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“I could end myself on your blade, scream your name until my throat is bloody and torn, and I don’t think you’d even flinch.”
“Would you revel in that? Even in death, would you cling to your egoism and hubris that all you would care for is to have one’s sympathies?”
“I’d rather be an egoist than an unfeeling bastard.”
“And I’d rather die as myself than live on another’s terms. So where does that leave us, Senior?”
“And not once have you considered an option where you make the logical decision and stay out of it, have you? You always choose yourself and your own self-interest, but never when it matters.”
Al-Haitham’s gaze is piercing, “And I would do it again. Does that trouble you, senior? Does it make your skin crawl that I am more dedicated to myself than you are your own supposed empathy?”
Kaveh slams his keys on the table, keychains dragging painfully against the table. The man follows the lines of Al-Haitham’s face looking for a telltale wince, as if searching for the only way he can penetrate the wall of steel before him. Al-Haitham startles back predictably, but somehow Kaveh cannot bring himself to feel joy at his pain the way Al-Haitham clearly does at his own.
So he slings his bag over his shoulder and slams the door behind him, and pretends that he remembers how to breathe. Pretends he does not hear Al-Haitham’s soft hitch in breath, an entry to say something that Kaveh knows he cannot bear to listen to right now.
●●●
“He has no shame. No sense, no idea of self awareness, and I can’t even bear to deal with him right now!”
Nilou stares at him with an unending patience he has no clue how she manages. Nilou is delightful and a gift to all humankind, “Forgive me for coming across as rude, Kaveh, but can I ask you a question?”
“Far be it from me to refute.”
“Why is this bothering you so much… now?”
Kaveh’s brows furrow, “What does that mean? He’s always infuriating.”
“You’re different. Usually the anger is more surface-level, but you really seem more affected than normal.”
Kaveh squints down at his hands, trying to process her words. Ultimately, Nilou is right. As a performer, he supposes she’d have to be more in tune with her emotions than anyone else, micromanaging every expression and sign - it’s clear in the way she carries herself and the way she picks him apart with a single look, “Am I really?”
She stares at him, taken off guard by his need for clarification, “Of course, if you think that you’re fine…”
Kaveh waves her worries off immediately, “Not at all, no, you’re likely right. I just can’t place why. Usually, I feel like I’m more in touch with myself, but something about what he said just set me off. It usually never gets bad that quickly.”
She purses her lips, biting at them subtly as she requests, “Can I state an observation?”
“Of course.”
“I won’t claim to know Al-Haitham well, but I’ve met very few men like him. He was completely willing to place his life on the line in the name of a nation he merely tolerates and has no desire to fill that void with some kind of desire or longing. Or at least none that I could place apart from some kind of self-fulfillment.”
She stares him up and down, as if fully taking him in for the first time. Not the tags on his clothing or the ink on his fingers as fellow scholars do, but his posture and elegance, the slouch in his figure and the set of his face, “I don’t think I understood why he was willing to risk everything or even why he was so nonchalant about it until I understood what he was willing to come home for.”
Kaveh scoffs, “You’d be hard-pressed to find anything he makes it home for apart from his books and protein shakes.”
Nilou persists - he’s glad she’s gaining the confidence in her own principles and skills to refute those she mistakenly considers better, “And yet I knew who you were before I ever truly met you. Al-Haitham is a man who values his own peace in his life, right?”
“Clearly.”
“Then why was he at unease until long after the fallout of it all?”
Nilou answers to fill the silence of Kaveh’s non answer, “Every piece of him I have never met I find in you. And I get the feeling he does the same.”
“What, so you think he decided to be an arrogant egoist because of me?”
“I think he’d do anything to keep his peace, and I think that somewhere in his mind, you are just that.”
Kaveh leans back into his chair, taken aback by this revelation, “So everything has just been…”
Nilou answers with a small smile, “I think you’ll need to find just why you were so angry to answer that question. Because I don’t think it’s because you find him arrogant.”
And as much as Kaveh hates to admit it, Nilou is right.
●●●
When Kaveh doesn’t know where to look, the first thing he does is go to Alcazarzaray. Somehow, Alcazarzaray is the largest expression of his own confidence, the transformation of what was once just pen and paper to a masterpiece he understands better than he ever will himself.
It’s more honest than anything else Kaveh has dared to create ever since, so he sits among the foliage and contemplates aimlessly. It’s only natural that he’s not quite alone.
He hears a familiar wolf-whistle, and he already knows who’s name is on his tongue as he turns with a half-assed grin, “Dehya, how’ve you been?”
Her expression is knowing as he turns to her, “You’ve seen better days.”
Silently, he notes the way she clutches a scroll in her hand with an unbearably firm grip as if it is a lifeline, “I could say the same of you.”
Dehya half winces as she laughs, “I suppose we’re both in a bit of a pinch, huh? An eye for an eye?”
Kaveh mumbles under his breath, “Makes the whole world blind, and isn’t that just about the motto of my day. You first?”
He must look the appropriate amount of pathetic if the way Dehya concedes immediately is any indication, “If you say so, princess,” she sighs as she clenches the paper in her first with even more force, “Let’s just say the father I’ve hated all my life for being an idealistic fool with no morals turned out to be the reason I’ve made a name for himself, and that he gave everything to protect me and my future to the point where he turned his entire guild around and died in the name of a cause he started for me before I could even thank him.”
Kaveh sighs, “Daddy issues, huh? Always get the best of us.”
