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The melody of pulse driven from the press of Kaveh’s palms to his ears
Sounds like the sea.
To the each of Alhaitham’s signed questions, Kaveh nods or shakes his head. He could use his lips and make Alhaitham read – they are, certainly, in a library –
But Alhaitham thinks his gritted teeth must say everything,
And the tightness of his shoulders, and the shaking of his hands.
Kaveh has him backed into as close of a corner that the House of Daena really has. He frames his beautiful body like a wall, pushing Alhaitham’s spine up against a bookshelf
To buffer and soak up the sounds of the impassioned student argument.
Today, Alhaitham is without the frayed wire of his earpiece. Kaveh’s newly returned from a project and he hasn’t had time to fix the noise cancelling feed.
So, the House of Daena: surely, Kaveh’d said, there’s no quieter place.
And Alhaitham, who knows down to his shuddering bones how lightly others consider the effect of their own presence,
Had gone along anyway. Here they are, then.
Kaveh protects him from the sound.
Alhaitham thinks: In my own way
I love him.
And through Kaveh’s palms he hears the ocean.
When he takes Cyno by the forearm, Tighnari knows that Cyno does not think
He’s appreciating the body there.
Cyno regards him with an open field of silence, waiting to be sown with the demands of Tighnari’s breath. His entire existence, even now, is shaped around the service he can do unto others
But never receive himself.
Tighnari strokes along the bone of his arm. It’s after dinner and Collei has finally, finally taken his advice and retreated to an early bed. The curtains are still drawn in her wake, and there is no dazzling light to glimmer and blossom in the ruddy marsh of Cyno’s eyes.
And Cyno will not be the first to speak, if he can help it. Heavens forbid he part his lips and taint the air with his confusion, his curiosity, his own wants and needs. He has spent so long unlearning the natural instinct of the person–
Unmade himself. Been unmade.
I’m shaking, Tighnari observes. When his hand retreats, it leaves, in Cyno’s arm
The lasting evidence of a bruise.
Cyno embraces him. Cyno comes to comfort him.
Tighnari kisses the side of his mouth and he wishes he could be the comfort, instead.
Kaven pushes their ear to the cavern of Cyno’s chest, and what they find there is
The regular thump, thump, thump of any living being.
One day, they chuckle, you’re going to have your own heart weighed on your scales.
Cyno, who is like Alhaitham with how he can miss the obvious thread of humour, inclines his head.
It is Kaveh’s own fault when Cyno says, Yes. I know which side will tip to the firmament.
Kaveh, who reacts to the horrifying trend of all their spouses in self-deprecation, clucks their tongue unhappily.
They remove their head and put their clutching hands to Cyno’s breast in its stead. He studies their self-clasped fingers with a distant curiosity. It puts Kaveh in mind of the village keepers in the desert
And they think, oh-so-fiercely, of the unstoppable force of their own love. No one deserves abandonment. No one deserves
A conditional affection.
What if, they propose, I take the heart out of you and hide it from the scales?
Cyno says, I don’t understand.
They are speaking quickly now. I want your heart to carry me to the afterlife. I am as selfish as the old God-Kings.
Lacking rebuke,
Cyno smiles.
If one looks down deep enough, then flesh and fur are the same. They are all just
Vibrating strings colliding on a one-dimensional level.
Alhaitham rubs the essential oils through Tighnari’s tail. Tighnari, spine bowed in his direction, is loosing long sighs of appreciation with his quiet mouth.
If one were to look hard enough, to touch each of their souls in turn and rifle through the contents
(The same way that Layla’s blind hands try to find the quill some other students have displaced,
Then)
Alhaitham and Tighnari would be the same.
No words. If Tighnari wishes for a different oil, he inclines his head and nods his chin in the direction of the basket. If Alhaitham’s hands feel overwhelming in their greasy quality, then he grunts and wipes them clean. Tighnari awaits his return like a siren who fell in love with a sailor and starves without him on the shore.
On some imperceptible and fundamental level, they are the same person. They are the same heart.
While words like love or fidelity make Alhaitham’s skin crawl, it is more pleasing to accept
The thought that they are shades of the same fate,
Framed by Tighnari’s relaxed exhales.
Cyno kisses the pads of Alhaitham’s fingers in balmy worship.
Kaveh encircles his arms around Tighnari’s waist, sunset and desire.
Tighnari tucks his head against Alhaitham’s sternum with a scientific faith.
Alhaitham levels his knee as a gentle weight in Cyno’s side, the definition of touch in the minor chord.
They are an unbreakable circle of reactions. They are extensions of the same body.
Kaveh kisses Alhaitham’s ears. [The conch.]
Alhaitham pinches his fingers around Tighnari’s ring. [The discus.]
Tighnari spreads his legs across Cyno’s lap. [The lotus flower.]
Cyno blunts his curled fist just above Kaveh’s heart. [The mace.]
All the better that they should be unexplainable to the eyes that peer into their windows.
Their union should be implacable and unplaceable, something to keep historians, centuries from now
Tenured in their attempts to explain the world’s simplest thing.
They were friends. They were enemies. They were roommates. They were allies.
Were they lovers? Less than friends? More than reciprocated envy and hate?
The forlorn lotus is shielded by the conch. The discus balances atop the head of the mace.
How many myriad ways can four people touch at once?
The word war is but one part of
Warmth.