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Kaveh was not in love.
He had, as all men do, pondered the concept. Wondered if perhaps he’d stepped into it one night, barefoot, drunk, bleeding from the pride again, and hadn't noticed until the sticky aftermath. But love—real love—was warm, domestic, ethical. Something held up by shared moral frameworks and matching dinnerware. Something that didn’t come in the shape of a man with no coasters and an inability to knock before entering the bath.
Which is to say:
It wasn’t Alhaitham.
And yet—
“What is love,” Kaveh said, flicking a pencil across the kitchen table like he was hosting a symposium and not sulking over his own thesis notes, “if not a state of voluntary moral subjugation to the aesthetic whims of another person?”
Alhaitham looked up from the corner of the couch, shirtless and apathetic, with the infuriating glow of someone who had just solved another algorithm and was now ready to dismantle whatever argument Kaveh dared to assemble.
“It’s not that,” Alhaitham said, flipping a page in the most obnoxiously loud way possible. “That sounds like the worst peer-reviewed polycule in history.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Kaveh said, immediately combative, “was I expecting too much nuance from the man who thinks withholding compliments is a personality trait?”
“Was I expecting too much original thought from the man who writes architectural critiques like they’re dramatic monologues? I quote: ‘The western façade sobs into the soil with the weight of its own tragedy.’ You’re not dating the building, Kaveh.”
“You don’t get to talk about dating,” Kaveh snapped, jabbing his finger at him like a thesis advisor rejecting a particularly cursed proposal. “You don’t even believe in love!”
Alhaitham arched an eyebrow. “I believe in biochemical responses to compatible dopamine triggers.”
“Oh my god.”
“It’s literally all oxytocin and mutual proximity. Remove the visual stimuli, introduce a new environmental constant, and watch how fast humans switch allegiances.”
“You mean cheating.”
“I mean statistical probability of attachment drift over long timelines.”
“You mean cheating.”
Alhaitham was silent. He took a sip of his tea—Kaveh’s tea, which he’d made without asking, using the last of the expensive Osmanthus leaves Kaveh had been saving for when he finally submitted his paper to that Sumeru design journal that kept pretending not to read his emails.
Kaveh stared at the hollow of Alhaitham’s throat as he swallowed and remembered—
No.
We’re not doing that today.
“Okay,” Kaveh said, tossing his notes aside in the most dramatic, suffering artist fashion he could muster, “say I were interested in a romantic relationship—which I’m not—what, exactly, is your philosophical framework for what that should look like?”
“I don’t have one.”
“You don’t—what?”
“I don’t believe in constructing ethical frameworks for things that are inherently irrational. You’re trying to map moral objectivity onto desire. It won’t stick.”
“Oh my god,” Kaveh hissed. “You’re the reason we have ethics committees.”
“And you’re the reason they have to meet every week.”
“I—we—do you think relationships should be built on nothing? Like just vibes and shared rent?”
“Relationships are agreements. Shared housing is already a contract. Sex is biology. Romance is ego. What’s left to argue?”
“I’m going to murder you with a chaise lounge.”
“You’d strain your back. Again.”
“That was one time! And I was reaching for a book!”
“You were trying to throw a candlestick at me.”
“Because you said love was fundamentally unethical!”
“It is.”
“WHAT?”
Alhaitham sighed, like someone being forced to explain basic math to a wine-drunk cat. “Love is selective. It encourages favoritism. It creates power imbalances. Even reciprocity doesn’t eliminate the inequality of emotional investment.”
Kaveh made a noise like he’d just been slapped with a moral philosophy textbook. “Are you seriously arguing that not being in love is more ethical?”
“I’m arguing that it's more intellectually honest.”
“Oh, go fuck a chalkboard.”
“Tempting. Less dramatic. Doesn’t cry when you forget to put the lid on the toothpaste.”
“I don’t cry—!”
“You sniffle performatively.”
“It’s called being emotionally attuned, you bureaucratic footnote!”
They stared at each other.
The air between them was now charged with the sticky ozone of mutual exasperation and poorly hidden arousal.
Alhaitham’s shirt was still off. Kaveh’s hair was falling into his eyes. The sunlight struck him like a half-finished oil painting. Every inch of this house smelled like ink, mint, and rage.
“…You’re attracted to me, aren’t you,” Alhaitham said, smug as sin.
“Don’t flatter yourself,” Kaveh snapped, immediately standing up to put distance between them, which was, unfortunately, the worst decision he could have made. Because the moment he stood, Alhaitham stood too.
Now they were toe to toe. Not arguing anymore, just breathing.
“Well, this is unethical,” Kaveh said, weakly.
Alhaitham blinked slowly, like a man preparing to destroy a religion. “Define unethical.”
“I—” Kaveh began, and then choked a little on his own dignity. “We’re cohabitating. There are boundaries. This is academically unsound.”
“We’ve been sharing a bathroom for years. That boundary’s already compromised.”
“I meant romantic boundaries.”
“There are none.”
“Oh my god.”
“Kaveh,” Alhaitham said, voice low, voice dangerous, voice pulling at the strings of something Kaveh absolutely did not have words for yet, “if we’re being honest—truly honest—was this ever about the ethics?”
“…I hate you.”
“You don’t.”
“I do.”
“Prove it.”
“Wha—how?”
“Don’t kiss me.”
Kaveh made a noise that could only be described as "academically unprofessional."
The tension cracked like glass in the heat.
Something in the air shifted.
Neither of them moved. Neither of them flinched.
“Fine,” Kaveh said, after a long, unholy moment. “Fine. If you’re so sure of your thesis, Alhaitham, then debate me.”
“…We’ve been debating for the last hour.”
“No, no, no.” Kaveh jabbed a finger into Alhaitham’s sternum, which was a mistake. It was too warm and too solid, and now he was thinking about muscle tone instead of refutations. “Debate me properly. Formal style. Framework, definitions, value criterion.”
“Loser has to do the dishes for a month?”
“Loser has to admit emotional vulnerability.”
Alhaitham paused. Considered. Tilted his head.
“You’re on,” he said.
Kaveh narrowed his eyes. “One more thing.”
“Hmm?”
“No touching.”
“That wasn’t part of the original contract.”
“I’m amending it.”
“Denied.”
“You can’t deny my amendment—”
“I just did.”
“You insufferable bastard!”
“You academically unethical romantic.”
“Take that back!”
“Make me.”
Silence.
Eventually:
Kaveh huffed. “I’m making tea.”
Alhaitham sat back down, victorious.
Kaveh went to the kitchen, muttering something vile about ethics and sex and semicolon usage.
The argument wasn’t over.
Of course not.
It never would be.
Which is why, naturally, it was love.
---
RULES OF ENGAGEMENT:
No interruptions unless it is for dramatic emphasis.
No touching unless one is actively dying.
The bell may be rung once per round. No exceptions.
Logical fallacies will be called out and roasted.
Loser must admit emotional vulnerability.
If there is kissing, it doesn’t count.
