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It’s lunchtime—and that means it’s time for Kaveh to complain about his newly-assigned roommate to his friends. Between the never-ending pile of assigned readings and Alhaitham being completely insufferable in every moment they spend together at their shared dorm, this is his only daily opportunity to let off steam.
“He’s so fucking annoying!” Kaveh snaps, “All he does every day is read his fucking books. I don’t ever see him eating or sleeping or just taking a normal fucking break like a normal person! It’s like he’s a freakin’ vampire or some shit! Nevermind having weird ass habits, he also—”
“Kaveh, Kaveh. How do you know he doesn’t eat or sleep?” Tighnari interrupts, “Maybe he just does it when you’re not there.”
“What, so he’s scared of eating in front of me?” Kaveh scrunches up his nose in disgust and takes a vicious bite of his Charcoal-Baked Ajilenakh Cake. “Fucking weirdo.”
“I guess he is kind of insufferable but—”
“Not just ‘kind of’,” Cyno deadpans. Cyno has hated Alhaitham since they shared a class last year. Unfortunately, being roommates is a step up from being classmates. It’s more time spent together, more time spent arguing. Worst of all, Kaveh always loses. How could he win when Alhaitham never reacts to anything Kaveh says, yet seems to know exactly how to push all of Kaveh’s buttons at once?
Tighnari gives Cyno a look as he finishes his sentence, “But those don’t sound like real reasons to be annoyed at a person.”
“Okay, fine,” Kaveh grumbles, “I guess I just find him annoying in general, and that means everything he does annoys me now. ”
“Well, the feeling is mutual, Senior.”
“WAH!” Kaveh screams, jerking his head up to—speak of the Devil—Alhaitham. Alhaitham, standing over Kaveh’s seated form with those massive man-boobs of his, gazing down at Kaveh with almost-bored, vermilion-pupiled eyes. “W-what are you doing here?!”
“Exercising my right as a student of Sumeru Akademiya to use its canteen. Why so surprised? Were you saying something that I’m not supposed to hear about?” Kaveh lowers his head to observe the others —Cyno’s giving Alhaitham one of his famous death glares and Tighnari has his mouth full of mushrooms, presumably to detach himself from Kaveh’s current predicament. Traitor, Kaveh thinks.
“Oh, so you know we don’t want you to hear what we’re saying,” Kaveh fakes a smile, then lets his expression sour, “then leave!”
“While I am rather hurt to be chased away so cruelly… ” Kaveh scoffs—Hurt, this cold-blooded creature of a junior? No way, he’s surely plotting some kind of twisted revenge! “... I’m here to ask you to return me the 500 Mora you owe.”
“500?!” Kaveh splutters, “I borrowed 400!”
“I’m charging interest since you’re rich enough to buy that overpriced gourmet coffee.”
“Ugh, you bastard! You’re worse than Dori! At least she’s upfront about committing daylight robbery!”
Alhaitham shrugs, unfazed by the comparison, “Perhaps you should try not being the victim of daylight robbery as you so put it by taking better care of your finances. Regardless, I expect to see 500 Mora on my study table by tomorrow morning.” And then, he turns and walks away, like everything is fine and dandy. It most certainly is not from Kaveh’s point of view.
So he stands up and shouts “You can expect to suck my dick !” as the man disappears into the crowd.
A snort escapes Tighnari’s lips.
Kaveh whirls around, face red. “It’s not funny!”
One lecture and two group project discussions later, Kaveh still thinks Alhaitham is insane for making him pay an extra hundred Mora when he only borrowed the money two days ago. Days!
Hence, he decides that he is simply not going to pay the extra. Not in Mora, at least. Hell, he will actually rather let Alhaitham suck his dick for real. At least he’d get a blowjob out of that.
When Kaveh reaches their shared room, Alhaitham is at his desk, but not working on some assignment due in two months. Instead, he’s hunched over it and shaking.
Kaveh’s prepared arguments give way for concern. “... Alhaitham?”
Alhaitham doesn’t reply. Kaveh takes a step closer and realises that Alhaitham is panting, like he’s suffering from some kind of illness.
Kaveh may find Alhaitham annoying, but not to the degree of wanting him to drop dead in an Akademiya dorm.
“Hey, do you want to lie down or something?” Kaveh reaches for Alhaitham’s arm, “You look like you’re going to—”
The moment he touches Alhaitham, he’s shoved so quickly that black spots appear at the side of his vision. When it clears, he finds himself pinned to his single bed, Alhaitham’s face in his.
The whole ‘shoved-onto-the-bed’ thing and the ‘panting-and-shaking’ thing aside, something’s wrong with Alhaitham. His eyes are no longer a rich teal, but a glaring, glowing red that overpowers even his distinctive orange pupils. Kaveh himself has reddish eyes, but they sure aren’t glowing like whatever Alhaitham’s got going on. Also, what is going on with those canines? Kaveh is certain that human teeth are not supposed to be that sharp.
One thing is for sure—This is not calm, cocky, logical-to-a-fault Alhaitham. This is feral, animalistic, devoid-of-reason Alhaitham, and he is someone Kaveh is completely unfamiliar with.
In Kaveh’s nervousness, he blurts out, “You’re a vampire?”
It’s supposed to be a joke, but the question shocks Alhaitham back to reality, his still-red eyes widening in surprise. “Since when did you know that?”
Holy shit, Kaveh realises, my roommate is a vampire.
