good lord we're back here again. time is a circle huh.
anyway hi this is lyn, aka ao3 user yugto and twitter user @tadhanastar (for however long that lasts). thanks for visiting, stick around if you'd like!
in which alhaitham switches places with his younger self and everyone handles this extraordinarily badly. we will improve this situationship or die trying. now on ao3! first two scenes below for ur reading pleasure.
Alhaitham, being no longer in his living room, decides the first thing he should do is sit down. He does so.
Heâs in an Akademiya dorm room. Itâs early afternoon. A few moments ago it was late at night and he was speaking with Kaveh, who was in the kitchen of Alhaithamâs own house. Alhaitham was leaning against the couch in the living room and flipping through a book that wasnât worth the paper itâd been printed on. The book is also gone.
Alhaitham only began dreaming again eight months ago, but heâs confident that this isnât a dream. It looks, with a great deal more specificity than could be possible even for his sleeping mind, like Kavehâs dorm room. Books of design, materials science, desert exploration, runic translation, and piano theory are piled on the desk. There is, laying on the bedsheets by Alhaithamâs hand, a cheap but fashionable earring he remembers vividly for the way it had caught the light in their single shared lecture, late afternoon in the hall below the Sanctuary. Semiotics and Glassmaking in Deshretâs Kingdom. He skims the earring briefly with a fingertip then moves his hand to his lap.
He considers what this might mean.
The door swings open and Kaveh says, âHaitham, can you take some of these? I borrowed everything I could find on desert Seelies but itâs really almost nothing, like I canât tell if weâre running into another ridiculous knowledge restriction again or if genuinely no oneâs ever tried to track the Seelie courts in Upper Setekh, which would be so typical, wouldnât it, so I grabbed everything else I saw on theââ
Kavehâs face is bright, young, flushed, freckled, happy. Heâs wearing an Akademiya uniform and is as tall as the last time Alhaitham saw him (fifteen minutes ago) which means heâs an inch or two shorter than the last time Alhaitham saw him, because the uniform boots are heeled. Heâs staring at Alhaitham with the aforementioned flush spreading like dye over the silk of his cheeks.
âKaveh,â Alhaitham says. âDonât freak out. I believe Iâve been displaced in time.â
âOh, I,â Kaveh says. His hands start to go slack beneath the stack of books leaning against his chest, so Alhaitham takes the books from him and sets them on the chair beside the desk.
âYouâyes,â Kaveh says, the flush climbing down his neck and up to his ears now. âIâoh.â
He couldnât be more than eighteen. Which would make it, assuming this is in fact the past Alhaitham remembers, which he really has no way to determine without further investigation, the year Alhaitham himself turned sixteen.
âI developed a bodybuilding habit when I was twenty and attempting to do some metabolic experiments that ultimately proved unfruitful,â Alhaitham says. âYou can touch my shoulders if that would get this over with.â
Kaveh, whose left hand had begun to drift with little apparent thought towards Alhaithamâs bare deltoid, snaps back so hard his head smacks into the doorframe. âIâm so sorry!â he says. âIâm so sorry, this is so rude of me, I should never have assumed, Iâm so sorry, and youâre so much older, and you never saidââ
Alhaitham sighs.
--
Kaveh stands bent over the kitchen sink, working his jaw and watching his cuticles slowly go to ribbons in the soapy water. Not literally. Literally enough. He should have let Alhaitham buy the stupid gentle dish soap that didnât ruin Kavehâs cuticles. Kaveh stops himself from thinking further on Alhaithamâs incredibly domineering dish soap opinions.
Alhaitham has gone quiet in the living room, but that doesnât mean very much. The state of their immortal souls could be at stake and Alhaitham would still bar himself from Celestia before he continued a conversation he continued boring. Or a fight.
Kaveh works his jaw harder, tension dull and radiant above one eye. Itâs not impossible for him to wait Alhaithamâs silence out. Heâs done it before and he could do it again. Itâs a way to end a fight, and wouldnât it be nice, ever, to end a fight? Without starting another? Could they hope for that much peace, at the least?