This is still a safe and consensual domestic environment, you absolute animals.
The coffee table was now a battlefield.
A battlefield, Kaveh thought, as he arranged his index cards like landmines of emotional intelligence, of minds and philosophies. Of subtlety and strategy. Of the human heart, and also that weird part of the human soul that gets really smug when it uses footnotes.
“I’m ready,” he said, crossing his legs like a vengeful academic on the thesis defense warpath.
“You’ve spilled ink on your shirt,” Alhaitham noted, not looking up from his tablet. “Again.”
“It’s vintage,” Kaveh lied, because he had no time for laundry or shame.
Alhaitham hummed. That annoying, I'm-going-to-win-this hum that Kaveh had started hearing in his dreams. Usually right before he dreamed about punching him. Or kissing him. Or both.
“Opening statements,” Kaveh announced, lifting the ceremonial Debate Bell and ringing it once.
Alhaitham arched an eyebrow. “I thought the bell was a joke.”
Kaveh glared. “It’s canon now. We live in a shared delusional reality. Respect the lore.”
“Very well.” Alhaitham put down the tablet. He stood. He stood. Like some kind of smug, shirtless lawyer from hell, towering over the table as though this were a courtroom and not their shared living room full of unpaid bills and emotional baggage.
He adjusted an imaginary pair of glasses.
“Ahem,” he said, formally.
Kaveh was already regretting everything.
Alhaitham: Opening Statement
“Ladies, gentlemen, and dramatically inclined architects—”
“Objection.”
“Overruled.”
“I am the dramatically inclined architect.”
“Exactly.”
Kaveh seethed.
“…As I was saying. I stand by the thesis that romantic relationships, while societally prevalent, are ethically flawed structures. They introduce preferential bias, reduce individual autonomy, and rely on emotionally volatile constructs such as trust, desire, and shared Spotify playlists.”
“You literal demon.”
“Moreover,” Alhaitham continued, stepping forward with a glint in his eye that should not have been legal, “the pursuit of romantic connection often leads to reduced cognitive performance, poor judgment, and in Kaveh’s case, the complete and utter collapse of impulse control.”
“I am not the one who ‘accidentally’ made two cups of tea this morning.”
“You drank both.”
“I WAS SETTING A MOOD.”
Kaveh: Opening Statement
Kaveh stood. Flourished. Nearly knocked over a wine glass.
“Love,” he began, hand on heart, face upturned like he was preparing to be sketched in charcoal on a rainy windowsill, “is not a biological weakness. It is a moral triumph. It is the active choice to invest in another person’s happiness, despite risk. Despite ego. Despite sharing a bathroom with a man who clips his nails in the sink.”
“That’s hearsay,” Alhaitham muttered.
“It’s forensic evidence,” Kaveh hissed. “The point is, love—real love—is deliberately ethical. It is the construction of shared values. Of mutual vulnerability. Of compassion as a praxis!”
“You sound like a poster in a therapy office.”
“At least I go to therapy!”
There was a beat of silence.
Alhaitham blinked slowly.
“I know,” he said, too softly.
Kaveh did not cry.
He sniffled. Aggressively. Theatrically. Ethically.
Round One: Logical Fallacies and Flirting That Should Be Illegal
“You’re using appeal to emotion,” Alhaitham said.
“You’re using a strawman argument.”
“You’re using your hands again—”
“They’re expressive!”
“They’re distracting.”
“They’re built for art and war.”
Alhaitham’s eyes flicked to Kaveh’s fingers. His mouth twitched.
Kaveh noticed. Unfortunately.
“Don’t look at me like that.”
“I’m just analyzing your flawed methodology.”
“Your face is a flawed methodology!”
“That doesn’t even make sense.”
“It doesn’t have to. I’m poetic.”
“You’re unhinged.”
“I contain multitudes.”
“You contain wine and unresolved issues.”
“And yet you’re still here.”
They stared.
The bell rang itself.
Neither of them moved.
Round Two: Definitions of “Emotional Vulnerability” and Other Forbidden Sorcery
“Define vulnerability,” Alhaitham said, tapping his pen. “In operational terms.”
“It’s the willingness to be seen,” Kaveh replied instantly, voice sharp and shaky. “To offer someone the parts of you that tremble, and believe they won’t use them to destroy you.”
“That’s irrational.”
“That’s human.”
“Then it’s inconvenient.”
“Everything worth having is inconvenient!”
“Even me?”
Silence.
The air thinned. The windows might’ve fogged.
Kaveh did not answer.
Not because he didn’t have one.
But because he did.
Alhaitham looked down. Just for a second.
“…Proceed.”
Round Three: Accusations of Codependence and the Great Coffee Spoon Incident
“Your definition of love encourages dependency.”
“Oh, and yours encourages intellectual masturbation!”
“At least mine doesn’t lead to crying over ancient poems at three in the morning.”
“I WAS MOVED BY THE SYMBOLISM—”
“You were moved by the fact that the poet died alone and you identified.”
“That is slander.”
“That is fact.”
“That is slanderous fact!”
“Bell,” Alhaitham said, ringing it twice, even though that was against the rules.
“ABUSE OF POWER!”
“You wrote a poem about a coffee spoon last week, Kaveh.”
“It was metaphorical!”
“It was a 30-line sonnet about me not stirring it enough.”
“I said the spoon was a metaphor for intimacy!”
“You said I ‘never go deep enough to clink the sugar.’”
Pause.
“…Okay,” Kaveh admitted, “that was maybe a little about sex.”
Round Four: The End of Denial and Other Catastrophes
“So what,” Kaveh said, finally out of cards, out of breath, out of excuses, “you think I’m just incapable of real affection?”
Alhaitham didn’t answer immediately.
He stood. Walked over. Slowly. Like a man approaching a wild animal. Or a very breakable, gold-threaded thing.
“You are,” he said, voice barely audible, “the most catastrophically affectionate person I have ever met.”
Kaveh blinked. Swallowed.
“That’s—”
“It’s not a compliment.”
“Oh.”
“It’s not an insult either.”
“Oh.”
“It’s just a fact.”
“…That you live with.”
Alhaitham looked away.
Kaveh’s heart did something embarrassing.
Final Round: Mutual Academic Ruin
“I’m tired,” Alhaitham said, eventually.
“Me too.”
“Let’s call it a draw.”
“Absolutely not. You lose. You felt things.”
“You quoted Rumi and threw a coaster at my head.”
“I was feeling things artistically!”
“Same thing.”
Kaveh slumped back onto the couch, head hitting the cushion beside Alhaitham’s shoulder. Not touching. Not yet. Just adjacent. Parallel lines in denial.
“I hate you,” Kaveh muttered.
“No, you don’t.”
“…I could.”
“You won’t.”
“…Wanna make more tea?”
“Only if you define ‘tea’ as emotional avoidance.”
“Obviously.”
And so, they sat.
In a living room full of empty cups, half-written arguments, and silences too loud for anyone but them.
