Archive of Our Own

They live together. Have been—since last week, and however last week happened with whatever last week meant.

It is, to some extent, unfortunate that he now has to share his cups and plates and washing machine and living room and tables and—house with a time traveller who just so happened to be incompetent enough to trust Alhaitham. Still, he doesn’t mind it when he returns home to—whatever this is, clean dishes and done laundry at least.

But, Alhaitham supposes, that living with somebody whose existence is, by all means, an anomaly does happen like this:

Ergo last week, Alhaitham was about four-hundred-seventy-two pages in Whiteholes and Wormholes when it happened. It, to say, a shift in the air and a quite possible psych-ward escapee, who looks as if he has most probably lost many things to his gambling addiction, flips the page instead.

Now, under most circumstances, Alhaitham would not mind this—he had finished reading the page exactly at that moment, and it isn’t even as if he likes flipping pages particularly enough to pick fights with people who would do it for him, but it is rather the state of this guy—again, most things considered, he is not precisely ugly but no cosplayer ever with their expensive accessories and whatnot break into—or teleport—in his house like that.

Observation: he looks ridiculous, this man. Golden hair and singlehandedly the strangest high-collar shirt—with open cuts at that—he’s seen, paired with even more outdated pants and a cape falling down his back and it is all utterly pretentious, with earrings and red clips sticking out and redder eyes and his ornaments scintillating with him. He looks as if he was painted alive from Nahida’s picture storybooks, as people are full of all obstinate things there. 

When he stares at the World’s Most Pretentious Man as he was inevitably wont to do, the World’s Most Pretentious Man looks back at him incredulously which is again, indecent, and then he scoots away. Which is also a ridiculous move because now they are both confused and the World’s Most Pretentious Man looks as if he shouldn’t have flipped the page—that is also ridiculous because again, Alhaitham isn’t even bothered about that.

So, after Alhaitham squints at him and confirms that the World’s Most Pretentious Man is indeed real and Alhaitham is still sane, he asks, “What are you doing,” Which doesn’t come out as a question as it does a statement but it should get the point across anyway.

“...Hello,” the World’s Most Pretentious Man smiles, he even tucks in the stray strands of his golden hair and Alhaitham has absolutely no idea why anyone would have a peacock feather there. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb you reading that—but I also kind of wanted to see what would be on the other page and I know I should have asked you but you looked as if you would have thrown me out if I spoke to you and I do not want that so—by the way, I’m Kaveh—with a capital K, K for Koalas and Kangaroos—”

“Kaveh,” He calls the World’s Most Pretentious Man easily because that isn’t a name too long to register in his mind every time he observes him, “I did not mind you flipping my page.”

“Oh,” Kaveh nods, “Right,” he then looks around and the tension in his shoulders dissipates. And, just because nobody asked him to, he says, “Also: I love your dining set but—er, in the nicest way possible, you didn’t have to keep that vase there—that one on the window—you could keep it on the table itself,” and in case he adds, “I am only saying.”

“I didn’t ask,” Alhaitham says frankly, closing the book shut, “Again, what are you doing.”

“One; talking to you,” Kaveh answers flippantly, “You are an awfully rude host. Two, I am as confused as you are. That is one more reason why you should refrain from throwing me out just yet—I’m but a damsel in distress. A victim of circumstance. Of you. Three: Mehrak kind of ran out of power—so—uh,”

“How about you,” Alhaitham reasons, “take your… Mehrak and get out through the window? I have an inkling that I don’t want to know what Mehrak is,”

But Kaveh lights up all at once. “Oh!” He fumbles a little, “She’s my emotional support time machine, actually. This may sound all rubbish and stuff to you and I know okay? But I was in nineteen-fifty-four last time and I kind of got sick of all that so I decided to leave—unplanned, I know, but there was no other way—life is transitory and all that. Then halfway through Mehrak runs out of power and instead of two-thousand-thirteen, I’m sent ten years into the future. I think.”

Ah. “No, actually Kaveh,” he smoothes over, “I believe I can take you to the nearest mental hospital free of cost. I am aware that inflation has been hard on people like… you, but that is no excuse to—do whatever you are doing. The time machine thing is, I will admit, a bright idea, but healthcare is free in Sumeru. Now if you may—”

And, since he is the World’s Most Pretentious Man, Kaveh abruptly stands up and then he is pressing down a finger to his forehead and he looks almost defeated. Which is contradictory in itself, because he is determined and Alhaitham doesn't even know for what. Therefore; almost.

Like this, an inch between their heads, Kaveh has remarkably long lashes with freckles, nose snubbed ever so slightly, lips chapped and eyes are sharp towards the edges. He looks like he belongs in worlds full of rosy clouds and twinkling skies and all the baubles in the trees—and he has stumbled his way here.

“Who are you, honestly?” Kaveh asks at last.

