Chapter Text
The house is eerily quiet when Alhaitham returns home.
He frowns slightly as he steps through the front door. Kaveh’s shoes by the entrance tells him that Kaveh is home but the house is far too quiet for that. It’s unsettling, the silence.
Alhaitham has a fine appreciation for silence. It’s his preferred atmosphere. But he has, in the five years since Kaveh moved in, come to appreciate the simple background noise of life. Kaveh can be loud and noisy. He keeps Alhaitham awake until odd hours in the morning with his crafting. (And other sexy reasons.) Kaveh nags and shouts and screams. (And turns the prettiest shade of red when flustered.)
Despite all of that, Alhaitham has come to appreciate the other noise. It’s the sound of cooking in the kitchen. The song Kaveh hums as he waters the plants in the greenhouse. The footsteps in the hallway. Doors that open and close.
There’s life in their home.
Alhaitham adores it. It’s peaceful despite the noise it makes.
So this silence is unnerving and concerning.
Even more so if Kaveh is home.
Alhaitham wanders the house. The living room and kitchen area is empty. The bathroom door is open. Their bedroom is silent and unwelcoming. The bed is cold to the touch. The study, and it’s Alhaitham’s study today, also does not contain Kaveh.
That leaves the guest bedroom.
(It became the guest bedroom again, when Kaveh fully moved into Alhaitham’s room. But most days it’s also Kaveh’s workshop for him to work on his commissions. It’s also sometimes the greenhouse when Kaveh checks on the plants that his mother has left behind.)
It’s too quiet. There isn’t the sound of hammers or sawing. There isn’t a light on to suggest drafting is being done. It’s an easy assumption to guess that such silence might have been a result of Kaveh taking a nap during the day. Alhaitham can’t imagine that Kaveh would draft the guest bedroom and sleep there.
Slowly, he pushes open the door to the guest bedroom.
It’s a room he hasn’t seen before.
It’s not the guest bedroom or the greenhouse or the Kaveh’s workshop. It’s a room with red walls. A circular window, divided up into even parts, frames the far wall. It is as tall as Kaveh in height. The afternoon sunlight pours in.
There is nothing else in the room. It’s empty.
Save Kaveh who sits in the center.
Alhaitham quietly enters, shutting the door behind him. He treads lightly and sinks down next to Kaveh’s side.
Kaveh immediately leans, resting his head against Alhaitham’s shoulder.
“Welcome home, Haitham,” he says.
His voice is so weary. Worn like a thin piece of material that is threadbare, just holding onto its shape, color and pattern but still unraveling.
Alhaitham wraps his arm around Kaveh’s waist, supporting him. “Is something wrong?” he asks.
While this room is new, coming home to a quiet, brooding Kaveh had been common in the last two months.
Alhaitham is concerned.
Kaveh laughs. It’s watery, like tears unshed. “No,” he says. “Really, no. I know you have been worried. I’ll explain. I just… wanted to see if I could still draft this room.”
“This room?” Alhaitham says. He takes another look around. There’s nothing really remarkable about this room as far as he can tell.
Kaveh points behind him, at the door.
Alhaitham twists slightly, trying not to displace Kaveh too much from his shoulder.
There he sees the detail he missed when he first entered the room. There’s little notches in the doorframe and crayon markings with wobbly letters next to it that spell out Kaveh’s name. The marking of heights with each growth. The notches stops around halfway up the doorframe.
“Ah,” Alhaitham says. “Your childhood bedroom?”
“Mmm,” Kaveh confirms. He resettles against Alhaitham’s shoulder and quietly sighs.
“You already know the story,” Kaveh says. Bittersweet and resignation haunts his carmine eyes. “I sold my childhood home and most of the belongings besides what I couldn’t let go to build the Palace of Alcazarzaray. And I told you a few years ago that most of the rooms were empty as a result.”
“Yes,” Alhaitham acknowledges.
Kaveh has, over the years, shared bits and pieces more about how his magical drafting powers work.
It’s an ability that manifested several generations back. A family line of Kshahrewar graduates who were talented in unique ways. Alhaitham hadn’t actually realized that many of Sumeru’s grandest buildings could be traced to Kaveh’s family line.
And such blessed talent had somewhere along the way manifested in magical drafting.