Somewhere beneath the coffee table, the Debate Bell rolled off its coaster and hit the floor.
They did not notice.
Because Alhaitham looked at him again.
And Kaveh did not look away.
---
Kaveh had never known such defeat.
Not in front of the Scribe, not in his final critique panel, not even the time his mother asked if he was “seeing anyone intellectually compatible” and then followed it up with, “What about that roommate of yours? He’s… practical.”
It had been a draw.
That’s what they’d said.
But only the way a ceasefire is a draw. When both armies are out of ammunition and someone has started weeping into their wine.
He woke up the next morning sprawled on the living room floor, surrounded by index cards, ink-stained fingertips, and three half-full teacups that tasted like heartbreak and cinnamon.
Alhaitham was nowhere in sight.
There was a folded blanket draped over Kaveh’s shoulders.
He would kill him.
There were unspoken rules to the house.
The left drawer was Kaveh’s.
The top shelf of the fridge was Alhaitham’s.
The windowsill was neutral territory and also used for declarations of war.
Emotional proximity was strictly forbidden unless someone was sick, dying, or sleepy.
Today, Kaveh was cleaning.
With vengeance.
He stormed through the living room like a glittery hurricane, scooping up abandoned books, lint, intellectual debris, and—was that his notebook under the couch with Alhaitham’s handwriting in it??
He paused. Flipped it open.
There, in elegant, tight script, beneath a sketch of Kaveh’s latest model of a multi-layered atrium, was written:
“Unnecessarily complex. But…beautiful.”
Kaveh closed the notebook with a snap so hard it was legally a threat.
“YOU ABSOLUTE—”
“Good morning,” came Alhaitham’s voice from the hallway, achingly casual.
He was in his pajamas. His voice was sleepy. His hair was sleepy. He looked like sin and science and too many unread messages.
Kaveh, shirt half untucked, elbow-deep in revenge vacuuming, hissed like a threatened cat.
“Did you touch my sketchbook?”
Alhaitham blinked. “…I moved it. You left it on the heater. Again.”
“That’s boundaried misconduct!”
“It’s architectural arson, technically.”
“You wrote in it.”
“Marginalia. It’s a compliment.”
“It’s emotional sabotage!”
“I said it was beautiful.”
Kaveh froze.
The vacuum whirred awkwardly in the background, like even it didn’t want to be involved.
“…You can’t just say things like that,” Kaveh muttered, flicking off the vacuum and pretending he wasn’t blushing so hard he might start bleeding embarrassment through his pores. “That’s emotional warfare. This is a ceasefire zone.”
Alhaitham shrugged, utterly unmoved. “My comment was entirely observational.”
“Observational my ass! You wrote it in cursive! Nobody uses cursive unless they’re feeling something!”
There was a silence.
A long, painful, aggressively casual silence.
Alhaitham tilted his head. “Would you like me to write it in Helvetica next time?”
“I WILL THROW THIS VACUUM CLEANER AT YOU.”
“Only if you untangle the cord first.”
Kaveh inhaled. Deep. Slow. Spiritual.
He was going to commit a homicide. A beautiful, well-lit, structurally sound homicide.
The problem was not the debate.
The problem was what the debate had unearthed.
Which was: nothing.
Nothing had happened.
And Kaveh had spent seven hours defending the sanctity of love and relationships, exposing his heart like an open wound in front of the man who thought passion was a scheduling inconvenience—and for what?
No kiss.
No admission.
No epiphany.
Just index cards and lingering glances and the humiliating realization that he still thought about the way Alhaitham had looked at him when he said “you don’t hate me.”
Kaveh decided the only solution was laundry.
Because nothing said emotional repression like folding a stranger’s socks with passive-aggressive precision.
“Why are you in my room?” Alhaitham asked.
Kaveh didn’t look up. He was elbow-deep in a pile of very offensively neutral-toned shirts. “Your laundry bin was spilling into the hallway. Like a metaphor.”
“For what?”
“For the ethical failure of this domestic arrangement!”
“Is this about the debate again?”
“No!” Kaveh said, holding up a sock like it had committed war crimes. “This is about boundaries!”
“You’re folding my underwear.”
“I’m sorting the wreckage of your moral compass!”
Alhaitham leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, voice smug. “It’s interesting that you’re doing this right after reading my note.”
“That was not a note.”
“It was in your sketchbook.”
“It was graffiti.”
“It was praise.”
“It was—shut up!”
Alhaitham stepped forward. Just once. Measured.
He reached down, picked up one of the folded shirts, and unfolded it. Slowly. Intentionally.
Kaveh stared. “Did you just—did you just undo my emotional labor?!”
“I’m correcting the fold. It was crooked.”
“That’s—you—you—MONSTER!”
Kaveh lunged.
They ended up wrestling over a towel.
Yes. A towel.
It was deeply undignified.
There was hair-pulling. There was foot-stomping.
There was absolutely, definitively, no kissing.
There was, however, proximity.
Proximity like breath on breath, like fingers caught on the hem of a shirt that was absolutely not about to be removed, like a pause so thick it became structural load-bearing silence.
“…This is unethical,” Kaveh whispered, fists still twisted in cotton.
“Then stop.”
“I can’t.”
Alhaitham didn’t answer.
Neither did Kaveh.
Eventually, they both let go.
The towel fell to the floor.
They stared at it like it had ruined their lives.
The next hour was quiet.
Too quiet.
Kaveh made tea. Bitter, on purpose.
Alhaitham sat on the windowsill and read with violent composure.
There were four feet of distance between them.
There were five miles of unspoken things.
At some point, Kaveh tried to say something, but it came out as:
“So you really think people can’t love each other ethically?”
Alhaitham closed his book. Didn’t look up.
“…I think people try. I think most of them fail.”
Kaveh nodded. Bitterly. “And you think we’d fail too.”
“I think we already have.”
“Oh.”
Beat.
“But,” Alhaitham added, carefully, “failure is not always the end of a theory. Sometimes it’s just a bad hypothesis.”
Kaveh’s breath caught. Somewhere stupid. Somewhere soft.
“…You’re infuriating.”
“And you’re loud.”
“I hate your bookshelf.”
“I’ve catalogued the architectural insults you’ve hidden in our furniture.”
“Oh my god.”
Alhaitham looked up. Finally.
There was something in his eyes.
Not vulnerability. Not yet.
But a fault line. A crack.
Kaveh looked away. “I'm going to bed.”
“Okay.”
He stood. Waited.
“…Your bed,” Alhaitham clarified. “Right?”
Kaveh paused.
“Obviously,” he said.
Silence.
“Goodnight,” Kaveh added, voice too raw.
“Goodnight.”
He left.
Alhaitham did not follow.
Neither of them slept.
---
The first thing Kaveh did the next morning was tear down the living room curtains.
They were gray.
They were practical.
They were selected by a man who said things like “form follows function” and once argued that color theory was propaganda for undiagnosed romantics.
And Kaveh? Kaveh was vengeance in gold trim.
