citylogs | [ open ] kaveh's permanent catch-all

And do you only feed when people ask, now? Do you ever ask yourself?

[ as if a puppet's strings have been snipped from their mooring. midnight presses his face into kaveh's hand, and kaveh takes the time to bring him close, to observe his pallor and the colour of his eyes. kaveh, in truth, has no idea what he's looking for. there aren't that many tells on a human being; kaveh has no baseline of what a vampire looks like when healthy, and he's fairly certain that never actually seen midnight healthy to begin with. there are no answers. there is no existing schema. kaveh is searching for something that is very much like nothing. he keeps searching anyway.

midnight's hand covers the curve of his shoulder. kaveh looks up. ]

Oh, no. [ kaveh says, and the bemusement is a beat late as it flits across his expression, ] No, Netzach wouldn't. [ kaveh reminds hi self - but netzach killed midnight. ] Well, he had no reason to. No, [ now the bitterness comes. kaveh's voice still. ] this was Alhaitham.

I was wondering what set you off. You are still hungry. Once a week is a terrible timeline to follow if it doesn't satisfy you, Midnight. Will you drink from me today?

No, I had certain arrangements.

[ ... Now that Welt's gone, Midnight's going to have to make some new arrangements. Preferably a few he won't be likely to miss later.

(Grim. Maybe best not to think about it like that.)

... Midnight then pulls away a bit, tucks around Kaveh's hand with the confidence of a man who certainly could have done that a few seconds ago, lifts his hand from Kaveh's neck and chucks him gently under the chin. ]

I have been a vampire longer than you've been alive, love. I've taken classes on the topic, if you'll believe me. Once a week is fine. More than, really.

[ Ideally speaking, he could maybe try taking something a bit closer to a pint per week, but as long as he's eating other food, it's not actually necessary. This is no longer the years of war leading up to the nth fall of Kazdel; there's no need to stock up. He can afford to be humane. He wants to be.

He settles on Kaveh's side, slipping off his thigh. The momentary pique is gone, now that he's gotten his explanation. Alhaitham, huh. ]

... If you tell me what happened with Alhaitham, I'll promise to be a little more transparent about last week.

[ With the haunted house, and just how often he was drawn back in there. Midnight doesn't mind trading a card for a card. ]

[ 'had' midnight said. kaveh has lived with the most infuriating haravatat known to mankind. it's a tense that kaveh knows well. but he doesn't do much more than note it, carefully shifting so that there's space for midnight on the cot. circulation returns to his thigh. netzach had been the weight of a small bird in hand, a duskbird in spring. midnight is the weight of a carved-edge sea. it's not necessarily his mass, so much as it's the weight of his being. kaveh thinks - the sword he'd made for midnight based on his best estimate of his weight was off by a margin. he'll have to go and shave it a little, have it properly balanced.

still: ]

Then you're a poor scholar. Age certainly hasn't done your self-preservation any good. The only thing you're my senior in is orneriness, and that's hardly anything to be proud of. [ midnight shifts. kaveh shifts with him. drawing plans, kaveh thinks, can be put on hold. he nudges midnight, then bears his weight down, slides him back onto the bed with a grimace. ]

Bribery. [ kaveh says, obfuscating, ] Or hostage-taking. One of the two. But there really isn't much to tell. The haunted house robbed him of his autonomy, as it did to many people. He bit me when he wasn't himself. [ kaveh stops. kaveh starts again. he's never been a particularly good liar. ] ... truth of the matter is, we're not on speaking terms right now.

I like to call it semi-transparent negotiations.

[ But Midnight listens, allows himself to be led down. Curls around him, arm around his waist, breathing in his warmth, the scarf still lightly folded between Midnight's fingers. ]

Was it because of that? Tell me what happened.

[ And because he did just promise, he does intend to be... well, honest enough in return. Now that he thinks about it, there are many things that happened last week that one might call rather significant, but Midnight is struggling to figure out which one won't lead to the unraveling of the rest. Which he's willing to give up, which he wants to keep close to himself. Which one will spare Kaveh of the helplessness of being in present and not in the past. Not with him. ]

Ah, haravatat.