There’s some mysticism to the whole process. Knowledge that has been lost as it’s passed down, but it’s mostly rooted in science even if some of the mechanics are unknown.
Kaveh possesses the ability to draft a floorplan of an existing room. This floorplan gets added to his drafting pool. Every day Kaveh can select from this drafting pool an existing floorplan and summon it into existence. The room is perfectly preserved, furniture included.
Alhaitham even tested it with food. It perfectly preserves food too. Kaveh complained but Alhaitham was testing it to make new compost for Kaveh’s greenhouse so he didn’t put up too much of a fight. The food remained fresh, the coffee was still warm. There was some sort of permanent stasis effect. This also explains why Kaveh’s plants do not die if Kaveh goes out on a trip and doesn’t water them for three weeks.
“When you empty a room, there’s a high risk of a floorplan vanishing,” Kaveh says. “There’s a lot of power tied to the identity of the floorplan. If I draft a floorplan and call it a bedroom and then remove the bed, it loses its identity and I become unable to draft it. I may be able to change that room into a new identity and preserve the floorplan but that’s not always a success. Kitchen renovations are notorious for failing, something my grandfather noted. It is always easier to just redraft the new room.”
So what did it say about Kaveh’s childhood bedroom that was currently empty?
“The other way to lose a floorplan is the result of death,” Kaveh whispers. His voice is thick with emotions. “Some floorplans simply vanish when the original drafter dies. It’s unknown what happens to the room and the items that are contained in the room. My mother and I haven’t been able to draft my father’s study since his death.”
Alhaitham squeezes Kaveh’s waist gently. Even after discovering the truth behind his father’s death, the scar still runs deep in Kaveh.
Kaveh takes a deep breath. “I speculate that in the future, someone might gain access to it, provided the original draft of the floorplan survives. I was able to draft my great great grandmother’s bedroom and her walk-in closet after I found the floorplans in our storage. My mother heard from her father that no one had seen it since her death. Perhaps it is the healing of time that allows the room to be resummoned, when the grief is no longer there.”
And thus it was no comfort to anyone who might have needed it.
While he normally viewed Kaveh’s drafting ability as something wondrous, Alhaitham hadn’t known about this downside.
He tried to imagine all of his grandmother’s things vanishing into a room that is unopenable for the rest of his life. It’s a sharp pain in his chest. Alhaitham has let go of many things over the years but there are so much of his grandmother’s belongings that he has kept.
“And you can be locked out of certain floorplans,” Kaveh says. “There is a mastery or ownership tied to it in some cases. I haven’t been able to access many of my mother’s rooms: her private study, my parents’ master bedroom or her atelier. I don’t know if she burned the original floorplans, redesigned them and excluded access from me, or if she emptied them and abandoned them. I have copies of it, but I cannot access them.”
He pauses. Pain flashes across his face. “Nor have I asked her about it.”
Alhaitham remains silent. Kaveh reconnected with his mother three years ago, after the truth about what happened to his father came out. He has a darling baby sister now. Kaveh visits, writes on occasion, and always returns back to Sumeru.
It is not the most perfect relationship and Alhaitham has held his thoughts on Faranak.
Faranak doesn’t deserve Kaveh as a son. But Kaveh will not let go of filial piety.
Alhaitham lays most of the trauma that Kaveh carries at her feet. The debt to Dori may have been Kaveh’s own making and the grief of his father’s death may have been heavy, but it’s all exacerbated by Faranak’s abandonment of Kaveh.
That is where Alhaitham and Kaveh different. Their losses are similar, too early, too soon, but Alhaitham has never doubted the love his parents and grandmother gave him. He’s blessed in that way. On the other hand, Kaveh struggles with accepting help, with believing that people love him and adore him.
There is much that Alhaitham blames Faranak for but he holds his tongue on those words.
They fight enough over the topic as is.
“The last way to lose a floorplan,” Kaveh says softly, slowly, “is when the original building that the floorplan is made of is destroyed.”
Alhaitham pauses. The puzzle pieces click together “Your childhood home was demolished?”
Kaveh hums. “Yes, this morning,” he says. His voice is… resigned. A bittersweet acceptance, a wound that scarred over and is now weeping blood again.
