Chapter Text
Clicking and tapping arise from his roommate’s keyboard, the blinding light accompanying his monitor in the corner of the dorm doing nothing to lessen Kaveh's headache. Kaveh rolls over in his bed, grappling with the bedsheets. One leg out, one in. Everything is far too loud, and warm. Okay, scratch that; the room is on fire suddenly, and the stupid clicking has not stopped. Kaveh groans as he flips onto his pillow, shoving his face into the makeshift sound-cancelling cushion.
It’s been months since he started his new semester at the Akademiya, halfway through his three-year architectural program he was placed with what had to be the most obnoxious roommate known to mankind. He plays something called League of Legends for days on end. When Kaveh returns from his morning classes, he's playing video games, evening classes? Same thing. He’s been greeted with the same sight repeatedly with no signs of stopping any time soon. His flatmate and his PC that sounds like it may just explode from the stress that is put on its fans. Not to mention the constant stench of ramen noodles that permeates itself throughout the entire building.
He may be slightly exaggerating.
Kaveh groans once more, into his palms this time. His hands ball into his blanket to throw it off of himself, his legs swing over the bedside, his blanket following en route. “Alhaitham. Could you be any fucking louder?” he grumbles.
Kaveh falters, shocked by himself for reacting in such a way, but he forgives him almost instantly. He hasn’t had a moment's peace since the start of September because of this man. Ever since the new semester began, Kaveh’s had to accommodate his living space to his junior, now in theory this would have been fine. It would have been. If not for the constant lack of discretion towards others in the vicinity. Staying awake, making noise, preventing Kaveh from his reasonable hours of rest the night before any important presentation he's ever had. Not to mention the man's appalling taste in decor. It was fine the first few days they were unpacking for their first term until his new ‘friend’ had so graciously bestowed upon him his video game posters and abundance of ridiculous mini figurines with shelves that occupied far too much space. Kaveh was a man of aesthetics, a student of the arts. He can't have all these unnecessary, admittedly expensive-looking, figurines staining his repertoire of artistic space!
His roommate only shrugs in response and continues clacking away at his keyboard. It’s practically two in the morning, what is so interesting that the junior insists on playing it at this hour? Kaveh manages to study the bright screen only to find a the same image he's been graced with for the past several months. He’s playing fucking League of Legends, again. Kaveh seethes. Has this man never felt the touch of another human being? The blonde scoffs as he scrutinizes his roommate's use of free time.
“Just go to sleep, Kaveh. If the noise is so burdensome, take my headphones-” He takes the clunky headphones off his desk and throws them in Kaveh’s direction without a singular glance away from his screen. Kaveh doesn't have the reaction time to prepare for the whiplash of the device hitting him square in the nose. He yelps, clutching at his face as his eyes fill with unshed tears.
“Ow, ow, ow! Alhaitham!” Kaveh lets one arm fall and grips his pillow to throw it. The cushion flies with a faulty speed. It farts out feathers as it lands on Alhaitham's lap. He grumbles at the ineffectiveness of his bite, still holding his nose with one hand, silently writhing in pain.
Alhaitham is sat still as feathers float down towards the ground. “Well, that was just plain rude.” His words stink with sarcasm, laced with a tease Kaveh hasn't been able to become fond of, not quite.
Kaveh’s mouth gapes in disbelief. People can call him clumsy and messy all they want, but Alhaitham is on a different level of it.
“And breaking my nose wasn’t? Are you kidding?” He nearly screams. Alhaitham holds up a finger in front of his lips, hinting at the blonde to be quiet. The junior glances at their shared clock, gesturing that it's almost three o’clock in the morning. “ I will eviscerate you,” the architect says with a glare, this would have been threatening if he hadn’t sounded like a low-budget snorkelling sound effect with his nose pinched. Alhaitham smirks and returns to his League of Legends game. The pillow remains discarded on his roommate’s lap, who has no intentions of returning it back to its owner. The senior huffs, irritated at the absolute lack of any effort on the junior’s end. He firmly places his feet on the ground and moves to stomp in front of his junior. His arms cross as he waits for Alhaitham to return his pillow. Alhaitham relaxes against his chair, gesturing to the pillow in a telling way of go ahead.
Kaveh's eyes widen at the implication. A red tinting his cheeks as he swipes the pillow from his junior’s lap and stomps back towards his own side of the room, glaring at the other one last time for good measure.