“Alhaitham,” he says simply, and he doesn’t inch, doesn’t leave. And you are either a deranged, estranged man who has lost all his worldly possessions to alcohol and gambling and now all you can do for a living is break into others’ houses looking like that to hold even a semblance of a normal people-to-people conversation—not that Alhaitham wants to antagonise him like this deliberately.

“Alhaitham,” Kaveh echoes, testing his name upon his lips,  “Believe me when I tell you I didn’t want to be stuck with you either—but things happen and time shifts and the world tilts and Mehrak is trying her best, alright? This is just a space-time phenomenon!”

“A what—?”

“Say, then,” Kaveh begins, the proximity between them wavers again, and Alhaitham doesn’t go looking for these things. “What are your thoughts on time travelling?”

“I think,” Alhaitham inhales very, very slowly, “besides wanting to lock you out and call every emergency number I can think of, I desperately want to travel back in time when the universe didn’t hate me and you didn’t break into my house with your dirty shoes looking like a psych-ward escapee,”

“...Okay,” Kaveh sucks in a breath, stretches out a smile, “I’ll rephrase,” And then — “What are your thoughts on time travellers?”

Alhaitham squints at him. “Psych-ward escapees. Deranged unemployed men breaking into houses. Fired corporate workers with a family of five.”

“Brilliant,” Kaveh says, moving away, “I am not a deranged unemployed man breaking into houses—not yours at least and I have so many things to put on my resume—I'm not a psych-ward escapee either, by the way. Great—” he laughs, a touch hysterical, “What’s today’s date, Alhaitham?”

Ah, Alhaitham thinks: I am doomed. Not that it matters, in the grand scheme of things—he has known that long already. They might need two psych-wards, at this rate.

All in all, Alhaitham would like to believe he took it pretty well; staring at the wall for twenty minutes notwithstanding. Even hypothetically, if Kaveh were to break into his house, which is impossible, he would at least need to break a few windows and pick locks. And, assertion: Kaveh is simultaneously brighter than anyone he has spoken to and the most perverse man he has had the sheer misfortune of seeing.

When he learns how Kaveh went bankrupt last time—by feeding desert foxes for a month—it all makes sense. Alhaitham doesn’t doubt it; Kaveh cannot, for the life of him, break into his house. The sky is blue, the grass is green, and Kaveh just can’t.

“You know,” Kaveh begins, looking him in the eye, “This is where you start a game of hundred-and-one questions where I dodge most of it and answer the ones about my food habits,”

Alhaitham closes his eyes, “There isn’t much for me to doubt when you look like that.”

“Look like what?”

“That is,” Alhaitham says, “people don’t exactly wear capes like yours. Or a feather—whatever it is that you are wearing right now. Seeing that you showed up here with no possible explanation because, as far as I am concerned, I do not leave my windows open or my door unlocked and—nineteen-fifty-four, really?”

“Everything sounds lovely when you’ve accidentally ended up in the five-hundreds,” Kaveh eyes him up and down and says, “People still look like oversimplified clowns,”

“You look like a clown,”

“Touché,” Kaveh starts slowly, “I wish I had ended up some time with flying cars instead,”

Clearing his throat, Alhaitham says, “The cars don’t make noises anymore. Most of them,” he sighs, “You are taking this surprisingly well. Like you do this often.”

Kaveh shrugs, fidgeting, “So are you,” he says, “Not dealing with problems you don’t create always works, most of the time. And I’ve been doing this since I found Mehrak, really. I don’t think about—this,”

“I doubt you think about anything at all,” Alhaitham says dimly, “Maybe that is why you look like you haven’t eaten in five days and four nights,”

“Only four—I slept through the fifth one,”

“Then I wasn’t so wrong about the deranged estranged man without a single mora to name part,” Then he goes on to add, for both their sakes, “By the way, I don’t like dirty shoes in my house.”

And that is that.

In all fairness, it takes Kaveh precisely three and a half hours to process any of this—in the middle of which he starts to look for this Mehrak, followed by an impromptu realisation that she was beside him all along and then that is followed by Alhaitham making acquaintances with Mehrak, the-somewhat-suitcase, who lives off of oil and has one emote she can make. He doesn’t really understand how she can fly or if she even has a minuscule of consciousness to comprehend whatever Kaveh might try with her—whatever she is right now, a dead thing with sounds a microwave makes in the murky hours of the night.

Then he realises he is broke, which leads to him claiming that one of his houses must have been built exactly here seventy years ago so then somehow Alhaitham’s house should technically be theirs. Then he learns how to operate Alhaitham’s unused coffee maker, to him, is a godsend in and of itself. Alhaitham is more uncertain than anything.

This also leads to:

“Praytell, Alhaitham, why do you have a… three-in-one shampoo?”

“Please enlighten me, why do people have shampoo bottles?”

