Chapter Text
It’s Alhaitham.
Of course it’s Alhaitham.
It’s always Alhaitham.
“What-what are you doing here, Alhaitham?” Kaveh asks, his voice still rusty from sleep. That doesn’t stop him from saying Alhaitham’s name like it’s a swear.
All he gets in response is a meek, “May I come inside?”
Like the stupid little people pleaser he is, he just opens the door wider.
“What are you doing here?” Kaveh asks again, hoping to get an actual response.
“You’ve been ghosting me,” Alhaitham says, levelling Kaveh’s ego with a single glance.
“Ah. Yes. That,” Kaveh says, blinking twice.
Alhaitham raises an eyebrow. “Are you going to defend yourself?”
“I don’t see why I would have to,” Kaveh retorts, trying to go back to his past self from about four weeks ago. The disguise does not last for very long.
“I have been nothing but polite towards you,” Alhaitham says, growing far too annoyed for Kaveh to argue.
Alhaitham continues, softer this time, “I care about you, Kaveh. Did something happen?”
“Nothing happened, I just... it’s all me, okay? You have no need to worry about it,” Kaveh says, glad to have thoughts of words back in his brain.
“Yes, I do. I would like to think I’m your friend, at the very least,” Alhaitham says, his tone soft but commanding.
Kaveh sucks in a heavy breath. “I don’t have any idea why you would think that something is wrong with me. I’m fine.” he says.
“Nothing is wrong with you — but you’re clearly not okay. Kaveh, look around yourself.” Alhaitham gestures widely towards the rest of Kaveh’s house.
Kaveh hasn’t cleaned in a week. There are already boxes littering the floor, and Kaveh would clean them up, but he just... doesn’t have the required amount of motivation.
“Does this really seem fine to you?” Alhaitham asks, worry coating his voice in a way Kaveh has never heard from him before.
“Listen to me — I told you, it’s none of your business, okay? Can’t you just leave me alone?” Kaveh’s voice cracks, and it’s humiliating. He takes steps towards the kitchen, but Alhaitham stops him in his tracks.
“I want to talk to you, Kaveh. Can’t you give me the light of day, even for a second?”
Kaveh curls his fists, eyes growing teary. “Fine. Fine! What do you want from me, Alhaitham?” He spins himself around to face Alhaitham. He’s sure his cheeks are flaming red from shame, but some part of him stops him from caring.
“I want to know why you’ve been avoiding me. Why you’ve been ghosting not only me, but everyone else in your life.”
“I’m not — I wasn’t ghosting you, for a first, and even if I was, I wasn’t ghosting anyone else,” Kaveh says, hurt and shame filling his voice.
“Yes, you were. Or were you just too busy to notice Tighnari, Cyno, and Nilou trying to contact you over the past week?”
“They didn’t — none of them talked to me. None of them tried, I don’t think,” Kaveh says, voice growing weaker by the second.
Alhaitham’s expression grows complicated. “Of course they tried to talk to you. They’re your friends.”
Kaveh goes silent.
“I’ll ask only one more time, Kaveh. Why are you avoiding me?” Alhaitham says, and this time, his voice is so full of hurt, Kaveh can’t keep his silence.
“I can’t — I won’t be friends with you anymore. I’m sorry,” Kaveh says, looking to the corner of the room.
There’s a long pause. The air seems to still.
“Why?” is all that Alhaitham says, and it pains Kaveh to his core.
Kaveh’s eyes start wandering around the room, but they never look any higher than Alhaitham’s feet.
“It’s just — It’s all me. I’m all wrong.” Kaveh can feel the tears pricking at his eyes again.
Alhaitham, his touch as light as feathers, takes Kaveh’s chin in his hand. He angles his head so they come eye-to-eye. Kaveh can’t bring himself to look away.
“Tell me what’s wrong,” Alhaitham says, tilting his head ever so slightly.
Kaveh blinks several times and smiles weakly. “You can’t fix it.” You can’t fix me.
“Kaveh.” Alhaitham speaks with a tone of finality. “I’m not going to lose you again,” he says, voice cracking ever so subtly.
Kaveh places his hand on Alhaitham’s outstretched arm.
“Why do you care?”
