Work Text:
Careful hands aligned a ruler over the seventh draft of the floor plan that Kaveh had been working on for the past week. He hummed to himself while contemplating the decision at hand, the current angle slightly wrong for reasons he’d never be able to articulate. Rotating the object slightly to the left, he smiled.
Finally, it was perfect.
Without taking his eyes off the paper, Kaveh carefully lifted a hand to retrieve his brush from where it had laid abandoned in his inkwell for who-knows how long. Several minutes, at the very least. He’d been contemplating the finishing touches for too long.
It wasn’t there.
Kaveh tried to temper the rush of anxiety that ran up his throat, already throwing his brain into overdrive. It couldn’t be missing, not now. Not when he was so close to finally being done with this stupid, menial project the sages had shoved on him at the last minute because they couldn’t bother to inform him of the upcoming Akademiya renovations in advance.
A quick glance around his workspace revealed that it sat atop a stack of scrolls on a shelf above his desk. He narrowed his eyes, glaring at the incriminating object for the inconvenience its existence was causing him in this moment. The only explanation was that Alhaitham had been rooting through his things again in search of spare supplies that he couldn’t be bothered to purchase himself.
With a huff, he stood from his desk, climbing atop his stool. The new perspective revealed that his brush wasn’t the only misplaced object, a small assortment of supplies camping out among the yellowed pages. A measuring tape, pack of graphite, and several erasers also lay amongst the yellowing plans that were stored on the shelf.
He frowned, picking up the lot. Alhaitham wouldn’t have done that, but he didn’t remember leaving any of it up there either. Kaveh shook his head with a sigh.
His memory had gotten worse lately, but this was embarrassing even for him. He felt like a schoolchild again, forgetting his homework in between the pages of the light novels that he imported from Inazuma and hid beneath his bed.
Lost in thought, he gravelly miscalculated the distance between his perch and the ground while stepping down. The fall was quick, and entirely graceless, just like the scream that exited Kaveh’s mouth in the process.
He hit his head against the floor, cursing as he jostled the desk and the stack of materials that he kept precariously perched came crashing down. From spare paper to the dull blades he used to sharpen his writing utensils, everything either fell onto him, the floor, or on top of his current project.
Just his luck.
It took a moment to regain his breath and Kaveh used the seconds to take count of how his body felt. While sore, and surely bruised in multiple places, nothing felt broken. Lifting a hand to his head, he winced when he felt a spot of blood where his skull had met the floor. That’d be a bitch to clean up later.
A finch came to perch upon his windowsill, staring down at Kaveh with a cocked head as if to cast judgment upon the state of his life. The late afternoon sun behind it cast a divine halo around its head. Leave it to the archons themselves to mock him.
Pulling himself up to his knees, Kaveh pushed some of the carnage aside without a second thought. Some of it rolled under his desk, while other items simply wilted sadly in their new spot as if waiting to be recovered and organized once more.
This sucked. Everything had its place and now it was all wrong.
It was only when Kaveh turned his attention to his desk that his eyes widened, breath caught in his throat. He ignored the shaking in his limbs as he clambered to stand, pushing objects aside with reckless abandon. The flurry of papers created a storm in his office as the awful truth was revealed.
The floor plan that he’d spent hours working on was drenched in ink, his careful lines and meticulous reworks lost under the black rivers that were coating the paper. Several books lay atop and near the inkwell, splattered in the ichor that was the source of this misfortune.
Kaveh simply stared for a moment, disbelieving.
He’d have to start over from scratch, days of work gone and ruined because he couldn’t manage to climb down from a stool without fucking everything up. The deadline was tomorrow.
The logical part of his brain told him that he could manage to get it done on time, the memory of his past revisions lodged somewhere in his brain. Even if the sages were dissatisfied with the draft he brought them, their rejection could buy him time to make things perfect again. He could fix this.
Every other part of Kaveh knew that wasn’t true, that it wasn’t that easy to repair. His mistakes always cost him more than frowning faces and a reprimand. A long line of lost opportunities and failed relationships proved that. This would finally be the thing that got him fired, disbarred from the Akademiya altogether. If he couldn’t manage to complete a simple, menial, re-done floor plan in a week, what good was he as an architect anyway?
No, it had to be this draft. Another one wouldn’t do. He couldn’t turn in anything but this. It had almost been finished, would have been perfect, if he hadn’t screwed it up.