“I’m redecorating,” he declared, voice still hoarse from last night’s nothing. His nothing. Their nothing. The nothing that had left his throat dry and his hands shaking over pillowcases that still smelled like unspoken things.
Alhaitham looked up from the couch with the expression of a man already regretting being conscious.
“You’re doing what?”
“Redecorating.”
“We live here.”
“Yes. Together. Which means shared space. Which means shared aesthetic responsibility. Which means—”
“You’re retaliating over the sketchbook note.”
“That’s slander.”
“You’re retaliating emotionally.”
“That’s defamation.”
“You’re reacting irrationally.”
“That’s called being human!”
“You don’t even believe in minimalism, do you?”
“I believe in taste.”
“You think ‘taste’ means draping the windows in tangerine chiffon like an unmedicated theatre major.”
Kaveh snapped the curtain rod out of the bracket with all the rage of a man two seconds from full-tilt homicide by home décor.
“I am reclaiming my narrative.”
Alhaitham blinked slowly. “It’s a curtain.”
“It’s a manifesto!”
“It’s a fire hazard.”
“I HOPE IT BURNS DOWN YOUR STUPID REPRESSION!”
Pause.
Silence.
The curtain fell to the floor, like a metaphor for everything neither of them wanted to deal with.
“Let’s assume,” Alhaitham said an hour later, arms crossed as he surveyed the tragedy that was now the living room, “that a relationship is a contract.”
Kaveh spun around, mid-tack-stabbing the new fabric into place. “No.”
“No?”
“No more metaphors. No more debate. No more ethical frameworks. Just let me redecorate in peace.”
“This is not peace. This is citrus-scented anarchy.”
“It’s the only thing in this house with emotional honesty!”
Alhaitham stepped forward. “You don’t think a relationship should be a contract?”
“I think if you try to quantify feelings into a flowchart, you shouldn’t be allowed to feel them at all.”
“That’s not an argument. That’s just projection.”
“It’s critique!”
“It’s petty!”
“It’s accurate!”
Alhaitham inhaled sharply through his nose, like he was calculating how many minutes of silence it would take to make Kaveh combust into stardust.
Kaveh narrowed his eyes. “You think autonomy and intimacy are incompatible.”
“I think autonomy and intimacy are in tension.”
“You think surrendering part of yourself to care for someone else is inherently unethical.”
“I think it’s unsustainable.”
“You think love is unsustainable.”
“I think it’s inefficient.”
Kaveh turned. The curtain slipped from his hand. “You think I’m inefficient.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
Pause.
Another one of those aching, ugly, awful silences.
“…This isn’t about the curtain,” Alhaitham said.
“No shit.”
They stared at each other across the battlefield of mismatched fabric, emotional repression, and exactly three decorative pillows that Kaveh had smuggled into the house one by one like contraband.
“Fine,” Kaveh muttered, dragging his hand through his hair like he wanted to erase himself. “Let’s debate.”
“Now?”
“Yes. Again.”
“You want a rematch?”
“I want clarity.”
Alhaitham tilted his head. “Or you want me to admit I’m wrong.”
“I want something, Alhaitham!”
Alhaitham said nothing.
Which was, in its own way, an answer.
Kaveh folded his arms. “Okay. Terms. This time, the central question is: Can a relationship be ethical if one person is more emotionally invested than the other?”
“And the value criterion?”
“Genuine reciprocity.”
“And your position?”
Kaveh hesitated. “I—I think it can be. But only if both people acknowledge the imbalance and work to equalize it. Like—like a see-saw. Or a garden. Or—”
“A garden.”
“Shut up.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were thinking something smug.”
Alhaitham sat down. Crossed one leg over the other. “And you?”
“What?”
“What’s your emotional investment level?”
Kaveh turned red. Violently. “That’s outside the scope of this debate.”
“It’s the only scope.”
“Well, then what about you?”
“Equal.”
“You’re not.”
“How do you know?”
“Because you’d rather re-alphabetize your bookshelf than look me in the eye for more than ten seconds!”
Alhaitham paused.
“…It’s been eleven seconds.”
Kaveh blinked.
“You bastard.”
Alhaitham blinked back. Unreadable. Still.
They were inches apart again.
Not quite touching.
Not quite surviving.
“I think,” Kaveh said, quietly this time, “that being in love with someone who isn’t in love with you is the most ethical thing you can do. If you don’t demand anything in return.”
Alhaitham exhaled.
“That’s not a relationship,” he said.
“It’s not?”
“It’s martyrdom.”
Kaveh looked down. “So I’m unethical.”
“No.”
“I’m irrational.”
“Yes.”
“I’m—”
Alhaitham stood. Slowly. Steadily.
“You are the most chaotic, impulsive, emotionally repressed person I have ever met.”
Kaveh braced himself. “And?”
“And I’m worse.”
They stared. Again. Like fools. Like gods. Like idiots playing chicken with their own emotional ruin.
“I’m tired,” Kaveh said, softly.
“You said that yesterday.”
“Well, I’m still tired.”
Alhaitham tilted his head. “Then stop.”
“Stop what?”
“This.”
“This what?”
“This—this elaborate farce where we pretend we aren’t already in something so emotionally catastrophic it could qualify as a natural disaster.”
Pause.
“…Is that your version of a confession?” Kaveh asked.
“I’m experimenting with new thesis structures.”
“It's terrible.”
“You’re still here.”
“I’m always still here.”
They didn’t move.
The curtains fluttered. The sunlight cut across the room. And in the quiet, something shifted.
But neither of them reached out.
Not yet.
Because they were idiots.
But they were ethical idiots.
And that had to count for something.
---
Kaveh made coffee that morning like it was revenge.
Messy. Noisy. Existential. Grounds everywhere. Spoon banging against porcelain like it was crying for help. If that spoon could file a formal complaint to the Akademiya Ethics Committee, it would have. Twice.
Alhaitham entered the kitchen halfway through this small act of civil war in caffeine form. Shirtless. Again. Holding a book about sociolinguistics like it was shielding him from intimacy.
Kaveh turned. Glared. “Do you ever wear shirts anymore or are we just emotionally spiraling full-time now?”
“It’s warm.”
“It’s October.”
“I run hot.”
“Emotionally, that’s a lie.”
Alhaitham blinked. Slowly. “You’re using my mug.”
“You’re using my life force.”
“You always use the gold-rimmed one. You said it was ‘aesthetically sincere.’”
“Well, now I’m being ironic. It’s my satire era.”
“You’ve weaponized crockery.”
“I’ve weaponized survival!”
Alhaitham sat down. Opened his book. “You’re not coping well.”
“I am coping ethically,” Kaveh snapped, flinging himself into the opposite chair like a martyr descending from a very emotionally expensive cross.
They stared across the table.
The coffee steamed between them.
The spoon trembled.
“We need a new debate,” Kaveh said, unprompted. “We need to revise the framework.”
“We have revised it four times. This is no longer debate. This is grief in academic drag.”
