Chapter Text
Alhaitham is quiet when they get home from the Bimarstan. Kaveh is holding his hand as they step into the house, which is the most he feels he can do to comfort him at the moment.
They had been stopped multiple times on their way back by nosy people wanting to know more about the rumors they’ve been hearing. Kaveh had expected that to happen, but it still hurt his heart to watch Alhaitham, who is usually so self-assured, look over to Kaveh helplessly every time someone approached them, begging him with his eyes to step in.
“You okay?” Kaveh asks quietly, squeezing Alhaitham’s hand as they stand in the entryway together. The question is just a formality; he knows he’s not “okay,” but Kaveh needs to assure himself that Alhaitham hasn’t completely retreated into himself yet, before they even start the conversation about his drinking.
Alhaitham shrugs, rubbing his eyes with his free hand. “That depends on what you mean by ‘okay,’” he mumbles. “I have a headache, among other things.”
“I meant mentally,” Kaveh clarifies gently. “It wasn’t a well-formulated question, though. I know you’re not doing well. I should’ve asked something more along the lines of ‘how bad is it right now?’”
Alhaitham doesn’t respond for a moment, still rubbing his eyes. He looks physically uncomfortable, his shoulders tensed, face pale and scrunched up in pain.
“Bad,” is all that he manages to offer in response, his voice strained.
Kaveh sighs softly, tugging on Alhaitham’s hand to get him to keep walking into the house. He follows without protest, feet stumbling forward, uncharacteristically clumsy.
“Can you say any more about that?” Kaveh asks carefully, sitting them both down on a divan in the living room. “What kind of ‘bad’ is it? What’s going on in your head?”
“Everything,” Alhaitham murmurs, leaning into Kaveh slightly where he sits. Kaveh’s relieved that he’s at least initiating some physical contact. Sometimes when he’s struggling Alhaitham doesn’t want to be touched at all, and that can make comforting him more difficult for Kaveh.
He gladly lets Alhaitham lean in, wrapping an arm around his shoulders and pulling him closer.
“And what does ‘everything’ encompass?” Kaveh presses. He doesn’t want to push Alhaitham too hard yet, but if he wants to be helpful he definitely needs more information than just a single word.
“A lot,” Alhaitham answers quietly, closing his eyes and burying his face into Kaveh’s shoulder. “Everything is… a lot.”
Kaveh hums softly, running his fingers through Alhaitham’s hair soothingly. That’s still not really enough words to give him an idea about what’s going on in Alhaitham’s brain, but… it’s becoming clear that pressing more isn’t going to bring him any additional clarity.
“That’s true, ‘everything’ is a lot to be going through your head,” Kaveh acknowledges, and Alhaitham nods against him.
Kaveh looks down at his partner where he rests, snuggled into his shoulder like a sleepy child. He looks so much younger than his years, when he’s like this. It makes Kaveh’s heart ache, and it makes guilt curl in his stomach, knowing what he needs to say next.
He’s not used to being the one doing this kind of pushing, and the phrasing of it is difficult for him to figure out.
“We still need to have that talk about next steps,” Kaveh murmurs finally, moving his hand from Alhaitham’s hair to his chin, tilting his face up gently. “This isn’t something that will just go away if we ignore it, you know that.”
The pain in Alhaitham’s bleary eyes when he blinks them open is heartbreaking, but even more so is how small his voice is when he responds, how scared.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” he mumbles, but Kaveh can hear the hint of resignation in his words, the reluctant acceptance that he doesn’t have a choice in this.
It doesn’t make him feel any better about pushing it.
“I know, my love.” Kaveh’s thumb moves across Alhaitham’s cheek again, swiping at tears that don’t exist yet, but definitely will soon. “We have to talk about it anyway.”
—
Alhaitham doesn’t remember much of his conversation with Kaveh. He remembers starting to cry. He remembers bodily pushing him away, so hard that he nearly falls off the divan. He remembers standing up and shouting at him through the tears, the pain in his head, the nausea, and the crawling restlessness under his skin.
“You can’t make me do anything!” he had yelled, trembling where he stood. Kaveh had agreed, he remembers.
“You’re right, I can’t,” he had replied. “Your recovery is in your own hands primarily.”
That had only made Alhaitham feel worse. And the suggestion to go take a shower to calm down had felt like claws digging into his chest, but as he storms away to go do just that, the anger begins to fall away, leaving ruin in its wake.
