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“This is it,” Kaveh collapses to the ground, shaking his head. “I’m done. I’m dead.”
“Why,” Alhaitham cranes his neck, trying to understand why anyone would waste so much resources on a living place. “You’re pretty much alive.”
“Metaphorically. Where do I go from this?!” He shakes his arms in the direction of the palace of Alcazarzaray. “This is my peak. I am barely into my thirties and boom, my prime is already past me.”
“Brain activity only starts to deteriorate when you are in your forties. You have time even if in my estimate yours never really was that high to begin with.”
Kaveh groans, face between his knees.
“I am facing my own inevitable end! The start of the last ripe fruit’s fall onto the ground from a wilting tree! Can you be less of an asshole for a second?”
Alhaitham shrugs. He must admit – maybe he had miscalculated. Maybe Kaveh is in such deep slumps that their usual back and forth is a bit much. It is not like he is the greatest shoulder to cry on by any standard and Kaveh is about as predictable as entropy itself in his outbursts.
“Just trying to lighten up the mood.”
“Great job,” he gets up and folds into a mocking bow. “Thank you, oh the great scribe.”
“...You are welcome?”
It is a sunday high noon. The day was free for both of them and it's not like Kaveh is awfully busy any day of the week really, but the man had decided to drag Alhaitham out on a stroll right at dawn and of course they ended up before his magnum opus.
It is not like Alhaitham completely does not get it. Philosophy and logic classes have built into him a capacity to view things from viewpoints which are now necessarily his. But Kaveh is a tortured, romantic, tender something-something soul and to fully wrap your head around you need more than to deduct. Frankly, he thinks he starts to palpate at least some substance in his musings. Immortality through art and lust for death and the whole thing.
"I hate this, I hate this," Kaveh turns around and starts walking away from the palace.
Maybe not. Alhaitham follows suit.
"I hate everything about it now. This palace is the bane of my existence,“ he stretches out his arms as if he was a man on top of the world and cries, "I should let my bones rest and make my death so beautiful that it will eclipse this!”
Alhaitham’s mouth twists in a frown.
“That is... concerning.”
“The high and mighty Grand Sage? Concerned about mere me?"
“I’ve turned down the offer. And genuinely, actually.”
Kaveh presses his mouth in a tight line, light blush touching his cheeks.
They walk in silence for a while, passing by some buzzing dendro crystalflies. It smells of fresh grass and vaguely of roses. When they finally can not see the palace, Kaveh decides to disrupt everything again.
“About that actually,” - he rolls a strand of his hair between his fingers, - “how are you doing? Like, where do you even go after turning down being a grand sage?”
“World domination is next on my list.”
Kaveh's eyes widen, his fidgeting stopping and he stands appalled for a few seconds. Alhaitham continues to walk past him.
“You know what?” - Kaveh catches up, out of his stupor though not actually as he seems to be in one perpetually. - “If you put your mind to it…”
After a few steps he waves his hand dismissively. “No, too... edgy to be true even by your standards. Also too much work. I am serious. What are we doing next?”
“We’re going to my house. I will probably eat something, then read, then journal and go to sleep. You will try to get in my way as much as possible.”
Kaveh sighs at the last beat.
“Alright, I get it you hate me,” - he makes a gesture around himself. - “But in a grand scheme of things.”
“In the grand scheme of things I am not a Grand Sage but I still will have a grand amount of paperwork to do tomorrow so I don’t want to fret over abstractions.”
Kaveh raises a brow.
“No further climbing up the ladder?”
Alhaitham briefly catches his own reflection in a pond they were passing.
“I would like to take a few steps down actually.”
Kaveh rubs his nose bridge.
“How much of a genius do you need to be to be offered the position of a Grand Sage without even trying?”
“A lot, I’m glad you’ve finally realized. From now on we’re following my housework schedule only.”
They go on like this until they reach the city but Alhaitham's, as recently decided brilliant, brain keeps coming back to the "let my bones rest" in his mind. It is puzzling. The sun had already been half through its journey to the horizon when Alhaitham turned the key to open the door to his house.
Kaveh tips his head into the direction of the bedroom but lacks any tease.
“You wanna go?”
“No,” he feels too aware about hickeys under his bodysuit for a second.
“Me neither really.”
“I think I still have trouble sitting after the last time.”
Kaveh puffs out his chest, hands resting on his hips. “Should I be proud?”
“Don’t let it get to your head,” he turns into the direction of the kitchen. He was serious about the whole eat-read-journal-sleep ordeal.
“Why, it’s not like I’m the one with the ego.”
“You’re not the one? The I-will-go-out-so-grandly-that-it-will-be-in-the-history-books Kaveh isn’t the one with the ego?”
With widened eyes, Kaven denies the idea.
“That was a joke,” he says sheepishly. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Who knows with you artistic types,” he mumbles, taking a plate out of the cabinet.
“I mean it's not unheard of. Inazuma’s artists of old tended to put great emphasis on death,” Kaveh murmurs. ”They saw it as an extension of their work.”
