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

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[ open ] kaveh's permanent catch-all

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

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[ in the spiral of kaveh's thoughts, the ones that begin and end with love, the ones that begin and end with the deserving of it, the feeling of it, the realisation of it and the betrayal of it, the one that still remembers that day in the host club, of midnight curled around him speaking of the damage to the vessel, of midnight walking away in the apartment with the scent of jasmine still pressed against kaveh's wrist, of the realisation that the sargonian architect sitting in this chair lingers with the scent of originium rot and the distinct perfume of night jasmine - in the sea of its unending wend and turn, comes this:

there's you, then. and there's me.

kaveh laughs. the sound is torn, raw from the way it strips itself from kaveh's throat. the pain forces his throat closed. it truncates the sound from the waist down, it grinds it down into pieces, and kaveh's head bows into the cool clasp of midnight's hand. kaveh has never run warm; the oripathy does something to body temperature, or so kaveh has realised. they are not each other; they are not the same. in the scant thirty seconds that he has spent sitting in this chair in the life of a man who only ever once existed in script, the realisations have come at a clip. but what the laugh says is thus: ]

Here's me, and here's you, then.

[ kaveh says, and bares his teeth. the word smile is too benign to describe the gesture, which recalls that the liberi were said to be cousins of the archosauria - that liberi once had fangs. because despite it all, kaveh is merely kaveh, and midnight is merely midnight, and that fury in kaveh has never died, to know that the city has once again wrested something of midnight's and given it unwilling form. it was supposed to have been the heart, and not the pain.

and therein lies the guilt - that kaveh had asked for this, once, and knowing its meaning, he knows that he would ask for it again and again. 'then, let me stay with you', midnight says, and the words sear itself into a sargonian architect's soul. kaveh, who wears that soul, looks down, and expects to see himself bleed for it. let me stay with you, and kaveh's heart says: ]

You know that the moment that you turn around and close that door, this will all be over. Go, Midnight. I refuse to call you "Yoru" as the script dictates. I refuse the term Sanguinarch more. Leave this room. Why prolong this? This is you, and this is me. What do we owe them, hm?

[ because they both know the ending to the script: that the room had been built to contain originium dust and its subsequent spread. that when the door opens again, there will be nothing left of the sargonian architect, and kaveh will have scattered into dust.

(kaveh doesn't know the other half the script. he cannot know. the sargonian architect never knew. that's why this had been written as a tragedy.) ]

[ A Liberi. Midnight smiles more with his eyes than with his mouth. He'd made that mistake when he first met Kaveh, hadn't he? Wondered how he'd been able to groom his headplumage to look so different before remembering the strange missing parts on so many of the humans here.

(Liberi are short-lived. The smallest, hottest flares of life.)

Midnight picks up Kaveh's hand, presses his lips to cold fingers. The Sanguinarch did this earlier in the script. He remembers this even as he understands that it never happened. Odd how the mind adjusts to contradiction.

(How long? How long until he's too everything he is, and not enough himself?) ]

I should, shouldn't I.

[ ... Midnight looks into Kaveh's eyes. ]

Perhaps I'd like you all to myself for a bit, mm?

[ Midnight does not have covetous bone in his body. Jealousy, yes; a desire to take that which does not already belong to him, most assuredly not. And he's always known that no one belongs to anyone else, even before his books informed him of that singular fact.

So it's a lie. A poorly told one. Midnight turns Kaveh's hand, kisses the meat of his palm. The nerves under that scarred flesh are shutting down, he knows. He'll have to wait until Kaveh is helpless. It's in this script. The Sargonian architect is just as stubborn, as prideful, as enthralled with his own martyrdom.

Midnight closes his eyes, smells Kaveh's skin. (He can smell the blood, the cold tang of Originium underneath his scent. He knows that that mix will reappear in his short, fevered nightmares. This, too, is a part of love.) ]

[ midnight's eyes curve. kaveh thinks - when did he begin to notice these things. that at the apartment, the curve of midnight mouth had been wider; that here, the curve of his eyes is truer. kaveh looks down. midnight kisses his hand. for a moment, the action is divorced from its consequences. kaveh observes the kiss as if it were happening to someone else. in a sense, it is. in a sense, it isn't. it isn't until the pain registers again that kaveh realises - the nerves in his hands are dying. kaveh cannot feel the skim of midnight's lips. the blood red of kaveh's eyes widen. there had once been a sanctuary of light and warmth. kaveh had shattered it with his own hands. his mother's hands hand trembled in its aftermath. they trembled as leaves upon a tree, as the shaking, shifting desert beneath their feet, the one that swallowed kaveh's father. the one that swallowed her love. she could never hold a pencil again.