“You don’t have to be such a prick” Kaveh slumps back on his mattress, pillow in between his chest and arms, held tightly to himself.
“I’m not being a prick, senior.” He says with quotations in the air. There’s a pause as Alhaitham quietly chooses from an array of responses. “Just teaching you consequences; if you’re going to throw something at your lowerclassman, you should think it through.” Alhaitham makes sure the words jab just right at his senior, counting it as a victory when the blonde shuffles himself back under his blanket with an angry mumble.
“Still a prick...”
The two roll their eyes almost in unison. Alhaitham turns his cushioned swivel chair back towards his monitor, clicking resuming. Kaveh fluffs his pillow before drifting off into a well-deserved rest.
An alarm sings in the early morning, and Kaveh rolls onto his back to start his day off with his palms digging into his eyes, eliciting a throbbing pain to develop in his head, which worsens with each beep from his phone. He grunts as the screen lights up with its memorable 7:20 am. Three years into his architectural degree he’s still not used to the vigorous schedule. Alhaitham fluffs his pillow as he grumpily stares Kaveh down from the opposite side of the dorm. He attempts to glare back, but he doesn’t nearly have enough energy to do so. He deserves it for keeping me up anyway, Kaveh smiles to himself.
He shuffles his hands under his sleep shirt to fully unclip his binder again. Keeping the constricting binds off as he sleeps has become predictably impossible due to his whole having a roommate. It’s been difficult to find the time to leave it as such. After Alhaitham plants his face back into his pillow, Kaveh stands up, flinging a towel from his bedside table over his shoulder and stepping into their shared bathroom. The tiles under his feet chill him as he slips from his clothing, and dropping his pyjamas on the floor. He flips the lock and talks himself up into finally setting foot in the shower. Kaveh hisses as the water hits his skin. He tenses, waiting for it to slowly heat up before moving on with his routine. He begins to lather his body in soap suds of scented body wash. The room quickly filling with the familiar scent of zaytun peaches and mourning flowers as a result, as condensation fogs up the mirror and glass walls of the shower, he sighs.
Kaveh tries not to glance down at his figure every time he brushes his chest with his loofa or wipes foam on his thighs. Showering has been difficult ever since he came out, the reason to watch and feel his body, his unwanted body each time. Every sneak peek of his naked body in the mirror, any small semblance to his former feminine self, he crashes and burns. A bird with no wings that plummets through the endless sky. Memories of the binder he had stretched out, or the tape that sits nestled underneath, never quite being enough floods his mind.
He’s worked so hard to get on medication that could soothe these aches and burns but even after the two years of testosterone, not a whole lot has changed. Every coming day he has to remind himself, that it's just something he has to live with, that reflection is him, no matter what everyone else says about it being otherwise. It's normal to be who he is. It’s normal to have the genitalia of a girl even if he’s a man, that is perfectly fine— even if his breathing turns to gasps of thick air at the reminder of what he was born as.
His hands move on to massaging the shampoo into his scalp, squeezing conditioner out of its tube and letting it saturate the tips of his locks after washing away the first trials of his shampoo. He grips the shower head and lets the stream wash away his filth as it eats away at the bubbles that cover his imperfect body. A body that should never have been his. A body that has caused him heartbreak, assault and abuse from boys who never loved him enough, never loved all of him.
The water is turned off and the sound of dripping water is eerily too loud for the enclosed space he's in, it deafens the sound of banging on the other side of the door, failing to alert him of the waiting man on the other side. He manages to step out of the tiled prison in one piece. He’s drying himself off when he catches a reflection of himself in the foggy mirror, contorting his vision and sight. Hip dips, small but round chest, feminine shoulders, and plump thighs meet his gaze. He can't stop the sting behind his eyes or the way he falters at the sight, stepping back from the reflection, turning around and forgetting.
It’s not until he hears his roommate’s complaining that he’s able to pop the bubble of insecurity that he’s trapped himself inside.
“Kaveh! Hurry up, man, I gotta piss!” Kaveh snickers. Alhaitham tends to interrupt his train of thought when it’s most needed. Maybe, his self-doubt is so loud it slips under the cracks of the door, perhaps he thinks out loud, or his does Alhaitham have some kind of sixth sense? He thinks, deciding to dwell on it no further. Instead starting to hurriedly return back to clipping his binder around himself, tossing on his shirt, and buttoning his jeans up.