“That’s it,” Kaveh mutters, clenching the sink and looking him in the eye, “We are going to the Bazaar.”

“This,” Kaveh marvels, running his thumb along the silk of the curtain, and Alhaitham is once again left wondering what they could be doing in the furniture aisle, “is what quality fabric means. No, Alhaitham, it’s not about the colour, yes, it’s the richness of the material—now, this isn’t for your room, but rather your living room, because Archons, green curtains?”

“I’ve been living there for years,” Alhaitham points out conveniently, “I see no problem with it.”

“Well, ignorance is bliss I suppose,” Kaveh tuts, waving his right hand sweepingly, “No matter. We can think about your curtains later and first, the—”

“—Kaveh.”

“I honestly can’t fathom why you should have no house plants! Because, okay, fair, I do get that you are most certainly not an ornamental man, but I’m not even suggesting you get live plants because the world and its wife know that you are really—”

“Kaveh,”

“—and I hate to say—what?”

“Why are we—that is me since you aren’t paying at all—buying fifteen soup cans and what use do I have of three different bottles of…” he holds up one to read the label, “New and Improved: Get rid of the lice in your head today—wait what?—Narana Body Wash—I don’t know how I could benefit from this—and three different colours of mouthwash that I am not even going to read the labels of?”

“Alhaitham,” Kaveh sets down a pair of scented lamps and candles, “your house literally looks as if it is ready to be sold off or something. Also, all these stuff have such pretty labelling—colours and all that. Now, of course, your interior is simplistic and all but it’s so—dead, really. Like do you actually live like that? And I never said all of this is for you.”

Alhaitham crosses his arms. “I never said I’d let you live with me,”

“Then where else would I go? It isn’t even like I voluntarily asked to be here or anything,” Kaveh smiles, moving towards the clothing aisle. “Besides, if you had wanted, Alhaitham, I’d be well out and homeless already—I say you knew it long ago. I’m stuck here and you with me.”

And, naturally, Alhaitham knows. Hasn’t doubted it; not even once. He sees Kaveh, and he sees Kaveh drag him away to this world of his, and he knows he is doomed. They are doomed. He is stuck and he has forgotten his way back. It doesn’t matter much—Kaveh knows he can make houses and homes wherever he goes. Alhaitham will simply give him the keys to his doors.

It happens easily, between the two of them. Kaveh settles into his only spare room—and promises that he will be well out of Alhaitham’s hair after he does whatever he has to do with Mehrak. That is followed by him doing whatever a Kaveh is wont to do; keeping his screwdriver hostage and the light on till four in the morning.

“Kaveh,” Alhaitham calls one night, leaning against his door frame, “Stop this nonsense.”

Kaveh whirls around, and Alhaitham realises just how long it has been since they saw each other face to face—which was only yesterday, but living with somebody changes a few things.

“Hi,” Kaveh greets, a little breathless, out of place. His eyes have sagged and almost red around the whites, his hair is seeping from everywhere he has it tucked and his room is an array of clothes and papers. “I woke you?”

“I didn’t sleep,” Alhaitham replies, picking up one of the scrunched-up papers and throwing it in the bin. “I would have if you decided that it was night finally and did what people do at night.”

Kaveh smiles, a small thing, and raises a brow, “I thought you were looking forward to seeing me off?”

“That,” Alhaitham sighs, “hasn’t changed. I don’t want you here longer than necessary. What I am suggesting is that you sleep and let me sleep.”

“I never stopped you,” Kaveh retorts.

Alhaitham squints at him, brows knitted and strides up to him. A little closer. “I believe,” he mutters, “you should show up to breakfasts.”

“Oh, no,” Kaveh says, raising his hands, “I do show up to breakfast, Alhaitham. Just not with you. Not everyone wakes up at six to eat all that.”

“I hate to admit, as much as you perpetually irritate me, I am sick of seeing my coffee rations be wasted on you. I suggest that you might as well sleep than make me take another trip to get more coffee. Actually, I don’t even know why I go when you drink it so often.”

Kaveh grins, weak and tired. His eyes twitch ever so slightly. Alhaitham doesn’t understand how anyone could willingly forgo sleep to look like a fired corporate worker with a family of five. “Goodnight, Alhaitham,”

Kaveh, needless to say, sleeps later than he usually does, that night. He is petty like that. Alhaitham makes sure to hoard the bathroom for twenty minutes the following morning. Because he is pettier.

Living with Kaveh changes a few things—namely, his sink is aligned with five different creams and there is another toothbrush beside his and his neighbours start sending him noise complaints. All is well.

“Fuck you, Alhaitham!”

Alhaitham stares at the mirror with seemingly no purpose. Kaveh’s banging gets louder with each minute. He leaves the tap running, water gushing down the drain. There is a sort of satisfaction to it: he wakes up five and a half minutes early to hog the washroom.

“I know you can hear me!” Kaveh calls from the other side, “What did I do to you?”