The moment the door to the bathroom closes and locks behind Alhaitham, he sinks to the floor, bringing his knees to his chest and hugging them. He stares blankly out in front of himself, eyes fixed on the plain tile.
He’s not quite sure what he is feeling. It could be described as the absence of feeling, he supposes — some twisted version of emptiness — if it weren’t for the ache. Alhaitham can’t really tell where in his body the aching, empty pit is, but it feels simultaneously like he’s hosting it and like it’s hosting him.
He sits like that, curled up into himself on the floor of the bathroom, for a long time. It starts to feel like he might be dissolving, or maybe melting. Becoming one with the emptiness. Alhaitham knows logically that time is passing, but it doesn’t feel like it at all. He is suspended in time and space, cocooned in the aching absence of any emotions he can identify.
After some amount of time unknown to Alhaitham, there’s a knock on the bathroom door, and Kaveh’s voice floats into his awareness.
“I don’t hear any running water. Are you going to start your shower, hayati?” he asks gently. “Do you need any help?”
Alhaitham’s tongue feels heavy in his mouth, like there’s something weighing it down, and he’s not sure he has the wherewithal to speak right now, but he tries anyway. Kaveh sounds worried.
“I… don’t need help,” he murmurs, so softly that he thinks Kaveh might not have heard him at first, since he doesn’t respond right away.
“Okay,” Kaveh finally says, quietly. “Just let me know if you need anything. I’ll be around.”
Alhaitham listens to his footsteps fade as Kaveh walks away from the closed bathroom door. A feeling of loneliness becomes the first emotion Alhaitham can identify since he stepped into the bathroom, but he doesn’t try to call out to Kaveh. Something keeps Alhaitham from calling for him, from telling him that what he really needs is to be held and comforted and told that everything is going to be okay.
Instead, he slowly lifts himself off the floor, approaching the sink. He lifts his gaze to the mirror, looks into his own tired, red-rimmed eyes, and sees absolutely nothing reflected back. No anger, no resentment, no righteousness. All of those would be understandable if they had lingered. Kaveh is forcing him to confront something he doesn’t want to face, it would be natural to feel upset with him for more than five minutes.
But Alhaitham’s eyes are empty. Dead.
He looks down at the sink, unable to continue staring into those eyes he can’t recognize as his own, and his gaze catches on the straight-edged razor just sitting there on the counter, innocently. It’s the razor he uses to shave, but another use for its single exposed edge pops into his head unexpectedly.
He can’t say that he hasn’t been tempted before. Digging his fingernails into his arms has not always felt like enough to ground himself during a meltdown, but Alhaitham has never tried actually cutting with a razor.
His hand gravitates to it without much thought, and he lifts it to examine the sharp edge.
It looks clean enough, and he’s always been careful to rinse it well after each shave.
He finds himself rolling down one of his long fingerless gloves, testing the feel of the cold metal against his skin. Already, the haze of emptiness is starting to lift at just the thought of what it might feel like to press down and swipe across.
Alhaitham suddenly glances at the closed bathroom door. Kaveh will probably get worried again if he doesn’t hear running water soon.
And he’ll be even more worried if I start fucking cutting myself now, too.
He quickly puts the razor back down on the sink, dropping it like it’s burning him and backing away from it.
Turning toward the shower, he starts taking off his clothes, pushing the thought of the razor deep into the furthest corner of his mind. He can’t start doing that. Kaveh would find out immediately, and then what? He’d have to stop right away.
Alhaitham tosses his shirt into a corner with a sharp sigh. He can feel the panic creeping up on him again subtly as he turns on the water, the restless energy, the need for oblivion.
Drink or cut? Or neither? His mind can’t settle on how to solve the emotions that are tugging at his awareness, catching on his skin like fishhooks.
Shame, anger, panic, fear, overwhelm, badness.
Labeling them doesn’t help either.
Alhaitham turns the water temperature down as cold as it will go and steps under the spray. The coldness shocks him back into his body, jerking his focus away from what’s going on in his head and instead allowing him to fixate on the feeling of numbness spreading across his skin as the freezing water washes over him. He lets out a shuddering sigh, closing his eyes and letting himself relax into the sensation.
