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The first time Alhaitham ever had coffee was during his student days, soon after he met Kaveh.
His senior had been so terribly flabbergasted and appalled to hear that Alhaitham, a ripe nineteen years of age, had never tasted the nectar of the gods and many a student's mental crutch during exam season. They'd ditched classes, actually - a shared elective taught by an overbearing man who wrote his own textbooks and shoved them on his students as necessary "supplemental" purchases - for Kaveh to take Alhaitham to Puspa Café.
There, Kaveh had ordered them both a plate of baklava and two steaming hot cups of the most expensive, most fragrant blend, though of course not before considerately asking Alhaitham if he minded bitter drinks. He hadn't known. Why would he, when he had never tried it before?
As luck would have it, he didn't. And so Alhaitham was introduced to coffee and baklava. And even now, if Alhaitham was being completely honest, he didn't know if the coffee and sweets really tasted as good as his memory told them they did, or if it was simply a paired effect with the memory of Kaveh's beaming smile that day.
Alhaitham's mortal senses tended to be at least mildly affected by Kaveh's mood, if he happened to be nearby. It was simply a quirk of dubious biology he had accepted. Wine tasted better in Kaveh's company. Coffee tasted less fragrant in its absence. All but Alhaitham's most preferred snacks tasted a little off if Kaveh was in the house being upset while Alhaitham was trying to eat them, whether Kaveh was actively upset at something he said or not.
Maybe one day, Alhaitham would be tickled enough by his own Kaveh-compelled variations in metabolism to submit to an Amurta study.
At the moment, it was simply an idle thought on an idle weekend morning. The book in Alhaitham's hand wasn't quite engrossing enough for him to ignore his roommate's humming as Kaveh flitted about their cramped kitchen, retrieving the coffee beans and pouring them into the hand-press.
In a few minutes, the rousing aroma of the freshly ground beans filled the nose. It made a lovely accompaniment to the jaunty tune Kaveh was whistling, if Alhaitham was a man of prose and poetry.
He wasn't. Or rather, he was a consumer of prose and poetry, not a creator of such. That would be Kaveh's purview. Alhaitham would never give him the full satisfaction of a bare-faced compliment, but for the brief window of time where Kaveh had been interested in writing his own poetry, he had been quite good at it.
So, instead, he contended with a complementary pairing of his own: recalling a passage in a very lengthy, very saccharine letter a vizier of King Deshret wrote some years before the king’s death, wherein the man had lamented the arduousness of his duty in terms of how many mornings he had spent away from his beloved wife.
What a strange memory his vast mind had fed him with. Alhaitham spent a moment puzzling over why, exactly, he made this association.
Then a cup of steaming hot coffee was put in front of him, followed by a plate of candied nuts, and Kaveh saying, “You’re so spoiled, junior. You’re the most spoiled man in all of Sumeru, that you get served dessert for breakfast.”
“That’s only the burdens of financial freedom,” Alhaitham replied.
He got cuffed lightly on the head for it, but getting to see Kaveh’s puffed-out cheeks and full-lipped pout as he dropped himself the chair across from Alhaitham? Worth it.
-
Kaveh paid for the new coffee press with his own money.
Alhaitham heard about this secondhand, as he often did when something really left Kaveh torn, and not just something he would grumble to his face about and then forget by morning. It had been very expensive, which was understandable for the quality – or so Kaveh had told Lambad, who told Alhaitham when he came to peel the drunk roommate off his bar counter. It was also not an impulse purchase. Kaveh had been eyeing it for a month, and despite his latest commission paying him much less than he thought, had decided to get it anyway.
There was a certain tone Lambad took when he was relaying the message to Alhaitham that was…difficult to decipher. Alhaitham carefully ran it through his internal archive of Mood Tone Indicators while he hefted Kaveh up and threw one of his arms over his shoulders. He deduced that the closest match was Warning. But about what ?
“If it had strained his finances so, then he should not have made the purchase,” Alhaitham said reasonably when Lambad continued to stare at him even after having settled their tab. Like the man was expecting a response of some kind.
Lambad let out a long, gusty sigh, and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Just…be kind to him, Scribe,” he said gruffly. “Be grateful.”
“Whatever have I done to imply I’m not?"
That seemed to somehow be the correct answer to this line of conversation Alhaitham did not fully understand. He left the tavern with his roommate slung over his shoulders (as usual), the wry but mildly approving smile on its owner’s face haunting him every step of the way home.
Alhaitham was still thinking about it as he helped Kaveh out of his cloak and shoes, then carried him to bed and gently stripped him of his multitudes of annoying, sparkling ornaments so he wouldn’t wake up tomorrow with weird red welts in their shapes all over. As he was putting the cheap, merrily-clinky earrings away in its designated box on Kaveh’s nightstand, Alhaitham finally decided he was missing a critical piece of information to complete the picture.
The shape of the issue was easy enough to guess at, though. Lambad had probably been hit with the Feel Sorry For Me Beam from Kaveh, who was so very good at it when he wasn’t trying. He had figured Alhaitham would be a horrible mean monster to him over the wasteful purchase of a coffee grinder they didn’t really need, even if it was better than their last, almost-falling-apart counterpart at home. And he’d warned Alhaitham to shove off, accordingly.