“It isn’t my fault that I need to use my washroom longer than whatever is your comfort.”

“I know you’re done. I literally know. Come on,” A thump, “please?”

“Maybe,” Alhaitham drawls, washing his hands for the third time, “If you’d consider doing the dishes for…”

“I’ll do them before you get home—”

“—the next three days, then I might consider being done with this sooner,”

Silence.

Alhaitham counts the seconds on his hand. One. Two. Three—

“Fuck you,”

“Why do you do this?” Alhaitham asks one evening. Kaveh’s been here for a week and five days. Mornings have gotten colder and evenings louder. The earth is still spinning.

“Do what?” Kaveh asks back, looking up from his place on the table. He has been saying that Mehrak is almost finished. Alhaitham hasn’t found anything to say to that exactly.

Alhaitham flourishes his hand, “Time travelling.”

It takes Kaveh some time, to answer this. He scoffs when a screw comes loose around Mehrak’s edges and twirls a strand of his hair around his ears. Drinks a sip from his cup; it’s cold coffee with cream and cinnamon. Taps his feet against the floorboard.

“It was an accident, the first time—” he begins, sounding half-hearted and so genuine all at once, “I ended up around sixteen hundred or something. People burning for witchcraft and all that. It was—er—scary, obviously. Looking like this and walking around with the strangest suitcase time machine isn’t really ideal,” he laughs there, “I was—I stayed there for a few weeks. Stuck. I was—going to be burned, I think.”

“You can’t tell where and when you’ll end up?”

“Back then I didn’t,” he hums, “Nobody tells you what to do when the box you found and repaired starts beaming and taking you to all these places. Doesn’t come with an instruction manual. I figured it my fourth time—embarrassing, I know Alhaitham, you don’t need to rub it in,” he rolls his eyes and says, “Then it was cool.”

“But you didn’t answer me,” Alhaitham points out, reaching out for Kaveh’s cup and chugging the rest, “Why do you do this?”

This time, Kaveh smiles, wrong in all the places. “I’m tired,” he says, and he still sounds as genuine as he did. Kaveh; bright Kaveh, genuine, putting salt in his tea, watering his plants and waiting for him to come home and never knowing what stings and where it aches. “It will rain tomorrow. Take your umbrella to work.”

Alhaitham eyes Kaveh; brushing his teeth on the mirror, beside him. It is strange what they’ve become.

It is stranger that Alhaitham knows how today will play itself: he will leave, type something at work, be eyed by other employees—they can’t seem to see him as a fellow underpaid desk job worker—and come home where Kaveh will, instead of doing whatever he does in his room, be shifted on the living room—he says it’s to spite Alhaitham—sprawled over the sofa, and he will scoff at him before smiling and kick his calves when he turns back.

They will have dinner, watch the television, argue about the dishes or the laundry or—anything because talking isn’t them.

It is a fact. Kaveh knows it. Alhaitham knows it. The neighbourhood aunty and her wild dog which she acquired from seemingly nowhere know it. Everyone and their mother knows it.

“Stop staring at me,” Kaveh says, spitting out the paste, “you look unhinged.”

“It takes one to know one,” Alhaitham replies right back, turning off the tap. “I’ll be late.”

Kaveh glances at him for a split second and shrugs. “Yeah, okay.”

“Don’t burn down my kitchen,” Alhaitham lists off: “Do your share of dishes. I’ll come home and do mine. Don’t make anything with eggs today—I want to eat omelettes tomorrow. Don’t leave the television on if you watch it to sleep again and lock the doors properly this time. Don’t do the laundry, it’s my turn.”

He is walking behind Kaveh, step for step—right foot with Kaveh’s left. And then Kaveh suddenly stops, turns around, faces Alhaitham and scoffs. Like he has just found a thing to tell him.

“I am mad at you,” He decides, and repeats for good measure; “I’m mad at you, Alhaitham.”

Alhaitham pauses. “I did not do a thing.”

He watches Kaveh suck in a breath, a long, deep one, and there he goes:

“I hate you—” he jabs a finger to his chest, “I hate that you do everything right. It’s uncanny, you know? Living with someone like you? Do you even know that? No, no you don’t—you’re ignorant like that. It’s like—like when I wake up you’re already done with breakfast and it’s six in the morning. I arrange your bookshelves and you always know how to keep the books in the worst way ever all over again. I leave coffee for you when I make some and you put enough milk in it that it tastes weird. We fight about laundry, Alhaitham—and dishes. And your plants that I water. And this. Everything. And you’ve not thrown me out and I’m kind of convinced you are into cannibalism—”

“I’m not,” he interjects, for the sake of both their dignity.

“Okay, so you aren’t, that’s nice. I don’t even know where you work. Or what you do. You could be doing drugs for all I know! And you don’t even know me—how do you sleep knowing I could be a murderer, Alhaitham? I could be—I could be everything bad you’ve imagined and—gods,” Kaveh doubles over, hands on his hip.

