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There was a light knock on the front door, odd considering it’s usually a violent pounding. Alhaitham payed it no mind though, until he walked over to open the door and heard Kaveh speak from the other side of the door.
“Wait! Don’t open the door yet!” He pleaded from the outside
“And why not?” Alhaitham sighed, but respected Kaveh’s wish to keep the door closed.
“You have to promise not to be mad…”
And with this Alhaitham opens the door not caring or promising anything. Alhaitham finds himself in shock, there is no fucking way this isn’t some stupid dream. Maybe he’s comatose and this is something his brain has spun to keep him occupied for the time being.
“Okay, Kaveh, please explain to me why you have a horse with you?” Alhaitham asked, angrily gesturing towards the horse.
“You said you wouldn’t be mad!” Kaveh gently hugs the horse’s neck and pets it sadly.
“I said no such thing.”
“It was implied!”
“It absolutely was not. Now tell me where the horse came from so we can return it.”
“No! We are not returning her! Please, please let me- us keep her! I promise I’ll take care of her!” Kaveh tries to give Alhaitham puppy eyes, but he instead looks like a demented addict who’s going through withdrawals.
“You can barely take care of yourself, there is no way you could possibly take care of a horse for fucks sake.”
There’s a brief silence before Alhaitham speaks again, “Now where did this horse come from?”
“Well… she was on the side of the road and she looked kind of lonely a-“ Kaveh begins before he’s cut off.
“You stole a fucking horse?! From the side of the road?! Because it looked lonely?!” There is absolutely no fucking way Kaveh kidnapped a horse for funsies. “Tell me where you found the horse and I’ll return it.” Alhaitham offers, because he knows that if he makes Kaveh return it he’ll probably start some sort of weird cowboy roleplay, go into the desert, get lost, and nearly die from the conditions of the desert only to be found by some rando. It wouldn’t be the first time something like that happened- excluding the horse.
“We’re not returning her! At least for tonight.. please… it’s late out! And I’m tired!”
“Shocking coming from you.”
Kaveh practically throws himself onto Alhaitham to show his gratitude. “So it’s settled she’s staying for tonight! Oh thank you I love you so much! Plus I think I would’ve started filing divorce papers if you didn’t let her stay,” Kaveh speeds over the last part while having his face effectively sunken into Alhaitham’s man boobs. That is to say, that last part was hard to hear.
“What was that…”
“Nothing I said nothing!” He pulls his face away from the gravitational pull of the man boobs, somehow.
“No you definitely said something at the end there.”
“Nothing to worry about, just a short little seizure is all haha!”
“First a fucking horse and now a god damn seizure?!”
“I’M TIRED AND WE’RE GOING TO BED!” Kaveh grabs Alhaitham’s wrist and drags him inside with him.
Alhaitham awakes at four in the morning to a loud snoring. He never recalls Kaveh snoring, let alone this loud. He glances around the room, but isn’t able to see much considering his range of vision is limited because he simply does not want to move from his current sleep posit- WHY IS THE HORSE IN THE FUCKING BEDROOM?!l
“KAVEH!” Alhaitham screams, glaring at the man laying next to him. He knows he cannot see because he is asleep, and it’s almost pitch black in the room, but he feels it necessary regardless.
“Mmmnnn whaaat,” Kaveh groans, not even bothering to open his eyes.
“TELL ME WHY THE HORSE IS IN OUR BEDROOM?!” He continues to scream, again angrily gesturing at the horse and continuing to shoot daggers at Kaveh with his glaring.
“She was cold. And I am too. Get back over here,” Kaveh simply states like a horse in their bedroom is a normal occurrence. He proceeds to throw his arm out and try to feel around for Alhaitham because he still does not wish to open his eyes.
“No-! You don’t get to just bring a fucking horse into the house, pretend this is normal and like it’s not getting our house dirty-“
“She’s not getting it dirty and she was sleeping until you threw a fit,” Kaveh quickly found Alhaitham in their bed and tries to scoot closer to him.
“She is probably drooling all fucking over! And she’s noisy as fuck! She could’ve easily squished Mehrak by accident as well! You don’t get to just do this then ask for cuddles like you’ve done nothing! Tell me where exactly you found this archon forsaken horse so I can leave her where you found her!” He pushes Kaveh away. He rolls over and huffs.
