitham’s throat; of course, the other can’t see him and yet his gaze made Alhaitham believe he could. Because for the fracture of a second, they look at Alhaitham’s soul long forfeited, tug at the threads that compose him so perfectly.
“Someone there?” he asks but his tone is light and airy—not scared, not taken aback. When no answer comes, he turns back to his painting. Alhaitham lets his eyes wander. The atelier is home to an endearing chaos humans are so prone to when indulging. He always had a soft spot for it, seeing what hearts so fragile and lives so fleeting would create.
But the more he looks around, the more he’s certain he shouldn’t be here. The man in front of him looks healthy. He can sense his heart beating, quietly, fiercely. Can hear the thrum of his pulse and his blood. Can’t see any scars littering his skin. No sickness festering within.
Alhaitham’s stomach plummets.
Because if there’s no physical sickness, no old age, no imminent danger—
He kneels beside the artist, ignoring the canvas in favor of looking at him. Another cold shiver washes over the blond, a side effect caused by the presence of a Sage of Death. His pulse quickens, unease thick on his tongue. The brush falters and his hands sink. The artist turns his head, looking at Alhaitham, eyes unseeing, murky.
“I can’t,” the blond confesses to his empty atelier but it feels like he’s speaking directly to Alhaitham, who is unsure if he’s rejecting him or rejecting life. His body brims with a light so stubborn, it snuffs out the coldness lingering on Alhaitham’s skin. Suddenly he feels the heat and breathes in his scent—a mixture of paint and citrus and summer nights. Wine, somewhere at the back of his tongue. Telling him of the struggle veiled behind a coat of paint.
“It’s okay,” Alhaitham whispers before he can rethink his actions. He never offers comfort. And doesn’t even agree with his own words. Because it doesn’t feel okay, doesn’t feel like he should be here. Yet he leans in, closer until their lips almost touch, until he feels the other’s breath as little bursts of flames mingling with his own.
Tears well up in red eyes, spilling over, slicing over high cheekbones and a pointed chin. Alhaitham lifts his hand and catches them, warm and devastating, in his palm. One snap of his finger to part the veil, to reap this soul—one little push to tip over the scales of life.
But he can’t bring himself to do it.
He steps away. And with it, a phone starts ringing.
The artist exhales, long and grating before tossing away his paint supplies and walking over to his bag. Alhaitham observes how he pulls out his phone.
“Kaveh! Where are you? We’re already one hour into studying! Are you hiding from your deadlines at the atelier again?” the voice is teasing, amused, not knowing what it interrupted.
“Y-Yeah,” the artist, Kaveh, forces lightness in his tone. “I didn’t realize it was this late already. On my way, see you there!”
He tosses the phone into his bag but fishes out something else; a small box of pills and Alhaitham drags a hand over his jaw, realizing he has been clenching it the whole time. Of course, he expected to see something like this. There was a reason he was here, after all.
But Kaveh simply stares down at the pills in his hand, shoulders shaking with suppressed emotion. He tosses the pills back into his bag and closes the zipper. Fingers rake through golden hair, lips parting for the ghost of a scream, choking on pain buried so deep not even Alhaitham, who has studied human pain for centuries, can decipher.
When Kaveh’s shoulders slump, Alhaitham takes a step back, retreating from the sun pouring through the window. Knowing that if he lingers, the artist might change his mind.
So he leaves, empty-handed and heart filled to the brim with something undefined, hoping to never see Kaveh again.
When Alhaitham enters the atelier a second time, the art has changed from bursts of colorful emotion plastered to the walls to blueprints covering the floorboards, Kaveh hunched over them with a pen instead of a brush; his hair falls loosely around his cheeks, covering their hollowed cut. Dark circles under his eyes and two bottles of red wine accompany him although the summer sun still sets him alight, radiant and so close to burning away.
Alhaitham sits down across from him, studying the blueprint. It’s precise, pristine—a stark contrast to the dishevelled state of its creator. Kaveh is wearing a thick hoodie despite the temperatures as if wanting to hide. His left wrist, guiding his pen, is wrapped in a dark elastic bandage, stabilizing it.
