Work Text:
Out of chaos, order.
Observe, then:
Here, the Light of Kshahrewar spread out on his bed like a sunbeam made solid.
More than one scholar has accused Alhaitham of lacking the sensitivity to appreciate poetry despite graduating under the Haravatat banner, but that’s their own hubris. Language is the systemization of sounds, ordering them into words, into phrases, into sentences, into meaning. Order does not have to be linear so long as meaning is made. More than almost anyone in Sumeru, Alhaitham understands the weight and structure—and thus, power—of words.
Like this, Kaveh has been rendered speechless yet Alhaitham takes his meaning perfectly. His lips are bitten red and parted, clever mouth unable to do more than keen and wail as he trembles, pride shucked aside in favor of attending to the force of his need.
Alhaitham did this. Others write with pen and ink, but with only a few well-placed touches, he can create poetry out of this body.
A vicious blade of pleasure cuts through him at the thought—that Kaveh designs palaces that dare to defy the forces of gravity, and yet he cannot defy the laws of his own body, the law that demands Alhaitham sate the heat within him.
Equal, yet opposing.
It would all be so much easier if Kaveh would just accept Alhaitham’s bite, but he has never been someone to choose the path of least resistance. It infuriates him in their daily life how difficult Kaveh makes nearly every aspect of his living for himself, but during his heat the fury is transformed into a deeply satisfying intoxication.
Kaveh has had many lovers over the years, especially during their time in the Akademiya. He collects beautiful people and trinkets both, treats them all well but not preciously. He has always loved freely and generously, offering with open hands his goodwill to all who ask, and Alhaitham knows that these are the same traits that will irrevocably ruin him one day in a world steadily turning more capricious.
There is a part of him that wants to impart on his senior the rational truth of the world for his own well-being, but a larger part of him that wants to preserve that goodness however long he can. That in itself is an irrational desire, but today it is one that he can live with.
It is technically possible there is someone else for whom Kaveh is saving his bite, but it has been nearly a year since he moved in and as far as he knows, Kaveh has not pursued other bedpartners. Alhaitham understands what that implies, even if Kaveh will never say it aloud: here is a place he can be safe. Here is someone he can trust. Alhaitham will not misplace that trust by demonstrating too much tenderness, to truly reveal the thorns roiling beneath his own skin for Kaveh to impale himself upon.
Within and without.
Without: the place Alhaitham prefers to occupy to observe and preserve the values of Sumeru; not at the seat of power, but comfortably beside it.
Within: the place Alhaitham prefers to be when it comes to Kaveh.
He is soft and hot inside, thighs parting easily as soon as he smells Alhaitham’s intent in response to his own. Everything about Kaveh becomes more agreeable while he is getting fucked. His own defensiveness gives way to a delicious contradiction—he wants Alhaitham to enact obscenities upon him. He wants to be praised. He wants to be defiled. He wants, in this moment, to take back everything that he metes out to others and Alhaitham is the only one who can give it to him.
“Harder,” He demands, damp hair slipping through Alhaitham’s fingers like flax thread, eyes hazy and unfocused. “Haitham, harder, I need—“
It’s the only time he voices aloud a desire for cruelty. Usually, he’s complaining that Alhaitham is too harsh, while knowing full well that the friction is what he likes. The odds. It settles something in him too, to be able to give Kaveh something that under normal circumstances he insists Alhaitham lacks.
And as for Kaveh—well, he need never know that he is the only person Alhaitham has ever felt the urge to see ruined and remade like this, broken down into his primal, composite parts like a pictograph into its base brushstrokes. When he deigns to bare himself to the twilight of Alhaitham’s gaze, he becomes the brightest star, incandescent with pleasure.
His throat is bare and slick with sweat; it would be so easy for Alhaitham to sink his teeth in and lay his claim like a sculptor chiseling his mark, gather the taste of salt and iron on his tongue and feed it back to him.
What can the richest soil house that I cannot already harvest from you? Why do you still resist the turning of the earth, the tilling of the field?
He presses those words like seeds into his skin with each kiss and Kaveh must absorb some of his meaning whether he intends to or not because he bears down, wraps his arms recklessly around Alhaitham's shoulders as he comes.
Expelling his half of their shared madness.