oh, my… as much as i believe that kaveh would never want to hide it/be embarrassed to be open about his transition, he does realise that the akademiya is not a safe place for being your own person to begin with. when i think of the possibilities in this regard, i have the line from his hangout about “struggling a lot in school” & often attach the experience he had with the acceptance to it. people’s opinions never would affect him & his love for this part of him but that doesn’t mean he’d have it easy.

both alhaitham & kaveh were some kinds of outcasts in the akademiya. the real geniuses against the faux image of it, two boys who do not necessarily know how to interact with others (alhaitham’s bluntness & distaste to the opinionated minds/kaveh’s overkindness & the guilt that follows each interaction, being easy to use). alhaitham doesn’t form his perception of someone based on what people say but only what the said person displays to him & what he deduces from their emotions shown or hidden. he’d be the oasis for kaveh in the desert of “prickly” peers. this is why it’d never matter to alhaitham. the rumour is untrue? fine. whatever. the rumour is true? wonderful—it makes kaveh even more beautiful in his eyes. it doesn’t change nothing. it’s his kaveh. nothing else matters—nothing will go against alhaitham loving him & that implication MELTS MY HEART.

still… alhaitham definitively finds out about it in their adulthood, and i only wonder how it’d play off—would he hear it from kaveh openly talking about it somewhere, or would it be a pathetic happenstance where they both acted a bit too much upon their feelings/actions. the disaster of it if kaveh was not ready to tell him…