Work Text:
It began with a list.
Because of course it did.
And not just any list—no, this was not a shopping list, not a thesis outline, not a record of overdue commissions or passive-aggressive reminders to “PLEASE clean the mildew from the bottom left tile in the shower, Alhaitham, it’s becoming a sentient being.” No, this list was something far more ambitious, more tragic, more inherently doomed.
This was the list of a man who had decided—out of desperation, out of spite, out of sleep-deprived mania birthed by three straight nights of watching Alhaitham eat grapes and annotate philosophy with a visible vein of smug running down the side of his face—that he was going to fix things.
“I’m going to be proactive,” Kaveh had whispered to himself in the dark at 3:47 a.m., illuminated only by the glow of his architectural tablet and the faint lunar sheen reflecting off Alhaitham’s shoulder blade.
(Why was Alhaitham shirtless? Who knew. Why was Alhaitham in his room? Who allowed this? Also unknown. Kaveh had once asked him. Alhaitham had said, “The light’s better in here,” and then fallen asleep like a bastard.)
Kaveh had stared at the ceiling for a solid fifteen minutes, lips pursed, clutching the stylus like a weapon forged of pure resolve. Then he began to write:
OPERATION: FUNCTIONAL COHABITATION (AND NOT MURDER)
An Ongoing Log of Interpersonal Improvements, Emotional Maturity, and Other Aspirations Kaveh Will Definitely Not Sabotage Himself Trying to Achieve
Do not yell at Alhaitham before breakfast.
Do not throw breakfast at Alhaitham.
If Alhaitham says something dismissive and infuriating and completely wrong, do not take it personally. He is not a personal person. He is a godless academic slime mold in a hot man’s body. Accept this.
Stop opening the door mid-rant and forgetting what the rant was about because he’s standing there in sweatpants and nothing else.
Make a chore chart. Stick to the chore chart. Demand Alhaitham does too.
NO SEX. EVEN IF HE’S BEING ANNOYING IN A REALLY ATTRACTIVE WAY.
Especially then.
Stop writing sexy things in the margins of your own floorplans when he walks by.
Stop fantasizing about being pinned against bookshelves during arguments.
Do not touch his tea. He is weirdly territorial about the stupid tea.
Tell him, calmly and clearly, that you’d like to set boundaries.
Possibly scream “THIS IS A BOUNDARY” while shoving him off the couch. (Note: this is less ideal.)
Be the bigger person. (You’re not, literally. He’s taller. But emotionally. In your soul. Spiritually.)
Don’t fall for him.
Again.
Kaveh stared at the list. The list stared back. He felt—briefly—like it should be laminated, or bound in leather, or perhaps ceremonially burned with incense and prayers.
Instead, he saved it to his files under the folder “GOD HELP ME”, closed it, and tried to sleep.
He did not sleep.
Because the aforementioned hot slime mold rolled over and flung one (1) toned arm across Kaveh’s chest like they were already lovers and not—whatever they were. Hostile domestic bedfellows. Passive-aggressive roommates. Philosopher and tragic idiot. Bitter co-tenants. Heart-throbbingly repressed.
By morning, Kaveh was feeling… confident. Not rational, per se, but caffeinated and emotionally overheated, which for Kaveh was indistinguishable from confidence. He had a plan. A list. An ironclad commitment to not letting Alhaitham get under his skin.
He marched into the kitchen like a man with a purpose.
Alhaitham was already there. Shirtless again. Reading a research journal and eating mango slices with a fork, like someone who’d never been hit in the face with a rolled-up blueprint but was deeply, profoundly deserving of the experience.
“Good morning,” Kaveh said, calm and cool and premeditated.
“Hm,” Alhaitham responded, not looking up. “You’re not yelling yet. That’s new.”
Kaveh’s eye twitched. Breathe. Breathe through it. This is a test.
“I’ve decided to try being proactive,” he said, pulling up a chair, grabbing his own mug of coffee. “I think we should establish some boundaries. Ground rules. Systems for improvement.”
Alhaitham finally glanced up, the way one might glance at a crow that just asked to discuss emotional labor.
“You made a list, didn’t you?” he said, utterly unfazed.
Kaveh choked on his coffee.
“I didn’t—how do you know that?”
“You always make a list before something explodes,” Alhaitham replied, completely serious. “Remember ‘Operation: Put the Books Back in the Library and Not in the Bathroom?’ You taped it to the fridge. The fridge caught fire.”