“One second!” The words leave him winded as he fixes his damp hair in a rush. He’ll have to bring his brush with him to class it seems. The door swings open when he finally undoes the lock and a flushed Alhaitham pushes past him. “Geez, manners much?”
Alhaitham glares at him before speaking up. “Kaveh, if you do not leave this bathroom right now, I will drop my pants right here, right now, it won't be pleasant.”
The blonde rolls his eyes and closes the door before going to grab his bag and phone off the charger. The lock screen reads eight am on the dot which meant he had just enough time to get to his architecture lecture in time. He stuffs his draft paper under his arm, shuffles into his worn-out sneakers and grabs his keys before ungracefully tripping over himself.
The walk, or rather jog, to his car is short, only because he skipped several stairs leading down to the garage unit beneath their dorm building.
The car door is swung at above-average speed and Kaveh worries he may have almost hit something if not for his ankle being in the way. He clutches at it as his hand turns the key in its ignition. The old and burnt-out 2000 Ford Taurus chugs as the ancient engine tries its best to function. A heavy sigh leaves Kaveh’s lungs when he pulls out of his parking spot and turns towards the road.
Kaveh runs from his eight o’clock architecture lecture to his art and design class at ten. With his rolled-up project under his arm, it becomes increasingly difficult not to crinkle or ruin it in some way during his run across site. The campus is larger than he would have liked. It causes for long ventures across halls and far too many bumped shoulders for his liking but he's learnt to cope, choosing to focus on his studies instead. Monday’s are always the toughest, he hates them due to his loaded schedule. He tries not to exhaust himself too much, knowing he still has his shift at Lambad's later that night. Then it's rise at the ass crack of dawn again to work at Puspa Café, in other words, fuck his life. Being friendly and putting a smile on his face to serve coffee to rushing students is one thing, flirting and putting up with drunk students trying to let off steam. Different thing entirely.
He bursts through the door of his classroom, wandering eyes quickly focusing on him. He laughs nervously, taking a deep breath in an attempt to withhold his desire to find a hole and crawl inside of it, never come out. The professor takes one glance at his dishevelled appearance and sighs as she gets back to explaining the anatomy of the human body. Kaveh turns to the stool he typically occupies—the only chair in the entire room that has absolutely no back support. He settles down and sets his bag down beside his feet, not before taking out his usual graphite pencil and sketchbook. Fantastic, late during the start of a new unit. His palms dig into his droopy eyes, the vision behind his lids becoming dotted with dark purple spots at the pressure.
Kaveh jolts out of his almost comatose state, his teacher’s grunt wakes him up. She clears her throat and immediately drags his attention to the subject at hand. The entire class was three body sketches in and he hasn’t even drawn a single line. Quickly he flips open his journal and gets to marking traces on the paper in haste.
His scribbles at the end of class look nothing like his classmates. Move on and don’t compare your art to others. He internally curses himself for taking an advanced trigonometry class after the past gruelling three and a half hours. Kaveh’s brain is barely functioning as is, and now he has to do math on top of it? Architecture hasn't been much better, but why in Celestia did he enroll in another mathematics course? He grovels in his self-pity as he exits the class. He's halfway toward his next lecture when a water drop wets the top of his head. The gods seem to act despite the blonde these recent years, especially after his mother left for Fontaine. The droplets fall faster from the sky as he reaches his car, slamming the door shut before the downpour drenches his Ford.
He wants to worry about missing his trig lecture but the issue at hand is his soggy building draft, his professor will kill him if he hands in a piece with even the slightest wrinkle. Kaveh lets out a loud swear in the quiet air of the car, letting his frustration release in the form of sobbed-out tears. The last time he brought a project back with a torn corner, he was wrung out in front of the entire lecture hall and had to leave while tears stained his cheeks. He does not want a repeat of last time.
He rummages through his jacket pocket for his keys before shoving them in the ignition and starting the engine. Looks like he's ditching his last class, he needs to fix this fuck-up.
Kaveh steps up the stairs of the dormitory building, soaked head to toe from the rainstorm. The carpeted flooring making a brushing noise that irritates his ears every time he happens to not lift his foot high enough. Drops of water plop on the ground with every step he takes toward his dorm. His shirt and jacket, even his pants are wet. His binder clings to his sweating skin uncomfortably, chafing his skin and forming several rashes he chooses to ignore. He twists the doorknob to the right and is greeted with an all too familiar sight and smell. Of course, Alhaitham is at his computer, playing Minecraft. His junior fancies older games, no matter how many updates it has had over the past decade. The game pauses as the other turns around in his swivel chair, leaning back, manspreading and arms crossed.