[ kaveh says, and then falls silence. he studies the line of midnight's body. he is curled the way a cat would be, seeking out the last vestiges of a setting sun. there's an irony in that midnight is curled around kaveh, who only ever knows how to burn out - but he supposes body heat is body heat regardless of ironic connotations. still, kaveh's certain that this isn't enough. that this won't be enough. kaveh has known starvation. midnight seems more prone to it than anyone he has ever met.

slowly, kaveh's hand begins to move through midnight's hair. soothing strokes, contemplative strokes. midnight does not have to promise anything, kaveh thinks. kaveh has always been a poor negotiator. ]

Alhaitham and I had a fight. [ kaveh tells midnight. there's rue there as he cants his head, ] As we do. It's not as though it's our first fight or our last, and it's not as though it's the biggest one we've had. The biggest one... it tore us apart for years thereafter. This one will not, and cannot. But it was a fight nonetheless. You're going to think it's terribly silly - but remember, you asked.

[ kaveh mulls. then: ] The haunted house took away Alhaitham's autonomy. I thought it had taken it all. He bit me, over where you bruised me last. But perhaps Alhaitham had more control over it than I'd thought. He's done quite a bit for me over the years, you know. More than I know. More than I deserve. We argued. I asked him why - why me? [ kaveh draws breath. it's a seething thing. ] He said it was because it was me.

No, just an appreciator.

[ Midnight hums, sneaks in another kiss, because Kaveh's only half-right when it comes to his hunger, but settles in to listen, but mirrors the fingers in his hair with his own embrace, stroking down his spine with long, slow caresses. For the repetition of the motion, the soothing pressure of it.

(Kaveh leaves no warmth for himself. Midnight realizes he is warming ashes. He believes there is a coal in there, red and beating, and persists.) ]

And you find this unbelievable.

[ An observation like a mirror. If Midnight finds it silly, he finds reality itself silly, and Midnight tends to treat reality with the same sort of irreverence he does his past, the unremarkable parts of it. It's just a fact. Midnight is all right with a fact, so long as he's allowed to look at the whole of it. ]

[ kaveh's eyes close. midnight's fingers drag down the long line of spine. simultaneously it's touch underwater, twelve mattresses stacked in terrible, fairytale random, and it's scintillating overstimulation, too much at once. ]

Of course I do. That's because it is unbelievable. He knows what I'm like better than anyone else. Not-good, not-kind, not-decent. [ kaveh tweaks a lock of midnight's hair. he tucks behind a pointed ear. it's cartilage, kaveh realises, same as any other ear. kaveh's hand skims it, unbidden. he wonders if it pinks like any other ear when flushed. it's something to focus on as it comes: ] It was a deflection, Midnight. No more, and no less, and I was a fool for expecting otherwise. I won't forgive it.

[ ... With the way people are paying such close attention to his ears, he'll start reacting to touch there specifically in a Pavlovian manner, rather than any sort of sensitivity. Not that that's a bad thing... Kaveh's right in thinking that he doesn't think about himself in every way he should. Cultivating a liking for something is as much of a discovery as finding a taste fully grown, after all.

Which is to say that ear touch is followed by a soft hum, then a softer, gentle head shake as he simultaneously attempts to stay still, his fingers gripping into Kaveh's waist for stability. Tickly. Not bad. ]

Deflection... Hm. [ ... ] Has he said such things to you before, for the same reason?

He has deflected before. I would know.

[ kaveh smiles. it's a mere baring of teeth. his fingers run themselves over the shell of midnight's ears again. another thought: they must dissipate heat well. they must get cold in the winter. something knitted, perhaps. or would conventional ear mufflers work?

it's something to think about it as his hand drops. back into midnight's hair, back into familiar territory. ] He's quite good at it. Language doesn't only exist in word, it also exists in the absence of it. Well, you'd understand, however.

It does. I do.

[ But his understanding isn't perfect, which is the first step in understanding conversation in absentia. It's an art, but an art expresses the soul, and some letters aren't meant to be understood outside of those for whom they were written. ]

What was he deflecting from, then? A concern for his wellbeing, perhaps?

And how should I know what goes in the block of his head? If you ask me, who am I to ask? No, he's a confounding man with his own confounding logic, and it's enough for me to know that he doesn't intend to tell me.

[ kaveh's hand scrapes through midnight's hair, a little rougher now. a little more, because kaveh has suddenly found that he has more in him. to give, to express, to burn. ] It doesn't matter. He made a choice in deflecting. A choice, and I am capable of condemning that choice, just as I am powerless to force the issue.