Alhaitham feels a prick of dread at that, but before it spreads out further Kaveh continues:
“But how will you be without me? Nowhere higher to go, you will just churn in paperwork and a ten o’clock bedtime until gray hairs. Or whatever you will have when you’re old - you’re already gray.”
Does sound pathetic when one puts it like that.
“Doesn’t sound that bad to me.”
Rolling his eyes, Kaveh gets up from his chair.
“Alright, mister Strong and Independent.”
“I am those things.”
“Archons, stop! Seriously, stop. I will feel bad for laughing.”
They fumble around the kitchen some more before fixing themselves a meal and setting down to eat. Sun was not down yet, but the afternoon was already settling everything into its unhurried, weary pace.
“So we give up on the idea of a lustrous self-destruction?”
“Yeah.”
At least the first box of his plans for the time being goes on without much hindrance. But the second task is somewhat more challenging even before Kaveh plops his head into Alhaitham’s lap and maybe the bastard had worn off on him, but years of tremendous monotonous workload do start to sound not all that nice and his mind does wander off so much that etymological schemes of Fontanian tech words blur before his eyes. Maybe he will need a bigger fish to fry eventually. Maybe he should reconsider the promotion offer.
Yes, Kaveh is a bad influence.
The man in question squirms and starts pitching his another brilliant startup.
“I think I want to add a garden to this place.”
Alhaitham languidly turns a page but he can not really bring himself to concentrate.
“With whose funds? Even Dori’s riches seem to have taken a hit with your expenses”
“Shut up. I will manage something.”
“With the death of Rex Lapis and your ideas together I think Tevyat will soon run out of money.”
“Oh,” - Kaveh raises one is his carefully trimmed brows, - “what do you think about that by the way?”
“About what? Your delusions of grandeur or mora?”
“I already know how you feel about the former, you make it clear everyday. Mora.”
“Well,” - he places a book on the couch, accepting that he will not be focused enough to read, - “we had a round table about that recently.”
“And what have you know-it-alls decided?”
“It is as with words. Some go into obscurity or become archaisms when their usage declines or a better alternative comes about. Mora will become sacred as a resource for alchemists and forgers but most humans have no need for its special properties so we will probably start to mint a new currency out of natural resources.”
“There is a divide on the matter: some think it will be something one nation will have a monopoly on as it was before. It will probably be Snezhnaya with their lodes and rapidly growing economy if that is the case as Liuye has many pressing troubles and might not be quick enough to retake its prior influence. There’s another possibility some believe in - each country will take the matter into their own hands.”
“Oooh,” - Kaveh squints his eyes - always bright with something, those damn eyes of his - in displeasure, - “can you imagine how much pain it would be for each nation to have their own type of money?”
“I suppose.”
“We will have to buy wine from Monstadian traders with dandelion seeds or something…”
That is a preposterous idea. Something as common and fragile as flower seeds is way too cheap to be a base for currency, Alhaitham thinks. Plus, trading with merchants from distant shores would probably be done in the currency of a land they are selling in, not their own. He keeps it to himself. Some ammunition is better left unspent. Another time.
Maybe that will finally get you to stop drinking it,” is what Alhaitham says instead.
“Even if I had to pick those dandelions myself I wouldn’t give up on the wine!” Kaveh protests.
“Matches the description of clinical alcoholism. Most of the things you say do.”
“No, just appreciation for the finer things in life. You wouldn’t know it.”
Kaveh, with his billowing shirts which slide down just so and preposterously long lashes, is very clearly one of the finer things in life. “Whatever you say.”
Silence starts to fill out between them and Alhaitham reaches out for the edge of his book only for Kaveh’s voice to chip in.
“But I don’t like the idea of Snezhnayans controlling money one bit either.”
Alhaitham gives up. Kaveh is successful in stealing his time and he will let him have this little victory. They are in rare relative calm today it seems.
“I don’t think anyone does except them.”
“Do you? Or are you too cool for school on this matter too?”
“No.”
Kaveh exclaims. “So we finally agree on something!”
“I guess we do.”
“They are shady folk-”
“To put it lightly.”
“But the Zapolarny is such an artistic masterpiece…” and there he goes. Leave it to Kaveh to leave any moral dilemmas behind at a sight of something pretty. “I hope I will see it for myself someday.”
“So we have found you a reasonable goal,” he can make peace with this one more easily. The previous idea of Kaveh orchestrating a gorgeous suicide for himself was too… Kaveh-y. That means unreasonable, very obviously life-threatening (obviously) and quite frankly ridiculous. Alhaitham, for obvious reasons he will not disclose (obvious), also did not like it on a personal level.
“We did,” Kaveh blinks, realizing, red eyes wide and full of hope. “How about a trip to Snezhnaya?”
“Too cold.”
“Just wear a coat. Or does your ego require your muscles to be on display all the time?”
“It is too far away. Too much fuss just to see some building.”
“It’s not some building! Have you seen the illustrations of that thing? It’s magnificent. Otherworldly,” he lets out a dreamy sigh. “Makes me want to convert and join Fatui.”