“‘M not telling you,” he grumbles. He seems more hurt by the lack of physical affection than he is the screaming.
Alhaitham puts his face in his hands for a moment before getting out of their bed and throwing on a random shirt and pants. It then occurs to him that he has no clue how the horse got into the house, let alone how he will get it out. Maybe Mehrak’s collar and leash will work? He sincerely doubts it, let alone that a little fat cat’s leash will fit around a horses neck, but it’s worth a shot.
He manages to make it fit, and leads the horse out of the house. It took him a good hour, but he did it. Navigating out of the house was the hard part, but leading it somewhere out in the open should be easy. Within the hour, he manages to drag the horse out to the ocean by Port Ormos. Now what? Does he just leave it there? Can a horse swim? He really doesn’t want it coming back. So, he simply decides the most logical option. He ties the horse to a bench very quickly before trying to find someone willing to rent him a boat.
He sounds absolutely ludacris, “Do you have a boat that would hold the weight of a horse and me?”
It was six in the morning and this teenager was not being payed enough to deal with this shit. He glared at Alhaitham like he just told him that he killed an entire nation on accident with a fork. “Probably one or the other, man.”
“Fucking- okay, is it possible to buy a boat then?”
“Yeah, but it’ll be double.”
“Fine, okay, take the fucking money just give me a damn boat.”
While this poor minimum wage worker is dragging out a dinky little wooden boat, he attempts to speak with Alhaitham, “Why exactly do you need a boat to hold you and a horse?” Alhaitham sees this poor little skinny boat struggling immensely and tries to help carry it, but is swatted away.
“My husband brought home a horse last night because he saw a horse and simply thought it looked lonely.”
There was no other talking exchanged between the two parties.
Alhaitham unties the horse and leads it onto the boat before pushing it off into the ocean. That takes care of that, and he’s off to… home, he guesses. The attire he’s wearing now isn’t very suitable for work, and either way it’ll take him an entire hour- hopefully less now without the horse- to get back. At this point, it’s better if he simply doesn’t show up to work than show up however much later than he should. He’ll go back tomorrow, simply say he was sick or something. More simple than explaining the horse situation.
Upon getting home, Alhaitham hears soft sobs coming from somewhere. He cannot catch a break today can he. He locates the sobs, they seem to be coming from the porch. He gently opens the door as to not upset Kaveh anymore than what’s already gotten him worked up. He walks over and asks, “What happened Kaveh?” He was still a bit upset about the horse, but he wasn’t just going to let his husband bawl in solitude.
“Y…you fuckin..fucking to…took the horse i…is what!” He manages between sobs, burying his face in his hands.
Alhaitham is absolutely dumbfounded. “I… didn’t know the horse meant that much to you,” he attempted to explain.
Alhaitham leaves the room to find Mehrak. She was always better at this sort of stuff than he was. Upon coming back with Mehrak, he sets her in Kaveh’s lap.
Kaveh starts speaking again completely unprompted, “The horse just… looked so lonely… I…I couldn’t just le…leave a little creature l…like that!”
“Yes you could.”
“B…but th…that would’ve be…been so mean!” He picks up Mehrak and hugs her to his chest while petting her head.
There’s a brief silence between the two. Alhaitham wants to respond, but needs to find the right words first.
“Honey, look, a cat is one thing sure,” he pauses, Kaveh looks at him and nods slowly, the crying slowing subsiding. “But a horse is simply too much. Where would we keep it- do not say the house because I swear to god I will kick you to the streets. Realistically, we do not have the space for that. Or the time to take care of it. You cannot simply take on a responsibility as large as that without thinking it through properly.” Alhaitham explains. He quickly realizes that this could’ve all been avoided had he explained this last night when Kaveh came home with a horse.
“Mnnn, I…I guess you’re right…” Kaveh admits for the first and probably only time.
The rest of the day goes by as usual, aside from the fact that Alhaitham had to miss a day of work due to this dilemma. He and Kaveh sleep without being awoken by a horse at four in the morning, and Alhaitham is actually able to go to work the next morning. Or so he thought. Because when he opened the door, there was the fucking horse. Somehow, defying all odds, the horse had managed to either float or swim its way back to land, then trot back to their house.