There. We're not on speaking terms. And that's what the bruise is all about.

You never asked.

[ ... Oh, Alhaitham. Midnight realizes he understands and doesn't at the same time. Mostly, the feeling here is sympathy. Hurt and hurt again.

He chases after Kaveh's nails, his ire, pressing into his hand and closing his eyes, back arching a tiny bit in pleasure. As clever as Midnight can be about picking up patterns, he really is a simple man at heart. He likes the attention, biting as it is. He likes knowing Kaveh's there. ]

... What is that statistical fallacy... "Correlation does not equal causation?" Mmmn. Oh, Kaveh...

[ midnight arches into kaveh's nails. kaveh smiles, just so. he begins to carefully scritch midnight's scalp the way you would for a much loved dog, his fingers working his way across the crown of midnight's head, carding through the wild wind of his hair, and scraping its way across the nape of his neck. midnight enjoys it. if it's within kaveh's ability to give, of course he would. why would he not? it's midnight. midnight, who takes his gentleness and his ire both. kaveh does him an injustice. he really does.

still: ]

Don't quote that at me. You didn't go through years of being in the Akademiya; you didn't hear that fallacy being thrown around like the wind. Yes, correlation does not equal causation, but it's equally true that there must be a reason. Are you saying that this is a not a reverse causation? Or are you saying that I have it wrong?

Tell me, Midnight. Perhaps I've gone mad, but I suddenly want to hear it, what you have to say.

... I think there's nothing more to be said but more of the same thoughts I've always had, more of the same truths you are so very quick to dismiss out of hand.

[ Midnight says this quietly, thoughtlessly, craning toward Kaveh's touch. Still not rid of all thought here, even in his contentment. The tumble of his two truths: his yearning for a sense of naïvetè, his eyes irrevocably locked to reality.

Why hasn't he broken yet? What is he waiting for? ]

Tell me why he doesn't love you, Kaveh. Make me understand. It's the razor, you know. A simple answer for a simple question.

[ kaveh smiles. it's a weary thing. he drags his hand through midnight's hair again, lets it rest along the length of his neck. midnight runs warm, like a little sun. he draws circles with the pads of his fingers, and breathes out, long and slow. ]

You're right - the same cycle, the same words. You must be exhausted. I am exhausted. I exhaust myself, Midnight. That has always been the truth.

[ kaveh shakes his head. ] It doesn't matter, whether he loves me or not. Or rather, it matters too much. If he loves me, then he is making a mistake he should not. If he doesn't, it's because that is the way it ought to be. I cannot be loved. But you'll be the first to remind me - that the guilt I feel over the death of my father was one done by a child. And I'll be the first to remind you - that children can sin.

Should love hurt, Midnight?

[ Midnight hums a little, gathering a thought here, a word there. ]

Water in itself isn't wet. Nor does fire burn. They are elements that inflict those states of being on whatever they touch. Love is similar in that it simply is love. Love is not in and of itself hurt. The only way love can inflict pain is dependent entirely upon the nature of the heart surrounding it.

[ His eyelids flutter, eyes dusk pink between his lashes. ]

Love simply is. Sometimes, in spite of one's best intentions, it can damage the vessel that carries it. Such is the nature of an emotion so heavy, so prone to embedding itself into one's body.

[ midnight's eyelashes cast themselves into the sea of his eyes. they are pink, much like the reflection of a fontainian dawn. kaveh has never seen the fontainian dawn. he has never been to fontaine. but in his memories, he knows that pink. he has imagined it a hundred times, and thousand times, what it must look like reflected in the eyes of his mother. that is what it means, kaveh thinks, to love.

does it hurt, to love me - kaveh nearly asks. it is an unbearably cruel question. it is an unbearably presumptuous question. it is an unbearably senseless question. kaveh, who still cannot bear it, says, instead: ]

You must be damaged beyond belief, then. It must have dented you from the inside out, to form the shape of you that I see today. [ kaveh's hand curves through midnight's hair. gently, he leans down, to press a kiss to the crown of his head.

kaveh can leave it at that. he should leave it at that. nobody ought to have to deal with the burden that is knowing kaveh. but this is midnight, who held his hand past the grief in their pocket. this is midnight, who bowed his head in the mall. this is midnight, who pushed kaveh to save alhaitham. this is midnight. midnight has always deserved to know, come what may.

kaveh says, after a long silence: ] I'm driven by guilt, you know. You must know by now.