“—and I thought you could show me what you’ve been working on after I’m done with my seminar. You will attend, right?”
“Yes, of course,” Kaveh murmurs toward the phone lying next to the blueprint.
“Wonderful. I also wanted to offer you a position on my next project, you know, the extension of the Opera Epiclese? I’m sure you can bring some amazing ideas to the table.”
“The Opera…of Fontaine?” Alhaitham can see how Kaveh gets yanked out of his vision because he’s scrunching his brows again. He drops the pen and grabs the bottle instead. “I’ve to stay in Sumeru for my summer job, maman.”
“Art commissions? You can do those anywhere!”
“I work best in my atelier.”
“You having to pay rent for that place causes you to need a summer job in the first place.”
Kaveh’s mouth pulls into a frown and instead of quipping back, he takes a deep sip of wine, wiping off a stray drop with the back of his bandaged hand. The gesture is uncaring and tired and creates a pang in Alhaitham’s chest. He starts to believe this time, they will leave this room together.
“But this would look excellent on your résumé.”
“I know, maman.”
“So, that’s a yes, then?”
Her tone is not unkind, but rather excited. Almost endearing. But she can’t see her son crumpled on the floor working on whatever university task Alhaitham can’t decipher—and she doesn’t know he is in pain whenever he moves the pen and hasn’t slept properly for a month. Doesn’t know he runs on caffeine and apathy and habit.
“Yes,” Kaveh says, faking a smile into the answer without effort. “You’re right, maman.”
“Wonderful! Oh, I’m so excited! After all your hard work, we will finally create something together! I’m so proud of you, Kaveh-joon.”
That startles him, lashes dewy in the afternoon sun. But before he can respond, his mother rambles on, tells him she has another meeting and ends the call. Kaveh lies down on the floor, one hand curled around the bottle of wine as he stares at his half-finished blueprint.
“Why do you keep doing this?”
The question fills the atelier like a hazy fog. Alhaitham lies down across from him, keeping their eyes level. Kaveh’s heartbeat is slow and shallow—the sound of gray rain neverending. Missing its fierce, stubborn quality. Alhaitham stretches out his hand, fingertips hovering over the sharp arch of his rosy cheek. Kaveh tilts his head, almost nuzzling into the touch.
He doesn’t shiver anymore upon contact. He’s ready. He won’t fight Alhaitham, not today.
And yet he’s so warm under his fingertips. Alhaitham strokes over a blond strand falling into his face, wind streaming through the open window to justify the touch. Kaveh’s mouth opens for a delicate sigh.
His pupils are blown wide, filled to the brim with a festering pain. Rot rather than carnage.
Sometimes, people go like this. Quiet, aching, suffering while glowing so brightly. Not stars burning out against rock but embers trying so desperately to stay alight.
It feels wrong on Alhaitham’s tongue. He retreats his hand. He knows he can’t stop it—the nature of his work is not to act out of his own accord but to collect souls for Death, all-encompassing, not playing favorites.
But looking at him, Alhaitham wonders what might happen if he were to leave now.
“Fuck,” Kaveh curses, a wet tremor in his voice announcing tears that immediately spill over. “Fuck, I fucking hate this—”
He jolts upright and reaches for the blueprint. He drags his nails over it, grabs at the paper until it crumples under shaking fingers. Tears at it, ignoring the pain lancing through his wrist. Within seconds his work is ripped to shreds, flying through the room. Kaveh finishes his second bottle of wine and tosses it—Alhaitham instinctively moves his head as it flies past him and shatters on the wall, ruining a finished painting in the process.
“Just stop!” Kaveh screams, grabbing his hair again, pulling harshly, so golden curls come loose. The pain erupts from deep within with such a force, Alhaitham feels it grinding against his bones. It floods the room, drowns out the sun and suffocates every spark of light as Kaveh stumbles toward the remnants of the bottle, picking up one of the shards.