“Because I care about you, Kaveh. I don’t want you to feel like we can’t even be friends. Tell me what’s wrong, and I can help.”
Kaveh shrugs. “What do you want me to say? That I — that I’m in love with you, or something?” He’s hyperventilating a little bit.
Alhaitham blinks twice.
“I don’t know. Are you?” he asks, completely genuine. His face is carefully blank.
Kaveh tightens his grip on Alhaitham’s arm. “If-If I am, would you leave?”
Alhaitham doesn’t answer.
Instead, he says, “Are you?” again.
Kaveh breaths in, and he feels the snot gathering inside his nose.
“Yeah.”
Kaveh’s voice doesn’t even crack. Somehow, that hurts.
He closes his eyes and braces himself for the inevitable.
Somehow, all Alhaitham does is pull Kaveh into a hug.
“That’s okay,” he says, whispering so softly into the crook of Kaveh’s neck he almost didn’t hear it.
“What?” Kaveh asks, thoroughly confused.
Alhaitham breathes in deeply. He huffs out like he’s laughing, which only serves to confuse Kaveh further.
“I said, that’s okay.”
Kaveh pulls apart the hug, no matter how much he misses the warmth. “How? How is that okay?”
Alhaitham closes his eyes.
“Because I feel the same way,” he says, like it’s just that simple.
Kaveh blinks. He takes two steps back. Alhaitham’s eyes are still closed.
“What?” he says, trying to process. “What?” he says again, but the remark still isn’t processing.
After a handful of seconds, Kaveh grows several times louder. “What!?”
Alhaitham opens his eyes and nods.
The statement finally goes through Kaveh’s idiotic mind.
“Since when!? Since when.” Kaveh points an accusatory finger at Alhaitham.
Alhaitham just shrugs, the asshole. “Since high school.”
Kaveh rubs at his eyes. “This can’t be real. This cannot be real.” Kaveh looks up from his hands. “Tell me you love me.”
Alhaitham blinks. “I love you.”
“No way.”
“Would you like me to pinch you?” Alhaitham says, a mix of mildly sarcastic and happy.
“Holy shit. You... love me?”
Alhaitham just nods.
“And you have since high school.”
Alhaitham nods again, slightly more forcefully this time.
“I’m such an idiot,” Kaveh says, burying his face in his hands.
Alhaitham huffs out a laugh again.
“Don’t laugh at me!” Kaveh whines.
“Why not? All this fuss over something so manageable.”
Kaveh laughs once. “Manageable? Kiss my ass.”
Alhaitham raises an eyebrow.
“Shut up,” Kaveh looks over to the rightmost wall. “Since high school?” he whispers, mostly to himself.
“Yes. Is it really that surprising?”
Kaveh laughs again. “Yes! Yes, in fact, it is! Since high school. Since high school. Even after the — our fight?”
Alhaitham shrugs. “I don’t see how I would stop.”
“I’m not sure who the bigger idiot is here,” Kaveh says, laughing despite himself. “You, for loving me after the fight, or me, for only realizing I loved you like, three weeks ago.”
Alhaitham smiles wider than Kaveh’s ever seen him smile before.
“You’re laughing at me again, aren’t you?” Kaveh narrows his eyes at him.
“No. But you did just say you love me.”
Kaveh breathes in, and lets out a laugh of his own. “Well, yeah, of course. I-I love you.”
Alhaitham looks at him like he has the world in his eyes. It makes Kaveh’s heart skip several beats.
“You’re so cheesy,” Kaveh says, rubbing at the bridge of his nose.
“I don’t see anything wrong with that,” Alhaitham says simply.
“Yeah, of course you don’t,” Kaveh rolls his eyes as he speaks.
Alhaitham watches him intently. “Are you going to stop avoiding me now?”
Kaveh laughs a little. “Yeah,” he says guiltily.
“Good.” Alhaitham nods. “You look tired. Do you want eggs?”
Kaveh blinks. “For breakfast?”
“Mhm.”
“Are you making them?”
“Mhmm.”
“Then yes,” Kaveh says, feeling uncannily like a princess.
Alhaitham smiles. It makes Kaveh’s heart flutter and his world grow a little brighter.
The two spend the rest of the morning just talking. Kaveh smiles more than he has in the past year, and Alhaitham is much the same.