[ Kiss accepted, Midnight shifts back into Kaveh's arms, pushing a breath through his nose as he touches the tip of it to Kaveh's neck, letting his too-familiar scent seep in. Idly, he reflects that he's always fallen too fast, and that nothing about this place airing Kaveh's past would have changed that. It happened at the start, in a darkened store, with a chandelier.

Of course love doesn't hurt. The vessel that surrounds it grows accustomed to its shape, so with enough care and patience, with the slow accumulation of thick walls around it, pearls in a shellbeast in the reverse, the damage it does is negligible.

(The problem was never holding it in. The trouble always came after letting it out.) ]

I do. Where is it with Alhaitham?

Edited 2023-11-26 05:40 (UTC)

[ midnight breathes in. kaveh breathes out. on a cot meant for one, two men have made a nest in each other. there's a nostalgia there for a different time and a different place. kaveh's hands find their way into midnight's hair.

his callused fingers carve through them, the strands of it, the way sift like the murk of a long, wending river. this is an apology. it is a poor one. ]

I was the one who approached Alhaitham, you know. A Haravatat junior, all alone next to a flock of his Darshanmates, excluded from the crowd as if spurned. I thought he was in trouble. It turns out he was trouble. We became friends, you see. Two heads tipped together over the tables in the House of Daena, bent over so closely that a hit to one head would end somewhere in the other - the discussion, the debates, oh, the debates. You could hear us all the way down the Divine tree. I nearly wanted to throw him down it at times. But that's where we began.

Where we ended: we worked together on a thesis. "Decoding the Runes and Architectural Philosophy of the Ruins of King Deshret's Civilization". It was to revolutionise our understanding of desert-born structures and the language that came with it; it did, even in its incomplete form, update the standards of Sumeran building code, and improved the lives of countless desert-dwelling folk. Yes, we never finished the project. We had several other people in our group, all vying for the same vision. All brilliant, all warm-hearted. It wasn't long after the project began that the cracks began to show. In hindsight, I could say it now: there were those who couldn't keep up with us. But you know, Midnight. I had wanted them to try. And I had wanted Alhaitham to try.

One by one, they left the group. It didn't matter that I cajoled or coached, taught or carried - they left, and by the end of things, it was just Alhaitham and I. Alhaitham, who never agreed with my methods to keep them there. Myself, who never agreed to Alhaitham's apathy to their plight. Alhaitham was the first to point it out, you know - that I was driven by guilt. All of it. Not-kind, not-good, not-decent. Just guilt. I told him that I regretted him.

[ the guilt and the grief - and the anger. the anger that never died, only took on new forms as the years passed. it's too easy to admit this to midnight. midnight didn't deserve this, kaveh knew. he deserved the kind, the good, and the decent. but the only thing in this host club right now is kaveh - just kaveh. nothing more. ]

I burned our friendship that day. By the time we became adults, we didn't speak for years. But before I came here, Midnight, I was living with Alhaitham. It's a long story. Alhaitham was the one who reached out to me in my time of deepest need. I was ashamed to admit it, just as I am ashamed to admit it now. I regretted him; that guilt remains. I regret regretting him.

[ the lull: the silence seeps. kaveh's head tilts. suddenly, he feels weary beyond belief. beyond understanding. ]

You say you are the expert in such things, Midnight. [ kaveh says, into midnight's hair. ] Knowing the words said that cannot be unsaid, how can there still be love?

The opposite of love isn't hatred, my darling. It's apathy.

[ Midnight kisses like he's dreaming, soft and unaware and completely helpless. No particular part of Kaveh is the goal; he lands one on his wrist, his chin, the hollow of his collarbone. Completely nonsense gestures from a nonsense man. ]

You'll have to forgive me, darling. It's so rare for my past to guide my decisions that I do struggle to imagine a world where a word said by anyone, myself included, could affect who I am now, today, with you. In fact, I'd say that I forget everything of no use and remember only that which reminds me of love.