The thing is, Alhaitham has thought about it. Under the sheets where everything is quieter and darker and where Kaveh truly takes it upon himself to shine. He hears him shuffle and wonders if today is the day; Kaveh will return his screwdriver and leave his coffee machine alone and he will come back home that night to an empty house, maybe his neighbours will ask him if that was a spell in itself, and Alhaitham might agree to them then. Kaveh could be anything and nothing at all, so who goes to look if Alhaitham loses these bits? Geniuses often come mad.

The thing is, Kaveh could be made up of dreams and stardust. Or the sweeter things. Anything. He could’ve been burned at the stakes once and he may have lived twice. Kaveh’s existence, at its best, is dubious. Anomaly. A variable. Alhaitham wonders if he closes his eyes one night, he will wake up and piece together this—whatever they are. Whatever Kaveh is. Whoever Kaveh was.

The thing is, he wakes up every day—and some days he stands, right before Kaveh’s door, half ajar. Sometimes Kaveh is stumped there, head on his desk and sometimes he sees Alhaitham there. He never quite leaves—Alhaitham never quite names him. Them. He wonders if Kaveh has already done that for them. He waits, then, for Kaveh to say anything—but they don’t speak. They don’t talk.

So, Alhaitham shakes his head and says, a most simple thing; “One: you went bankrupt because you fed desert foxes, Kaveh. You could’ve killed me the day you met me. Two: I work at the Akademiya,” he leans down—all strange and weird and he is three minutes late for work now and he can’t bring himself to care. Irony slaps him in the face at all the wrong times. “And I’m willing to know you. If you let me.” If you let me. Let me. If. What are you? Then — what are we?

They could define it, right now. The world could tilt, just now. Only for now. Only if they let it, is it a scary thought.

Kaveh shifts. He doesn’t quite look up yet. “I’m—” he stumbles back, “I want to know you too.” It’s so quiet and they’re both speaking and nothing settles, between them, “If you—let me, that is. Or not. Or—or we could do nothing. I’ll leave if you want me to. I’ll do nothing if you want me to. I’ll do everything. Whatever. I don’t even know why we’re talking about this, actually—but I was sitting, last night and I realised you might not even—” an exhale, deep and slow, “want me. Here. In your house. With you.”

Alhaitham and Kaveh. They don’t talk, not like this. But since every part of Kaveh likes to defy every bit of Alhaitham, they lie together, contradicting each other and no part of one isn’t defying the other and Alhaitham refuses to be in peace. Kaveh refuses to let him. It’s written. Will play out. Alhaitham doesn’t need a time machine to confirm that.

“I’ve wanted to talk,” Alhaitham says, and no part of it is a lie, “to you. For a long time. We don’t talk, not us. And that somehow allows both of us to talk to different parts of ourselves that aren’t us. This is inherently unfair, because by no means are you allowed—to dictate to yourself things I never meant or said. Don’t ever try to make things I would say when I’m right here. It’s insulting.”

And then Kaveh is laughing, the corners of his eyes crinkling and his shoulders shaking. Alhaitham thinks he still looks ridiculous—like the only thing that matters is him, Kaveh, Kaveh, Kaveh, rosy and slippery and floundering. He makes too much in the morning so he shares it with their neighbours who only see him funny. He ties scarves and zips jackets on the kids by the roadside who look at him like he is the most beautiful thing. He buys keychains—so many of them because nobody goes to tell him healthcare is free in Sumeru.

He is beautiful, like this. Love seeps out of him like he is a little overwatered, and all he can do is love more. There is nothing he knows else. Nothing hurts him quite like love does. Like nobody has taught him how it hurts to bleed.

“Gods, Alhaitham,” Kaveh still says in between giggles; sweet, kind. “I wanted to say so many things to you. I even had this script in my head where I would tell you I was going to be burned because I threw my hairclips at someone. And I’ve forgotten. You’re late for work. I don’t know what to say to you. We are lost. We doom each other.”

“We doom each other,” Alhaitham agrees, “I’m stuck here and you with me.”

And, Alhaitham finds, they don’t argue about this. It comes to them the easiest thing.

When Alhaitham shows up to work half an hour later, nothing really happens. The world doesn’t end. He eats lunch that isn’t quite made by him, comes home and finds Kaveh asleep on the desk with a half-eaten plate of omelette beside him. It is then that it sinks in him: he is stuck. He can’t leave his own home.

Things he knows about Kaveh: a longitudinal list of about eighty-seven things. Specifically, but not limited to:

Kaveh hates spice and he will deliberately go out of his way to put his peppers on Alhaitham’s plate because he wants to be a menace. When Kaveh smiles, both his eyes crinkle and there is an inconspicuous dimple on his right cheek. He hums the most unsettling tunes to ever be; Alhaitham has asked him about three and he has received varying responses including the one about rabbits and those whom rabbits eat alive. Kaveh takes around twenty minutes to shower—he has a routine which includes enough things that if Alhaitham begins to name, he will miss at least three.