It’s nice.
•--- (っᵔ◡ᵔ)っ(˶ᵔ ᵕ ᵔ˶) ---•
“Do you want me to play for you, or do you just want to keep whining?”
“I think either course of action would be entirely appropriate,” Alhaitham says, placing his hand on his chin.
Kaveh rolls his eyes. “Has anyone ever told you how much of an asshole you are?”
“Not to my face, no.” Kaveh hears the smile in Alhaitham’s voice. “But you can start playing now.” He says it like he’s bored and it’s all Kaveh’s fault.
Kaveh taps one of the strings lightly. “Any song recommendations?” he asks, voice sickeningly sweet.
“For the bass? No.”
Kaveh stopped listening back when he asked the question.
His attention diverted to his instrument, Kaveh mentally maps out the song he’s about to play. Hopefully, it’ll sound impressive. And if it doesn’t, then he can just blame it on Alhaitham’s lack of bass knowledge.
The song lasts for less than a minute. Somehow, Kaveh’s sweating by the end.
He takes a deep breath, runs his hand through his hair, and turns to Alhaitham. “You like it?” he says, plastering a confident smile over his face.
Alhaitham eyes linger on Kaveh’s hands.
“I think... it was perfect,” he says, eyes finally coming to meet Kaveh’s.
Kaveh’s expression breaks down into a more genuine smile. He softly places the bass aside and goes to sit closer to Alhaitham.
“You could’ve said that, like, ten seconds earlier,” he says, flicking his fingers against Alhaitham’s forehead.
Alhaitham’s face doesn’t change in reaction, but he does take Kaveh’s wrist in his hand.
“Compliments tend to have more effect when the recipient feels like they’re earned.”
Kaveh breaks into a toothy smile. “Okay, now you’re just making things up.”
Alhaitham tilts his head. “It may not be backed by any scientific data, but it feels like common sense, no? In another regard, I don’t see how I would be making things up, when I’m merely speaking from experience.”
“Your experience seems skewed, and by extension, so does your common sense,” Kaveh retorts.
“How so?”
“Well, for one, you fell in love with me,” Kaveh says, looking to the side while he smiles snarkily.
Alhaitham grabs Kaveh by the chin and turns his head so that they face each other. He blinks once, slowly.
“I don’t see how that’s indicative of any flaw in my judgement,” he says, his face not conveying a hint of the cheese he just spouted.
Kaveh shakes his head slightly, smiling wider. “You’re the silliest man I’ve ever met, you know that, right?”
Alhaitham just shrugs.
Kaveh breathes out a huff, his mind drifting. “I’m still jealous that Nilou got to kiss you before I did,” he says, pouting slightly.
Alhaitham huffs, unimpressed. “It’s just television. By that definition, you’ve kissed far more women than I ever have or ever will.”
“You don’t know that. One day, you could suddenly be really interested in the romance genre,” Kaveh suggests jokingly.
Alhaitham scrunches his nose. “I wouldn’t. For multiple reasons.”
Kaveh leans closer. “Like what? You’re not passionate enough? No director will take you?”
“Firstly, I can be plenty passionate when I want to be. The first real reason starts with K and rhymes with ‘aveh’. The second reason is because romantic movies are rarely written well.”
“How would you know? You don’t watch any.”
Alhaitham rolls his eyes slightly. “I watched yours.”
Kaveh gasps. “My movies are amazing! I would never take a movie with a bad script.”
“Your first film was a Hallmark Christmas movie,” Alhaitham deadpans.
“I was young and desperate. And I wasn’t even the lead in that one!”
“I don’t see how that’s an excuse.”
“Not everyone has the face of Adonis, Alhaitham. We can’t all be outrageously lucky kings who only star in sci-fi dramas.”
Alhaitham raises an eyebrow. “I have the face of Adonis?”
“That’s what sticks out to you? Archons, you’re so vain,” Kaveh laughs a little, closing his eyes for a split second.
When he opens them, he finds Alhaitham staring back at him like he’s the most beautiful thing in the world. Kaveh squirms imperceptibly.
Somehow out of breath, Alhaitham asks, “Can I kiss you?”
And, well, who is Kaveh to refuse?