justscribing | The City

Well, our meeting here was very accidental — [ a pause here as his terminal leaves his hands ] — so I don't know what else you would call it. Serendipitous, perhaps? Alhaitham, you have a better word for it, if it exists.

[ Kaveh cares so much. It's so nice. Midnight hums happily to himself, watching Kaveh manhandle his terminal and work himself into a red-eyed, poofy Catastrophe. ]

Are you accusing us of conspiracy, by the way?

If not a coincidence, would you call it fate? The pose was Midnight's idea, by the way. Isn't it suitable for this headband?

[No shame in throwing Midnight under the bus, it's just what it is.] Besides-[His gaze flicks to the phone.] weren't you going to start taking pictures?

[ kaveh makes a noise that sums up all the derision that currently exists in the world. ]

And since when did you take just anyone's idea? No, you took a look at it and decided that it was the worst you can do. Who knows what's going on in that baffling head of yours. No, I am not going to take more pictures. I have enough of them, - here.

[ a few flicks of his fingers later, kaveh shoves the phone back into midnight's hands. with a few well-positioned nudges, he gets him a few feet back, and points at alhaitham. ] This is a proper distance. I've also dimmed your flash to an acceptable level. And no, I am not - in fact, both of you would have to be lemurs for me to call you a conspiracy. Why are you looking so pleased!

[ Midnight takes the pictures in the exact position and lighting directed, then reviews the footage, looking so very pleased indeed. They're very good pictures. Kaveh has a fine eye for these sorts of things. What isn't there to be pleased about? ]

Me? They're very good pictures. You've a fine eye for these sorts of details. Here, Alhaitham, let me send you them.

[ And Midnight proceeds to send Alhaitham the whole album in one go because he's no brute, he wouldn't send them one at a time?? ]

["Who knows what's going on in that baffling head" Kaveh asks, just after he described what exactly had been going on in Alhaitham's confounding brain. Kaveh knows, considers, and takes the bait anyway. Because it's Kaveh, too full of feelings and opinions to contain them within his body. It comes out in strangled sounds between teeth, in the furrow of his brow over wide red eyes, over the way his whole body seems to puff up with movement to express the full offense that Alhaitham and Midnight have caused him.

Alhaitham's eyes track him as he harries Midnight into a suitable position to teach him to take a better photo. Alhaitham's brow eases. The reflection in his eyes is a little too fond.]

You have photos that weren't up to your standard of quality. You'll keep those over the ones with a more considered eye behind them?

[No, Alhaitham fully expects Kaveh to delete them and attempt to erase this from his mind. That's okay. Alhaitham will have the copies. Maybe he'll print one.]

Edited 2023-09-24 05:30 (UTC)

Hah! Why must they be good quality when I won't ever look at them again? I can't even look at you right now. [ kaveh, of course, looks. he thinks - alhaitham is smiling. the thought comes to him without a single shred of the quirk of his lips to back it up as evidence, only that alhaitham's entire body language has shifted sometime between him walking over to midnight and him looking up, and kaveh absolutely knows he can't look at alhaitham right now. there are still cat ears on his head. he can't deal with having to look alhaitham in the face while he's wearing cat ears, he's already under too much mental stress.

wait.

kaveh turns back on midnight. ]

Wait. [ wait. ] His phone only had a single chime. You sent them to him in one go. [ lowly, dangerously: ] There are thirty-nine separate notifications on my phone right now, you absolute donkey. [ ... how does he know? because he counted each notification, you fuck. kaveh is, in fact, going to shake midnight like midnight owes him money. ] Give me back my peace of mind!

[ Midnight tuts, examining the photos himself. ]

You shouldn't throw them out so needlessly. These are quite lovely. You should take more pride in your work.

[ He has more to say, although to be fair, a lot of it is sifting through the fact that the two keep looking at each other and smiling, and whether he should mention that or if he should store that away for himself, when he needs reminders that affection like that exists outside of himself in the world—

but then he is shaking like a fortune teller at a shrine on New Years. His brain rattles like fortune sticks. He laughs. ]

They were live updates as the situation developed. I thought you would appreciate how fastidious my attentions were.

[Alhaitham, to the blessed relief of Kaveh and probably most other people in a ten mile radius, finally drops the silly pose. Kaveh is shaking Midnight, so Alhaitham takes the moment to pull the phone out of his belt pouch and look at the bulk of pictures (there are a lot of pictures) Midnight sent. He is still wearing the cat ears.

With a neutral hum (he looks ridiculous. He's keeping the best ones) he struts over to them and stands with his hands on his hips.] He can't reverse sending you thirty-nine messages, can he? It's already happened. If you don't like them, you'll have to delete them yourself.

And if I don't like you, to which higher power ought I entreat to delete you?! [ kaveh says, with some measure of despair. he chances a glance at alhaitham around midnight's bulk. still alhaitham, still cat ears.

the sound he makes can't be described using human words. ] I can't look at you. Midnight, I'm going to count to ten. Fix this!

I don't know, darling, you were the one who called me godless — ah —

[ Midnight is looking at his past messages. Look, a man must try, even if the request is, quite frankly, ridiculous. ]

— The timestamp says at 19:04. Listen, do you want me to take your terminal and delete your copies? Do you really hate to look at Alhaitham that much?

[There's a joke about deleting Alhaitham himself that flashes by his mind and is quickly thrown to the back of his thoughts. It's the sort of dramatic that they've volleyed between them with no heat that now hits in uncomfortable places, and Alhaitham is loath to wander too close to the truth that there are nights where he's still shaken before he falls asleep by the false memory of Kaveh's hands, tight around his neck.

Instead, he peels the headband off without a word and, while Kaveh is distracted, attempts to slide it right upon his head instead.] You're making such a fuss about these.