Alhaitham sharply inhales and is at his side in an instant.
Even before Kaveh can set a cut, his soul is already wrapping around Alhaitham’s fingers, eager to lace his knuckles with his shadows. Alhaitham steps behind him, eclipsing that shining presence with his absolute aura—no one can cheat death, no one can escape once their soul is in his grasp. That is what he was made for.
And yet—he holds onto Kaveh’s hand holding the shard, he mimics his motion toward his forearm, he presses it against the visible vein, their movements entwined now, working toward the same goal and he feels something.
As if this mortal here is the knife turning inside him, prying open a heart long faded.
And perhaps, he would trade a thousand lives to keep this one. Perhaps.
“Kaveh,” he whispers into that delicate neck and this time, a shiver grips Kaveh so tightly he drops the glass. He flinches, bumping into his chest because they have been so close, they danced around the veil too intimately.
For a moment, both their worlds collapse into a single one. So for a moment, Kaveh catches a glimpse of eyes as blue as the ocean, blazing as purgatory before Alhaitham retreats behind the veil and vanishes.
“What—?”
He expects Kaveh to panic but the blond reaches forward. His hand can’t grasp him anymore. He escaped death. Or rather, death escaped him. Alhaitham still doesn’t dare to breathe when Kaveh looks into his eyes, lower lip wobbling, tears rendering his face with tragedy.
“I saw you,” he clutches his chest but his heartbeat is still roaring violently, no longer silent. Alhaitham takes another step back but Kaveh suddenly lunges forward. Not at him but at his easel.
Forgotten are the torn-up work and shattered glass as Kaveh starts mixing paint in a frenzy; he yanks the bandage off his wrist and although Alhaitham senses his pain, Kaveh himself is blind to it as he starts to work.
“I’m probably losing my fucking mind but—oh shit—”
The paintbrush dances over the canvas frantically, with a survivor’s abandon. Alhaitham knows he should leave but he can’t help it. It’s so rare he gets to observe survivors. He accompanies heroes and villains, victims and lovers, murderers and innocents but never them.
Never Kaveh, who wears potential bloodshed so very gentle, like he would lie in it like it was tall, soft grass with sun in his hair and gold in his veins.
It’s fascinating.
Alhaitham ignores the canvas once more to watch Kaveh instead. Lashes threaded with a subtle hunger again, movements coming back to life. Brushing the veil off his shoulders with a flick of his injured wrist. Now the pain anchors him to life rather than death. He murmurs under his breath, words that barely make sense to Alhaitham.
“—this is you,” Kaveh says once he’s done, chest heaving. He can’t see Alhaitham but he still feels like the blond is speaking to him. “A wisp of my imagination but damn—damn that looks kinda good.”
Alhaitham walks around and looks at the canvas.
He’s greeted by the sharp profile of a man; chiseled cheekbones, pale skin and silver hair like the moon during a cloudy winter’s night. His eyes are ablaze but cold at once, carrying the weight of endless lifetimes. The slope of his nose, the fullness of his lower lip, the darkness of his lashes.
“Scratch that. That looks fucking beautiful. You’re beautiful,” Kaveh drags the brush over the drawing’s cheek and Alhaitham’s heart spasms in his chest like a bird with a broken wing. Heat surges into him as if Kaveh touches him and not the canvas. “My savior.”
“I’m not,” he whispers, throat unnaturally tight. “Quite different, to be precise.”
“Where did you come from?” Kaveh ignores him, obviously, musing over his work. “I wanna say from two bottles of wine but it feels like—like I’ve seen you before.”
“You have,” Alhaitham murmurs because he understands that this is him in the drawing. Death isn’t granted with a reflection. He doesn’t belong in this world and he looks so different to everyone. Beasts with sharp teeth, neverending darkness or the aching, hollow feeling of loneliness.
But he didn’t know he could look this beautiful.
Or perhaps that isn’t how he looks but how Kaveh sees him.