Things he doesn’t know about Kaveh: a lot, actually. Alhaitham doesn’t even know what he did before—all this. He doesn’t know what Kaveh eats for breakfast if he eats at all. He doesn’t know why Kaveh does this. He doesn’t know why Kaveh even wanted to be in twenty-thirteen. It was an odd, odd time.

“Why are you staring at Archibald Julien Anjelica II?”

Alhaitham blinks. “Archibald Julien Anjelica II?”

Kaveh, diverting his attention from the news on the television for the first time in the last twenty minutes, points where Alhaitham was staring out the balcony and at the sad, withering plant there. “Archibald Julien Anjelica II. You can call her Julica, I suppose.”

It is then that he realises Archibald Julien Anjelica II is the plant—the sad thing that Kaveh has been watering in his stead.

“That explains it,” He says, not really paying attention to the journalist talking in the background, “No wonder she looks so sad.”

“At least I water her daily and talk to her on Mondays and Wednesdays.” Kaveh elbows him, somehow still listening to the television. He seems to be intent on this. Alhaitham doesn’t even know what they are talking about anymore. It doesn’t matter, he thinks, looking at Kaveh’s profile: he scrunches his nose in between and squints sometimes, his hair is held in a band, a ponytail on his left shoulder and he looks strange—they look strange, like this.

Now, he thinks, there are eighty-nine things he knows about Kaveh—and one more that he doesn’t; if even Kaveh knows why Julica seems to hate him. Then again, he supposes, that isn’t a hard thing to do—these things happen easily when it is Kaveh. Hating him, it seems, is the easier thing—it is loving Kaveh that is the devouring, inevitable thing.

Kaveh is making the dinner, today. He hums this song, something about goats and sheep and those who eat them alive, sauters the pan and his voice is drowned by sizzles and hisses. Alhaitham watches him from the table, tea cold. It has gotten late. Today marks a month since Kaveh came here.

“You know,” Kaveh calls, voice pitched a little higher, just so Alhaitham can hear him, “I ate this—dish somewhere in the sixteenth century, they would cook it with wine, the expensive ones. It tasted divine, Alhaitham. People were stinky and dirty and all but they didn’t eat bad bad. Wonder if you’d like them—suppose you wouldn’t, it would tamper with all your Alhaitham-y responsibilities.”

“Mn,”

“Right?” He pours the rice from the cooker and the curry over it. He makes sure to pick the peppers from his plate to Alhaitham’s and curry leaves on his. It’s absurd how he has learned to pick them apart like this. “Also, remember That aunty who lives in the neighbourhood? With the wild dog? Her daughter’s coming over after a year. So sweet, really. She looked less constipated talking about it.”

Alhaitham eyes him bringing the plates and setting them down on the table, vase aside. “She spoke to you?”

“Somewhat,” Kaveh shrugs, sitting down, “She talked about her daughter for most of it. She works at the Academiya, you know? Maybe you do know her and then we could get a free dinner. Or lunch. I’m not eating breakfast at her house though.”

“You wake up too late to attend breakfasts,” Alhaitham scoffs.

Kaveh stares at his plate for a while, and then some. He doesn’t know what to say. He has something to say. He doesn’t talk about that though. “Po-tah-toe, po-tay-to. Does it matter? No, no it doesn’t. Funnily—” a lick of his lips, swing of his earrings, “funnily, I’ll miss the way her dog would lick my palm. Silly thing. He wags his tail when he sees you leaving for work. You never notice him, of course—”

“What’s wrong?”

“—because you don’t see things that are in front of—” Kaveh pauses, spooning halfway to his mouth, “...you.” He finishes lamely.

Alhaitham cocks a brow. “I am seeing what is in front of me,” he says, “Rather it is you who appears to—”

“Maybe she won’t invite us after all,” Kaveh interrupts him offhandedly, chewing. “Let’s not disturb her.”

“Kaveh,”

“What?”

“Did you drink from my stash of wine again?”

Kaveh’s shoulders drop. “No,”

“What do you want to tell me?” He narrows his eyes, “The important part.”

“Isn’t everything I say unimportant to you?”

“When you spoon-feed me the unimportant parts,” Alhaitham says, “You look exponentially more asinine when you do.”

“Asinine, really? Who even uses that?”

“It is a word,” he points out, “I am free to use it as per my will.”

“And you think I am pretentious.”

“Because you are,”

“Out with it,” Alhaitham prods, “You can’t keep things you want to say in your stomach.”

Kaveh scoffs. “You seem to be an expert at that—reading me.”

“You wear your heart on your sleeve.”