“That was an electrical issue!”
“You threw a hairdryer at me.”
“You said my essay on elemental formation was ‘folk mythology with graphs’ and I snapped, okay?!”
“Mm.” Alhaitham looked thoughtful. “It was. Poorly argued. Wouldn’t stand up to peer review.”
Kaveh made an unholy strangled sound and gripped the countertop like it was the only thing keeping him from homicide.
“No,” he muttered. “Not today. I am calm. I am mature. I am setting the tone of this household.”
Alhaitham blinked slowly.
“You’re sweating.”
“It’s the coffee!”
“You’ve only had two sips.”
“I—” Kaveh stood, dramatically. “I’m setting up a chore chart. With color-coding. You will respect it.”
Alhaitham sipped his juice, wholly unimpressed.
“Why don’t you just ask me to do specific tasks?”
“Because you don’t do them.”
“Because you ask in a tone that suggests I should already be on fire.”
Kaveh, visibly vibrating: “That’s not the point! The point is—I’m setting healthy, adult expectations and you’re going to follow them, or I swear by the Seven, I will fill your office with live ducks.”
“Unethical,” Alhaitham said. “And ineffective. The acoustics in there would drive them mad.”
“I’LL TEACH THEM TO SING.”
There was a beat of silence. Kaveh, flushed and panting. Alhaitham, evaluating his life choices. A forkful of mango paused midair.
“…Are you done?” Alhaitham asked finally, voice mild.
Kaveh blinked.
“…No.”
Then he kissed him.
Or maybe he meant to shove him, to shut him up, to prove a point, to demand respect with a mouthful of anger and citrus. But the problem was—Alhaitham kissed him back, soft and smug and languid like he’d been waiting for Kaveh to get proactive, and this was exactly the reward system he’d calculated for.
And just like that—item six on the list exploded into pink glitter and shame.
---
Kaveh, post-kiss, was experiencing what doctors might call a full-body architectural meltdown.
It was like watching a baroque cathedral collapse in slow motion—beautiful, excessive, and very loud. Internally, externally, metaphysically. If shame could be engineered into a building, it would be a gilded, column-choked ballroom filled with mirrors, chandeliers, and one (1) shirtless roommate leaning against a counter, licking mango off his fork like a crime against god.
“YOU—WE—THAT WAS—” Kaveh sputtered, flailing backward like he’d just been struck by the divine light of Celestia and it had told him he was stupid.
Alhaitham raised one eyebrow and calmly went back to chewing.
No apology. No remark. Not even a blink.
Kaveh was—was this what people meant by gaslit? Was he being reverse-psychologized into a panic spiral because Alhaitham wasn’t even reacting?! Was that not the single most tension-fraught, homoerotic, mango-flavored moment in the history of polite domestic society?
“You kissed me back,” Kaveh blurted. “You—don’t just act like that was—like that was a greeting! That wasn’t a ‘good morning,’ that was a mouth duel!”
Alhaitham turned the page of his journal.
“I didn’t say it was a greeting.”
“You didn’t say anything!”
“Correct. You seem to be covering both sides of the dialogue.”
Kaveh let out a sound so high-pitched and tragic it registered only to Pyro Slimes and emotionally devastated pigeons. He spun in a circle, pointed at nothing, and then declared, “I need air,” like the tragic noblewoman he absolutely was at heart.
“You’re already in the kitchen,” Alhaitham offered helpfully, “which has windows.”
“I need external air. Fresh air. Air that hasn’t been polluted by your—you—and your lips and your—mango breath! I’m leaving!”
“You forgot your pants.”
“Shut UP.”
Ten minutes later, Kaveh was on the roof, in sweatpants, wrapped in a blanket like a disgraced artist post-scandal, muttering to himself about the fragility of human will and the dangers of casual sensual warfare.
He should never have kissed him. Never. It was just—it was the hormones. The lighting. The mangoes. It was the way Alhaitham leaned against things like he owned gravity and had personally filed a patent on angular indifference.
“I’m going to die,” Kaveh whispered into his tea, which he had brought up in a mug that read Bureaucracy is Sexy. “I’m going to dissolve into emotional goo, and Alhaitham will categorize my remains by emotional weakness and display them in a museum under glass.”
He tried to write in his architectural journal. He ended up doodling Alhaitham’s jawline. With annotations.
He tore the page out and set it on fire with a match he definitely wasn’t carrying just for this reason.