“It seems the person I sold it to originally, sold it about three years ago,” Kaveh says. “And the next owner did not… take care of the home. A violent sort, apparently, the type to punch walls and break windows and not bother to repair it. The kind of person that vanishes two years ago and no one cares, brutally murdered. The Matra found his body about six months ago, wrapped up the case and as the owner had no relatives and the house has been under Akademiya’s control since. It went up on the market two months ago and was promptly bought by a family of six.”
Slowly Kaveh’s actions over the two months have made sense. He had been moody and withdrawn, to the point of worry for Alhaitham. Kaveh had barely fought with Alhaitham during the time and Alhaitham was in the middle of planning an intervention with Tighnari and Cyno because he had no idea what could be causing such a mood.
“They're a nice family,” Kaveh says. He swallows tightly. “And they hired me to replace it.”
Alhaitham presses a kiss to Kaveh’s crown.
“You choose the hardest battles sometimes,” Alhaitham murmurs.
“I do,” Kaveh agrees. He softly sighs and continues on. “The foundation was still good and though neglected and in much disrepair, the house could have been fixed. But… that was a home for a family of three. Not for a growing family of six. It would have been easier, better, to tear it all down and rebuild.”
He stares at his hand, opening and closing his fist. “The mother of the family is my client. Her husband says she’s the best one to decide on how the house should be laid out. I’ve been meeting her. She’s a delightful woman. One of the best clients I’ve had. She adored my design.”
“So you demolished your childhood home,” Alhaitham says.
“So I demolished my childhood home,” Kaveh echoes.
Kaveh’s bleeding heart. Alhaitham loves that about him, but he always… always wishes that Kaveh wouldn’t make choices that damage him at the same time.
“The new extension of the foundation was poured today after the old house came down,” Kaveh says. “And I came home and drafted this room.”
“To see if you could,” Alhaitham says.
“To see if I could, yes,” Kaveh says. His eyes close. “This was the first one I tried. It… survived when I emptied it, to sell the furniture and knicknacks to pay off my debt. I hoped it had survived the demolishing of my childhood home.”
He smiles bitterly. “Because unlike the other rooms in that house, this one was mine.”
Though the room is empty, Alhaitham can see in his mind the ghost of the young Kaveh running into his room, flopping on a bed and kicking his feet in the air. Toys scattered on the ground, blocks for building and paper and pens for drawing.
“Much like how a room can seal itself with grief, I believe if the room, even if it’s stripped of its identity, holds enough memories, the floorplan can continue to exist even though the original building is gone,” Kaveh says. “It’s proven with my family’s library. The original building is long gone. I don’t even know where it originally stood. The greenhouse with my mother’s plants is from her grandparent’s place. There is a road where that house used to be.”
He traces the wooden floor in front him, following the whorls in the wood grain. “I just wasn’t sure if I had left enough of… me here.”
“But you did,” Alhaitham says. Kaveh shines so brightly. It’s not a surprise to know he left scorchmarks where his brilliance touched.
“I guess so,” Kaveh says.
“What now?” Alhaitham asks.
“Well once the foundation is set, it’ll take only three weeks to finish the entire house,” Kaveh says. “There’s another project I also have to finalize. They only wanted the design. The construction will be handled by a different company. But I will have a considerable amount of free time once those two projects are complete.”
Alhaitham tilts his head, looking down at Kaveh. This is an unexpected change in mood.
Kaveh peers up at him. He smiles gently.
“I told you I’m fine,” Kaveh says.
Alhaitham snorts at the words. “That is usually a code for me to get Tighnari,” he says dryly. Kaveh has a terrible habit of overworking himself or working himself into depressive fits.
Alhaitham intervenes as much as he can. Getting Kaveh to maintain a healthy work-life balance is an uphill battle. It’s easier now that Alhaitham can just scoop Kaveh up and drag him into bed but it’s still a constant work in progress.
Kaveh laughs. “Spare me from Tighnari’s wrath.”
“We’ll see,” Alhaitham says. He’s not going to call off the intervention until he knows for sure.
Kaveh leans against him. A smile still dancing on his lips. “It’s just while I’m devastated over the demolition of my childhood home, it left me with some other things to think about.”
“Like what?” Alhaitham says.
“You remember the renovation project for the Bimarstan I had last year?” Kaveh says.
