[ 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 tastes him. kaveh is bound. he is not bound, kaveh thinks, by the mere cage of flesh. beneath his skin, he can feel the dark, shattered shards of oripathy rot, the way it, the potential of something balanced on the infinite potential of water tension. kaveh is bound instead by the love. midnight presses his lips, not his smile, to kaveh's - kaveh kisses him back. of course he does. of course he does for all the wrong reasons: he does it for the love, for the yearning, for the heartbreak, and for the fear.

(it was his mother's hands. these are his hands.)

it's with that same fierce dagger's edge that he bites. ]

Why would it? [ kaveh says, when he leans back from the kiss-bruised and bite-bruised jut of midnight's bottom lip, ] When have I ever sought to turn away? Didn't I give that useless, beaten organ to you? Why would I be responsible for a failing in something that is yours?

[ the sargonian architect tips up his head. his headfeathers flare. ]

No, the only thing that will fail me is you, if you don't recall this: you owe me a dance.

[unrequite]

[ Midnight does not owe Kaveh a dance. The Sanguinarch, however, remembers it well, his lip curling softly as he touches his tender lip. (He looks born with those feathers, puffed in spitfire indignation. He deserves a long life. He deserves to find absolution someday, in some mortal fashion.) ]

I erred terribly. I did not realize that taking your heart would leave you with a dearth in your chest. Had I known... I should have grown one of my own long before this.

[ Midnight leans onto Kaveh's lap. Just a hand on his thigh, light. He's conscious of his weight, the bite of flaring nerves pinched dead in Kaveh's legs. ]

You can stand no longer, my love, my soul. Would you remind me of a promise I cannot keep? Or do you beg me to keep to my oath?

[ These questions are gentle. They do not mourn. Sweet, playful, mindful. His parlor room has heard the rise and fall of these gentle words so many times, over tea and sweet bread and mannerly conversation. This is not a wake, and the Sanguinarch, nobility of the Sarkaz court, must not suffer a funeral before the death that earns it. ]

[fussiest]

[ this is the part of the script that kaveh has dreaded. not the death or the heartache, not the skim of midnight's lips and the recitation of love. it was this, when the image takes shape in the script. there had been a gala celebrating the groundbreaking ceremony. there had been an ill-fated assassination attempt and a long-meandering conversation over the skyline of old kazdel. the night breeze was cool and free. for that brief, ravishing moment, so were their hearts. ]

Didn't I say so, Sanguinarch? It wasn't your heart that I wanted.

[ so were our hearts, jeegareh mani. ]

And an oath is a two-way thing, is it not? Are you going to beg me to accept it? [ says kaveh, because the sargonian architect he wears on his sleeves was not born in kazdel's court, had raised himself to carry the weight of his oripathy up the cliff-faces to wrest into reality the palace of his dreams. kaveh doesn't have that strength. but this is a story that needs to end. kaveh has never started something he didn't intend to finish. he has never shied from the work of it - and since when was kaveh anything but work? since when was midnight? it's time to get to work, kaveh thinks. he takes a deep, stabilising breath. he holds that fear at bay.

he reaches with his hands, he hooks his arms around the back of midnight's neck. ]

Be strong. [ kaveh says. he pulls. with strength that kaveh does not possess, he pulls himself out of the chair, leans his weight into midnight's canted shoulder. his legs are leaden. they weigh like anchors. the pain is overwhelming. kaveh's vision swims.

one, fierce, clawed hand grips into the back of midnight's shirt. it trembles with the strength of his grip. ]

[unrequite]

[ Midnight knows that at this point, the Sanguinarch remembers not to smile, then holds firm, does exactly as he's told. Not because he's being told to do it, but because he is strong, and he relishes proving it. Both he and the Sanguinarch have this in common.

What they also have in common is a held breath, a locked pair of knees, until the architect's weight rests firmly in his arms. He holds that breath until his joints solidify back to cartilage. The architect's strength is required of Kaveh; so too does the Sanguinarch demand strength of Midnight.

(See, this is why he'd never get along with a normal vampire. Very little room just to be oneself.)

Once he has Kaveh, carrying him under his thighs, steady and unyielding, he begins to sway to invisible music, music he begins to hum. The architect's heard this one; it was the last dance at that gala before the assassination, a waltz as heavy as stormclouds. ]

Do you have any other requests, love? I am the Sanguinarch, after all. I shall forgive you everything, and give you everything. It is only noble.

[ This would sound very grand, but it's being spoken, soft and low, into Kaveh's ear. Eyes hidden, breath steady. A vampire ushers in death. What privilege it is to hold death in one's arms!

(He thinks of tomorrow for the first time in a long time. He knows it will be emptier. This, too, is sacred.) ]

[fussiest]

[ midnight is strong. midnight is strong in ways that kaveh can't verbalise. kaveh needed him to be strong. kaveh isn't strong - not as the architect, not as himself. midnight's grasp buoys him, holds in close in a world where the skin he wears is altogether too similar and not similar enough - and kaveh thinks, if he lets go now, he will be lost. kaveh can't let go. if he does so, his hands will forget what it means to grip, and then kaveh will have nothing. the thought is stark. it's unnecessarily dramatic, and it doesn't at all help the situation, and it will be over soon - but kaveh can feel his hands forgetting the sensation of a held pen. he can feel his hands forgetting the rough hewn of lumber and the torn edges of stone, he can feel his hands forgetting the cool burn of forged metal and the drag of sandpaper against fired clay. he can feel his hands forgetting the warmth.

it is nothing compared to the pain along his hips, the one that marks the delineation between necrotic tissue and the still-torn jagged teeth of originium crystals that have been making their way up his body for years. it is nothing. but it is everything.

kaveh breathes. he remembers to breathe. that puff of breath begins somewhere in the caverns of kaveh's chest, and ends somewhere in midnight's shoulder - just the flesh of it, just the hooked, crooked swell of it. this isn't the architect. this is is kaveh: ]

Is this even a fraction of how you've felt, Midnight? [ kaveh laughs, bleakly. ] All those years.