“Since now,” Kaveh chuckles nervously, the fact that he’s been sleeping in the same room as a vampire not yet registered in his head, “I didn’t think vampires were actually real, but… well, I guess I can’t deny the red eyes or the fangs.”
Alhaitham, apparently an actual vampire, stays uncharacteristically silent.
“So… are you going to drink my blood until I die?”
“No,” Alhaitham says immediately, “blood slaves are more useful alive than dead.”
“Blood slave?! H-hey, I have not agreed to be your blood whatever!”
“I could convince you.”
“No, you can’t.”
“If you let me drink from you for tonight, I’ll consider your debt paid.”
“Huh?”
“I’ve been too preoccupied with work to go out and feed,” Alhaitham explains, still panting, “If I go out now, I might lose control, attack someone.”
“So you want me to help you. But… Do vampires not lose control when they drink human blood? It’s not that I don’t want to help you and get my debt paid, but I just want to be alive to reap the benefits of my service, you know.”
“No, I won’t lose control,” says Alhaitham, though his eyes remain crimson and his every word is a low, husky growl that makes Kaveh’s heart jump in foreign excitement.
“Huh, awfully confident, aren’t you?” Kaveh really, really doesn’t know where he’s getting the courage to argue like this when he’s aware that his roommate drinks human blood.
“Yes.”
“How can I trust the words of a cocky bastard like you?”
Alhaitham grins, his fangs glinting in the light. “Have I ever been wrong, Kaveh?”
Apparently, it’s because Alhaitham is one hot, sexy hell of a vampire. “All the time, asshole!”
The vampire bites down into his neck without hesitation. Kaveh gasps, his brain short-circuiting from the pain and the sudden movement as Alhaitham removes his teeth from the newly-punched holes and licks them.
“Archons—Haitham!”
“Shut up.” A growl from Alhaitham, and Kaveh obeys as the sucking begins. It takes him around ten seconds to register that there must be some kind of chemical in Alhaitham’s saliva, some sort of vampire venom that messes with the mind and makes human prey enjoy losing their blood. There’s no other explanation as to why the pain suddenly seems dull and faint, why he’s moaning in pleasure, why he’s holding onto his cocky vampire roommate for support instead of resisting this life-threatening activity that he somehow isn’t afraid of.
The black spots return quickly, his vision glitching like a broken Kamera screen. Before they take over completely, he sees Alhaitham pull back and bite his wrist, drawing fresh blood. The bloody wrist is shoved in his face, and he tries to avoid it with the power of his last two functioning brain cells. But Kaveh is weak, and a now-full Alhaitham gets his way with him, making sure a mouthful’s worth of vampire blood is down his throat before he falls unconscious.
“Kaveh.”
Kaveh groans. He’d very much like to remain sleeping.
“Kaveh, wake up. I made breakfast.”
Breakfast. Food.
Alhaitham doesn’t eat food.
Teeth in his neck. Blood leaving his body. Alhaitham with red eyes and fangs.
Kaveh rubs his eyes as the previous day’s events come flooding back to his mind. When he reopens them, Alhaitham is staring down at him with a frown.
“... Alhaitham?”
“Yes?” Alhaitham’s voice is back to normal, devoid of madness and primal instinct. His eyes, too, are back to their regular serene teal. It’s almost as if Vampire Alhaitham was just a dream.
Kaveh’s voice is awfully groggy, “You don’t need to eat or sleep? Because you’re a vampire?”
“What are you talking about? Wash up and go eat. I made toast.”
“Changing the topic? Really?”
“Shut up and finish your morning routine, Kaveh.” Kaveh will later research more about vampire myths (that are actually real) and realise that Alhaitham had compelled him to wash his face and eat breakfast without complaint. At the moment, however, Kaveh simply obeys without realising, and even worries that maybe, just maybe, the Vampire Alhaitham thing was all a dream. His wound isn’t there anymore, either erased by vampire blood or because it didn’t happen.
But when breakfast is eaten and they’re about to leave for class, Alhaitham smirks—smirks—at him and says, “you know, if you borrow money from me in the future, you can always repay debts the same way you did last night.”
Kaveh’s face goes red— That gaslighting bastard. “You think I won’t spill your secret to the entire school?”
“You won’t say a thing about my vampirism or anything that happened last night.”
(Kaveh will later, also, realise that this statement was compulsion when he tries to complain to Cyno but finds himself at a loss for words. It’s the thing that sets off his research into vampire myths.)
“Disregarding last night’s events, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone else already knew! You never sleep or eat and you’re up all night reading textbooks for fun! It’s so suspicious!”
“Why, I am just a particularly diligent student, Senior Kaveh.”
“Oh, bullshit! Calling me ‘Senior’ when all you do is disrespect me?!”
“If I really wanted to disrespect you,” Alhaitham takes a threatening step closer to Kaveh, his voice dropping to a low whisper, “I would have had my way with you last night regardless of your will.”
Kaveh’s breath hitches in his throat. The blood loss or the fact that Alhaitham drank from him must be fucking with his brain, really. Why else would he be weirdly turned on by this and so calm about the fact that Alhaitham is a whole vampire?
“Oh, I’m sure. That six pack could only have developed because of your crazy vampire genes. Otherwise, you’d just be another feeble scholar.” There’s no way Alhaitham got his muscles from learning literally every language possible.
“Vampirism has nothing to do with muscles, but I’m glad you’ve enjoyed ogling my physical form. See you later.” Alhaitham shoots Kaveh one of his infuriatingly smug looks as he shuts the door behind him.
“That’s not what I—You blood-sucking bastard!”