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There’s a clatter as keys jam into the door rashly, the audible thunk of the door against his weight resonating in the man’s ears as the vibration passes through his earpieces. The door is pulled shut with just as much strain, no mind given to the volume that followed his inattention. Dragging a hand down the side of his face in clear exasperation.
“Alhaitham?”
Now does that dreaded mirthful voice of his roommate chime from where Alhaitham had presumed to be the kitchen. His waning focus however, scraped any relevance of the hint of possible concern that may have been present in Kaveh’s voice when he spoke his name (not that he’d care for such a suggestion, he’s sure if he realised at the time he’d even find it quite irritating). The scribe waves a hand in mock acknowledgement, a wave of which that serves no real purpose, for they aren’t even in the same room.
“Not like you to extend your hours so exhaustively.” The blond passes the subtle jab towards his junior's idleness lightheartedly, though there’s that same concern again that highlights his words as he returns from the kitchen.
He then eyes the man sitting on the couch, raking a hand through his hair as he notices first how utterly dishevelled he is. His hair is disarrayed beyond belief, and for a man who sleeps oh so soundly with that generous salary he most certainly looks like he hasn’t for days. Only then does Kaveh anticipate the high maintenance he’s sure to meet after having indicated any true concern for the other.
Alhaitham opts to inspect his fingernails in lieu of an actual reply, humming as he feels the weight of the couch shift slightly with Kaveh’s own as the architect sits beside him.
“I’m usually home before you,” Kaveh passes the comment plainly as he swings one leg over the other, noting the lack of reply, “humour me for once, Hayi?”
Kaveh could’ve sworn he saw the way the scribe’s fingers twitch uncomfortably with a very genuine irritation. It’s an offset for him, really. It’s very atypical to find Alhaitham actually unnerved by Kaveh’s words, and the blond finds himself almost feeling guilty for the fact. He’s noticed the anomaly with the man’s behaviour for a few days, though had deemed it insignificant and temporary — returning in such a state as the one he had done, however, irks him.
“I don’t indulge in such activities.” He states, almost matter-of-factly, if it weren’t for the way his shoulders sag out of the evident fatigue that stabs into his temples more and more persistently.
“Oh, can you stop acting like telling me anything is a detriment to a reputation you don’t even possess?” He’s fully aware that not once has Alhaitham ever cared for a ‘reputation’ — given what anyone in Sumeru would say about his present one, that is, “I can’t express an ounce of concern for you without you shutting down entirely, and this time you get home at this utterly stupid time of night looking like you’ve been trampled by a sumpter beast at least six times over.”
It doesn’t take much to hinder a man as capricious as Kaveh was, and as much as Alhaitham typically likes to relish in the infantile retorts of his senior, tonight he simply cannot bring himself to entertain the idea.
“You seem to act as though I have a curfew.” He raises an eyebrow, though unbeknownst to his senior, as he has yet to avert his gaze from the floor.
“Well, maybe you need one!” Kaveh snaps, stopping himself before his outward display of vexation becomes his dramatic ‘arms in the air’ expression (a habit; one he’d rather not allow to become the grounds of another snide remark).
“What a juvenile thing to suddenly declare, you must be awfully tired, Kaveh.” He says, standing up off of the couch as he sweeps a book from the corner of the table, indiscreet with his way of patently holding a finger to the noise-cancellation option on his earpieces when making his leave.
Alhaitham’s ability to flip a situation on its head had always pleasantly bemused the architect, but in this context? To turn Kaveh’s concern towards him into one of his own? The contradiction is as though the man spoke purely in the grating noise of a fork against a porcelain plate. He can only scoff, wordless in his attempt of retort as he watches the grey haired man retreat to his own room.
There’s an ache that fans out across the scribe’s chest as he hears the muffled click of his bedroom door as it closes behind him. Sitting on his bed, he’s quick to discard the book onto the floor just as quickly as he’d picked it up, having lost any motivation he had before to read as he rubs the nape of his neck, face contorting into a frown. He ponders for a moment, fingernails dug painfully into his palms until he finally registers the sting, slumping over fully onto the bed. Alhaitham feels no need to express any emotion that overwhelms him as for how rare it is for him to not independently overcome such things; he deems it rather redundant. Though all the same, nor does he feel any need to hide things from Kaveh. His issue is that he couldn’t tell Kaveh. He just couldn’t possibly find the words . He instead, lays in all his disorientation, entirely unable to comprehend why it is he’d felt so awful for what his heart sinks with the realisation to have been a week by now.
It couldn’t possibly be work, everything is the same . Why should he be so violently swayed by a week that is no different from the one before or the next? His eyes grow increasingly heavy as his concerns drift off into their own tangents, willing him to finally rest. As concise as he initially had imagined his thoughts had been, Alhaitham finds himself battling with his drifting consciousness instead, eventually succumbing to his assailant — complete and utter fatigue.
He wakes all the same, however; in mass disarray, clothes unchanged, now clinging to his skin near suffocatingly as he heaves himself up off of the mattress. Pressing his palms into his eyes, the scribe finds himself feeling worse as he snatches his earpieces from the table beside him. It hadn’t even occurred to him that he’d slept alone that night, nor had he paid mind to the fact that Kaveh was preparing wordlessly for his own leave for the day.
