hey girlie.

He hops off the table and takes one large stride towards Alhaitham, using his momentum to lower one knee between his lover’s legs. He snatches the book and throws it aside, fully ignoring Alhaitham’s indignant squawk of protest. 

“What are you doing.” Alhaitham’s face remains stoic even as his ears tinge pink from the way Kaveh’s knee is brushing against his crotch. 

“Testing a theory,” Kaveh replies, brushing his hands up Alhaitham’s chest as he leans forward. His knee drives further into Alhaitham’s lap, and Kaveh swallows his returning gasp with a brush of their lips. 

“Theory?” Alhaitham questions against Kaveh’s lips, and Kaveh can feel the shudder than runs through his body.

“Yes, you’re a feeble scholar , right?” Kaveh teases, pushing Alhaitham’s shoulders roughly until his back hits the divan. “prove it to me.”

“You know as well as me that a theory can’t be proven-”

“Oh, shut up ,” Kaveh cuts him off, rolling his eyes. “I want you to use your stupid secret strength to throw me around, is it that hard?”

“It does require a degree of strength to have you this close to me and not touch you the way I want,” Alhaitham shudders a bit when Kaveh’s exploring fingers move to his chest, toying with his hardening nipples under his tight shirt. 

“You always have so many words,” Kaveh shifts, moving his leg so he’s straddling Alhaitham fully. “You really know how to set the mood, don’t you?”

“You just called having sex a theory - ah ,” Alhaitham’s breath arches in a gasp when Kaveh grinds down hard, enough to feel the younger’s hard cock tenting up in his trousers. Kaveh kisses him fully this time, sucking Alhaitham’s bottom lip between his teeth and nipping with just enough pressure to not break skin. Alhaitham whines, a sound that Kaveh delights in knowing that no one else outside of them would ever hear. 

One particular nip makes Alhaitham suck in a sharp breath and Kaveh’s eyes flutter open just in time to see his lover’s darken, and in a flash he goes completely weightless. He lands on the divan and Alhaitham is on top of him in a mere second, grinning down at him with mirth. 

“Does that satisfy you?” He shakes his silver bangs out of his eyes, leaning down to brush his lips against Kaveh’s hair in a silent contrast to how hard he had just gripped Kaveh’s waist.

“I think I need more data,” Kaveh is breathless and his words come out in a whisper. For all of his bravado, it took a mere moment of Alhaitham’s manhandling to reduce him into a weak puddle below of the younger. Every inch of his body is singing for him, craving his touch and the noises he makes and the hot press of breaths panted against his skin. 

“What do you want, darling?” Alhaitham says, softened and honey-colored. Fuck me until I have no breath left in my lungs, leave bruises on me that last for days, treat me like I am not made of glass, Kaveh wants to say. He aches to reveal his deepest desires, but even in his current state he knows that it is a conversation for another time.

“Touch me,” he lands on, letting out a sharp breath when Alhaitham unfastens his pants with practiced ease and unsheathes his weeping cock. He presses his fingers to Kaveh’s lips, humming in pleasure when Kaveh opens his mouth obediently and sucks them in. Alhaitham presses them down against his tongue and collects the saliva pooling in his mouth and Kaveh moans around them. 

Haitham had never done this before, he was always gentle and light handed with Kaveh, and while Kaveh has thoroughly enjoyed every time that they were together he could not deny the thrum of excitement coursing through his body. He meets Alhaitham’s eyes with his own misty ones and something inside him purrs at the desire leaking from the jade stones. Kaveh is suddenly struck by how pretty Alhaitham is, from the sharp lines of his nose to the hard set of his jaw and pretty, pretty eyes. Kaveh could stare at him all day if he was allowed, would commit every minor detail to memory so that he could continue to see him whilst his eyes were closed; he was all too grateful to be broken out of his sickeningly sweet thoughts by the feeling of a wet gurgle coming from his own throat.

Alhaitham removes his hand from Kaveh’s mouth and a wet sound echoes through the room, drowned out by Kaveh’s sounds when he curls his fingers around his cock. Kaveh’s hand flutters to Alhaitham’s shoulder, moving to wrap around him, but he finds it locked in an iron grip against the divan before he can blink. Kaveh is helpless to do anything but let out a staccato of ah-ah-ah ’s as Alhaitham moves his wrist expertly, too fast and too much but perfect nonetheless. The younger’s hips move against Kaveh’s thighs in time with his strokes, but the blonde doesn’t register anything beyond the pleasure flickering up and down his spine. 