[ the years that intervened between midnight fighting for his life in that alleyway to the midnight that kaveh sees today. the one that sways with him to invisible, imaginary music that only two people who never existed still know.

all those years. ]

And don't tell me - that it's never hurt. You will never have me believe it.

[unrequite]

You're farther along than I am, love. You're in a place I haven't reached yet. Incomparable.

[ A kiss against his ear. Midnight's arm braces; his other hand comes up, smooths over Kaveh's hair, his headfeathers. ]

At any rate... I'd imagine your hands don't hurt much, scarred and beaten as they are. Why would new wounds haunt me in places where old ones have already dulled the pain?

[ This isn't a brave face. It's the truth as Midnight sees it, or at least how he interprets the disconnect between his heart and his body. He's grown thick skin. Tough, untouchable, unassailable. He's learned that pain is temporary, that change is the only constant, that glory awaits those who work through both. It's not that it doesn't hurt. The hurt must be there somewhere. He simply can't feel it. For him, it was necessary. To hand that pain off to others... No. It belongs to him.

He kisses Kaveh again. He can feel him grow limp, muscles seizing, limbs dangling like so much butcher's meatbeast hanging in a window. It's senseless. It's time to take them both away from here. ]

There's only one bit left for me. Just a bit more, love, I promise.

[ He kisses down to Kaveh's neck. This, of all things, at least makes sense. ]

[fussiest]

[ yet, midnight says, and kaveh knows the gravity of that word. all rivers flow to the sea, and the sea on terra is one where unimaginable terrors live. it's a metaphor that struggles to get away from him, and kaveh is inclined to let it because midnight is warm - and kaveh is warmer, and the pain is exhausting. of course it is. midnight kisses him, and kaveh closes his eyes. he takes the time to breathe.

'why would new wounds haunt me in places where old ones have already dulled the pain'? ]

You're an old silly. [ kaveh informs midnight with a little laugh, ] New wounds hardly take over old ones - but they have different ways of hurting. That's all.

[ just one bit left. it ought to be comforting. slowly, kaveh shakes his head. his headfeathers flicker, much in the way of ruffled wings. he can still feel the long trail of a tail feather gently brushing the concrete floor, dust to dust - fascinating, what these new appendages mean. fascinating, what it does to biology. ]

I take it back, you know. I'd like to stay here for a bit longer. Not in this form not as something you must carry. [ quietly, quiet as dust: ] You don't have Oripathy here.

[unrequite]

Mmm. I don't.

[ Midnight lays one last kiss on Kaveh's neck. He breathes one last time. No fever, no headache, no lingering pain in his bones. It's nice.

Nice things don't last.

He drops his hand to the back of Kaveh's neck, holds him there, opens his mouth, and lets his fangs sink into fevered skin. Hot blood fills his mouth. It's still Kaveh, the desert yearning and sweet wine of him, but filled with fired coals and anger. That's unstable Originium.

(He knows that taste well. It's a choice this time.)

He massages the back of Kaveh's neck, and Kaveh cannot fight back. The Sanguinarch waited so patiently for the bird to fall from the sky. All it took was time, care, the ability to look at something beautiful and allow its destruction. ]

cw: death!!!! aka midnight's kaveh kill count rises to 2

[fussiest]

[ kaveh would have seen this coming if it weren't for the fact that he was blind. no, kaveh thinks, distantly, the thought ought to have been 'should'. should is the word for it. but kaveh can no longer see. he remembers, in this story, how the architect had gotten oripathy. his father had been shipped back in a container, you see. and kaveh, he had wanted to see. needed to see.

midnight drinks. the sanguinarch drinks. it's the fury in kaveh that has his shaking hand drag itself to midnight's hair. it's the sudden, vaulting terror that has him pull. ]

Midnight. [ kaveh says, with the soft, quiet futility of a script already written, but he pulls. because the architect doesn't remember, but kaveh does - an alleyway, a mall, the fevered smile of a man who had been alone that day, and that single, solitary confession over midnight's dripping blood: it had been in his food. kaveh couldn't allow it, for his blood to be the one to taint midnight again. midnight doesn't have oripathy here.

kaveh says again, ] Midnight! Stop.

[ and it's a whistle of a word, the tailend of a cry. kaveh is crying, he realises. of course he is. as usual, when it comes to midnight, kaveh has come too late. ]

(league of legends announcer voice) DOUBLE KILL

[unrequite]

[ Midnight draws his fangs from Kaveh's skin. He does not wait. He bites down again. And then again. Expedience is key, here.

When he kisses Kaveh on the neck again, his mouth leaves bright red lip marks. Black smoke fills his eyes, his nose, his lungs. He breathes in deep. ]

Shh, shh. Wait for me, my love, my heart. I'll be along as soon as I can.

[ The Sanguinarch puts his head down, pulls easily away from Kaveh's desperate, out of character fingers, and drinks until that hand falls.

Once he's finished, he lazily tilts his head back, nuzzles against cooling skin. Mouth still smeared red, he walks forward, places his burden on the chair. Arranges his hands, closes his eyes. Wipes under blonde lashes with his fingers, drying tracks of salt and water.

One last kiss to the mouth. Sit here and wait for me, my darling. I'll be back.

The Sanguinarch turns, steps five paces, opens the door, and leaves the room. ]