“At least I have a heart to wear.”

“That,” Alhaitham deadpans, “is precisely why you get into unnecessary trifles with unimportant people who don’t need your attention in the first place.”

“Ah,” Kaveh rolls his eyes, “Since you care so much about what I do and how I talk.”

“I was insinuating what is apparent.”

“Believe me, I know.” He clicks his tongue, “I don’t need you to tell me what is apparent.”

This is headed in all the wrong ways. “You know,” he says anyway, “The thing is, Kaveh—” his chair screeches back, plate clenched tight, “your love bleeds you alive and there is nothing—absolutely nothing—else that hurts you the way it does.”

And there it is, pieced together for the both of them to hear. Unscrambled and picked. Kaveh looks at him, and they are looking at each other, eye to eye and so far apart and the proximity makes Alhaitham want that he could bend time to his will—it tickles slow, from Kaveh to Alhaitham, between them when all it has ever been is too erratic, too quick.

He wonders, briefly, if Kaveh had foreseen this too; like weather and history. If he had known this too, if this was one of his treacherous dreams, if this is where time becomes a little cyclic, looping around their fingers and back.

It’s almost hysterical, how he still sees Kaveh’s lips tremble, so slightly, the hand holding his spoon hesitates, and his shoulders stiffen because neither of them has ever—ever laid out these things between them. Like it is something defining, something questioning. They don’t do this, the two of them. Alhaitham and Kaveh. It is insulting, how they are tangled like this. Bared to each other like nobody had tried to unravel them like they do each other.

Kaveh stands up abruptly, and, somehow for the first time in ever where ever is knowing Kaveh, Alhaitham can’t read him bare. It feels wrong, and Alhaitham is left searching—wandering for what leaves them like this. What feels wrong between them, sinful and illicit and exhilarating even still?

When Kaveh speaks, it is then that the world stops, very briefly, and they should fall just about now. “Mehrak is finished,” he says, “We should have breakfast together tomorrow.”

It is strange, then, how his heart plays the fool when neither of them is one.

Naturally, Alhaitham tosses and turns till he hears Kaveh fiddle with the lamps and haphazardly search for trinkets and jewels he never really learned how to keep.

Through the closed door and dimmed lamps of Alhaitham's room, he hears Kaveh finish his share of dishes, rummage through their shelves, water the withering plant on the balcony and—stand. Just there, not moving, not talking, not knocking. Alhaitham expects a quiet, fervent remark, or a knock, or an excuse. Anything. He waits—has waited, keeps waiting, till Kaveh sighs and shuffles away.

It is stranger that when he wakes—there is Kaveh in the kitchen. He is doing nothing: standing and absentmindedly swirling his coffee.

There is a pack of biscuits, open—Alhaitham doesn’t remember buying them—and one of them has already fallen on the floor. Kaveh doesn’t seem to care; he stares out the window, where the sun has barely risen, and Alhaitham wonders, not for the first time, if Kaveh woke up or didn’t sleep at all. He doesn’t look rumpled or chafed, he looks nothing at all; just Kaveh, with his hair slipping from clips, shirt falling down his shoulders and cape swaying in seemingly nothing.

“You are awake,” Alhaitham remarks, just because he hasn’t found anything else to say.

Kaveh turns, almost immediately, and smiles blearily. “I’ll leave—after breakfast. This time you get to see me off.”

And, somehow, Alhaitham wishes he wouldn’t have to see him off at all. It is when all his thoughts become condescending and his heart betrays him alive. “Right,” he says, shuffling, “What do you want for breakfast?”

“Soup,”

He should’ve said something like, ‘Soup isn’t breakfast, Kaveh,’ or anything like that but instead he nods and says, “Fine.”

Kaveh shifts, still swirling his coffee even when both of them know the sugar must have long dissolved. Then — “It’s weird,” he says, “not having anything to say to you. You! With all your narcissistic pride and wit.” And quieter, not quite a secret, “I’m not sorry for anything I’ve said to you. I thought—think that you should know. Just because.”

“Neither am I,” he replies, scoffing. They don’t say things to each other when they don’t mean it. It’s a universal fact now. He slices the tomatoes in thin slices, without knowing what to do with his hands.

“Didn’t expect you to be,” Kaveh hums, neither bitter nor warm. Something in between. “You, of all people, being sorry? Unheard of.”

“I simply have no reason to be.”

“Of course—of course you don’t,” he agrees drily, “I hate that about you. I hate many things about you, actually. Like your stupid nose—”

“How is my nose stupid?”

“And your hair—which should look malnourished and deprived of so many things but you must have gotten your genetics from the Archons themselves. Your eyes don’t even have a trace of dark circles. You can’t possibly sleep well all your life—but you have. You must have. You’re Alhaitham and Alhaitham sleeps at eleven-thirty on dot. Your jaw makes me want to punch it. Everyday. And—and your lips—”

“I can’t figure out if you think I look remarkably ugly or,” Alhaitham looks at him blankly, “if I make you want to ruin my face.”