He comes with a cry, painting Alhaitham’s shirt in white strokes with the force of it, and Alhaitham doesn’t stop working him until he’s shaking with overstimulation and whining with every breath. The younger presses another kiss to the top of his head before collapsing onto the divan next to him, pulling Kaveh on top of him gently. Kaveh goes along easily, feeling weightless and light in post-orgasmic bliss. 

“So, did you prove your theory?” Alhaitham mutters, his words slurring together in a way Kaveh is too fucked-out to figure out the reason behind. 

“Quiet,” Kaveh groans and buries his face into Alhaitham’s chest, shaking his head in exasperation. He looks like an overgrown affectionate kitten, and Alhaitham feels something warm and sparkly seize at his chest. 

Love , his muddled brain supplies him, a word that has since lost its mystery with the time he’s lived with Kaveh near. He leans further back into the divan, taking Kaveh’s full weight along with him as he buries his hand in the blonde’s hair. His fingers scritch at his scalp, loosening the braid and hair clips, making Kaveh grumble into his shirt. 

“Wait,” Kaveh sits up with alarm, his hand reaching towards Alhaitham’s waistband. “You didn't-”

“Ah,” Alhaitham shushes him, pulling him back down into his chest. “Don’t worry, I. Finished.”

Kaveh always talked about his temper but he didn’t truly understand it. Alhaitham was never truly angry, he simply didn’t know how to express his emotions any other way. Frustration, exasperation, annoyance - weren’t those all the same, anyways? 

Truthfully, things might have been simpler if he had just told Kaveh about this. He almost had on several occasions, but in an overwhelming twist of fate he actually cared about what Kaveh thought of him, unlike anyone else. He didn’t want Kaveh to think any worse of him than he likely already did, especially now that he was planning on asking him for a favor.

Alhaitham wasn’t too proud to admit when he genuinely needed help; if he truly thought he could accomplish something on his own he would, but as he stares down at his broken ear pieces he resigns in the knowledge that he can’t fix them himself. He had lasted all day without them after discovering that they weren’t working when he woke up, and while he would have preferred to have his crutch, he knew that he wasn’t incapable of living without them. 

As Alhaitham trudged up to his front door, he was achingly reminded that simply living was the bare minimum. After a day of shrill voices in meetings, heavy footsteps against the pristine floors of the Akademiya, and children’s shouts as he was walking home, he was left utterly exhausted. Something in his chest was beating at him in warning but he ignored it; he was home now, and it was no use dwelling on things that were beyond his control. 

Home , his heart pangs once more as he enters the door, the place where Kaveh was sitting at the dining table and tinkering away at his latest project. 

“Could you fix these for me?” Alhaitham says in lieu of a greeting, pulling the ear pieces off of his head. He had worn them all day despite their lack of functionality, hoping that they would provide at least some solace. 

“Oh, did you break them?” Kaveh asks, the wheels already turning in his brain as he took in the delicate objects. He took themthe from Alhaitham gently and continued speaking without waiting for an answer. “I was actually thinking about some modifications I could make to them, should I run them by you first-“

“Kaveh,” Alhaitham sighs, silently bemoaning for the uncountable time that day the loss of his earpieces. He recognizes that this behavior, ignoring Kaveh’s questions and demanding things of him, was what the older constituted as rude , but Alhaitham could make up for it later, when his head wasn’t threatening to burst. He squeezes his eyes shut and falls into the chair beside Kaveh, willing and failing to make his muscles relax.  “Can I have silence for a few minutes, please?” 

“Does living with me cause you such suffering that you are in pain simply from me being in the same room as you? You came in and asked me for something and you won’t even talk to me,” Kaveh demands, leaning forward into Alhaitham’s space. Alhaitham craves the older’s proximity but his voice was grating him down so far that he fears he would soon be left flayed open and bleeding. “Maybe going without the ear pieces for a while will do you some good.”

“Kaveh, it’s not you that causes me pain,” he says simply, pressing the pads of his fingers into his temples so hard that he sees white around the edges of his vision. 

“Then what? You can’t tell me that this is normal -” Kaveh stands and the legs of his chair scrape against the wooden floor and Alhaitham.

Alhaitham breaks. 

His head thunks into the heels of his hands as he leans forward, a strangled sound that was aching to be a scream ripping from his throat as he let out the frustration that he had been keeping inside all day. 

“Haitham?” Kaveh’s voice is a whisper now, his words coming out hesitant as he hovers over Alhaitham, scared to touch him. 

“S-sounds,” he grunts out, and though the room was quiet now the scraping sound was echoing through his head and scratching painfully at the inner walls of his skull. All of a sudden, his hearing whites out and all he can absorb is blessed rolling static. His palms black out his vision as he rides out the first incident he’s had like this in a long time; a small part of him is grateful that it happened at home with only Kaveh to witness, away from the prying eyes and whispers of the Akademiya. 