Downstairs, Alhaitham continued his morning completely unbothered.
He loaded the dishwasher.
He corrected three typos in a manuscript on elemental resonance theory.
He glanced at Kaveh’s chore chart, which was now taped to the refrigerator with sparkly washi tape and three magnets labeled “Justice,” “Balance,” and “HOPE.”
He replaced “Tidy study” with “Reorganize by aesthetic principle rather than alphabetical.”
He crossed out “NO SEX” from the list and added a note that said “Ambiguous. May require further exploration.”
Later that evening, Kaveh re-entered the apartment like a man storming into a duel. His hair was windswept. His scarf was dramatic. He was carrying three boxes of something labeled “Herbal Detox for Emotional Overexertion.”
“You,” he said, pointing at Alhaitham, “have NO idea what you’ve done.”
“I’m pretty sure I do.”
“No. No, you don’t. You’re smug. You’re—arrogant. You’re intellectually unethical. You’re emotionally chaotic. You kissed me like it was an equation you already solved and you’re just waiting for me to catch up.”
“That’s a compliment,” Alhaitham said, deadpan.
“I was trying to be mature!” Kaveh wailed, clutching the boxes to his chest like a melodramatic maiden shielding her virtue from a pirate. “I was trying to create boundaries! Systems! A foundation of stability! But nooo, you had to go and be all—hot and annoying and emotionally literate!”
“You kissed me,” Alhaitham reminded him.
“I WAS VULNERABLE.”
“You were yelling about chore charts.”
“THAT’S MY LOVE LANGUAGE.”
Alhaitham blinked. Slowly. Like a cat watching a squirrel walk into traffic.
“…Are you trying to say,” he said, voice calm as ever, “that you want to pursue a romantic relationship based on a list of rules you created at three in the morning while watching me sleep?”
“I’M SAYING,” Kaveh snapped, “THAT I AM A COMPLEX MAN WITH COMPLEX NEEDS AND I DON’T KNOW HOW TO BE NORMAL AROUND YOU ANYMORE, OKAY?”
Pause.
“I see.”
“I KNEW YOU’D SAY THAT.”
“You’re still yelling.”
“Because you’re still you!”
Another pause.
Then Alhaitham stood. Slowly. With gravity. With intention. With the quiet arrogance of a man who knew exactly how this game ended and had already printed the footnotes.
He walked over to Kaveh. Stopped in front of him. Reached out. Touched his jaw—lightly, just a graze of fingers.
Kaveh nearly dropped all three detox boxes.
“Is this where you panic again?” Alhaitham murmured. “Do I need to start annotating your emotional state in a margin somewhere? Color code it, perhaps?”
Kaveh’s mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. Like a fish. A hot, flustered, emotionally devastated fish.
“…You’re so—smug,” he whispered. “It’s not fair. It’s not normal. Normal people don’t do this. Normal people don’t just—just win arguments by existing.”
“I didn’t realize this was an argument.”
Kaveh’s last three brain cells threw up their hands, screamed, and leapt off a mental cliff.
Then Kaveh kissed him again.
This time it was messy. Uncontrolled. Reactive. The kind of kiss that started with fists in shirts and teeth against lips and the sort of furious attraction that could reasonably be mistaken for a small civil war.
Alhaitham kissed him like he’d been expecting this, which only made it worse. Better. Worse. It was impossible to tell at this point.
Kaveh’s list was burning in the metaphorical background, reduced to ash and aesthetic failure.
Fifteen minutes later, they were on the floor.
Kaveh was lying half on top of Alhaitham, blanket askew, hair a mess, mouth bitten, chest heaving.
“I failed,” he croaked. “My whole plan. My systems. My boundaries. I failed all of them.”
Alhaitham adjusted his arm under Kaveh’s neck and said, entirely unbothered:
“You have a new one. It’s called ‘us.’”
Kaveh made a noise of betrayal and stuffed his face into Alhaitham’s shoulder.
“Don’t say things like that. It makes me feel feelings. I hate that.”
Alhaitham hummed. His fingers trailed down Kaveh’s spine.
“You’ll adjust. Eventually.”
Kaveh bit him on the shoulder.
“Still smug.”
“Still hot.”
“Ugh.”
---
It was 9:42 a.m. on a Thursday when Kaveh decided to revise the list.
Not remake it. Not abandon it. Revise.
Like an academic might revise a doomed dissertation—clutching it in shaky hands, muttering “This is fine,” while reality burned quietly behind them.
