[ open ] kaveh's permanent catch-all

[fussiest]

WHO: kaveh (fussiest) & y'all!
WHAT: this is a perpetual catch-all for kaveh because i'm too lazy to make a new one every month. this is for closed starters, tag-ins, visits to kaveh's workshop and the like! be wild! be bold! be free!
WHERE: all around the city, and especially at kaveh's workshop, the pairidaeza architectural design studio in district 1
WHEN: everywhere! everywhen! all at once!
WARNINGS: bickering, probably - everything else will be warned for on a thread-by-thread basis

Comments

[fussiest]

[ 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.

[unrequite]

[ 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?

sorry it's backstory time again (tm)

[fussiest]

[ 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?

takes out my crazy straw and slorpseslrplslpslrp

[unrequite]

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. ]

[fussiest]

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.

[unrequite]

[ 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.

[fussiest]

[ 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.

[unrequite]

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...

[fussiest]

[ 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.

[unrequite]

[ Midnight's laugh is very quiet. Silent puffs of air. ]

As an expert in happiness, I can confirm that the time I spend with you is surfeit with the sweetest sort of happiness. To say otherwise would simply be incorrect.

[ Midnight fits his mouth to Kaveh's, the ache in him untwisting as the softness is returned. As though the love trapped with Kaveh's body, sharp and heavy, is just the shape and weight Midnight needed to debride the phantom limbs of unkind selfishness from him, leaving scars aching, but clean and well healed. Midnight can't help but try to fill this new space with affection. It's the least he can do for a man who doesn't understand how well he holds his heart. ]

I want to make space in me for you. Come nest with me whenever you like.

[ Said a bit drowsily, in prophecy. Midnight never thinks about this moment in precisely this way again, but perhaps he caught the bird in Kaveh faster than he realized. ]

[fussiest]

[ he loves this man, kaveh thinks. he loves this man the way the river will part for the weight of the mountain that splits it, he loves this man the way trees will wrap themselves around ancient columns that once displaced them. it is not the kind of love that midnight wants; it is not the kind of love that midnight needs. but it is the only kind of love that kaveh knows how to give, the kind of love that takes what's there and builds for it, transforms it, carves out a space for it in bedrock and canopy and the realm of dreams. kaveh will build a castle for midnight. he will fill the cavern in midnight with stars.

he will do so to make room for all the other things that must also fit inside that cavern. he will take midnight's curled form, and make room for midnight inside of midnight. he wants midnight to sleep beneath the stars. ]

Flattery. [ kaveh says, and laughs. ] I prefer a roost that will be honest with me. Tell me, sometime, of what has happened to you. I want to hear all of it. What you experienced in the haunted house, why is it that you chase after what hurts yourself the most. I will ask you this again when you are less comfortable, as it will not be a comfortable question. I would demand it of you because even if you go to a place where I cannot reach, I want to know of it so that I can scold you for having done so, and then thank you for having come back. And then I will go to the place where you once went so I can gather up the pieces of you that you left behind so as to return them to you. I cannot make you whole, but I won't have you be any less than what you are now.

[ kaveh presses midnight down into the bed. he is being unfair, he knows. the cot creaks with it, the shifting of their combined weight. kaveh kisses midnight. he slips the phone out from beneath the pillow. that's the first thing he does. ]

But that's another time. [ kaveh's brow arches. ] I want you to sleep. If you don't, you will put up entirely too many slat walls, and then I will need to be more cross with you than I already am.

[ a ziptie comes out of his pocket. kaveh reaches around with a single hand for their wrists. he binds them together, wrist-to-wrist, and pulls the ziptie proper.

then, he flicks open midnight's phone for the alarm. ]

Sleep. I'm not going anywhere, and neither are you.

why are they so fucking crazy (affectionate)

[unrequite]

Darling...

[ This is less in protest to Kaveh's proclamation — he'd promised, after all — and more in bewilderment to his sudden captivity. A simple concept protests the necessity of the plastic at his wrist:

He won't leave if Kaveh's here.

After a pause for rumination, Midnight's face clears:

If he's here, Kaveh won't leave.

There it is, then. Midnight sighs, well pleased with this conclusion, and presses fully against Kaveh. ]

I see. Set it to 4 am, won't you? I'd still like my run.

[ He throws that out expecting nothing, closes his eyes and lets the ache of being awake ease away. He tucks their knees together, kisses the first thing that comes in contact with his lips without aiming at all, although whatever it is seems pretty face adjacent. ]

I've been told that I can make quite the speech... But look at you, love. Giving me a run for my money. You could change the seasons with that kind of ferocity, my darling. Make a river run back to the lake that birthed it...

[ Sleeping in proximity with Netzach has done him the great kindness of inducing sleep with a warm body next to him via Pavlov. He kisses Kaveh again, and thinks: Ah, the mouth this time. Truly fate is kind. ]

Thank you for waiting for me. I will come back for you until I cannot. I promise...

[ A promise made like a fact. The sky is blue, the grass is green, and Midnight will always return because his heart is here. ]