“No. I’m serious.” Kaveh rummaged under a stack of napkin scribbles. Pulled out an abandoned index card. “Central question: Can denial be morally neutral?”
Alhaitham stared at him. “In what context?”
“Emotional. Interpersonal. Romantic.”
“You’re just trying to win on a technicality.”
“I’m trying to live!”
Pause.
“What’s your position?” Alhaitham asked.
Kaveh exhaled. Dramatically. “Denial is not inherently unethical. It’s a protective mechanism. If acknowledgment of desire would destabilize an otherwise balanced dynamic—like, say, between roommates—then repressing it is a morally justifiable act of love.”
Alhaitham raised one eyebrow. “So by not kissing me, you’re being noble?”
“I’m being selfless.”
“You’re being cowardly.”
“I’m being ethical.”
“You’re being infuriating.”
“You like it.”
Alhaitham said nothing.
Kaveh’s heart did something violent and hideous and hopeful.
He immediately shoved it back down. Denial was safe. Denial had throw pillows. Denial didn’t ask what would happen after.
“Let’s assume,” Alhaitham said, voice carefully clinical, “that there is mutual desire.”
“Oh my god.”
“It’s hypothetical.”
“Liar.”
“I’m being objective.”
“You’re being seductive in an epistemological way and I hate you for it.”
“Are you interrupting my syllogism?”
“I’m interrupting your emotional constipation!”
Pause.
They were standing again. Somehow. Always.
Too close.
Again.
Like every word was gravity and the distance between them was just metaphor waiting to collapse.
Kaveh paced. “Okay. Fine. Let’s play your game.”
“It’s your game.”
“Shut up. Assume mutual desire. Assume emotional repression. Assume shared domestic space.”
“Assumed.”
“Now: Is it ethical to pursue a romantic relationship if doing so risks destabilizing the existing cohabitative equilibrium?”
Alhaitham blinked. “You’re asking if kissing me would ruin the kitchen schedule.”
“I’m asking if kissing you would ethically constitute sabotage.”
There was silence.
A long, long silence.
Then Alhaitham said, “You overcook rice when you’re anxious.”
“Don’t change the subject.”
“You do. You forget to set the timer. You stand in the hallway and talk to yourself about Rousseau and forget the water’s still boiling.”
“That’s—How do you know that?”
“I listen.”
“You don’t even care about Rousseau.”
“I care about you.”
Silence.
Another one.
Kaveh broke it. Of course he did.
“With all due respect, that was uncalled for.”
“You asked.”
“I meant academically!”
“Don’t use ‘academically’ as a shield for your feelings.”
“Don’t use your feelings like they’re peer-reviewed.”
“You’re shaking.”
“I’m always shaking!”
“No, you’re afraid.”
“And you’re not?”
They were close again.
God. Always. Like orbit. Like gravitational inevitability. Like it wasn’t even them anymore, just the unbearable pull.
Kaveh swallowed. “We can’t. You know that.”
“Because of ethics?”
“Because of everything.”
“I would never hurt you.”
“That’s not the point.”
“Then what is?”
Kaveh said nothing.
Because the truth was—
He wanted.
He wanted with the kind of want that made the floor feel unsteady.
He wanted with his whole thesis-stained, argument-riddled, repressed body.
But want wasn’t ethics.
It wasn’t sustainability.
It wasn’t safe.
Alhaitham leaned back first. Always the one to retreat. Always the one to give Kaveh the dignity of not collapsing.
“Another draw, then.”
Kaveh nodded. “Another.”
They sat down. Quiet. Shaky.
The coffee had gone cold.
Kaveh reached for the sugar. His hand brushed Alhaitham’s.
Neither of them moved.
“I don’t want to ruin it,” Kaveh said finally, softly, like a sin.
Alhaitham didn’t look up.
“You wouldn’t,” he said. “But you might change it.”
Kaveh nodded. Swallowed. “Change is hard.”
“So is stagnation.”
“You’d still make me tea?”
“I’d bring you the entire kettle.”
Kaveh almost laughed.
Almost.
And so, nothing happened.
No kisses. No collapse.
Just a coffee table full of index cards.
A new curtain fluttering in the window.
Two cups growing cold.
And one spoon, left in the sink, echoing like a question no one was brave enough to ask.
---
Three days had passed since the Spoon.
The Spoon Incident. The Great Spoon Catastrophe. The Day the Repression Curdled.
(They were still not talking about it.)
But now, now—Kaveh was reorganizing the kitchen shelves.
“You moved the tea,” Alhaitham said flatly, entering the kitchen like a man who had just returned from battle and discovered his armor had been repainted fuchsia.
“I curated the tea,” Kaveh snapped, turning around with a canister in each hand like they were the heads of two conquered enemies. “It’s called ‘aesthetic flow,’ you cultural barbarian.”
“It was alphabetized.”
“It was sterile.”
“It was efficient.”
“You had paprika next to peppermint!”
“They both start with P.”
“You don’t drink paprika!”
“You don’t live here! Emotionally!”
They stared. Again. Naturally.
This was their language now:
Curt, blistering, over-the-shoulder insults punctuated by the occasional near-epiphany and a level of sustained eye contact that should have counted as a physical act.
Kaveh turned back to the cabinet, balancing precariously on the counter, robe half-hitched, hair coming loose like some sort of mythic domestic disaster.
Alhaitham watched him. Unfortunately. Consistently.
“You’re going to fall,” he said.
“I am climbing toward emotional equilibrium!”
“You’re two inches from a nervous breakdown and five from the ground.”
“Oh, look who’s suddenly concerned with my well-being.”
“I’m concerned for the tiles.”
“You’re insufferable.”
“You’re barefoot on a marble countertop.”
Kaveh reached higher.
The teacups rattled.
And then—the touch.
Accidental. Brief. Barely there.
Kaveh’s fingers brushed Alhaitham’s.
It was nothing.
It was everything.
Let’s pause here.
Let’s get academic about it.
THESIS:
Accidental touch is morally neutral.
Intent defines ethical weight.
Without intent, there is no betrayal. No promise. No confession.
COUNTERARGUMENT:
Sometimes the body speaks first.
Sometimes the skin admits what the mouth would rather rot than say.
Sometimes, brushing a hand in the middle of a kitchen is not neutral.
Sometimes it is war.
Neither of them moved.
Alhaitham’s hand hovered by the shelf, frozen. Kaveh’s hovered by his. They were not holding hands. They were hovering. Politely. Aggressively. Trapped in the purgatory between “accident” and “admission.”
“…That was an error in spatial judgment,” Kaveh muttered, voice cracking like a ceramic plate dropped in the back of his throat.
“Of course,” Alhaitham said.
“I was reaching for the Darjeeling.”
“You touched my hand.”
“You were in the way!”
“You inhaled sharply.”
“You always sound like that when I talk about color theory!”
“I think you liked it.”
“I think I’m going to throw this mug at you.”
“Is it the one with the flowers on it?”
“YES.”
“Then I’ll duck.”