Kaveh righted the fallen inkwell, stopping the problem at its source, before bringing both of his hands to the paper and beginning to brush the wet ink towards its edges. It smeared, leaving echoes of the pigment behind in varying shades that blocked out almost all of his work. He tried again, and again, to push the liquid away, the impressions of his mistake stark against the cream-colored plan. Soon, nearly the whole document was covered in some way by the black ink, a poor attempt at the color-block paintings that some of his classmates had once tried creating in an extracurricular art cours.
His skin was stained from his efforts already, ink clogged under his nails and stinging the small cuts on his hands that were always amassed from stray paper cuts and knicks from his sharpening blades. Kaveh could feel his skin cracking from the saturation of it already - he’d always been too sensitive to the materials he used.
That’s where Alhaitham found him some hours later, smoothing and scrubbing away at the ruined floor plan with a hazy look in his eyes and dried blood in his hair.
His boyfriend placed his hands over Kaveh’s, lifting them off the desk and holding them firm as Kaveh twitched against his hold in a vain attempt to return to his fruitless efforts. When Kaveh didn’t volunteer any information, merely staring at the mess around them, Alhaitham let out a quiet sigh.
“What happened this time?”
“This time? What is that supposed to mean?”
“Don’t pick a fight. I’m trying to help,” Alhaitham said, watching as Kaveh looked past his head to a spot on the wall where the paint was chipping.
“I messed up, okay? As always,” Kaveh wrenched his hands free from Alhaitham, turning his back to him. “Nothing to be concerned about.”
“Even so, you usually laugh it off. What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know, I just - my brush wasn’t there,” Kaveh absentmindedly pulled at his hair, blonde stairs getting caught between his fingers as they were tugged loose. “It wasn’t there, and then I found it, but then I was stupid and couldn’t just think before I did something for once in my life -” He found the newly formed scab on his head wound and scratched it open. “And now my draft is ruined and the sages are going to kill me.”
“I highly doubt that,” Alhaitham said before gently grabbing hold of Kaveh’s hands once more, frowning at the fresh blood on them. “We need to get you cleaned up.”
“That’s what you’re worried about?”
When Alhaitham didn’t carry their conversation further, Kaveh allowed him to pull them away from his office and into the washroom. The silence wasn’t comfortable, exactly, but it wasn’t angry. Kaveh knew that his boyfriend was merely contemplating the best way to convey whatever he wanted to say.
It had been a point of contention early on in their relationship, Alhaitham’s tendency to fall into silence in the middle of conversations. Only after a long argument one summer night did Kaveh find out that it was a means of condensing his thoughts and planning his next part in the interaction whenever he became overwhelmed. There was a learning curve, but Kaveh had grown accustomed to waiting for his input now, knowing that any interruptions might lead to conflict or misunderstandings that they’d both like to avoid.
He sat on the edge of their tub, watching as Alhaitham retrieved their first aid supplies and some spare towels for the task of cleaning him up. It was only when Alhaitham was kneeling in front of him, eyes fixed on Kaveh’s hands, that he spoke up.
“I do care about you, Kaveh,” Alhaitham said, pouring disinfectant onto one of the towels before rubbing it into Kaveh’s hands. At his wince, he eased up on the pressure he applied, going about the matter more gently. “It pains me to watch you turn an accident into a personal failing.”
“But -”
“Let me finish.” Kaveh shut his mouth, watching as Alhaitham moved from disinfecting to scrubbing at his skin with soap and water. Although much of the ink was stained on his skin, its shade lessened during the process. “This could have been prevented, but that doesn’t mean you need to harm yourself over it. I’ll help you tidy up your office tomorrow, and then you can make a new draft.”
“It can’t be tomorrow, Haitham. That’s when this project is due.”
“Then I’ll talk to the sages about moving your deadline,” Alhaitham said, exchanging the dirty towel for some bandages. He began wrapping the cloth around Kaveh’s fingers and palms.
“You can’t just make excuses for me, that’s not fair,” Kaveh said, unable to stifle the whine that had crept into his voice.
Alhaitham stopped in his bandaging, jaw tense. “And you working yourself into a breakdown is?”
“That’s not what happened.”
“What would you call what I came home to?”
Kaveh set his mouth in a firm line, unmoving. Alhaitham tied off the last bandage, nodding as he assessed his handiwork. “Turn,” he said, grabbing the disinfectant once more. “I need to clean your head wound.”