Alhaitham wants to ask him, brush away the veil and see his reaction once more. Feel Kaveh’s warmth seeping into the cracks of his heart but he knows he can’t. If he steps away now, Kaveh steps away from that dark ledge, no longer tempted but in control.
“Kaveh,” he whispers as he leaves the atelier, looking back because how could he not?
And Kaveh lifts his head, staring into the space where Alhaitham lingers as if answering his call before eternalizing him onto his canvas.
As a Sage of Death, he is one of many. But once the task is distributed, no other might grasp it from him. So Alhaitham doesn’t have to fear for Azar or Cyno to take Kaveh first; their paths seldom cross and even then, they stick to their own shadows. He doesn’t need to protect the artist from anyone but himself.
And yet, he does the opposite.
He starts to linger, parting the veil ever so often to catch a precious moment of blissful innocence, always bordering on sweet wine-fuelled and sorrow-stricken mania. One false word from a loved one, one more task burdening Kaveh’s shoulders already sharp as knives and Alhaitham might be able to cradle him in his arms.
He knows better than that. He keeps his distance. Watches him through the open window on humid summer afternoons when Kaveh’s voice rivals birdsong as he strokes the brush across the canvas. And then, on the bad days, he is sitting with him on the floor between bottles of wine, smells sour alcohol and black blood and leans in, inhaling him with an ache winding his chest so tight.
If yearning has a shape—if death could yearn—it must be for Kaveh.
“Kaveh,” he repeats the name on his tongue because he cannot bear not to say it. He’s not enamored by the poetry mortals write about death but Kaveh’s name? It seeps like honey from his lips. His soul is so radiant it might burn Alhaitham to dust, might be the one to defy him in the end.
Kaveh reacts to those whispers of death, calling out to him.
He tilts his head and listens, deep in thought. And then he shifts on the floor and it’s like a thread has wrapped around both their hearts, binding them together. Alhaitham’s lashes flutter close with an agonized noise as their faces hover a mere sigh apart.
Kaveh stares into nothingness, into him. Can’t see him but feels him, Alhaitham’s presence yearning to embrace him, a reaper sharpening the scythe and discarding it at the same time.
“I can feel you,” Kaveh murmurs into the little space left between them. He’s drunk and has taken two pills for the pain in his arm. The injury has gotten worse because he keeps drawing, keeps pushing himself. If Alhaitham were to part the veil, he could brush it off as a dream.
“No,” Alhaitham whispers back and brushes his fingertips over Kaveh’s cheekbone down to his jaw. “It’s me who can feel you. And I don’t know why.”
Kaveh’s lips twitch against his and Alhaitham almost soaks into him right then and there—can barely keep himself behind the veil. His hand cards through glowing hair with a cold breeze from outside and it’s unnatural, too crisp for an afternoon this honey-hued. Kaveh escapes a surprised sound and he wants to taste it.
“I keep telling myself I can’t leave yet—I need to create something great, something people can remember me by. But even then—do we ever remember the artists? Or just the monuments they leave us? Critics will judge the technique of my brushstroke but will they see the pieces of my soul etched into the canvas? What if no one will ever understand?”
He has turned away, staring up at the painting he has worked on the past weeks.
It’s Alhaitham, his side profile sharp, wrapped in emerald and silver, dark lines, clear edges and the softest eyes. Alhaitham has never looked at his reflection but he knows those aren’t his eyes. They are Kaveh’s, a window to a soul as tender as blood on one’s tongue. A bruise you press against to revel in the dull, aching pain because it feels like a heartbeat.
“Or worse—” Kaveh continues, voice haunted. “—what if they understand but don’t care?”
“Kaveh,” Alhaitham tilts his head, the tip of his nose so close to the slope of his neck. “If you only knew.”
He allows himself to indulge, press his lips against that fluttering pulse; it quickens under his mouth, under that cold hum of the afterlife, wings thrashing so violently, feathers raining like snow. And the moment he tastes him with a mouth that isn’t allowed to taste at all, he knows he is about to doom him with his want and flinches away—he is not gonna be the one to tear Kaveh from life, not when the blond is fighting so desperately every day to stay.