By the time he’s finished washing himself under the frigid spray, Alhaitham has little feeling in his fingers, but his mind and body are blissfully calmer. Not… entirely relaxed, but much better than before. His headache still pounds an incessant rhythm against his temples, and the crawling feeling has not disappeared either, but at least the nausea has receded slightly. He almost feels like he could eat something solid without hurling it back up immediately.
Alhaitham pats himself dry with his towel and wraps it around himself before unlocking and opening the bathroom door. Even though the air around him is warm, and there’s not much of a draft, it tingles uncomfortably where it hits his bare torso, and the towel around his hips feels like it’s made of sandpaper.
Ignoring the discomfort, he pads down the hallway toward where he can hear Kaveh rustling around in the kitchen. The smell of falafel and tahini and fresh tomato wafts down the hall, filling Alhaitham’s nostrils and making his stomach lurch with a combination of hunger and nausea.
Guilt crawls up his throat when he remembers how hurt Kaveh had looked in the silence following Alhaitham’s uncharacteristic outburst. And now he’s most likely making food for him, despite how justified he would be if he decided to completely ignore Alhaitham for the rest of the day.
“Your altruism truly knows no bounds,” Alhaitham mutters as he steps into the doorway of the kitchen. Kaveh is facing the opposite direction, vegetables strewn across the counter in front and beside him, but he turns around to look at Alhaitham when he speaks.
“Did the shower help?” Kaveh asks, instead of rising to the bait. He wipes his knife on his apron and sets it aside on the cutting board behind him.
“A little,” Alhaitham says quietly, looking down at his feet. “Not enough. I still feel… mostly awful.”
He sighs shakily, then lifts his head so he can meet Kaveh’s eyes, at least for a few seconds. “I’m sorry for yelling at you,” Alhaitham murmurs, then quickly looks away again, his head throbbing at the motion.
He can barely stand the softness in Kaveh’s expression, and hates the illogical forgiveness that he sees there.
“I don’t know what came over me,” Alhaitham continues, lifting a hand to his aching head, rubbing his temple. “It wasn’t appropriate for me to do that. I’m sorry.”
Kaveh takes a moment to locate a small bowl on the counter behind him, not responding to Alhaitham’s apology right away. The bowl contains a dark red liquid that smells strongly of henna berries and mint and a number of other things, the powerful scent slamming into Alhaitham’s face like a wall when Kaveh steps closer, holding it out to him.
“This is for your headache,” Kaveh explains. “I followed the recipe that the doctor at the Bimarstan gave us. The pita pockets are not quite done yet, but hopefully they’ll help get the taste out of your mouth later.”
There’s a pause. Alhaitham stares at the soup-like mixture in the bowl blankly.
“I do appreciate the apology for the yelling,” Kaveh continues after a moment. “And I also understand.”
Alhaitham knows that Kaveh understands better than anyone what he’s going through, but hearing it confirmed out loud… that helps. He takes the bowl from Kaveh and prods at the mixture with the spoon Kaveh hands him.
“Thanks,” he says softly. “This looks disgusting.”
Kaveh turns back around to face his cutting board and lifts the knife again, continuing to chop up the onions. “I’ll finish up these pita pockets while you drink that, then we can continue our conversation over a meal,” he suggests. “There’s something I wanted to propose that we do while you’re recovering, but you should take care of your headache and eat something first.”
Alhaitham makes an agreeable sound, then shuffles over to the kitchen table and sits down with the medicine bowl. He stares at it like it might jump out at him, the spoon held tightly in his hand like it could protect him from a soupy attack.
Once he finally gathers the courage to taste, Alhaitham wishes he had just tried gulping it all down at once. The bitterness of the henna berries combined with the sharpness of the mint makes for a very unpleasant flavor profile, and it almost feels like it’s burning his tongue.
Alhaitham glances at Kaveh for reassurance, but he’s still chopping vegetables, facing away. He turns back to the bowl, steeling himself. The headache is bad enough that Alhaitham is willing to tolerate the horrible taste of the medicine even without encouragement.
He brings the bowl to his lips and tips his head back, forgetting the spoon entirely. It’s disgusting, and the texture makes him want to gag, but he keeps drinking until the bowl is empty.
Alhaitham knows he will have to endure much worse than just bad-tasting medicine if he wants to crawl his way back out of this grave he has spent the past month digging for himself. Though “want” is a funny word, when it’s applied to a situation he has very little control over.
It is similar to the way a drowning man “wants to” keep fighting to live. Survival is required, but the method to it is far from desirable.