[ it had been the very moment the joke left his lips that the implications had slid in between bone and skin. kaveh had stilled with it, but the moment passes - it ought to, it must - as he straightens, finally, to reach out and bat alhaitham's hand away.

it's a half-hearted attempt. the hairband slips on. kaveh scowls. ]

No, I hardly trust you to take a photo properly, I wouldn't trust you to delete thirty-nine notifications with any real efficacy.

[ kaveh turns to alhaitham. ] Well? Pleased? This is ridiculous; it patently doesn't match the colour of my hair or anything.

[ ... Man, right in front of Midnight's salad?

Well, he's not at all the sort to overthink a beat in the conversation, especially if it's short, neat, pushed to the side for more pleasant matters. Not out of ignorance of what could be, but because some things must remain within the banks of their own streams, flowing quietly into better tributaries, deeper waters, far off oceans filled with the stuff of fairy tales he will never read.

No, what he does instead is pause, switch his terminal back to the camera app, and quietly take a picture of Kaveh before he has a chance to protest. It's so cute????? ]

Not bad. Perhaps I should go win a golden one.

[Unfortunately, Midnight is alone in his realization that he's experiencing third wheeling over here.]

You took such offense to me wearing them. [At Midnight's offer, Alhaitham simply gestures without any comment to his hasty picture taking.] There you go, he'll win you a matching one. Anyway, what about that other stall you were taking apart? You got the mechanism apart, didn't you?

[Go on, tell them if it was interesting.]

[ anyway, alhaitham says, as if this were merely a perfectly normal day ending in -y and kaveh's protests are from another universe entirely. kaveh snorts, entirely derisive. ]

Hey. Delete that. [ kaveh informs midnight. but he pulls the hairband from his head, and because this is a trifecta, now, slips it onto midnight's head instead. deed done, kaveh rolls his wrist. ]

And of course I did. It was merely a conveyor belt beneath a water tank that provided tracks for the circular movement of the ducks. Even a first-year Kshahrewar could have built it if they had the components and plastics were invented. But it's giving me an idea for a new kind of irrigation system. [ kaveh pauses, and then - ] Actually, it may work in your host club too, Midnight. Have you considered putting drinks on a conveyor belt as a gimmick?

Nya.

[ Midnight says this idly, while setting the picture as his lockscreen. It's a picture that has ignored all of Kaveh's advice about good angles, lighting, framing. Kaveh just looks candid, slightly out of focus, mouth open in mid-protest. It's Midnight's favorite thing right now.

A conveyor belt, though...? Midnight looks up from his proud new lockscreen, humming in thought. ]

I like that, actually. Sounds a bit unstable, but it also sounds a bit like a revolving sushi bar, but alcoholic. Please, by all means, engineer that, so long as it doesn't spill all over the place.

((Alhaitham and Midnight have taken the same kind of mid-movement canid photo of Kaveh's protesting, why are they the same person.))

[Alhaitham peers at Midnight's new Kaveh lock screen with a raised brow. But before he has the chance to think too deeply, Kaveh is detailing his recent efforts of dismantling the game stalls. Temporarily. Hope he remembers to put it back together.]

Irrigation for the greenhouse? [The one he's seen Kaveh mid-sketch, something about Tighnari in his mumblings. And... host club? Revolving sushi bar? He can conceptualize the second though he has to question its practicality.]

Nya.

[ kaveh, who is just trying to live his best, cat-hairband-free life, echoes with what should have been disdain - but comes off as fond exasperation. he hates these two. ]

And yes, for the greenhouse. I don't have the proper machinery to bore proper irrigation channels, but a conveyor belt can easily be laid above-ground, and I'm thinking that there may be advantages to bringing the plants to the water and not the other way around. [ kaveh shrugs. ] Though I'll be sure to test it on an alcohol conveyor first; and we'll have to see if it spills everywhere. And with the stunt you started today, Midnight, we'll definitely have to see, no?

[ sufficiently cheered, kaveh looks between the two of them, and shakes his head. ] Well, I'm going to go back and finish the rest of that conveyor belt. The two of you had better not get into trouble beyond documented compare.

[ as we all know, kaveh in motion is part cryptid, part kvetch

Midnight looks back to his lockscreen fondly, eyebrows raised. ]

I am innocent of all crimes, but you've already wired both chandeliers, so I don't mind guilt by proxy.

[ Midnight waves Kaveh off. (He also, perhaps, waves Alhaitham off. They're the academics, the engineers, the ones interested in belts and pulleys.) ]

I'm atoning by getting another pair of ears for you. Very legal, very aboveboard.

[Kaveh nya~s with the sort of fondness held delicately between the assertion of offense, and then goes immediately into detailing the fantastical concept of some sort of conveyor belt shower for plants. It's exactly the sort of thing that Alhaitham would disregard as absurd were it not from Kaveh, who has a way or wresting dreams into reality, who is a genius without compare in his darshan, who smiles sharply with mollified cheer.

The moment stands still in Alhaitham. He looks.]

You should be minding your own trouble instead. Who's going to be the one in handcuffs if you get distracted again and forget to put it back together?

No. [ kaveh says, and then, for good measure: ] And no.

But I'm amending that: I hope the two of you don't get into trouble beyond documented compare where I can see, but I hope to see its aftermath, and I hope the two of you are handcuffed to each other. I think both of you would deserve it.

[ because, kaveh thinks, midnight had been laughing - and alhaitham had gone along with it. it warms him. both of them could use more friends, midnight could use more levity, and alhaitham - well, what doesn't alhaitham need?

but it's with a wry thing tucked away in the corners of his lips as kaveh raises a hand to flick two fingers at them. before long, kaveh disappears back around the bend, back to this conveyor belt. ]

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