Alhaitham pulls away, leaving Kaveh on the floor, still none the wiser. His fingers trace the spot Alhaitham has kissed like something sacred and the sage knows he never can have more—for even if death is full of love, all it can do is haunt the living.
“Fuck, I needed this,” Kaveh exhales toward the ceiling, smoke parting his cracked lips. He’s draped over the armrest of the blue sofa in the atelier like one of his paintings, wearing nothing but leggings and a paint-splattered tank top to fight the overwhelming heat of the day. His hair sticks to his scalp and neck but he can’t be bothered to tie it; he sits up to hand the blunt over to his friend sitting across from him.
Their legs are entangled and Kaveh’s injured hand draws little patterns on the other’s knee. His friend grins, a lazy lift of plush lips. He takes a hit of his own and they relax into each other. It’s peaceful and maddening at the same time—and confusing because Alhaitham doesn’t know why he’s here, why Kaveh’s soul has been calling to him tonight.
Because he’s once more overwhelming his body with substances, perhaps. Though it’s a simple joint and he has only had one glass of wine and Alhaitham knows, Kaveh’s body—though made up of bones and questions—can withstand that. Still, he steps into the middle of the atelier, observing.
“Yeah, I thought it was about time to track you down.”
“Not much to track, I’m literally always here,” Kaveh rolls his eyes with a grin but his friend frowns.
“You know you don’t have to be.”
“I’ve nowhere else to go. Didn’t need that apartment anyway. It’s better to just—stay here.”
“You could stay with me.”
“No, it’s fine. I don’t wanna bother you.”
“I offered because you wouldn’t bother me, idiot.”
“Really, Tighnari, ‘s fine. You don’t wanna deal with my shit, trust me.”
Tighnari digs his heel into Kaveh’s side until he lets out a squeal. Their legs tangle even more as they playfully start fighting each other without leaving their comfortable positions. When Tighnari almost drops the blunt, they stop, out of breath with rosy cheeks.
The impulse to part the veil and show himself, to join them, rises like bile in Alhaitham’s throat. He bites his lip to keep it down. Kaveh tosses back his head with a laugh and red eyes catch his own; it happens more frequently now, as if Kaveh senses his presence even in moments like these, even when he sinks into the kaleidoscope of life.
It shows Alhaitham that he’s here for a reason—and that Kaveh’s joy is temporary, perhaps even an act for his friend to put him at ease.
“You know what I’d love to do right now?”
Tighnari raises a brow.
“Smoking another one, going to a club, getting bought drinks from strangers, fucking said stranger in the back of his car.”
Tighnari snorts: “Sounds like a good way to get murdered.”
“No fun if there isn’t a little risk involved, eh?” Kaveh jokes but Alhaitham knows it’s not a joke. The blond takes another deep drag before balancing the joint on a nearby ashtray.
The friends both sit up, Tighnari scooting closer until he can hook his thighs over Kaveh’s. Their gazes are murky, toying with each other almost lazily. Kaveh puts a hand on Tighnari’s thigh, thumb dragging over the inner side of it.
“Or you know, we could just…”
Tighnari places a hand on Kaveh’s face and pushes him off. “In your dreams, Kaveh.”
“Can you imagine?” Kaveh cackles, not hurt by the rejection in the slightest.
“Oh, all too well. A recipe for disaster.”
“So, fucking strangers it is. What do you say?”
Tighnari slowly gets up and the haze in his eyes clears slightly as he takes in the atelier. Behind the sofa, Alhaitham spots a mattress Kaveh must have been sleeping on. A small mini fridge in the corner hums soothingly. He really has moved in here into the depths of his soul, trapping himself with no chance of climbing out of the chasm. Was it Alhaitham’s overstepping that doomed him? Or something else?
“Just go with him,” Alhaitham urges Tighnari, going unheard. “Don’t reject him. Not tonight.”