“Good.”
“Good.”
Another silence. This one blistering. This one steaming. This one full of all the things they hadn’t done yet.
“You’re redefining the ethical bounds of physical contact mid-debate,” Alhaitham finally said, folding his arms.
“You’re weaponizing casual intimacy,” Kaveh bit back, hopping down from the counter like a righteous prophet descending from Mount Passive-Aggression.
“You didn’t flinch.”
“You didn’t either.”
“I didn’t want to.”
Kaveh froze.
“…What?”
“I said, I didn’t want to.”
“That’s unethical.”
“That’s honest.”
“You can’t be both.”
“You can. You just won’t.”
Kaveh looked away. Immediately. Furiously. Like if he turned fast enough, the words would un-say themselves.
Alhaitham remained still. Composed. Barely blinking.
But his knuckles were white.
“Define touch,” Kaveh said finally, voice low, shaking.
“Contact between surfaces.”
“Wrong. Touch is meaning. It’s vulnerability.”
“It’s physics.”
“It’s confession.”
“You’re assigning romantic weight to every act of proximity.”
“And you’re disassembling intimacy to protect yourself.”
They stared.
The kitchen was too warm.
The tea was untouched.
The cabinet door swung slightly open, unlatched, as if even it wanted to make a quick escape.
Kaveh stepped back.
The moment broke.
Something like disappointment cracked inside him, sharp and bitter. “I can’t keep doing this.”
“I’m not asking you to.”
“Yes, you are.”
Alhaitham’s voice dropped. “And what would happen if I stopped asking?”
Kaveh didn’t answer.
Because he didn’t know if he wanted him to.
Later—
(the kind of later where nothing has changed but everything is slightly more unbearable)
—they found themselves back in the living room.
Kaveh pacing.
Alhaitham sitting.
The bell from their previous debates still sat on the table. Mocking.
“We never defined the ethics of wanting,” Kaveh said, staring at it like it held answers instead of dust.
“That’s because you didn’t want to.”
“I want too much.”
“And I don’t want enough, is that it?”
“I think you want perfectly. In a way that hurts.”
Alhaitham didn’t move.
Kaveh sat. Far enough to pretend it didn’t ache.
“What if…” Kaveh said, quietly. “What if we’re both ethical. But incompatible?”
“That’s possible.”
“What then?”
“We continue. Respectfully. Repressed. Platonic.”
“You say that.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“I think you’re terrified.”
“Of what?”
“Of wanting back.”
Silence.
No touch this time.
No spoon.
Just the unbearable tension of two people so tangled in rules and ethics and denial that they could barely see each other through the fog.
The cabinet door was still open.
So was the window.
So were Kaveh’s hands, resting on the couch. Waiting. Not reaching.
Alhaitham looked once. Then away.
And Kaveh let him.
Because not reaching was the most ethical thing he could do.
---
The cabinet still hung open.
It had been three days since the Great Accidental Hand Graze, also known as That Which Shall Not Be Discussed But Haunts Them Both Like the Ghost of Emotional Intimacy Past.
And yet.
The cabinet remained.
Open. Unlatched. Condemned.
A monument to their indecision. A shrine to their shame.
Kaveh had begun calling it The Mouth of Truth.
Alhaitham had begun alphabetizing the spices.
“I’m moving the turmeric,” Alhaitham said without looking up. He was kneeling on the counter again like some sort of emotionally avoidant gargoyle.
Kaveh turned from across the room, arms folded like judgment incarnate. “You can’t just move turmeric.”
“It was next to the sesame oil.”
“Which is thematic!”
“It’s chaotic.”
“It’s culinary symbolism!”
“It’s clutter.”
“You’re clutter!”
“That doesn’t even make sense.”
“You don’t make sense!”
Alhaitham looked over his shoulder. “You are projecting irrational emotional distress onto a series of seasonings.”
“And you are infusing your repression into the cumin.”
“That’s impossible.”
“It tastes like avoidance!”
Pause.
The tension was so thick it could be bottled and sold as an artisanal glaze.
Alhaitham stood up. Slowly. Precisely. Like a cat preparing to dismantle a shrine.
“What is it, really?” he asked, quiet, sharp. “What is this actually about?”
Kaveh opened his mouth. Closed it. Turned. Then turned back.
“It’s about—you—you never look at me when it matters.”
“I look at you constantly.”
“You look at me like I’m a problem to be solved. Like I’m a—an unfinished theorem.”
“You are an unfinished theorem.”
“I’m a person!”
“I never said you weren’t.”
“You say everything around it!”
Another silence.
The worst kind:
The kind that sounds like your own voice echoing back too late.
“Let’s debate,” Kaveh said, because that was easier. That was safer. That was a language they still shared.
Alhaitham nodded. Almost imperceptibly. “Subject?”
“The ethics of ambiguous intimacy in non-romantic domestic partnerships.”
“Define ambiguous intimacy.”
“Everything we’re doing.”
“Value criterion?”
“Clarity.”
“Impossible.”
“Then say something true.”
Alhaitham stepped closer. Too close. Always.
“You want truth?”
Kaveh froze. “Yes.”
“I think,” Alhaitham said, voice dangerously quiet, “that you are so desperate to be loved you have convinced yourself that anyone who doesn’t say ‘no’ is saying ‘yes.’”
Kaveh flinched like he’d been slapped.
Alhaitham kept going. Because he didn’t know how to stop. Because he always took it too far. Because saying the wrong thing was safer than saying the right one.
“I think you hide behind drama and color and curated emotional disasters so no one sees how lonely you really are.”
Kaveh’s voice was a whisper. “And you hide behind logic and distance and smug detachment so no one sees how scared you are.”
They stared at each other like two cliffs, like two knives drawn at dawn.
Then—
“I’m going out,” Kaveh snapped.
“Where?”
“Anywhere. Away from this. From you. From your—your taxonomized feelings and your fucking coriander hierarchy!”
The door slammed behind him.
Fifteen minutes later, Alhaitham followed.
Not because he was worried.
Not because he regretted it.
(Not only because.)
But because he’d realized something. Something hideous. Something real.
The turmeric was still out of order.
And he hated it.
And he missed Kaveh.
And the two facts were not unrelated.
He found him sitting under the archway near the fountain, shivering in his robe, hair windblown and soul cracked open just wide enough to let the pain seep out in silence.
“I’m not here to apologize,” Kaveh said without looking.
“I didn’t ask you to.”
Silence.
Then:
“I don’t want to keep doing this,” Kaveh muttered.
“Then don’t.”
“I don’t know what to do instead.”
Alhaitham sat beside him.
“The thing about ethics,” he said, “is that they only matter if there’s something at stake.”
Kaveh glanced sideways. “So what’s at stake?”
“You.”
Pause.
Alhaitham clarified, because he was a coward. “Our cohabitation. Our friendship. Our stability.”
Kaveh’s mouth twitched. “Right. Not me personally.”
“You’re included in the structure.”
“That’s not romantic.”