Soon, Alhaitham finally opts to change into something more comfortable alongside a sundry other things he’d hoped would make him better even in the slightest. He even clings to his standard morning habits, preparing himself a cup of coffee as he walks to the lounge, before he feels the mug slip from his fingers and shatter across the floor as he only just manages to lurch back from the spilled contents. A colossal slip-up that in turn drowns the man in embarrassment as he hears a certain someone demonstrates a flagrant intrusion of his privacy again as Alhaitham looks upon the mess he’s made.
“Haitham?” Kaveh calls, chest falling with a sigh — almost in relief — when he rounds the corner, eyes drifting to the spilled beverage, and then his junior.
With the absence of reply, he speaks again as he moves forward, gesturing to the lounge.
“Go sit down, and please don’t step in it, I’d rather you not trail it into the lounge.”
“I don’t need any of your injudicious decisions to plague me any further, go see your client.” The younger man retorts, bluntly.
Alhaitham had already noted that his senior was to visit a client today, one of which, from Kaveh’s own complaints from across the past few weeks, he gathered was quite critical and time dependent. He already knew Kaveh wasn’t good with deadlines, and he wouldn’t settle for hindering the architect’s work any further.
“Would you sit down?” He urges, stepping around the small puddle and prodding the man in the chest with an assertion Alhaitham again, does not have the energy to protest — thus, the scribe finds himself doing as instructed, pinching the bridge of his nose in vexation as he plants himself almost mechanically upon the sofa.
There are only a few minutes that pass as Kaveh clears the mess, sparing only a moment to mourn the delicate pattern of the broken mug as he slots two pieces together, regretfully scrapping it afterwards. He trails back into the kitchen, having decided to remake Alhaitham's short-lived cup of coffee, not before he made himself a cup of tea too as he brings both through into the lounge, setting them upon the table.
“I think this is a lapse in care towards yourself.” The blond speaks, sitting himself down next to the other man.
“So your words denote I can’t take care of myself?” Alhaitham replies, voice hoarse in its exhaustion — paired with the fact that he doesn’t believe he’s actually even spoken yet today.
Kaveh backtracks, accepting how Alhaitham doesn’t meet middle grounds.
“I didn’t mean that, you take care of yourself just fine,” when it comes to explicit necessities, he’d protest, if he didn’t know better than to do so, “I think you need a change of scenery.”
His junior’s brow furrows in what could almost be read as intrigue, prompting the other to continue.
“Everything’s the same for you, even home’s not much of a home to you because you have no interest in the little things.”
It’s not that Alhaitham doesn’t understand Kaveh, he just can’t bring himself to absorb such a worldview. To consume an outlook that has not once served as a personal benefactor to anyone, but instead a burden, Kaveh himself being a prime example, does not seem ideal to the other man. Kaveh however, is quick to pick up on the vacant look present on Alhaitham’s face.
“I’m saying that you don’t have anything to ever look forward to. Your days are the same, you shelter yourself from everyone— which is fine, but you live within an empty shell. There’s nothing new to look forward to for you, because every week is a carbon copy of the last, and you don’t make any attempt to counter that.”
“I don’t desire any sort of change, people shouldn’t seek to add obstacles when it’s very clearly unnecessary.” He counters, arms crossed over his chest as his nose crinkles in distaste at the suggestion of changing anything he already lives by.
Kaveh contemplates highlighting that this is in fact the main reason Alhaitham is so miserable in the first place, though — he doesn’t doubt that the scribe knows this already.
“You don’t desire a change because you’ve never experienced a change. You can’t form a desire for something you’ve never had to yearn for— and that’s important. I yearned for home for a long time, Hayi.”
The scribe sits for a brief minute in contemplation, rolling the thin sheet of gold around his ring finger out of habit. Alhaitham had, for the most part, been conscious of the issue at hand, though rather than accepting any fault, he had preferred to dish out any plausible excuse to push the issue further into the back of his mind. He didn’t care for right or wrong, quite frequently would he devalue his own intellect purely out of convenience, perception from others didn’t bother him — his health however, was a matter he would frequently second guess. Kaveh soon notices the acknowledgement of his claim, and his lack of reply speaks better than anything.
“You live and breathe by a very rigid pattern, and you don’t have to break it, you only have to meld it to your own tastes.” He leans into the man’s shoulder, only slightly, as to pull his focal point from the nervous habit and back to himself.
“You needn’t etch it into my brain any further,” the taller man waves him off lightheartedly, enabling a grin to surface upon Kaveh’s features, “I’ll do something about it, I suppose.”
Soon enough does that grin disappear as Kaveh scoffs, lightly kicking the scribe in the shins following the sarcasm that laces his words.
“I’m not going on another ‘outing’, however, if that’s what you happen to be insinuating,” Alhaitham is quick to add, before he adds, “and, don’t you have a client to see to?”
“Oh, would you stop it with that— and yes, yes I do, but I don’t like this client, I’ll get word to them later and relay my sincerest of apologies,” he chimes, leaning back for a moment to push a few stray hairs out of his partner’s face to suit the direction of his parting, before finally cupping his cheek, “mind, I can’t allow the Scribe of The Akademiya to trip over his own issues and look a fool, can I?”
“Of course, because then people would be thinking ‘isn’t it usually Kaveh who ends up in such predicaments’.” The faintest of a grin highlights his features, leaning forwards slightly so the tip of his nose brushes against Kaveh’s own, before leaving a benign, yet all the more teasing kiss to the same place, drawing back to relish in the frustration that floods the architect’s complexion as their rings clink together in his sudden protest to grab Alhaitham’s hand.
“Just who do you think you are?”