The thing was: things had gotten out of hand. The floor-kissing. The floor-lounging. The floor-everything. The shared toothbrush incident. The morning routine that now somehow included being kissed behind the ear while trying to butter toast.
("You dropped the knife," Alhaitham had noted, deadpan.
"You whispered 'good boy' while licking jam off my throat!?" Kaveh had shrieked, flinging the bread like a discus.)
It was—unmanageable. Unprofessional. Completely antithetical to Kaveh’s architectural integrity.
So naturally, he pulled out his tablet at exactly 9:43 a.m. and began Operation: Functional Cohabitation (and Not Murder) — Revised Edition, Draft 3.0: The Boundaries Reassert Themselves.
1. We are not dating.
(We are kissing. We are napping in proximity. We are accidentally waking up with fingers entwined. BUT WE ARE NOT DATING.)
2. No physical contact before 9:00 a.m. or until coffee has been consumed.
(Exceptions: emergency cuddle weather, night terrors, heatstroke, migraines, Alhaitham being hot in sleepwear. But still. In principle.)
3. Alhaitham will respect the sanctity of personal design space.
(This means: no lounging on blueprints. No using floorplans as coasters. No flipping through sketches and saying “This has good lines, like your thighs.” That is SEXUAL HARASSMENT.)
4. Kaveh will not cry when Alhaitham edits his emotional journaling for grammar.
(Even if he uses a red pen. Even if he leaves footnotes. Even if one of them says “overuse of metaphor implies repression.” ESPECIALLY THEN.)
5. No more ambiguous spooning.
(You cannot spoon someone aggressively and then pretend it didn’t happen. That’s not how spoons OR people work.)
6. NO FALLING IN LOVE.
(In bold. In all caps. Underlined three times. This is NOT a romance novel. This is a shared apartment. There are RULES. This is war.)
He finished it. He stared at it. He added a seventh item just for flair.
7. This is not a slow-burn enemies-to-lovers domestic arc. This is a cautionary tale.
And then, flushed with power, bathed in the afterglow of self-delusion, Kaveh marched to the fridge and taped it up. Right over the old version. Right under a drawing Alhaitham had done of a duck with Kaveh’s hair and a speech bubble that said, “My boundaries are a social construct!”
He took a breath. Admired his work.
“Order,” he whispered. “Sanity. Mature emotional infrastructure.”
Behind him, the door opened.
In walked Alhaitham. Hair damp from a shower. Shirt half-buttoned. Headphones on. Holding two mugs of tea. One was Kaveh’s favorite. He was humming. Humming.
Kaveh’s brain said:
oh no.
Alhaitham stopped in front of the fridge. Sipped. Read. Blinked once.
Then turned to Kaveh and said:
“…You know, for someone who claims not to be in a domestic romance arc, you sure like taping your feelings to kitchen appliances.”
Kaveh screamed. Out loud. At volume. Into a dishtowel.
“I AM ESTABLISHING BOUNDARIES!” he yelled from behind the dishtowel.
Alhaitham leaned against the counter, mug to his lips, eyes deeply, infuriatingly amused.
“You kissed me in the pantry yesterday.”
“I was overwhelmed!”
“You moaned my name while we reorganized the bookshelf.”
“It was alphabetical. Alphabetical is foreplay for me!”
“You made a to-do list titled ‘How to Emotionally Detach While Maintaining Eye Contact with Someone Who Owns My Entire Soul’.”
“That was PRIVATE!”
“You taped it to the bathroom mirror.”
“BECAUSE I NEEDED TO SEE IT, ALHAITHAM!”
Alhaitham set the tea down. Walked over. Took the dishtowel out of Kaveh’s hands with the same calm he might use to pick up a sleeping cat or a very small, deranged bird. He looked down. Studied him.
Kaveh vibrated like a bomb made of shame, desire, and color-coded internal chaos.
“I am,” he said hoarsely, “very mentally unwell about you.”
“I noticed,” Alhaitham said, gently. “It’s okay.”
“No it’s not! You make me feral! I revise documents because you exist! I’ve lost control of my morning rituals! I put cinnamon in your tea because I thought it’d make you like me more!”
“I do like cinnamon.”
Kaveh slapped him on the chest.
“That’s not the point!”
“Okay,” Alhaitham said, “what is the point?”
Kaveh opened his mouth. Closed it. Wobbled. Made a noise not found in the animal kingdom.