Suds climb up Kavehâs wrists. The number of nights heâs spent in this same position, mirroring himself like silvered glass over the past year and whatever heâs lived in Alhaithamâs house, frustrated and sad and exhausted by this whole situation, feels suddenly like a millstone around his neck. What a joke.
âLook, I get that you donât think conversation is worth your time!â Kaveh shouts as he slams the cutting board into the sink. âBut pretending like this isnât a problem just because youâre bored is not actually a long-term solution to the problem!â
Silence. âHaitham, I know youâre still out there!â
âKaveh?â Alhaitham calls back. His voice ends on a high and uncharacteristic quaver.
Kaveh throws himself through the door to the living room.
Thereâs a different Alhaitham standing in the soft streetlamp glow of the window. Thereâs an infant Alhaitham. Heâs skinny, teetering, his hair too long over his ears, where are his headphones?, god, look at those stretch marks on his shoulders, red as fresh paintâ
Alhaitham is looking up at the ceiling, head tipped back, balancing poorly on his heels as he turns. His head follows the lines of the woodwork. âIs thisââ His voice cracks, squeaking in a way that Kaveh was viciously self-conscious of when he was young and Alhaitham never gave a shit about. Alhaitham didnât start the masculinizing meds until he was at least fifteen, supplies a portion of Kavehâs heart that very rarely forgets. His voice hasnât cracked since they wereâ
Alhaitham looks from the vaulted ribs of his home to Kaveh. His eyes are enormous. He appears full of stars. âIs this the research center⌠you designed?â he asks. âThis is our project?â
âOh, no,â says Kaveh.
Heâs wearing the undershirt and trousers of an Akademiya uniform. The permanent frowning divot between his eyebrows has yet to form. The longer he looks at Kaveh, his pale eyes flickering from Kavehâs face to hands to chest to belt, the more he appears, ludicrously, to blush.
âOh, no,â says Kaveh, as Alhaitham trips backwards over the footstool and lands flat on his ass.
Tag game reblog this and put Babyâs First Blorbo in the tags like who was the first Character to move into your head and live there back when you were still figuring out how to tie your shoes
Not only will there be a new volume of CHECK, PLEASE! in the works...
But CHECK, PLEASE!: YEAR FIVE will be...
âŚTHE YEAR OF THE FROG. đ¸ đ â¨
Below, find a summary of what the newest volume of CHECK, PLEASE! will have to offer⌠highs, lows, and a whole new SMH!!
Samwell mens hockeyâs favorite bakerâand championship-winning senior captainâhas graduated! How will the team survive?
Problems abound as their new captain, Dex, learns that the effortless balance Bitty maintained on the team isnât as easy as it looks. Then, ultra-aloof Nursey must finally drop his âchillâ and get vulnerable in a senior poetry seminar. And to make matters worse, Chowder faces the dreaded âSSGSâ and is having the worst season of his college career.
But when change arrives at Samwell hockey, it not only threatens to rip the team apart, but could destroy Dex, Nursey, and Chowderâs friendship forever. Before they graduate, to save their team and themselves, the three seniors must come together and ask the question:
âWhat does Samwell hockey mean to you?â
I canât reveal any more spoilers, but Iâll leave you with that questionâwhat does Samwell hockey mean to you? Look out for more Check, Please! news in the months to come!
Subscribe to the Check, Please! newsletter!
Follow me on patreon for more exclusive news and to see me draw this goddamn comic!!
One of my favourite things when reading fanfiction is when you click with an author's style so much that you adore the fanfiction you're reading, and once it's over you need more. So you go to their page and hope that there's more for any fandom you might know- only there isn't any. They've written for other fandoms you aren't familiar with and never would've thought about before.
But you're down so bad for their style and talent that they got you wading in like:
areudirty
origamiaround
gracieabrams
vaporwave
kianamaiart
2087