“Nah, let’s stay in for tonight,” Tighnari says without looking at Kaveh; no, he’s approaching the portrait of Alhaitham only it now has become one of many. What used to be an ocean of color is now reduced to the ever-same hue of emerald, silver and blue. Alhaitham, parts of him, impressions and portraits and hints of his soul, sticking to every canvas cluttering the walls.
“Who is he?”
“No one,” Kaveh blurts out, scrambling to get off the sofa in alarm. “Someone. Anyone.”
“I see,” Tighnari turns around with a teasing smirk. “Is that the stranger you’d like to fuck?”
“Haha,” Kaveh rolls his eyes in annoyance but when his eyes land on Alhaitham’s portrait they glitter with something akin to yearning. “He’s—he’s someone I saw…briefly. Like, uh—I think someone I saw on a train. He vanished so quickly but his face has been stuck in my mind ever since.”
“It’s a pretty face,” Tighnari hums in agreement. “So, he’s your muse.”
“My muse. Yeah, maybe? That’s—yeah, I like that,” for someone so talented in weaving words, Kaveh suddenly seems to stumble over them. He grabs the canvas, gaze a longing brushstroke to Alhaitham’s face. “That’s what he is.”
“You’re hopeless,” Tighnari bumps their shoulders. “So that’s why you’ve been sulking so much. You fell in love with a stranger on a train and have no chance of seeing him again—well, that’s unacceptable. What do you know about him? Do you think he’s going to our university?”
“I don’t know—no, he seemed—perhaps?”
Kaveh tries to give non-answers while his friend probes him for details. It’s clear he doesn’t want to disappoint him even if it makes no sense to Alhaitham. But he doesn’t listen much because he wonders what would have been if he had been a stranger on the train. If he could have asked Kaveh if the seat next to him was empty and if taking it wouldn’t snuff out the light in his eyes but make them light up.
And then Alhaitham realizes.
It’s torture, love. No wonder mortals are so eager to die for it.
The moment the atelier door falls shut behind Tighnari, both Kaveh and Alhaitham exhale a breath laced with defeat.
“It’s okay,” Kaveh tries soothing himself. “You can paint instead of dancing. No one would want to dance with you anyway, not when you’re like this—not even Tighnari wanted to.”
In a way, painting is a dance when it comes to Kaveh; his movements are elegant and unhurried, someone dragging their feet on the dancefloor despite knowing every step. It takes the whiteness of the canvas to be erased by silver and emerald for his rhythm to grow confident. There are tears in his lashes and too much weed in his brain but Alhaitham steps behind him nonetheless. Watches himself come to life in Kaveh’s imagination, beauty and calamity in one.
He wraps his cold hand around Kaveh’s injured wrist guiding the brush. The other barely flinches because they follow the same melody—they fall into a dance so naturally because they have been doing nothing else the past months. Dancing around each other, each pirouette a fluttering heart, a yearning stretching beyond eons.
Kaveh leans into him and Alhaitham’s arm snakes around his waist, hand pressing against the flat of his stomach. His head tips downwards, nose buried in the side of Kaveh’s neck, breathing him in and Kaveh arches into him with a sigh.
The brush clatters to the ground.
The longing is a wave crashing down Alhaitham’s spine, the heat that welcomes him as he parts the veil almost throwing him under. Kaveh burns into him like a star; he throws up his hands and slings his arms around Alhaitham’s neck, back pressed against his chest and lips parting for a sigh so sweet and devastating.
“Please,” Kaveh cries softly. “Be kind to me.”
“I promise it won’t hurt,” Alhaitham says because all that death can ever offer is the truth.
“No, I want it to. I want my lungs to burn and my skin to bruise—I want to feel something, anything.”
“If it’s anything you long to feel, why choose pain?”
“What else is there—?”
The question bears the weight of the world, a mortal world, fleeting, gone in the blink of an eye, where death is the enemy, where death is blood-sodden clothes and tear-soaked handkerchiefs, red glass and black grief.