[ Love never dies. It evolves, sweetens, sours. It twists. It destroys. But love itself? Eternal. ]

Of course that's what you would say. I don't believe it, you know. [ kaveh says, more fond than anything. heartbroken and fond. he takes the kisses. he gathers them up like stars. he makes a constellation of them. kaveh presses it back, into the hollow midnight's neck, a mirror to where midnight once bit him. just once. ]

I know the man who carried that letter with him; I know the man who still thinks of that young man back at the host club. I know the man who sleeps and eats and rests so little that he burns himself for it. You know the parts of me that matter; I know these pieces of you. The parts that matter. The past matters. We have grown into the shapes that carry forward with us our mistakes. Those mistakes have always mattered.

[ ... ] Well, you've asked. This is it. The guilt and the deflection both.

[ Midnight can't help but tremble a little, whining at the touch of jasmine soft lips. His fingers dig into the tangle of blond hair at Kaveh's neck, tugging through knots and tangles. Not hard enough to pull Kaveh away. Just enough to pull.

He breathes a little. He wants to calm himself, to be enough of himself to answer Kaveh. ]

You've come up with so many answers to circumvent his love that the simplest solution to his motivations appears. The edges of it. The razor...

[ There is no Occam on Terra, but Midnight knows something of the sort must exist on Teyvat. It's the sort of thing that must make sense in a world with some kind of order. ]

There is no must and must not in love. I said so, didn't I? Love simply is. He does not protect your heart, he protects your life. It's all you allow him.

[ midnight is trembling. kaveh feels it along the contours of midnight's cheeks, in the shudder of his body, in the long line of his spine as it trails down in sinuous form. midnight is torn in two different directions of want and need. his hand pulls in kaveh's hair. kaveh's eyes shut, briefly. day five burns through his eyelids. the net of his lashes cast themselves into the red of a bloodlet sea, and stays there, dredging for what had been left behind.

the razor, the razor, the razor. 'it's all you allow him', midnight says, and kaveh's breath seethes through him as if aflame. ]

Really, what is it that you see with those eyes of yours? [ kaveh says, infinitely fond and exasperated and terribly, terribly weary. ] You were right in that I could not live in a world where he no longer existed. But Midnight, I hadn't considered how to live in a world where he does exist.

[ in this moment, the pivotal question forms: who is it that allows and disallows what midnight can do? the revelation is like condemnation. kaveh looks. he brings their foreheads together. he laughs. the laugh is bleak. ]

... why is it that you let me do this to you, hm? [ as he kisses midnight, kaveh whispers: ] You are starving.

You give him permission to create with you a space in the shape of him.

[ It's the only way. He says it simply. Not because he doesn't understand that such a thing is painful, or difficult, or perhaps impossible. He says it because living in the world with others is always a bit like that. It's how it's been.

He tips his face to Kaveh, humming his pleasure, his desire. The space between his heart and the rest of him fills with the sound of it, but only the sound. ]

You make me happy. [ He sighs. As starved as he is, as much as these kisses are mouthfuls of sustenance for a body dead from frost, it's still good. ] I want to be happy, and I want the people who make me happy to be happy as well. It was never anything more than that, my darling. My heart...

[ kaveh thinks, in that moment - that midnight has always thought things in terms of things like this - of permission, of allowance, of what is allowed. of what little is allowed. kaveh begins to see it, the shape of it, the shape of the box that midnight has allowed himself to exist in. the curve of its walls, the way it cloisters his body, the way you can see the outline of his limbs taxidermied in perpetual motion. the box is so small. kaveh thinks, what has kaveh given permission for midnight to create with him? and is it all that kaveh allows him?

kaveh's eyes shut, briefly. midnight hums. he hums in the way of a cat's purr. cats purr to indicate comfort; cats purr when they are in pain. kaveh kisses him again, gently, slowly, imbuing the gesture with all the affection he can muster: ]

I'm here, Midnight. I'm here. [ kaveh says, with that effervescent promise on his tongue: that in no universe would midnight reach for kaveh and come away with the absence of him. kaveh is here. ] And I've your heart in my hands, you foolish man. I am not capable of making others happy. But if you insist that this is happiness, then what can I do, hm? I can only be here.

[ open ] kaveh's permanent catch-all

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sorry it's backstory time again (tm)

takes out my crazy straw and slorpseslrplslpslrp

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why are they so fucking crazy (affectionate)