This was sweet of the tavern boss, if somewhat detrimental to his business model. Kaveh tended to drink whenever he was upset with Alhaitham, so by that logic, would it not have made more sense for Lambad to withhold the information from Alhaitham and let their argument run its course? He’d certainly collect more of his money that way, by way of Kaveh’s drinks ending up on his tab as always.
Well, Lambad did like Kaveh a whole lot. Perhaps it had finally gotten to the stage where that fondness outstripped the man’s business sense. Alhaitham had sympathy. Kaveh was a terrible blow to many people’s rationality. Exhibit A: himself.
On the bed, Kaveh turned over and mumbled something incoherent. Alhaitham put the jewelry box down and came to sit down next to him, at the very edge. He studied his roommate’s sleeping face for a moment, careful that their bodies not touch. Sometimes, even drunk, Kaveh’s chronic insomnia would prompt him to wake at unexpected touch. When this happened, he tended to start crying, spiraling into distress. Alhaitham had made that mistake once, and only once.
The room was dark, the only source of light that of the living room shining through the open doorway. It was still enough to see the tense line of Kaveh’s body, his mouth. “I’m sorry,” he murmured to someone not Alhaitham. “I’m sorry.”
And because the addressee was not Alhaitham, he could not be the one to say, “You’re fine.” He could not say, “You have nothing to be sorry for” and be believed. He wouldn’t be believed anyway, had Kaveh been awake and lucid, had Alhaitham ever the courage to vaunt through the wall of his pride to say these words aloud.
(If they were ever needed of him, he believed that he could. But how would he know whether they would do more good than harm? How could you grant relief to an innocent who believed himself the worst of sinners? How ?)
Instead, Alhaitham broke his rule in the only way he allowed himself to because he knew it usually worked: he reached out, very lightly brushed away a few strands of golden hair that had fallen across Kaveh’s face, and tucked it behind his ear. He waited, and when there was no sudden gasp of startled waking, continued to run his fingers through Kaveh’s sweat-soaked hair that smelled too much of booze and hookah smoke and drowned misery.
Kaveh’s breath smoothed out, eventually. His body did not relax, it rarely did even with wine in his blood, like even knocked out he was waiting for blows to rain down on him. But Alhaitham would take whatever results he could.
He sat there for too long for laziness or idleness to be legitimate excuses. There were many books Alhaitham could read before bedtime, even if it wasn’t far too late to be awake on a weekday. There were a few chores he could still sort out.
Instead he sat there in the dark of Kaveh’s room, perched on the edge of his bed, holding himself carefully so as not to accidentally touch the man made of glass and gold inches from him. Kaveh woke very easily, and Alhaitham had seen him get up only hours after a drunken escapade to go right back to work many nights before.
What bothered you so much in your sleep, Alhaitham had wanted to ask him many times. Had asked him ad verbatim once, actually, only for Kaveh to flush like he’d seen something embarrassing and told him off, said it was none of his business.
Fine. Whatever. He just lived here, in the room adjacent to the one Kaveh was in and sometimes cried late into the night. Archons forbid Alhaitham sought a satisfying answer to a concern he had.
But if he had said that , Kaveh would’ve only said, Then wear your noise cancelling headphones to bed. Gods know you don’t mind using them to tune me out during the day.
Then Alhaitham would have to argue, They are never on during the day, or whenever both of us are somewhere together. I don’t turn them on in your company .
And that would be an admission neither of them could gracefully stomach, so it was best to be marked as unnecessary and not a path of conversation worth pursuing.
It was an hour later, when Kaveh had curled away from Alhaitham and turned away to face the wall, that he got up. He tiptoed back to his room, deciding to do the dishes later so the clinking wouldn’t wake him.
Kaveh was already up by the time Alhaitham got out of bed, anyway. With a killer headache, the bad mood to match, and several bad words about the dishes in the sink that were still not done. “How did you even live before you got me to clean up after you?” he asked Alhaitham, all thorns and raised hackles, even as he ground fresh coffee for them both and then poured it by hand.
Alhaitham watched him pour it into his cup first before his own. Watched Kaveh add the precise amount of sugar and cream into both cups, the way Alhaitham always liked his. Said, “I ask myself that everyday. Certainly there weren’t as many nights being summoned over the Akasha system at a time people would be ashamed to be out on the street, just to fetch my roommate from the tavern.”
Kaveh blushed red to the tips of his hair. But when he carried the cups over, he slammed his and set Alhaitham’s down very carefully. With or without a book in his hands, he always showed that care. Alhaitham had already conducted that experiment. Just to know, of course.
“Thank you so much for your gallant sense of basic decency,” Kaveh said sarcastically. Then he picked his topic of argument for the day, and Alhaitham indulged him in the thirty minutes he had before he needed to leave for the Akademiya.
-
The new press produced much better ground coffee. It did so smoothly, with about a quarter of the sheer noise their old one made.