The point was—he didn’t know the point. Not anymore. It had started as boundaries, then morphed into emotional negotiations, then into forehead kisses and annotating each other’s paperwork and falling asleep next to someone who always ran warm and smelled like citrus and ink and everything dangerous to the heart.
The point was—he was in love. A lot. Obscenely. Disastrously. He was in love like it was a fault line and Alhaitham was gravity and he kept falling.
“I…” Kaveh began, weakly. “Am trying… not to become a cautionary tale.”
Alhaitham reached up. Brushed a curl behind Kaveh’s ear.
“Too late.”
Kaveh made a noise that could best be described as “high-pitched architectural distress.”
Then he kissed him.
Then he shoved him.
Then he kissed him again, more aggressively, while muttering, “You are ruining my whole worldview and also my fridge aesthetic and I hate you and your hands and your brain and your face—”
“Your boundaries are very inconsistent,” Alhaitham observed between kisses.
“SO IS MY EMOTIONAL MATURITY.”
And then they were pressed against the fridge. Which promptly beeped and flashed “DOOR AJAR”, because of course it did.
Fifteen minutes later, Kaveh lay on the couch in what was once a blanket and was now a metaphor for surrender. He had one arm flung over his eyes. Alhaitham sat beside him, reading a treatise titled “Romantic Irony in Interpersonal Infrastructure.”
Kaveh whimpered.
“Should I revise the list again?”
Alhaitham didn’t look up. “You could just get rid of it.”
“Get rid of it?! That’s emotional anarchy. That’s admitting we’re—this is—that.”
“I already replaced it.”
“You what?”
Kaveh bolted upright.
There, on the fridge, in perfectly neat script:
OPERATION: KAVEH LOVES ME AND IS IN MASSIVE DENIAL
A Working Document of Domestic Triumph
We’re dating.
He made me tea this morning. It had cinnamon.
I’m smug about it. He’s hot about it.
I reorganized the bookshelf in alphabetical foreplay order.
We kissed next to the mangoes. That’s not nothing.
He’s probably revising a list right now.
I win.
Kaveh screamed so loud their cat had a religious experience.
---
It began, like all tragedies, with dignity.
Or rather, with Kaveh’s attempt at dignity—which was already hanging by a thread thanks to the fact that he was wearing one of Alhaitham’s shirts (not on purpose), pacing the living room (absolutely on purpose), and clutching a cue card that read:
“I Deserve Emotional Autonomy (And Also Maybe Sex With Someone Else Who Isn't A Walking Thesis Paper).”
He had written it at 2:00 a.m., post-tea, post-kiss, post-existential unraveling.
He had meant to make a clean break. An elegant exit. Something stoic and respectable, like:
“I fear our arrangement has grown too complicated, and I must reclaim my solitude.”
What he had, however, was:
“I THINK WE SHOULD BREAK UP EVEN THOUGH WE’RE NOT DATING BECAUSE I’M IN LOVE WITH YOU AND I HATE IT AND YOU AND YOUR HAIR.”
Kaveh stood in the middle of the room, lit by late afternoon sun and spite, trembling like a man about to throw himself off an emotional cliff and scream all the way down.
Alhaitham sat at the table.
Reading.
Wearing his headphones.
With one foot—just one—grazing Kaveh’s ankle like a calculated microgesture of intimacy that Kaveh refused to acknowledge.
This was the moment.
He cleared his throat.
Alhaitham looked up.
“…Yes?”
Kaveh exploded.
“I THINK WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT THIS ENTIRE—US—THING,” he burst out, flailing wildly. “This domestic entanglement! This emotional farce! This slow-burn mutual destruction arc disguised as casual cohabitation!”
Alhaitham blinked. “You want to break up with me?”
“We’re not dating,” Kaveh said, wounded.
“You’re wearing my shirt.”
“It was on my chair!”
“You wrote me a list about our relationship dynamics. That counts as a contract.”
“It was a plea for emotional boundaries, not a declaration of love!”
“You annotated it with heart stickers.”
“THEY WERE IRONIC!”
“I kissed you while holding a laundry basket. You kissed me back and said, ‘fold me like your cardigans.’”
Kaveh screamed into the heavens.
“That was METAPHOR! IT WAS—A FIGURE—OF SPEECH!”
Alhaitham closed his book. Calmly. Deliberately. Set it down.
Folded his arms.
