Chapter Text
Kaveh doesn’t like naming his ex. But Alhaitham is aware he had one (and that he gained one right after their infamous fight).
And maybe he’s a little bit jealous that whatever Kaveh had with that person was remarkably intense.
The final indication of this is a stray letter he finds outside of Kaveh’s open room one day. His roommate is out shopping for groceries. But he did forget to close his room. The open ceiling fan is probably the culprit of the flying letter.
As soon as Alhaitham reads the first line- “I hate that I’m writing this to you”- he knows it’s personal.
But is he curious about what his secret crush has written to the ex Alhaitham has heard so many stories about?
Yes. Yes, he is. So he will snoop.
“I hate that I’m writing this to you. Because you were always the cool and rational one in our relationship. But I was the flowery one, the emotional one, the fragile one. So I took the weight of our relationship as if it was the largest stone in Teyvat. While you treated it as a feather.”
This description sounds… familiar.
“You robbed me of all my love. But you were the only robber anyone would willingly give up their entire selves to. Was I a fool? Because clearly, you were never interested in giving yourself to me. But I did it without hesitation. So maybe, yes, the world would judge me a fool. But my defence is simple- I was in love.”
Alhaitham’s jealousy was reaching unprecedented levels as he read this. Who Kaveh dates and breaks up with is not his business. But jealousy is like the blind lady of justice. It doesn’t understand all the excuses. All Alhaitham knows is that he’s extremely jealous of the man Kaveh loved so much.
“I was in love with you. I showed it every single day. But you ignored it as if my heart was just another offering for you in the sea of love you probably received from everywhere. Did you even care or pay attention to all the love everyone had for you? Would you ever care? Or would you always stay the stoic man for whom love is just another word in the ocean of words he reads?”
This, again, sounded really familiar. A scene slowly took shape again in Alhaitham’s mind. Kaveh, shouting at him in that classroom, angrily throwing away all the papers lying on the desk in front of them.
“What does that stoicness bring you?!” Kaveh had shouted. “Do you even care about the people around you? Do you care about me, Alhaitham? Or was this just another project for you?!”
Alhaitham had flinched at that moment, because Kaveh was his first real friend. He cared. He cared more than anything else about both Kaveh and the project. He didn’t want to lose the sole human aspect he had in his life at that moment.
“I never meant anything to you. I was just… another inconvenience, another person you had to talk to, another person you had to pretend to love.”
Alhaitham’s eyes widened as he read the last line.
“I was just part of another project you had to complete.”
This letter… it couldn’t be about him. How can it be? He and Kaveh had never dated.
But Alhaitham started thinking. It was quite strange how most people just mentioned Kaveh’s ex. But nobody knew who it was . Nobody knew his name, nobody could give a physical description of him. Everyone had just assumed Kaveh kept hush about that man because he was working on something big and difficult back then.
Wait a second. Had Kaveh ever even mentioned the word “ex” himself? Wasn’t it just…
“You made it!” Cyno was already a bit drunk (and therefore, obnoxiously cheerful) when Alhaitham entered Lambad’s Tavern. “We were waiting for so long .”
“Yeah I’m sure you were,” Alhaitham remarked amused as he glanced at the drinks in front of Cyno, Tighnari and Kaveh.
The fact that Kaveh was there was a bit of a shock to Alhaitham. After their fallout over their last (and only) project, Kaveh had refused to even look Alhaitham in the eyes.
“Alhaitham!!!!”
And Kaveh was clearly drunk.
“Kaveh.” Alhaitham acknowledged a really drunk Kaveh in a civil manner.
“How are you, buddy!” It wasn’t even a question. Kaveh was just attempting conversation for the sake of it. But he was smiling and was clearly happy. Alhaitham didn’t want to rain down on his parade.
“Uh, good.” He could have asked Kaveh how he was. But he assumed the blond was a bit too drunk to be able to answer that question.
“Kaveh was telling us about a certain someone right now,” Cyno said.
“Oh?” Alhaitham would ignore that tiny feeling in his chest..
“Yeah, uh, Kaveh, who was it?”
“The person I was in love with!” Kaveh said dramatically as he laid his head on the table now.
“And they broke your heart?” Cyno asked, patting Kaveh on the back.
“Yeah! That motherfucker probably never cared about anyone in their life.”
“Awww, that’s bad. Hope you get over them, brother.”
The rest of the night went away in trying to control a drunk Kaveh from doing the most impulsive tasks.
Alhaitham should have realised. The joke about Kaveh’s “ex” started from a conversation he was present in until it became serious.
But why did Kaveh never clarify?