He barely registers Kaveh’s frantic pushing of his shoulder, his body too stimulated to account for any sensory input other than the rushing in his ears. He feels his mouth open and knows that words are coming out, but he has little knowledge of what it is that he is saying. The older man helps him to stand and all but carries him to his bedroom, and by the time his head hits his pillow he is gone.

Alhaitham wakes in a more peaceful way than he has in a very long time. His senses come back one by one, the scratch of his blanket against his skin followed by the orange hues of sunlight hiding his eyelids, and sound was the last to come into focus. He braces himself for the impact but finds that he didn’t need to - all that hits his ears is distant chirping of birds outside and gentle breeze hitting the windows. 

He rises slowly and reached for his ear pieces blindly, forgetting for a moment that he had given them to Kaveh to fix. His heart drops when he remembers Kaveh , a horrifying mixture of guilt and embarrassment taking over his body all at once. He freezes when his hand meets delicate metal and wiring instead of empty air. His ear pieces are resting on his bedside table where he usually keeps them, polished and repaired beside a note that commands him to be more careful with them. His fingers tremble a bit as he puts them on, and a breath of relief rushes out of him when he is met with peaceful silence. 

He switches them off as he leaves his bedroom, trying to decide what he could possibly say to Kaveh to account for what happened the previous day. He shuts his bedroom door as he always done, slow and meticulous, but the telltale thunk of the wood against the doorframe doesn’t hit his ears. 

His eyes flicker across the span of the door in surprise to find some kind of padding adorning the borders of the wood. He opens and closes the door experimentally, something settling inside of him happily when it makes not a sound. A quick glance down the hallway shows that the rest of the doors have similar padding around the edges, something that definitely was not present just hours ago. 

He finds Kaveh at the same table he had been at last night, caressing Mehrak and whispering things to her. A rush of fondness takes over and Alhaitham has to wipe his face clean when Kaveh notices his presence in the room. 

“Alhaitham, look,” Kaveh sounds excited but his voice remains soft, tickling Alhaitham’s ears in a soft embrace. “I made some changes to Mehrak, she’s new and improved, listen!”

Mehrak comes to life with a wave of Kaveh’s hand and she voices her hello, her pixelated face looking as jovial as the first time Alhaitham had met her. Her welcoming beeps were melodious, sifting through the air like windsong. 

“Did you do the doors, too?” Alhaitham asks, knowing the answer but wanting confirmation nonetheless. 

“Yes,” Kaveh nods fervently, dismissing Mehrak and giving Alhaitham his full attention. “And I installed hinges on the cabinets to stop them from closing too harshly, as well as cushions on the chairs to keep them from scraping. If there’s anything else you can think of, let me know-”

“Kaveh,” Alhaitham starts, uncharacteristically out of words to say. Here Alhaitham was worrying over how he was going to explain himself to Kaveh, but as always the older man understood him without words being needed. “Did you sleep?”

“Ah, no,” Kaveh is sheepish, the dark circles under his eyes deepening when he attempts to crinkle his eyes in a smile. “It’s alright though, I’ll catch up on sleep tonight.”

“You know that catching up on sleep isn’t real,” Alhaitham steps closer to him, reaching for Kaveh’s chin so he could tilt his head up to meet eyes with him. 

“What-” Kaveh’s voice comes out raspy and he clears his throat, his eyes flickering back and forth between Alhaitham’s pupils. “What are you doing?”

“You did all of this for me,” Alhaitham says more than asks, wheels in his head turning in pursuit of finding out how to best express his gratitude. “You didn’t have to.”

“I know that,” Kaveh smiles, a soft, genuine thing. “I wanted to. You let me live here, the best I can do is make it comfortable for you, no?”

“That’s not…” Alhaitham trails off, frowning as he releases his grip on Kaveh’s face. He misses the touch immediately, and he presses his fingers against his pants to distract the urge to reach out again. “You don’t owe me anything.”

A chorus of he knows that you’re different and he pities you and he’ll never look at you the same way swims around Alhaitham’s head and he grits his teeth against the onslaught. 

“Besides rent?” Kaveh jokes, his entire face softening when he takes in Alhaitham’s discomfort. “Haitham, I care about you. I wanted to do this for you because I don’t want you to be in pain, okay?”

“I am not an invalid,” Alhaitham informs him, not unkindly. “I can manage just fine, yesterday was just a bad day.”

“Just because you can, doesn’t mean you have to,” Kaveh stands and cups Alhaitham’s face in both of his hands, ensuring that he had the younger’s full attention. “I don’t wish to see you in pain like that again.”

