[OPEN]

[justscribing]

WHO: (justscribing) & you!

WHAT: October Catch-All (open + closed)

WHERE: Poison garden, University, Around

WHEN: all through October

WARNINGS: TBA + marked in threads as necessary




OPEN PROMPT LINKS [UPDATED AS ADDED]

Poison Garden

University

Feel free to reach me by PM or plurk (monochromic) if you want to plot for something specific!

Comments

[justscribing]

We couldn't both be urchins. [Kaveh warms. Alhaitham's expression, too, warms.] And you've never been good at keeping still.

[fussiest]

They did also call me the urchin of the Kshahrewar. [ with a wry quirk. ] You disagreed?

[justscribing]

Should I have? [His head tilts with the silent baiting.] Which one do you think suits you better: urchin or light?

[fussiest]

Neither.

[ it has always been this answer. it is said with the lofty air of a prophet long-past, ] You know this, and I know this. I'm neither suited to being an urchin or a light. I've no rocks to cling to when the world insists on shifting beneath my feet. And I barely know the shape of my own path forward, let alone be able to illuminate it for anyone else. Absurd.

I am, and will always be, merely Kaveh.

[justscribing]

[Neither, Kaveh asserts. Both, Alhaitham rebukes. Because Kaveh glints with wayward starbursts. Because Kaveh burns like a sun descended to the earth, a brightness that demands the attention of those to witness the purity of its passion. No mortal could resist seeking its ever present warmth. And Alhaitham is only mortal.

Kaveh nurtured dreams from soil in a land that killed them. What else could he be called, if not light? What else could cause the burns on Alhaitham's heart for having dared to get too close, if not light?

... And for urchin, well--] But they were certainly using the definition of a misbehaving child for you. Do you deny it?

[fussiest]

- everyone wrote in the margins! They only singled out my annotations because they didn't like the way I criticised their way of thought, the kind that hasn't seen significant progress since the days of Kshahrewar's founding!

[ kaveh's free wrist rolls in the way of an grievance. it stills. kaveh looks, then looks away. ]

Enough about that. Alhaitham - ... [ ... kaveh's words bite off, severed where they stand. ]

[justscribing]

[Alhaitham is about to point out the issue was less the writing itself and more the content, up to and including leaving his personal sketches around.

But then Kaveh pivots the conversation. Then stops, cut off on his name. Alhaitham can't predict what that means.]

What?

[fussiest]

[ the silence swells. kaveh starts, as if to stop it. kaveh stops, as if to bury within it. for a moment, nothing comes.

and then: ]

How much... [ kaveh says, slowly, his gaze fixed on the roses across the maze. the red of them seems to bleed. ] did you hear? Earlier.

[justscribing]

Nothing I didn't already know. [Not quite a reassurance. As always, not quite.

But it's truth. It was nothing he didn't already know. That Kaveh holds himself responsible to every grief of his loved ones. Physical death of his father. Emotional death of his mother.

And after them, Alhaitham does not stand dead. He does not stand as loved by Kaveh.]

[fussiest]

[ kaveh still remembers his hands around alhaitham's throat, is the thing.

kaveh's fingers startle. in alhaitham's grasp, they are like live wires. they jolt in a way that suggests only their connection to alhaitham's hand prevents kaveh's feet from running. the adrenaline does regardless - the cold, sinking pall. kaveh opens his mouth. ]

You... know?

[justscribing]

[Kaveh jolts in a way much like a startled animal ready to run. Alhaitham on impulse squeezes tight, before remembering there's no reason for it and allows his grip to loosen back to a reasonable hold.] Does that surprise you?

[fussiest]

[ alhaitham's hand squeezes. kaveh is stopped in his tracks. the flowers bloom profusely. they had done so in razan gardens during spring, when kaveh took time between tightly-packed classes and engineering tutorials to sketch. alhaitham had been there too. that was an disingenuous way of putting it. alhaitham neverly merely exists. ]

No. [ kaveh says, after a moment. his own voice sounds so very far away. it only manages to come into focus when kaveh remembers that fresh wave of bitterness, that deep-seated ache: ] You see everything.

[ the tightlipped offer: ] Don't you.