Alhaitham pondered over all the questions racing through his mind before he decided to leave the letter at Kaveh’s desk. His roommate would be back any minute.
Talk of the devil.
“I didn’t get the tomatoes,” Kaveh announced as he walked in through the door Alhaitham had opened.
“No Aaru mixed rice today then?”
“No. But since it’s my turn to cook, I’ll make fish with cream sauce instead.”
Food was food, Alhaitham decided. And whatever Kaveh made was always delicious.
It was on the dinner table that Alhaitham considered bringing up this topic again. But before he could do so, Kaveh beat him to it.
“Did you enter my room today?” Kaveh asked in a careful and cautious tone.
“What?”
“The ceiling fan was turned off, even though I had deliberately left it open because I spilled water on the other side of my bed.”
Oh.
Fuck.
Alhaitham could obviously only see one side of the bed.
“We don’t want a high electricity bill,” he replied coolly.
“Electricity is subsidised in Sumeru.”
“It’s still irresponsible to waste electricity.”
“Electricity is made from renewable sources here.”
“Well, Kaveh, renewable doesn’t mean we get to waste energy.”
Alhaitham had a good point. He knew he did.
“Also, your room was open,” He added as he served himself the rice.
“Oh,” Kaveh finally relaxed his expression. Alhaitham knew he had successfully convinced him he had not touched anything else in his room.
Would this really be a good time to bring up Kaveh’s “ex”? Probably not.
But time be damned. The scribe was dying with curiosity. He wanted answers now.
“What was your ex’s name?” He asked and put a spoonful of rice and fish into his mouth, eyes careful not to meet Kaveh’s.
The fish was delicious. And Kaveh’s carmine eyes were boring into his when he looked up.
“Why do you ask?”
“You never mentioned his name.”
Kaveh narrowed his eyes. “I never said my ex was a he.”
“You’re gay, Kaveh. I know. The Akademiya knows. The entirety of Sumeru knows. It was easy to figure out the gender of your ex.”
Kaveh’s expression morphed into one signifying he conceded.
“ If that ex even existed,” Alhaitham added carefully.
But now, Kaveh was clearly fuming from the inside. Since he was awful at hiding his emotions, he couldn’t help but air them. So, right now, Kaveh looked like he was trying very hard to decide what emotions his face was allowed to betray.
Clearly, anger won.
“What gave you that idea?” He asked with narrowed eyes again.
“In the tavern that day, you mentioned you were in love with someone. But you never said you were in a relationship.”
Kaveh waited for a more elaborate explanation. Alhaitham obliged.
“A few days later, Cyno had apparently spilled the beans to Dehya and Nilou. From Nilou, I believe, it spread to a few Akademiya members she was friends with. Then the whole Akademiya was on fire.
“But Cyno had made a mistake. He was drunk. So he clearly remembered the details wrong. And instead of telling people you were in love with someone, he accidentally told them you had an ex who broke your heart really bad. Hence, the story of Kaveh’s ex?”
Kaveh continued to stare at Alhaitham. The anger had evaporated from his face though, replaced by a mix of emotions the silver-haired man was trying to pick apart.
“But do you know what is even more strange about all of this? You never corrected Cyno’s mistake.”
There it was. The accusation that Kaveh had played along because it benefitted him. Because now, he didn’t look like a loser. He looked like the desired architect who had his heart broken by an ex who couldn’t care less. It was the perfect sob story.
“Of course, because of how much everyone admires and loves you, everyone ran with the story of your ex. Oh, poor heartbroken Kaveh. Who would dare to hurt the Light of Kshahrewar?”
Kaveh was very visibly upset now. Dinner wasn’t going as well as he wanted it to go.
“I was heartbroken actually. But you wouldn’t care about that, would you?”
Was it just him or did Kaveh sound hurt?
“But it wasn’t an ex-”
“Does it matter?” Kaveh kept his spoon down. “Does it really matter, Alhaitham? That the person who broke my heart wasn’t an ex but just someone I was in love with? That I let the ex story go on for so long because I didn’t want the actual subject of my desire to get hurt?”
This… was surprising to the scribe.
“Wait, what?” Alhaitham had probably not expressed this much shock in his life to anyone.
“Believe it or not, the only reason I let the story run was not because of my reputation. Because if anyone even accidentally got to know who I was in love with, the project that man was working on could get ruined.”
Alhaitham still didn’t get it.
“I don’t get it.”
“You wouldn’t. Forget it,” Kaveh snapped and got up from the dinner table, his bowl only half empty.
Alhaitham couldn’t help but be assaulted by memories of that time now. Every fight with Kaveh reminded him of that.