Kaveh stops on his track. Blinks once, twice. Tears his eyes away. And, with the most passive voice in the world, he says, “It makes me want to kiss you.” And, more mortifyingly: oh.

Alhaitham’s heart falls. Takes him with it. Runs to Kaveh, maybe—it has nowhere else to go anyway. It is daring, that he swivels and challenges; “Then kiss me.”

“I can’t kiss you.”

“Why can’t you kiss me?”

“Because—” Kaveh throws his arms, “because—I just can’t. I’m leaving. You’re leaving. You don’t even like me. I shouldn’t—can’t like you. I hate you because I can’t leave you like that. I hate you because you should leave me like this. I hate that we do nothing about it. I can’t leave you and it is easier to just not have you.”

And, as Alhaitham sees the sun mocking them as it rises, he decides this is the most honest they’ve been. He decides that it is easy, so very easy, to have Kaveh. He inches closer, just enough that he can see Kaveh’s hand clench and he realises that he’s expecting something—Kaveh has talked to the Alhaitham in his mind, the one that isn’t anything remotely like the Alhaitham who he hears, but Kaveh goes ahead and listens to it anyway. It is so ridiculously Kaveh that Alhaitham takes him by his shoulders and looks him in the eye like it can speak for itself.

“What?” Kaveh snaps. He leans closer, minutely. Their noses will brush if they let it, Alhaitham thinks.

“I don’t like you?” He begins, somewhat disbelieving himself—but he hasn’t even had time to question it, “I do not regret anything with you.” So he says, firm and quiet and there isn’t enough of what he wants to say; “Letting you stay, eating with you, talking to you—I don’t regret you. I regret very few things in my life, in fact. I don’t—”

“Do things to regret,” Kaveh finishes for him, a small smile tucked somewhere on his face.

“Yes. It is simply impractical—then again, you and impractical seem to go together more often than necessary—that I tolerate you. That even unnerves me. You unnerve me.” And he wonders if—it truly sounds as maddening as it does.  

Kaveh lets go of his breath; shaky and tired. Maybe waking early does not bode well in the first place. “And you are implying that—?”

“Take me with you,” Alhaitham says, like it is the plainest thing to him, this. Kaveh. “Take me whole instead of bits of me that you will never return. I have nowhere else I’d better be anyway and it is humiliating to have both my heart and mine elsewhere.”

And it is silent, for minutes. Kaveh studies his face like an artist would: and Kaveh is one, he paints himself alive so that Alhaitham is left wandering.

Then—Kaveh yanks him by the sides of his head. “Archons, Alhaitham—” he inhales, a grin on his face and his palms shake against their holds, “I—you—you’re so fucking pretentious that—gods, can I—kiss you? You’re so fucking sappy and cheesy and I need to kiss you—”

“Why aren’t you kissing me?” Alhaitham sighs, and their noses brush and Kaveh’s lips are against his and—oh.

It is nothing divine or exhilarating or the sort of stuff fae would sprinkle on your lips and leave you writhing. It is desperate—so, so desperate, but it is them and that is what they’ve been. Kaveh’s fingers dig into his cheek, pulling him close and they are against each other; Alhaitham can’t tell if it is his heart against his chest or Kaveh’s, between them.

Kaveh’s lips are dry against his, chapped and brittle, and it is slow and sloppy, and everything Alhaitham couldn’t have expected in the first place. It is teeth and clumsy, and he pulls Kaveh closer instead.

Maybe the mortifying part is that Alhaitham doesn’t mind. Maybe he should. Maybe. His mind has wandered off with his heart, it seems. It is nothing he expected—Alhaitham doesn't expect these things. Alhaitham doesn’t expect anything about Kaveh. He is kissing Kaveh and—the things he’d do to stop the tides of time. So that is all that it is.

When they pull apart, slow and reluctant, Alhaitham can feel his lips redden; he sees Kaveh’s like that. Up close, Kaveh’s eyes dart from him to his lips to nothing at all and Alhaitham waits—waits for him to say anything.

So he does: “Your breath stinks. Like people did in the sixteenth century.”

“No wonder they wanted to have you burned at stakes,”

“They would burn you,” Kaveh chirps, “You look smart and they hate smart people. We should visit—at least you can try their best stews—also, am I still getting my soup?”

“No, soup isn’t breakfast.” He says and it sounds right.

“I hate so many things about you—”

“Then I do hope you can kiss and tell.”

“There might not be enough time left in the world if I do,” Kaveh grins, and — “I hate all of you.” But he kisses his lips first.

Like a wolf in sheep's clothing,

You try to hide your deepest sins,

Of all the things that you've done wrong,

And I know where you belong

— Caught Somewhere in Time, Iron Maiden