“Much better on the ears, isn’t it,” Kaveh commented one morning, giving Alhaitham a pleased look.
“Whatever do you mean?”
“You tend to make a face when I was grinding coffee with the old press,” was the answer, casual as though this was not an incredibly acute observation for someone Alhaitham figured always had his back turned when he was doing the described activity. “Now you don’t glare at me over the top of your book anymore.”
Alhaitham had another book held up to hide the lower half of his face right then. He was grateful for it, as it would’ve been very difficult to explain away his mouth dropping open a little too wide at that remark.
A response was not immediately forthcoming. Alhaitham had to spend a moment weighing between I wasn’t glaring at you because of the noise, I was observing you and I don’t know what you’re talking about . He settled for, “You’re so capable of awareness when it’s something completely irrelevant to your life.”
Kaveh scoffed at him. “You’re in my life,” he muttered.
Alhaitham had no answer to that , so he had to come up with something else to tease Kaveh with, who rose to take the bait with what almost seemed like relief. And then they were back on their usual rhythm.
That evening, Alhaitham made a very bothersome but absolutely necessary trip to Treasure Street. He browsed the wares of Liyuean merchants until he found a set of beautifully glazed and decorated teacups, sporting small golden flowers and scarlet butterflies. It cost twice the amount Kaveh put on his tab at Lambad’s for a month.
Alhaitham contemplated his strategy while he carried it home. He decided to put the china right next to the two boxes of flowery-tasting teas Kaveh also spent an obscene amount of money on, then went to his office to read rather than wait for Kaveh on the divan like usual.
It was just as well. His roommate decided to return home at an ungodly hour that night, muttering darkly about asshole clients who made him go to the survey site now right now with no respect for people’s time.
But the cups were used the very next morning. Kaveh also started with an argumentative sentence instead of a complaint and then an argumentative sentence, which Alhaitham decided to parse as gratitude.
He continued to set Alhaitham’s coffee down in front of him with care, with the exact amount of sugar and cream he liked.
The sky could fall, mountains could crumble, and Alhaitham still held the whole-hearted belief that this would not change.
For all that Kaveh could be abrupt and flighty with himself, his money, his interests, his own well-being, he was ever steady in his hands and his crafts – and his care for others.
Alhaitham thought of the hundreds of poems he had read of good friends and lovers, of parent and child, of grandparents to their progeny. He thought of every word, written in every one of the twenty languages he knew and more. And then he decided poets were both necessary and extravagant. Every sentiment across a hundred thousand pages about love and affection and sincerity – he saw it all condensed to a cup of coffee to accompany his breakfast every morning that he shared with a man made of glass and gold.
-
The insurrection came and went.
Alhaitham could not permit himself the doubt that his strategy would not succeed because he…simply could not. There was something more precious than the future of Sumeru that he needed to protect. Something more important than just the daily routine he knew well and took comfort in, the lightness of his own conscience to know that he saw flagrant wrongdoing and did something to stop it, the safety and liberation of their own Archon.
It took the shape of a house at the end of a short walk from the Akademiya that Alhaitham could retrace in his sleep. It took the shape of the interior of that house, by now mostly color-coordinated and tastefully decorated thanks to the tireless but very loud effort of one Master Architect. It took the shape of golden hair and red eyes, a heart-shaped face framed by strands of bronze-tipped gold. It took the shape, and the taste, of a mug of steaming coffee served with a variety of breakfast foods, some filling and some simply because Kaveh thought Alhaitham might need it before a long day ahead (he had never guessed wrong).
Lord Kusanali understood, because of course she did. She looked into his eyes when she came by to ask Alhaitham to take the seat of Acting Grand Sage, smiled wryly at whatever trepidation and exasperation she read in his mind, and said, “Do it for him, if nothing else. You are in the most capable position to guarantee at least some positive changes that would trickle down to benefit him, yes?”
Alhaitham might have disagreed to serve, even if she was his Archon. He did not, after what she said.
The morning after Kaveh came back from the desert and got the gist of what happened while he was away, he yelled at Alhaitham first thing in the morning for recklessness and lunacy. He slammed his hand on the table and demanded if he was hurt, if anything was wrong, why didn’t you send for me?
But the coffee he made tasted the same. Alhaitham sipped it while he looked everywhere but Kaveh’s flushed, scrunched-up face and wide red eyes, savoring the taste while he formulated a response.
And then , in the now-faithful tradition, Alhaitham loaded their barren cupboards with ingredients to make Kaveh’s favorite dishes, his favorite Mondstadtian wines, and dragged himself to Treasure Street at the end of his shift for more groceries he didn’t need to buy.
Kaveh baked the Sabz stew into a pie and didn’t complain about Alhaitham reading at the dinner table that night, in turn.
Give and take, give and take. These were the unspoken rules in this house. These were the things Alhaitham returned to at the end of every exhausting , frustrating day at his office as Acting Grand Sage. These were, in sum and in parts, everything he had sought to protect.
These, and the mornings, hectic or idle, the food and the coffee, made it worthwhile.