“Very well,” he said. “You’ve raised a valid argument. I propose we handle this logically. With structure. Debate-style. Propose your resolution.”
Kaveh’s hands trembled around his cue card.
“I—fine,” he spat. “Resolution: Kaveh should sever all romantic and emotionally entangling ties with Alhaitham, certified bastard, to preserve mental health, artistic dignity, and control over his life trajectory.”
“Excellent,” Alhaitham said. “I’ll begin my counterargument.”
Kaveh blinked.
“No, I haven’t made my point yet—”
“Point one,” Alhaitham said, standing, walking slowly toward him, “you have already lost emotional autonomy. You taped a list titled ‘How to Emotionally Detach’ to the microwave.”
“That’s circumstantial!”
“Point two,” he continued, reaching out to pluck the cue card from Kaveh’s hand, “your dignity is in tatters. You sang a romantic ballad to a bowl of my mangoes last week while I was showering.”
“That was not—I was experimenting with lyrical metaphors!”
“Point three,” Alhaitham said, now mere inches away, “you are not breaking up with me because you want to move on. You are breaking up with me because you are terrified of being happy.”
Kaveh flinched.
“I’m—what?”
Alhaitham reached up. Touched his cheek. So gently it made Kaveh ache.
“You’re scared,” he said, low and warm. “You think love has to be tragedy. That if it doesn’t burn you, it isn’t real. So the moment it gets quiet—stable—you panic.”
Kaveh’s mouth opened. Nothing came out.
Alhaitham didn’t stop.
“You thrive on chaos because it lets you stay in control. If everything is a disaster, you never have to admit you want something.”
“I don’t—”
“You do. You want me. You want my tea. You want to kiss me in the hallway. You want to wake up next to me and pretend you’re annoyed. You want to write a new list and call it love but only if no one’s watching.”
Kaveh’s eyes burned. He was trembling now, and not with rage.
“And I,” Alhaitham said, voice quiet, “want you too. All of you. The disaster. The denial. The gold glitter you spilled on the floor that’s still there.”
“I told you not to mention the glitter incident—”
“I want the glitter incident,” Alhaitham murmured. “I want the fight about tile symmetry. I want the 2 a.m. crying in the bathroom. I want the lists and the screaming and the accidental touching and the ten different versions of ‘I love you’ you’ve written in code.”
“I haven’t—”
“You annotated my footnotes with hearts.”
Kaveh broke.
He collapsed into Alhaitham’s arms like a slow implosion. Every inch of his restraint shattered. He clutched his shirt and let out a sound that was part sob, part laugh, part humiliated gasp.
“I’m so bad at this,” he whispered. “I’m—needy and dramatic and complicated and I can’t stop making things worse. I ruin everything good.”
Alhaitham wrapped both arms around him.
“You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to my tea.”
“That’s a terrible romantic metaphor.”
“I’m trying.”
“You don’t try. You calculate. You analyze. You smug.”
“And yet,” Alhaitham said softly, kissing the corner of his mouth, “here I am. In love. With the storm.”
Kaveh pulled back, just slightly. Looked at him. Saw, not smugness, but something terrifying: vulnerability.
Hope.
Maybe even devotion.
He grabbed Alhaitham’s face in both hands and said:
“You are such a bastard.”
“Statistically accurate.”
“And I am going to love you so much it ruins us both.”
“I’ll bring the tea.”
And then they were kissing like it meant something. Like it was the final blueprint to a house they’d been designing in their sleep. Like all the lists in the world couldn’t contain this—whatever this was—this sprawling, chaotic, golden-tipped, emotionally deranged thing called us.
Later, under the glow of the refrigerator light, Kaveh rewrote one last list. In silence. While Alhaitham watched from the counter, sipping from his mug labeled EMOTIONAL DEPTH IS A VALID LIFESTYLE.
OPERATION: Fuck It, I’m In Love
Also Known As: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let My Boyfriend Alphabetize My Anxiety
We’re dating.
He makes tea with cinnamon.
I love him. He loves me.
We’re a disaster. A well-documented, passionate, footnoted disaster.
That’s okay.
I don’t need to be in control.
I just need him.
Also: buy more mangoes.
Kaveh stuck it on the fridge with a glitter magnet.
And this time, he didn’t scream.
He just looked over his shoulder at Alhaitham, smiled, and said:
“Come to bed.”
Alhaitham, without even a page’s pause, replied:
“I thought you’d never ask.”