kaveh isn't the sargonian architect, who fought the inevitable until the day of reckoning came. kaveh didn't have years of therapeutic rehabilitation, the slow, painful relearning of how to walk again as a ten-year-old liberi fresh with grief, brought to tears by the mere prospect of dragging himself upright across the room on unresponsive feet. kaveh is merely kaveh, and kaveh has always been afraid. it sinks low, and slow, like simmering panic. but that wasn't a part of the script. ]

Enough to endure all of this for a while longer? Please, I'm hardly worth all that. [ says kaveh instead, and because he remembers to smile, with a wry twist of his lips. with effort, he nudges midnight's lips with his palm, just minute reproach in form. but midnight isn't cruel by nature, not to anyone but himself. kaveh thinks - there must be more at play here.

it clicks, or so he thinks: the door likely won't open unless they act out the entirety of the script. midnight must have realised that.

the realisation settles after a beat, much in the way of sinking resignation. kaveh shrugs. the gesture ripples unnaturally through him. ] Alright, alright, we'll play this out by the book, then. Where were we? 'Then, let me stay with you'. [ kaveh looks into midnight's eyes. ] "No. If you have any affection left for me, you will go."

You are worth leaving this room for. Were that I could now.

[ But no matter. They're speedrunning this so they can both get the hell out of there. Time to put another character on, a man who is and is not him. One who ends what he starts, as a man is wont to do.

He holds Kaveh's hand between both his own, feeling the flesh warm between his fingers. He knows that Kaveh may have drifted too far away from the feeling in his own body to feel heat properly. It may not be about that anymore. It's about the holding. It's about Midnight.

(He'd convinced Alhaitham of that in the mall. It still holds true.)]

Were that I was anything but affection incarnate for you. Were that I could be more than mere affection.

[ Midnight stands enough to reach forward, tuck a finger under Kaveh's chin, pull him gently forward. ]

Silly bird. You've made yourself a ribcage in the corpse of my motherland. You've made yourself its heart. Oh, my love, answer me this: if you've come this far to become my home, how do I leave you?

[ Midnight says it with his usual wry superficiality. Or the Sanguinarch's. Or both. Neither believed much in Kazdel, after all. Neither even believes in home. Not really. They both believe in this, though. In happiness, in spite of the reality surrounding them. In love. ]

[ midnight pulls him forward. the sanguinarch pulls the architect forward. distantly, kaveh remembers that his hand is still behind held. then, he forgets. there is an irony to having knowledge without context until the context comes to you. the sanguinarch is still kneeling. only now does kaveh understand it, the meaning behind seeing his man brought to his knees before a sargonian, what a failing in a sarkaz looks like and the condemnation of it; of the sheer act of love it must taken to do so in these halls.

the words come. they are bitter and bitter. ]

Yoru, [ kaveh says, and hates it, the syllables of it, ] I have endured the death of my father and the withering of my mother. I have endured the storm of the desert and the lost shoreline of the Sargonian sea. Yoru, I have endured the loss of my legs and my arms and the light of my sight. But Yoru, I cannot endure you.

[ kaveh moves his hand. he moves his hand despite the numbness of it, the disorientation of not knowing where or when it is - but he does, doesn't he. midnight is holding it. together, with midnight's hand, kaveh guides his own to midnight's chest. he taps a finger there. the pain reverberates like a knelled bell. hollow, it rings. ]

You are wrong. I am ▓▓▓▓▓, son of ▓▓▓▓▓▓▓, Master Architect of the Kshahrewar - I have made myself a heart not in the ribcage of your homeland, but in you. And I hate your smile. [ kaveh says, and the grief is there, like it has always been, that day in the tunnel where midnight had asked for him, of him, had kissed the bruise of his neck: ] Don't take who I love and have him smile like that. I cannot forgive it; I will not forgive you.

[ Midnight laughs. ]

My one and only boon. That which invariably creates happiness in others. I have nothing but selfishness in me, otherwise.

[ He compromises. The smile fades, but adoration remains in his eyes. He can't really make it go away. He was always good at lying, but his desire to give the truth always floats under the surface. ]

This is the last time I will begrudge you anything, my darling. How foolish of you to accept my heart like so.

[ He rises, Kaveh settles in his hands. He puts his lips to Kaveh's and tastes him. ]

How is it, then? To become that which the Sanguinarch guards jealously. Fervent, covetous.

[ Another kiss. Midnight smiles, but this one has the tang of a prince underneath. The Sanguinarch laughs, human no longer. ]

Your feet rooted, your hands frigid, stiff. You can no longer turn away, my love. So? Does your heart fail you?

[ How terrible. The architect in his final breath has fallen afoul of a demon intent on claiming his soul, another shining toy to keep. How many of the old tales end this way? ]

[ 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.

[ 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. ]

[ 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. ]

[ 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.) ]

[ 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.

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. ]

[ 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.

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. ]

[ 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. ]

[ 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. ]

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[ open ] kaveh's permanent catch-all

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

(league of legends announcer voice) DOUBLE KILL