Kaved did so, fidgeting with the hem of his shirt. He found a stray thread and pulled, the seam worrying loose. Tugging more, the edge slowly fell apart.
“It’s not going to kill you to take a day off work, Kaveh,” Alhaitham said, hands combing through his hair until the cut was revealed. “You’re lucky this won’t need stitches.” The disinfectant stung with a sharp bite as it poured into the wound and Kaveh let out a low whimper. Alhaitham worked faster, cleaning the edges of the injury with a fresh towel before taping the edges together and covering it with a bandage. “All done, don’t reopen it on purpose again.”
The bathroom fell into silence, nothing but the sound of rain beginning to fall outside accompanying the moment. Alhaitham stood, moving to put the supplies away when Kaveh closed his eyes and placed his head in his hands.
“I don’t know why you’re even bothering to lecture or take care of me,” Kaveh said, quiet as he squeezed his eyes shut tighter. “I don’t deserve any of this when all I do is ruin things.”
A moment passed before Kaveh felt Alhaitham’s weight settle beside him, pressed into his side. “You and I both know that’s not true.”
“But it feels like it is.”
“I know.”
“I’m sorry I’m not better.”
“I’m not asking you to change who you are, Kaveh. Just -” Alhaitham pulled him into a hug, resting his chin atop Kaveh’s head and holding him firm as he began to cry. “Ask for help. Before it gets to this point.”
“I didn’t even…I thought I was doing fine. I’d been working the past couple days, but -”
“Without any breaks?”
“I took some naps, it had to get done, Haitham. I couldn’t just abandon my train of thought! It’d never come back and then the project wouldn’t get completed and -”
“Do you think I need to check in on you for a while? Like I did back in our school days, when you’d get lost in projects for days without eating or drinking?”
Kaveh stifled a hiccup, burying his face further into Alhaitham’s chest. “I don’t want you to have to do that. I don’t want to be a burden.”
“Is it a problem when you have to help me decompress from crowds? Or find my headpiece when I’ve lost it?”
“Of course not!”
“Then let me support you, Kaveh.” Kaveh nodded, only to see Alhaitham’s smirk. “I’ll start by helping you go to bed.”
“Wait, don’t you dare -” Kaveh was cut off by his own screams as Alhaitham lifted him into a bridal hold. Kaveh flailed, trying to escape, but his grip only tightened. “Put me down!”
“I don’t think you should be walking with a head injury like that.”
“You’re being an ass, Haitham.” Kaveh squirmed, accidentally checking his hip on the wall as Alhaitham turned a corner. “This is all your fault!”
“Okay,” Alhaitham said with a smile, entering the bedroom and placing Kaveh onto the blankets with ease. When he tried to roll off its surface, Alhaitham laid down and pulled Kaveh against his chest, laughing as he continued to struggle.
“I hate you,” Kaveh finally gave up and turned to face his boyfriend, glare half-hearted as he wound his legs around Alhaitham’s. “I can’t believe you treat me like this.”
“I hate you, too.” Alhaitham pressed a kiss to his forehead before placing another against his lips, this one deeper yet softer. He rubbed a thumb along Kaveh’s cheek, before wiping away the last of the tears from his eyes. “Get some rest, it’s late.”
Kaveh didn’t know if it was his own exhaustion, the comfort of the bed, or Alhaitham’s presence alone that calmed him enough to steady his breathing and focus on the gentle rain falling upon on the roof, but he was soon lost in the hazy state between sleep and consciousness. He snuggled closer to Alhaitham, limbs lost in a tangle of his boyfriend’s own.
“Thank you, Haitham. For everything.”
He was almost asleep when the quiet response came: “I’ll always be here to help.”
--
When Kaveh stumbled into his office late into the next morning with bedhead and weary eyes, ready to help Alhaitham clean up his mess, he found it to be immaculately tidied already. Not only that, but all of his things had been placed back into his spots for them. The ruined draft was nowhere in sight, but a partially traced copy with crooked lines and smudged words lay in its place.
He found Alhaitham napping on the couch, a discarded book dangling from his hand near the floor. Grabbing the item and marking his place with a spare scrap of paper, Kaveh placed it on the coffee table with a soft smile. He drew a spare blanket over Alhaitham’s sleeping form before leaving the room to brew a pot of coffee to help start the new day right.