“That’s intentional.”
“God, you’re exhausting.”
“You are emotionally irresponsible.”
“You’re emotionally nonexistent!”
“You cry into dish towels!”
“You catalog your grief in spreadsheet format!”
“I color-code it.”
Kaveh laughed.
Which was somehow worse than crying.
They didn’t move for a long time.
Just sat there.
Two men in love with each other’s worst habits. Two men who’d studied each other like texts they never meant to memorize but did anyway. Two men who were, in every sense, a philosophical accident waiting to happen.
And the moment sat between them.
Louder than speech. Softer than touch.
They still didn’t reach.
Of course they didn’t.
Later, when they returned home, Kaveh placed the turmeric back where it had been.
Silently.
Without a word.
Alhaitham watched him do it.
Didn’t say a thing.
Because some things you only acknowledge with silence.
Because some things don’t need debating.
And because turmeric—that stubborn, yellow, blinding little thing—had always tasted a bit like hope.
---
It started with a cough.
Then two.
Then three.
Then Kaveh refusing to acknowledge them, because denial was a lifestyle, not a stage.
“I am not sick,” he declared through a tissue with the bravery of a man who was obviously, tragically, very sick.
Alhaitham glanced up from his book. “You’ve been sneezing into your architectural drafts for twenty minutes.”
“It’s textured paper.”
“You’ve used the same tissue six times.”
“It’s reusable!”
“You are contagious.”
“You are smug!”
“And you are warm.”
Kaveh opened his mouth. Closed it. Sneezed.
Then glared, as if the sneeze had betrayed him personally.
By midday, the fever had kicked in.
By afternoon, the fever had kicked Kaveh. Directly in the metaphor.
Alhaitham found him bundled on the couch, surrounded by crumpled tissues and increasingly delirious commentary on the structural flaws of ceiling beams that did not exist.
“Did you know,” Kaveh croaked, “that love is just a building with no fire exits? Full of illegal staircases and zero ventilation. A death trap of devotion.”
Alhaitham set down the thermometer with all the patience of a man who had chosen this hell and could no longer pretend otherwise.
“You’re at 102.4.”
Kaveh squinted. “Out of what?”
“Fahrenheit.”
“That’s hot.”
“Yes, Kaveh. That’s the point.”
“I feel philosophical.”
“You feel delirious.”
“You’re cute when you’re worried.”
“I’m not worried.”
“Liar.”
“Stop trying to flirt through mucus.”
“I’m dying,” Kaveh declared, flopping dramatically onto his back. “This is my legacy.”
“You’re going to be fine.”
“My bones are writing poetry.”
Alhaitham blinked. “That sounds deeply inefficient.”
Kaveh tried to throw a pillow. Missed. Hit a plant.
The plant tipped. The dirt spilled.
Alhaitham said nothing. Just breathed. Long-suffering. Profound. Practiced.
Then went to make soup.
Let us pause.
THESIS: Making soup for someone is an act of emotional intimacy.
COUNTERPOINT: Not if the soup is scientifically proportioned for maximum immune system support.
REBUTTAL: Shut up. It's soup. It's love.
“What is this,” Kaveh asked, suspiciously eyeing the bowl.
“Food.”
“Love.”
“No.”
“Care.”
“Calories.”
“Are you feeding me because you feel bad for me or because you’re in love with me?”
“Neither.”
“Liar.”
“It’s miso.”
“You are miso-erable at this.”
Alhaitham did not throw the spoon. Barely.
“I made you soup. You will eat it.”
“Consent is an ethical component of caregiving.”
“You consented by sneezing on my pillow.”
“That’s not how bodily autonomy works.”
Alhaitham pinched the bridge of his nose. “Do you want to debate the ethics of soup?”
“Yes!”
“No!”
“Then admit it.”
“Admit what?”
“That you love me.”
“I’m not discussing this while you’re delirious.”
“So you’ll discuss it when I’m dead?”
“I will put that in writing.”
“You are emotionally bankrupt.”
“You are emotionally overdrafted.”
They stared.
The spoon trembled.
Kaveh’s breath caught.
He took the soup.
He drank.
Silence.
“…It’s good,” he mumbled.
“I know.”
“It tastes like affection.”
“It tastes like garlic and protein.”
“Shut up and let me pretend.”
“Fine.”
He didn’t move.
Kaveh finished the bowl. Gently. Carefully. Like it meant something.
Because it did.
Because it always did.
Later, Alhaitham returned with a fresh cup of tea and a quietly replaced blanket. Kaveh was asleep. Half-curled. Mouth parted. Hair a mess.
He looked small.
Vulnerable.
Unbearably real.
And Alhaitham—
Did nothing.
He stood there. Watching. Saying nothing. Feeling everything.
It was unethical. Probably.
To feel so much for someone who’d just said “love is a death trap” and meant it like it was romantic.
But ethics were for theory. And this—
This was soup and tea and warmth.
This was Kaveh.
And Alhaitham was ruined.
In the morning, Kaveh woke up clearer, quieter.
“You stayed?” he asked, softly.
“You were inconvenient to relocate.”
“Did I say anything weird?”
“You threatened to seduce death with your ‘tragic eyebrows.’”
“Oh. Right. Standard then.”
Alhaitham handed him tea.
Kaveh smiled. Tired. Bright.
The tea was warm.
Their hands brushed.
They didn’t move.
“You know,” Kaveh murmured, voice still rough, “if this were a story, this is where we’d kiss.”
Alhaitham didn’t answer.
Kaveh didn’t press.
Because sometimes the most ethical thing you can do—
Is wait.
---
Kaveh recovered in the physical sense.
The fever broke. The coughing lessened. His voice returned, like a dramatic crescendo after a three-act tragedy.
But something had shifted.
It was in the quiet.
In the way Alhaitham left the tea just a little closer to Kaveh’s hand now.
In the way Kaveh folded the towels evenly, like he was trying to control chaos in domestic increments.
They weren’t talking about the soup.
Or the blanket.
Or the hand brush.
Or the silence that came after “if this were a story, this is where we’d kiss.”
No, instead—
They talked about ethics.
Because ethics were safe.
Ethics had footnotes.
Ethics didn’t get warm behind the ears when someone stood too close in the kitchen.
“New thesis,” Kaveh said, barging into the living room with the energy of a man one moment away from falling off his own moral high horse. “Is it ethical to want something you’re not sure the other person wants back?”
Alhaitham looked up from his tablet. “Only if you’re prepared to deal with the outcome.”
“So if I hypothetically wanted to—oh, I don’t know—emotionally ruin myself by kissing someone smarter and meaner than me, that’s ethical?”
“That depends.”
“On?”
“Do they want it too?”
Kaveh opened his mouth. Closed it. Spun. Opened it again. Pointed. “You’re playing a dangerous game.”
“You started it.”
“I invented it.”
“And I’m winning.”
“YOU—!”
He stepped forward. Fast. Reckless. Barefoot. Still in his robe from lounging but pretending it was for effect. Hair wild. Eyes brighter than the ethics they kept pretending to believe in.