She scoffs, “You’re telling me. Turns out the old coot wasn’t even my dad - just found me and took me in. Guess he was more decent than I thought he was.”
Kaveh groans, “Tell me about it.”
“You?”
“Turns out my roommate has been a self-sacrificing prick because he genuinely thinks I’m worth keeping around instead of just being a selfish bastard. I miss it when I could bemoan his name with ease. Now I can’t even be mad at him without an existential crisis to pair with it.”
She laughs, “Who, Al-Haitham? I do not envy you, that man is a mystery wrapped in seran wrap. He gets on my nerves half the time and I don’t even see him every day. What’s the crisis for?”
“He started nagging me about something and now I can’t even figure out why we started because he went off about his self-sacrificing tangent as if it were something to prove or be proud of, and all I remember is seeing red.”
Dehya stares blankly. And then sighs immediately, turning to exasperation, “Have you considered that it’s because you actually care about his wellbeing?”
“What?”
She pulls out a pyro construct of a wispy leaf, flames warming the space between them, “Think of it like this. You have something you’ve always taken for granted, right? Tyhe sk is blue, the grass is green, Al-Haitham is a man who will do anything for his own self-interest. Yeah, yeah, you get it, right?”
Kaveh nods slowly, “Yes.”
Then, swiftly, the flames disappear into the wind into the remnants of soot and ash in her palm, “And then it dissolves before your eyes - everything you think you know about it is gone, and what you thought was a guarantee is at question because of something you bring to the table.”
Kaveh squints, “I mean, theoretically yes. But what does that have to do with-“
Dehya groans, “So you feel like Al-Haitham’s illusion of self-centeredness has disappeared, right? He’s always on about that thing of keeping his peace but now it feels like if you’re associated with that, it’s your fault, all that. You following?”
Kaveh tilts his head and then nods briskly, pieces slowly coming together, “You think that this is… guilt? Because I wasn’t here?”
“No, I think you just realized Al-Haitham actually gives a shit about you and it’s making your head spin because - spoiler alert - you don’t actually like seeing him in danger.”
Kaveh’s jaw drops. And then it shuts closed as he tries to ponder the thought, only for him to start gaping again. Slowly, his brain starts to piece it together.
Dehya slaps him on the back hard enough that he jumps, “There you go, attaboy.”
Kaveh speaks to himself, “Then I’m just as bad as him.”
The eremite sighs, “Al-Haitham has a very natural trait of self-preservation and protection scaled up to the max - it’s very normal and very human to not want to see the people we love put in positions of danger. It’s every day life for us back home on the desert sands; it’s why I think we’re usually more blunt. No point in keeping things to yourself when it could be the last time, right?”
And Kaveh just about flatlines, because love? How the hell did he get to love? Yet somehow, it’s the only feasible explanation.
The lingering touches, the way Al-Haitham leaves coffee on the kitchen table whenever Kaveh has a late night. Why Kaveh nearly grilled the man alive after the assassination attempt, why Al-Haitham wrangles him from every bar counter and desert nook and cranny no matter what. That’s the name for the stupid and fickle thing that’s been lying between them since they were students, it’s love.
And Kaveh’s lips spread into a grin because he won! That sick bastard won’t know what hit him because Kaveh has won every single one of their godforsaken debates and Al-Haitham probably doesn’t even know it. Every time Al-Haitham claims he has no attachment to human whims of empathy or desire he’s been a deluded fool because apparently that deluded fool is willing to die for Kaveh. And as absolutely horrifying of a thought as that is, because Kaveh is the one supposed to be giving, it’s a truth of life.
He runs home, but not before pulling Dehya into a hug and making her promise to call him if she ever needs any help finding her birth family. She lets him go with a smile on her lips and a soft laugh, “Smartest of our generation, huh?”
●●●
Kaveh comes home quietly, breaking in through the window of Al-Haitham’s bedroom since he just so happened to forget his keys. Usually, Al-Haitham gets pissy whenever Kaveh unscrews the panes since he claims that Kaveh never secures it tight enough and the noises of the wind keep getting through, but Kaveh doesn’t particularly care for the protest right about now.
Al-Haitham is lying over his bed, book in hand and headphones up. Silently, Kaveh places the panes to the right of the bed and places a gentle finger on Al-Haitham’s knee to get his attention.
Kaveh supposes he should’ve realized that this fight wasn’t like the others by the way Al-Haitham snaps up and closes his book immediately, eyes snapping to Kaveh and making a habit of holding eye contact because he knows how it can grate on Kaveh’s nerves sometimes, “I set out some cut fruit for you in the kitchen if you were hungry.”
Kaveh gently presses a hand to Al-Haitham’s shoulder, with the younger man’s brows furrowing in confusion, “Can you do something for me?”
Al-Haitham’s eyes narrow in challenge, “What.”
“Do you trust me?”
Al-Haitham pauses once before nodding, taking him in as if he were a challenge, “Is everything… alright?”
Kaveh smiles before leaning in, wildfire in his eyes, “Never been better.”
Kaveh is the one to lean in first, but from the way Al-Haitham pulls him ever closer and doesn’t leave his side, Kaveh gets the feeling that this is the first of many to come.
Quietly, Al-Haitham gently pushes Kaveh off him when they both begin to gasp for breath, a question in his eyes, “And earlier…”
Kaveh sucks in a breath, “You wouldn’t happen to agree to leaving all the dumb self-sacrificing decisions to me, would you?”
Al-Haitham smirks, “Not on your life.”
“Then I think you’ll just have to take me with you so we can do them all together. Deal?”
“If you insist.”