“Oh,” Alhaitham leans into the warmth of Kaveh’s hands with a sigh, and Kaveh leans forward to press a kiss between his eyebrows. “Thank you, Kaveh.”

“Of course, ya amar ,” Kaveh lets him go, returning to his seat. “But you must promise to tell me when things get bad instead of getting angry.”

“I’ll try,” Alhaitham fights against the instinct to build his walls back up, to not be vulnerable like this. “Sometimes I don’t know until it happens, though.”

“So those times where you tell me to stop talking,” Kaveh starts, chewing on his bottom lip. “It isn’t because you don’t want to hear what I’m saying.”

“I always want to hear you, Kaveh,” Alhaitham sighs at how easily the words are leaving his chest, almost without his permission. “It’s just that my body doesn’t allow it, sometimes.”

That unspoken knowledge is why their current situation was so…odd. Kaveh returned home drowsy and languid from the cup of wine he had shared with Tighnari not long ago, and he had stripped down and bathed not a moment after coming home. He wanted to get into bed as soon as possible, but he wasn’t so tired that he was willing to risk Alhaitham’s lecture about sleeping in his bed without being clean. Kaveh made quick work of it, his eyes closed as he lathered and rinsed off his aching body, and he had slid into bed like he always does, draping himself over Alhaitham’s chest and burying his head in the juncture between his jaw and his sternum. The sound of Alhaitham’s slow heartbeat was typically Kaveh’s favorite bedtime story, but this time it jumped soon after Kaveh had closed his eyes. 

A glance upwards showed Alhaitham’s lips twisted into a frown, his nose scrunched up in such an adorable way that for a moment Kaveh’s confusion gave way to unfiltered fondness. The soft whine he lets out brings him back into focus, and he slowly blinks as he internally debates whether he should wake Alhaitham or not. 

Maybe he’s having a bad dream, Kaveh muses, and he snuggles a bit further into Alhaitham, trying to offer his junior some comfort even in his subconscious. It doesn’t help, but rather it makes things worse. The younger man whines again and wriggles under Kaveh, almost dislodging him from his perch. Alhaitham’s mouth parts in a disgruntled noise as his eyes finally blink open and he stares down at Kaveh blearily. 

Kaveh finds the whole thing dreadfully familiar, even though he hasn’t had this particular experience since before he and Alhaitham confessed their feelings. Ending up in bed together was a frequent occurrence back then, and Alhaitham would always wake up with a cold set to his body and a shade of disappointment on his face. Now, however, it makes no sense; they had been together long enough for sleeping in comfort together to be their lived-in routine. 

“Haitham?” Kaveh tries, something in him bending and threatening to break. “Are you alright?”

“Mm,” Alhaitham tries his voice out, and it’s thick and crackly from sleep. “Something’s wrong.”

“Wrong.” Kaveh repeats, and he leans back a bit to create some distance. Alhaitham doesn’t let him, his hand creeping around Kaveh to secure them together, and Kaveh’s heart settles a bit. “What do you mean?”

“You smell weird,” Alhaitham says, sentences even more deadpan in his drowsy state than usual. “Different. Not like yourself.”

“Do I smell bad? I just bathed,” Kaveh feels a little insulted, he knows how to wash himself thank you very much, but Alhaitham shakes his head before the heat inside him can rise. 

“You don’t smell like you,” Alhaitham’s voice is tinged with desperation, his words shaped like a plea, and Kaveh is so confused. He tilts his head down, trying to smell whatever Alhaitham is claiming is so wrong and that’s when he realizes. 

He doesn’t smell like himself, he smells like Alhaitham. His skin is painted with notes of amber and jasmine, woodsy and heavy which was wholly unlike his preferred scent of fresh padisarahs and cotton.

“Oh,” he lets out a relieved breath, letting his muscles relax so he was melted against the other man. “I must have used your soap instead of mine.” 

“But I like the way you smell,” Alhaitham whines, and Kaveh is affectionately reminded that his lover is the younger of them both. It isn’t often that Alhaitham lets his childishness show, but even he is vulnerable to the emotional effects of sleep deprivation. 

“I’ll fix it first thing in the morning, I’m tired now,” Kaveh reasons, closing his eyes.

“Now,” Kaveh can’t see the frown on Alhaitham’s face, but he can certainly hear it in the single word he mutters out.

 “Think of it this way,” Kaveh smiles, pulling out something he’d been keeping close to his chest. “If I smell like you, then everyone will know that I’m yours.”

Alhaitham doesn’t answer, but Kaveh feels his heart jump under his cheek, and he hides his smile in the fabric of his lover’s shirt. Nevermind that the ‘everyone’ that Kaveh speaks of consists of their four walls and Mehrak.