Alhaitham takes in the form of his drenched roommate and makes quick work of laughing at him. “Archons, what happened to you?” His grin is stupid, his laugh is stupid. Kaveh remarks.
Kaveh has to roll his eyes and sigh. “None of your business, Grandpa,” he scoffs, making a dig at his grey hair colour. Alhaitham continues to smile, personally enjoying the uproar he brings out in the blonde.
The room is a mess, it smells like cup noodles again. For fuck’s sake, how is he muscular when all that he supposedly eats is pure carbs? What kind of sick metabolism does this man have? Kaveh takes in all the abandoned cups, the full trash bin next to the desk in the corner and as he glances past the junior, and candy wrappers? Kaveh groans.
“Can you maybe clean up after yourself, just once in a lifetime?” Kaveh demands and Alhaitham shrugs, a signature move that’s now been engraved in the blonde’s memory. “Dude—” He picks up a discarded sock and throws it in the laundry bin, “It’s like I'm bunking with a pig!” He just went through a rainy, soggy hell only to come back to this nest of pure junk. All because his roommate has no mind to tidy their shared living space.
“I’m gonna go change, and take a shower while I’m at it.” He doesn't want to, desperately doesn't want to, but getting a cold might be worse. Kaveh mulls over in his head as he flips around in his clean clothes hamper, making sure to pick out a towel, shirt, pants and another binder that he shoves in between the rest of the bundled fabric to hide. “Clean this shit up while I’m gone, it smells rancid.”
Alhaitham raises his hands in surrender as Kaveh enters the bathroom. He’s got a good four hours before his shift at Lambad’s. He’s going to savour every last bit of his unplanned break.
By the time he leaves the steam-filled room, their dorm is spotless and Alhaitham is back at his desk, gaming as if all he did was twiddle his thumbs. Kaveh pats his hair in between his towel, admiring the look of a clean dorm.
He lets out a slightly audible woah that Alhaitham hears somehow. Those headphones have got to be magic.
Alhaitham has that look, as if he knows exactly what Kaveh is so astonished at. “Looks good, right?” Kaveh can’t help but nod, eyes still glued to the wiped-down desk, empty trash can, and tucked-in bedsheets.
He throws the wet towel in the laundry basket and cocks his head. “Since when can you clean?” he utters in complete disbelief. “Is everything just stashed under your bed or something?” Kaveh’s teasing him but still, he kneels down to check under the beds.
“I make a mess on purpose, you coming back and insulting me is the highlight of my day,” Alhaitham admits, snickering through every word as if he couldn’t take the words he said seriously.
Kaveh squints at him. “What are you, some sort of masochist?” He accuses his roommate in a disgusted tone. Alhaitham snorts.
“No no, I’m kidding, but it is still hilarious.”
“Ah, so just a perv, got it,” The blonde laughs as he sits down at his drafting table, laying out a new roll of paper to redo his draft.
After a few minutes, Kaveh huffs a pained exhale at the memory of his project getting doused with its fair share of rainwater.
His junior turns from where he’s sat and grumbles “Did your pet fish die? What’s gotten your panties in such a twist?” Alhaitham rests his fist on his cheek as Kaveh stills momentarily and flinches at the choice of words. So many words to choose from for a Haravatat student and he chooses those. He doesn’t know, he couldn’t. Move on.
“Oh, well, my architecture project got soaked in the rain earlier when I was running to my car.” Everything is okay, keep talking. “And last time I brought in so much as a slightly wrinkled assignment, he reamed me out in front of everyone.”
“Reamed? Wow, strong reaction.”
“Yeah, well, none of my professors take it easy. My art prof? Yikes.”
It’s been forever since he and Alhaitham have had a proper conversation, the idle back and forth calms his nerves. Did he judge his junior too hastily? When Alhaitham first moved in it was difficult to get used to another person because even then, it started on rocky footing. The posters, figurines, and PC took up enormous amounts of space, and it ruined the aesthetic he had going so far.
He’d complained to his friends day in and day out how frustrating it was to have a roommate, and of course, they’d assured him that it took time to get to know someone. But will it matter by the end of this year? By the time it’s summer, he’d have already graduated and moved out.
It’s fine, a few more months won't hurt. He assures himself as he returns to repairing his project.