“You always think you’re right.”
“I often am.”
“You think you’re untouchable.”
“I’m not.”
“You—”
He stopped.
Because Alhaitham had stood up too. And they were closer than usual. And neither of them had blinked in thirty seconds. And it was very rude of the universe to make his mouth that symmetrical.
Kaveh’s voice dropped.
“You know what I hate about you?”
“Many things, I’m sure.”
“You make silence feel like a choice.”
“And you make noise feel like a confession.”
Something cracked.
That was the only way to describe it.
Not like glass. Not like logic.
Like inevitability.
Like the second before lightning.
Like consent wrapped in tension and set on fire.
“You should kiss me,” Kaveh said. Too loud. Too honest.
“That’s not an argument,” Alhaitham replied, but his voice was softer now, breathier.
“It’s a dare.”
“Even worse.”
“It’s an invitation.”
Pause.
“A dangerous one.”
Kaveh raised his chin. “Afraid?”
“Always.”
Then—
It happened.
Like nothing.
Like everything.
Like the moment the sun comes out during a rainstorm and all the flowers lean toward it without even asking why.
Kaveh leaned in.
Alhaitham didn’t stop him.
They kissed.
It was soft. Barely. Like a note pressed between pages of a very stupid, very long philosophical treatise.
Like they'd forgotten their mouths had the capacity for anything but argument.
Like they both realized—simultaneously, tragically—that this had been the point of every fight.
Every touch.
Every debate about turmeric and soup and ethics and the human soul.
This. This.
This.
They pulled apart too fast.
Of course they did.
Because they were idiots.
Because they were afraid.
Because admitting it would make it real.
And if it was real—
If it was real—
Then everything else would have to change.
“I see,” Alhaitham said, after a long beat. “So this is what irrational behavior feels like.”
Kaveh blinked. “That was irrational?”
“I had no hypothesis for this outcome.”
“I literally warned you with my mouth.”
“And then used it inappropriately.”
“That was extremely appropriate!”
“It was reckless.”
“It was romantic.”
“That’s worse.”
They stared.
“I should leave,” Kaveh said.
“You live here.”
“I should leave conceptually.”
“You kissed me.”
“You kissed me back.”
“You’re not denying it.”
“I’m not proud of it!”
“You made a noise.”
“I always make noises.”
“This was different.”
“I hate you.”
“You’re trembling.”
“You’re trembling.”
“…Yes,” Alhaitham whispered. “I am.”
They didn’t kiss again.
Not yet.
Instead, they sat at opposite ends of the room and pretended not to look at each other.
They argued about the ethics of shared desire.
They drafted a five-part framework for mutual autonomy in post-kiss domestic dynamics.
They debated whether longing was more moral when suppressed or spoken aloud.
And they avoided.
And avoided.
And avoided.
Because if they kissed again—
There would be no ethics left to hide behind.
---
The next day, everything was different.
Except nothing was.
The tea was still made.
The books were still stacked.
The turmeric had been moved again—Kaveh would not be gaslit—and the floor was suspiciously clean.
They were still pretending.
Still operating under the unspoken Mutually Agreed-Upon Framework of Emotional Disregard Following Incident #17 (The Kiss).
(See Appendix D: The Hand Graze, and Appendix E: The Soup.)
It wasn’t sustainable.
Even they knew that.
“New debate,” Kaveh said, voice too sharp, too soft, too late in the evening.
Alhaitham didn’t look up from his reading.
“I’m listening.”
“Premise: Love is an ethical violation.”
“That’s not a debate. That’s a cry for help.”
“Stop psychoanalyzing me through the Socratic method!”
“Stop projecting your trauma through throw pillows!”
“I bought those throw pillows for us!”
“We don’t have an us!”
“You kissed me!”
“You kissed me first!”
“You kissed me back!”
They were standing.
Of course they were.
Alhaitham’s book was on the floor. Kaveh’s hair was in his eyes. There were three feet between them and no good reason for any of it.
“I shouldn’t have,” Alhaitham said.
Kaveh blinked. “Oh.”
“No,” Alhaitham added. “Not because I regret it.”
“Then why?”
“Because now I think about it.”
Silence.
That silence again.
Not empty. Never empty.
Just waiting for someone to be brave.
“I think about it too,” Kaveh said, finally, voice like parchment folding in on itself.
“I know.”
“I hate you.”
“I know that too.”
“I can’t stop wanting to kiss you.”
“…That’s inconvenient.”
“It’s unethical.”
“Why?”
“Because you’ll ruin me.”
Alhaitham didn’t move. “That’s not how love works.”
“You don’t know how love works.”
“Neither do you.”
“Then how is this ethical?”
Pause.
“It’s not,” Alhaitham said. “It’s a mistake.”
Kaveh flinched.
“But,” Alhaitham added, slowly, carefully, “it’s one I want to keep making. Until it stops being a mistake. And starts being something else.”
Kaveh exhaled like it hurt.
“You sound like a research proposal.”
“I am one.”
Kaveh laughed.
It was breathless. Bitter. Beautiful.
“Okay then,” he whispered. “What’s your thesis?”
Alhaitham stepped closer.
His voice dropped to a murmur.
“That loving you—despite the noise, the color, the chaos—is the most rational irrational act I’ve ever committed.”
Kaveh froze.
Then blinked. Rapidly. “You just confessed using dualistic paradox.”
“I thought it’d help.”
“You absolute academic whore.”
“You’re crying.”
“I always cry!”
“I know.”
Alhaitham reached out.
This time, Kaveh didn’t flinch.
They kissed.
Again.
But this one was different.
The first kiss had been an accident.
This one was a conclusion.
It was slow. It was careful. It was the collapsing of a thousand arguments into one perfect sentence.
It was Kaveh’s hand in Alhaitham’s shirt and Alhaitham’s fingers in Kaveh’s hair and everything, everything, falling into place the way it never had before.
Like an answer.
Like a diagram complete.
Like a paper turned in on time after years of rewriting.
Later, they lay on the floor.
Side by side.
Not touching, because some habits die slow.
Kaveh stared at the ceiling. “We’ll ruin each other.”
“We already did.”
“We’ll have to redefine everything.”
“I’m ready.”
“Even turmeric?”
“Even turmeric.”
Kaveh rolled onto his side.
Faced him.
“I love you.”
Alhaitham exhaled.
“I know.”
Pause.
Kaveh narrowed his eyes.
“Is that it?”
“I love you too.”
“Oh. Okay then.”
“Do you need it footnoted?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll prepare a presentation.”
“Make it pretty.”
“You’ll complain about the font.”
“I always do.”
They kissed again.
THESIS:
Love is messy.
Love is chaotic.
Love is deeply, deeply unethical.
BUT—
If you make tea for someone at 2am,
and memorize the way they sneeze,
and let them move your spices
and your heart,
and still let them stay—
Then maybe love is a footnote worth writing anyway.