[ midnight kisses him. this isn't, by any stretch of the imagination, a new thing. midnight has been peppering kaveh with kisses between words for the past thirty minutes with varying degrees of success, and only now chooses to show that he could have had proper accuracy something like four kisses ago if only he weren't such a little shit about it. the kiss is warm, and thorough. kaveh experiences through it an entire five stages of grief. not because midnight isn't a good kisser or this isn't a proper kiss, but the look that kaveh gives midnight in its aftermath is two-parts stricken because the issue is that it is a proper kiss, that always has kaveh contending with the fact that the person being kissed is kaveh, and kaveh didn't always deserve one.

this is a form of a mistake. kaveh remembers another one. alhaitham had been skirting its edges. everything on a day five loops back in an unending samsara to that one, flashbulb of a thought, and kaveh is exhausted - alhaitham exhausts him, midnight exhausts him, existing exhausts him. he exhausts himself. ]

Counter to your proposal [ is what kaveh says, instead, letting very real and weary exasperation leak in to cover it, ] I would have to ask you if you were a physician or a psychologist? And even if you were one or the other, I'd ask you why you thought I wouldn't have considered what you were saying somewhere in the two decades that this has been happening? And I can't believe that you would only have one way of tiring someone out in bed. Did you know that I was considering asking you to feed on me until I passed out? I want to sleep, Midnight.

[ kaveh nudges midnight's side. suddenly he wants to bury his face in his shoulder, and suddenly he can't even look at him. both things can be simultaneously true. so he nudges him, and then gives him a gentle shove. ]

Get out of bed, and go sit by the wall. Argue with me, or don't - but this isn't going to work, and I can't stand looking at you right now, so I'm going to draw you.