Another utterly ridiculous idea. Alhaitham reaches to caress Kaveh’s bangs.
"What do you think you would provide for them? Knowledge of abacus and echinus?”
“They are not just a milita, I’m pretty sure they have an artistic department with those cicin mage uniforms being the way they are.”
Alhaitham vacantly runs his hand through Kaveh’s hair. The image of Kaveh in a cicin mage outfit pops into mind and he smiles to himself at the mental picture.
“I find them to be vulgar.”
“You just don’t get it,” - he turns to his side in Alhaitham’s lap. “And I will have something to work towards. Can you imagine how good the occupation of a Harbinger will look in my Akasha entry? People in the future will listen to it and go like ‘oooh, this Kaveh guy managed to build the palace of Alcazarzaray, become a Fatui harbinger and fuck the Scribe of the Sumeru academy all in one lifetime! They just don’t make men like that anymore...’”
Alhaitham dead-pans: “Oh Kaveh, Il Architect, twelfth harbinger of brise soleil.”
Kaveh chuckles at the jest.
“I really like you when you’re like this.”
Alhaitham brushes light strands out of the other man's face, a corner of his mouth tugging up.
“I’m never playing a contrarian just for the sake of it. You are quite frankly delusional in your takes on a lot of matters.”
“And you’re what? Rational and right all of the time?”
“Yes.”
Kaveh rapidly gets up as if hurt but his face practically glows.
“Fuck you.”
“When I’m less busy.”
Looking at him above his shoulder while halfway to the living room, Kaveh is grinning playfully.
“When will you be less busy now?”
“We’ll manage.”
He hears Kaveh’s enthusiastic shout when the man himself disappears behind the wall:
“Put that in your new updated version three point o housework schedule, Grand Sage!”
They go on about the rest of the evening without many surprises. He is not of the anxious sort and tomorrow’s work does not drag on his mind much. He did manage to read what he had planned even if not as thoughtfully as he hoped. He journals, as he had hoped, but nothing comes to mind about the day.
Horror grips his biceps. Is this it? Was he wrong to decline the position of the Grand Sage? A prospect of new responsibilities never was all that attractive to him but what if he made a mistake? He is still young but it really does feel that after that and a coup d'etat there is not all that much to look forward to. He hears Kaveh mumble some new tune he picked up during their recent tavern outing over the steady sound of pencil's tip meeting a sheet of paper. A sheet in a pad, he knows even if he does not see it, necessarily bleached white and A2 format.
"What is this?!" Kaveh exlaimed when Alhaitham bought him an A5 pad on his way home and presented it to him. This was the first month Kaveh moved in with him but he was already as sure as he is now that he is the head of the place. "This paper is, like, minuscule! What am I going to draw on it? That brain of yours?! You...!" What Kaveh then was not privy to, and probably never will, was that Alhaitham bought the wrongly formatted sketchbook on purpose so they could go to the Academy's tool store together.
When the fear's cold lets go of him, he looks down. After dipping the pen in ink he writes down today's date and post some brief impersonal notes Alhaitham himself can not believe the words he puts to paper next:
'I have agreed with Kaveh twice today.'
Kaveh had spent the time in which Alhaitham lamented with a pencil and a sketchbook and by the time they start night time preparations shows him two rough sketches, one of a garden and one of a Snezhnayan-style altar. Alhaitham makes another remark about the twelfth harbinger with a toothbrush in his mouth and Kaveh nudges him in the knee with his foot while spreading some kind of clay mask on his face. Seems like that glorious idea had been put to rest but knowing Kaven he will one day swoop him in his arms and, not without muscle strain, bridal carry him to Zapolarny.
“I just really want to make a garden for us.”
Turning off the bedside lamp, Alhaitham lazily retorts: “For what sake? Bazaar is three minutes down from here if you want fresh fruit.”
“Just for Buer’s sake, you prick.”
It is a quiet night. Feeling his eyelids grow heavy, Alhaitham lets out a tired sigh.
“For beauty?”
Kaveh smiles.
“For beauty,” he exhales. Then he shifts on the sheets, turning to face Alhaitham. “But I want it to have some meaning. I think I would use marble for ornamentation, maybe plan out a small temple out of it for Buer. I would plant grape saplings around it in some neutral ceramics.”
“Maybe I could reference some Liyuen shapes for them, they are in general not too intricate without the ornaments and have sharp edges. I don’t want to use too many colors either. Just good marble, not many types of flora. Probably just grapes actually. White, green and hints of violet. I will let the lianas do their thing. Wild ivy and polished marble,” he prostrated the hand he’s not laying on in the dark, “a marriage of chaotic nature and human craftsmanship.”
It crosses Alhaitham’s mind that he could listen to this forever. His voice, however, does not betray a single sign of this discovery as he says, unamused and sleepy: “How very interesting.”
Kaveh’s hand drops and Alhaitham can help but let a weak smile creep up his face.
“I really hate you, you know.”