Alhaitham nods. It was one of the bigger projects that Kaveh had taken on. High visibility, high expectations and a very large budget. It was not unlike Kaveh’s renovation of Pharos Lighthouse. Kaveh accomplished with great success, on budget and on time and with all his stylistic flair.
“What I didn’t mention to you was that the payment for that project paid off the last of my debt to Dori,” Kaveh says. “And all my commissions this year were for collecting a down payment. I finally have enough.”
Unease churns in Alhaitham’s heart. Down payment? For what?
He knows… He knows that Kaveh loves him. But that small child in Alhaitham’s heart, the one that asked his grandmother not to leave him as she lay dying in her bed, still fears that Kaveh will walk out his life.
And Kaveh’s debt is what brought Kaveh back into Alhaitham’s life.
When it’s gone, will Kaveh still remain?
Alhaitham knows that sometimes… sometimes love isn’t enough.
Not when there are bigger dreams out there.
And Kaveh was always the biggest dreamer.
Unaware of Alhaitham’s inner turmoil, Kaveh simply hands Alhaitham a roll of blueprints.
“Open it,” Kaveh says.
Alhaitham unfurls it. It’s a house. Far larger than their current home with two stories. And the first thing Alhaitham notes is the first room, past the foyer is labeled as “Alhaitham’s Study.” Further down the hallway, in the corner of the house, is labeled library and a note to add more bookcases for Alhaitham’s books. It unfolds more, a kitchen, a dining room, a living room, a bathroom. A room labeled as Kaveh’s atelier. A master bedroom with an ensuite on the first floor. Guest bedrooms on the second floor. An extension in the yard labeled as greenhouse.
Alhaitham swallows tightly. This is…
“Kaveh?” he asks.
He knows what this is. But he wants to hear it from Kaveh.
Kaveh grins. A small one, but joy filled nevertheless. “There’s a spot, a little bit further than this location. An unfortunate ten minute walk to Akademiya instead of five minutes, but a much bigger space. There’s no house currently on the lot, but it means freedom and creativity for the design.”
He traces a finger over the blueprint. “This is the home I created for us. And, Haitham, I would really love to teach you how to draft.”
Alhaitham stares at Kaveh. His mouth goes dry because Kaveh is asking… Kaveh is asking!
“Teach me how to draft?” Alhaitham says. He doesn’t want to misunderstand.
Mischief gleams in Kaveh’s eyes. “Of course,” he says. He flips a page to another blueprint with concepts sketched on it. “I can’t have you unable to access parts of the house and we certainly don’t need some of the rooms out all the time. But I was thinking of a wine cellar, a breakfast nook, an attic for storage or just more storage rooms in general. An observatory for us to gaze at the stars at night might be fun.”
“Drafting isn’t a unique ability to your family line?” Alhaitham asks.
“It’s not a unique ability tied to blood, no. There’s some talent required to be good at it though. But overall, it’s something I think you’ll pick up fairly fast,” Kaveh says.
He gets to his knees to face Alhaitham, wrapping his arms around Alhaitham’s neck and pressing his forehead to Alhaitham’s. “The first thing my mother did after her wedding to my father was to teach him how to draft his study. I would love to teach you how to draft your own library, habibi. Will you let me?”
“Yes,” Alhaitham says, as he surges forward to capture Kaveh’s lips in a kiss.
Kaveh laughs into the kiss.
Alhaithams cradles Kaveh’s face, memorizing every line. His heart is bursting, singing in a way he has never quite felt before. He had never ever dared to dream this.
“You’ve spent the last two months figuring out how to propose to me?” Alhaitham asks.
Kaveh takes on a smug look. “I spent the last year planning on how to propose to you, Haitham.”
He shyly smiles. “Do you like it?”
“You made a home with me included. How can I not?” Alhaitham asks. Because proof, proof, that Kaveh will never leave him behind again.
All he can do is stare at Kaveh like the sun hanging in the sky. The wonder, the joy, the awe, mixing and churning. Just when he thinks he cannot find new ways to fall in love with Kaveh, Kaveh surprises him, over and over again.
Kaveh brightly laughs and intertwines his fingers with Alhaitham, squeezing tight.
Alhaitham can see the future where there’s matching wedding bands on their hands.
“Of course I did,” Kaveh says. “Home is where you are.”