And Alhaitham, who knows death so intimately, rips off the veil and pulls him in, crashing their lips together, a kiss more teeth than tenderness. Kaveh claws into him and they join the paintbrush on the ground. They kick over a bucket of paint and it doesn’t matter because when they find him tomorrow, Kaveh’s soul will be long gone, entwined with him.
Their kiss is a feral thing, teeth against lips, hands gripping at each other, enough force behind it to turn Alhaitham’s eternal existence into dust. He always thought himself a faithless creature—death has to be, after all, but this brings him to his knees anyway. Kaveh’s hair threads between his fingers like ribbons of gold, his tongue writes carnage against Alhaitham’s mouth.
He has never taken someone like this. Like he’s walking a tightrope, devotion and ruthlessness on each end for him to reach. Kaveh’s tears spill into their kiss, his hands start to shake against Alhaitham’s chest. His pulse quickens, a last act of defiance.
A last plea of “please, be kind to me.”
Because Kaveh doesn’t know how to do it himself.
Alhaitham severs their kiss with a wretched scream and the moment it ends, the air can stream back into Kaveh’s lungs. He lies on the ground, breathing, choking, tears running from his eyes into his messy hair.
It’s agony, to love someone who can’t love himself—like Kaveh pouring gasoline over his art, setting his soul on fire. They could embrace the flames, burn down to the marrow together but their kisses would forever taste like ashes.
“There’s more,” Alhaitham whispers but he has stepped away. Kaveh’s eyes are murky, the pupils blown so wide they are nothing but dark, endless lakes. Breathing coming in sharp bursts. Vomit on the back of his throat. “There’s so much more I want you to have. There is another kind of death. The kind you don’t want to escape into but you want to come home to. In a future far from now, with moon in your hair and peace in your veins. That’s what I want you to have.”
Because the veil has fallen shut, Kaveh manages to roll onto his side, unclogging his throat. He’s drooling but the air comes back to him as he curls into himself on the floor. His eyes search for Alhaitham but even though he kneels beside him, hand hovering over Kaveh’s shaking body, he can no longer see the man he has been drawing for weeks.
“I thought my longing would doom you but it’s your own. You undo the veil on a whim to feel me, you paint my face into existence because you don’t know what else there is to see. You think I’m the only path to walk on but I’m not, Kaveh. If we are to love, then not like this.”
“Please,” Kaveh bursts into a sob, it’s ugly and heart-wrenching, a child on the floor, coming undone, parting a dark ocean after drowning, inhaling air frantically, choking on it.
Alhaitham rises to his feet, lashes wet but mouth pulled into a grim smile.
It’s like pulling the scab off a barely healed wound.
The door of the atelier slams open the moment Alhaitham retreats from Kaveh’s side.
“I forgot my keys, have you—” Tighnari’s voice hitches into a worried scream and then he’s next to Kaveh on the floor, pushing him into the stable side position.
Alhaitham leaves.
The love in his chest winds tighter, a coiled spring nothing but barbed wire. It hurts but taking him with him would have hurt more. Snuffing out a light that has so many more years to burn. Still, Kaveh has to fight for these years. Alhaitham knows that he will suffer, that he will need time to cope and heal, conquer the poison in his veins and mind before Alhaitham becomes an afterthought in his heart.
But he much rather be an afterthought than the last resort.
And many, many years later Kaveh understands what the muse of his dreams from a time so long ago meant by loving him in another way.
Because death is ever-present. Not cruel, but natural.
Because Kaveh no longer drinks wine to numb himself but to enjoy it to a good meal. Because his arm still hurts but it’s a gentle kind of pain, looking out for him for when he gets lost in his art and forgets to care for himself. Because his golden hair has turned grey and his eyes carry the wrinkles of a thousand laughs and all the lines on his face feel like Alhaitham has drawn them with his lips, lovingly, infinitely.
Because he knows one day they will see each other again, with moon in their hair and peace in their veins and a love so very tender it will feel like home.