[justscribing]

[The chasm between them fills with bitterness. It's only a trickle. It only echoes its vast emptiness.]

Not everything. I'm still only human.

[Even he is still subject to being human.]

[fussiest]

[ a man who bleeds when cut. a man who bruises when hurt. a man who burns when put to the torch.

a man whose breaths dim when strangled. ]

Lucky for us, then. [ kaveh says, and the hysteria comes out in almost like a little stutter of a laugh. kaveh's hand grips alhaithams. it grips it so tightly that kaveh thinks it may bleed.

then, he, too, relaxes his hold. ] You are insufferable enough without being a deity, or a vampire, or any other such creatures. Better that you remain you, and let a few things slide beneath your gaze.

[justscribing]

Are you becoming an expert on vampires, now? [But he's probably just learned from Midnight, seeing as they're thankfully only fairy tales back home.]

[fussiest]

I've met enough to form an opinion. [ with another vicious squeeze - this time perhaps with a little less bitter. a little more bite. ]

Fine, then. You know, and it hardly matters.

[justscribing]

[So squeezy. Alhaitham shifts his hold, threading fingers between each other and gripping tight with the indent of fingertips to the back of Kaveh's hand.]

It matters to you, doesn't it? [That Alhaitham knows him. That Alhaitham has seen to deep, has dug his fingers in to pull the depths of Kaveh up from the dirt.]

[fussiest]

[ alhaitham's fingers slip into the valleys of kaveh's. kaveh worries his half-bitten nails in turn, picking at the jut of alhaitham's knuckle. ]

Of course it does. [ kaveh's breath catches. ] ... it matters to a lot of people.

[ of being known. of being known by alhaitham. ] You must know it. And must have seen it - isn't it the mortifying ordeal of being known?

[justscribing]

Then who are you suggesting it doesn't matter to?

[A question for a question. It matters to a lot of people. It matters to Alhaitham, who has always been difficult to know in purpose. Who does not give himself freely not out of a sense of shame but to maintain the distance between himself and the masses. It has kept many, many people from ever trying.

Alhaitham asks of the one person who knows him far more than anyone else.]

[fussiest]

[ kaveh looks. the question is like a rock flung against the battered shore. of course it matters to alhaitham. this argument is a nested doll. the underlying premise must, then, be one of care.

there is a second layer. kaveh asks - a question for a question: ]

Does it matter to you that you know?

[ that alhaitham knows kaveh - that he knows that kaveh has killed everyone that has ever had the misfortune of being loved by kaveh. ]

[justscribing]

[It's all in what they don't say, really. What they refuse to say. The question isn't whether it matters to Alhaitham. Kaveh knows it does. Kaveh knows Alhaitham would not put his considerable attention into something that does not matter to him. Kaveh is not asking if it does.

Kaveh is asking why it does.

It's in the things they refuse to say. But in the dim lights of the mall, hasn't Kaveh admitted it first?]

Of course. ["I can't lose even a fraction of you, Alhaitham."] You have always mattered.

[fussiest]

[ kaveh thinks - but the rejoinder is obvious, isn't it? why is the question. it is a 'why' born from the words 'shouldn't. and why should it? hadn't kaveh said so himself? he is merely kaveh. and he has done things that disqualify him from mattering to anyone save himself.

but the question, like those words of thanks that ought to come so long ago, don't come. they don't come because this is alhaitham - because this isn't merely alhaitham. kaveh's hand is limp in alhaitham's. and then - a squeeze. something like the quiet acknowledgement of a flower bud at dawn. ]

... if we take a right, here, we will find the exit.

[justscribing]

[It's amazing what can be said in the warmth of their palms. It is not a rejection. It is not the full of it, but it is the smallest sprout that has been spared by Kaveh's flame to have the chance to bloom.]

Then we go right. We've found everything worth coming here for already.

[fussiest]

[ but the only thing you found, kaveh thinks, is kaveh. he breathes. kaveh takes the first step forward. ]

Let's go.

[justscribing]

[Alhaitham lets his following steps speak the agreement for him. They leave, hand-in-hand.

The only thing he found, the only thing worth finding, was Kaveh.]