A Thousand Years in Perfect Symmetry

The sky was still dark when Alhaitham woke up.

For a moment, he blinked teal eyes in the darkness and yawned. He turned over, closing his eyes tight and preparing to fall back asleep until he realized. Then, his eyes sprung back open and his heart beat fast in his chest as he stared around the room. Everything was enshrouded in darkness.

Alhaitham hastily stood up from the bed and rushed to his desk. He turned the desklamp on and stared, wide-eyed and mouth agape, at the first draft of that god-forsaken report for the Akademiya higher-ups that sat undisturbed on his desk.

He touched it slowly, pressing fingertips to paper and then pulling his hand back fast like it had bitten him. It didn't melt away, didn't disappear like it'd been an accident that it continued to exist at all. It sat there, unmoving, as it had for the last however many days.

Alhaitham felt the tears run down his cheek and watched them hit the desk below before it even dawned on him how much his heart ached. In the dead of a dull morning, he wept for a tomorrow that came at last.

It felt undeniably silly to cry for something he'd wanted, yearned after, for so long, but it was here and it was here to stay. There was nothing the Akademiya could do to continue to deny him.

With shaky hands, Alhaitham reached out and took the paper. He lifted it up and folded it over once, twice, three times, then ripped it bit by bit until it was little more than pieces of confetti littered across the desk. Some slipped to the floor below and, for once, his heart felt ever fuller because of it.

In the mess and pain of the early morning, there was reality spread out in front of him in a way he'd never appreciated before. It was tangible and muddled in conflicting feelings. It was fondness in freedom and fear for a rejected confession.

Alhaitham turned out the light, plunging his room back into darkness. At the front of his mind, there was Kaveh. He shot through his mind in striking detail: the whites of his teeth when he smiled, the way his eyes sparkled like rubies every time they approached the Sabzeruz Festival, the light flush that highlighted his face when Alhaitham kissed him, the sounds he made when he—

Alhaitham stood up and made his way to the door in the darkness, sliding his hand along the wood until he reached the handle. It was cold under his hand, frozen from days of zero use and the still silence of peaceful days in which no one stirred.

The door gave way to their living room and his heart pounded in his chest to see the sofa pleasantly empty. No Kaveh, no sketchbook. The moonlight bathed their furniture in white, allowing Alhaitham to see through the darkness. Everything was left in place, just as his room had been. It still felt like a miracle.

Alhaitham slowly allowed his eyes to shift from the living room to what was formally his guest bedroom, now stolen away by the same man who had taken his heart. It felt like years since they'd returned home from that first Sabzeruz Festival, the real Sabzeruz Festival, and the door was still wide open. A silent invitation...

Alhaitham eagerly took it this time.

Kaveh's room was still dark and he found himself squinting to take in the details. He hadn't bothered to clean up, but right now it felt more endearing than frustrating. He could make out the outlines of clothes on the floor, crumpled balls of paper that didn't quite make his trash can, a few books pushed to the wall, and a scrambled litter of materials he didn't recognize (He assumes they're for art and therefore he wouldn't know them anyway). The rest of the room wasn't much better. The closet door hung open, Kaveh's desk chair was askew, and oh, Alhaitham didn't even want to start on how much of a mess his deskspace was. It was indescribable.