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When Kaveh finally expressed his feelings for Alhaitham, it was a long-winded stutter of a thing, oozing with the influence of alcohol. His confession fell on four ears, none of which were Alhaitham’s.
“Are you quite done?” Tighnari asked after a few moments of silence. He was grinning from massive ear to massive ear and his tail was thumping the seat beneath him. “Did you hurt yourself? That seemed to take some effort for you.” His gloved hand came up to cover his mouth as he laughed. His pale cheeks were rosy, undoubtedly from the third (fourth? he wasn’t sure) drink he was currently sipping on.
“Why are you laughing?” Kaveh demanded. He turned to Cyno who quickly averted his gaze. There was some movement under the table. “What are you doing? Did you just give Tighnari mora? Are you kidding me? Some friends you two are!” Kaveh wailed. To think that his own friends would bet on his feelings!
“It’s not like that,” Cyno said, sipping his own drink. “I was uninterested in betting until Tighnari offered me a limited edition Genius Invokation TCG card as a reward if Alhaitham admitted his feelings first. My interest was based there,” he said, a hand held to his heart.
Kaveh seemed to consider this for a moment. “What do you mean, ‘first’?” he asked, his tone measured.
Cyno and Tighnari exchanged a glance between each other from across the tavern table. “The Light of Kshahrewar, praised for his artistry and attention to detail, should have been able to notice the fact that Alhaitham is absolutely enamored with him,” Tighnari replied. “I mean, you live with the guy. How can you not notice?” Cyno nodded in agreement, his jackal headdress shifting back and forth on his head.
Kaveh sat for a moment. He took a few sips of his wine. He crossed his arms across his chest. He slumped back in his seat, as if pouting. He stared at both Tighnari and Cyno for a few moments. “What the fuck?” he finally managed to articulate.
“You live in his house. Rent free,” Cyno pointed out.
“Ah, you’re wrong! I pay rent!” Kaveh shouted in response, straightening up and reaching his arm halfway across the table to point at Cyno.
Tighnari buried his head in his arms, exasperated. “You only pay rent when you’re able and it’s only because you insisted. He was going to let you live there for free,” Cyno countered.
“Okay… well… the house was supposed to be ours to share in the first place, back before we graduated,” Kaveh said quietly. “So I really think he’s just trying to be fair.”
“I don’t know how much Alhaitham cares about fairness,” Tighnari replied, one of his ears twitching. “How many times have you insisted that he’s unfair and cruel?” Kaveh chose to ignore this.
“Who’s paying your tab tonight, Kaveh?” Cyno asked.
Kaveh threw his hands up. “Alhaitham is, so what?! That hardly means he’s in love with me. You two are ridiculous.”
Cyno turned to Tighnari and snapped his fingers as if recalling something. “Alhaitham is a Haravatat scholar, and an anal one at that, but he calls his place ‘our home’. Kaveh doesn’t legally own it, so his wording is inaccurate. How strange of Alhaitham. How very out of character for Alhaitham.”
Tighnari nodded aggressively. “I bet he’s on his way down to the tavern right now to escort Kaveh home,” he added, much to Kaveh’s dismay, who was across the table gaping at their exchange.
“Yes, and who could forget how concerned Alhaitham was during the Inter-Darshan Championship? Did you see his face while Kaveh was insisting on using the prize money to move out?” Cyno asked.
Tighnari nodded even more aggressively, his ears bobbing along with his head. “Yes, I did! Did you see how worried Alhaitham looked when Kaveh broke the diadem?” Tighnari asked.
“Enough!” Kaveh shouted. Cyno and Tighnari simply looked at him with smug expressions. “Stop talking about me as if I’m not here! Each one of those situations is incredibly nuanced and his behavior is so bizarre that it’s not worth trying to analyze.”
“Whatever helps you sleep better at night, Kaveh,” Tighnari said, shrugging his shoulders. “Let’s finish this round of TCG before Alhaitham comes to retrieve you.”
—
Sure enough, towards the end of their TCG round (which Cyno won by a landslide, naturally), Alhaitham materialized by the tavern entrance. Kaveh, who was decently drunk at this point, said his goodbyes to Tighnari and Cyno before falling in step with Alhaitham on the path to their house.
Their home, rather. Kaveh tossed this notion back and forth in his head. Of all the evidence Tighnari and Cyno had thrown at him, this was by far the most damning. Alhaitham was, if anything, precise in his words. Each word he used was used for a reason, as would be expected of a genius hailing from Haravatat. Outside of when he was bantering and bickering, Alhaitham rarely said anything that deviated from his normal cadence of carefully articulated sentences. And, Kaveh bitterly thought, he only bantered and bickered like that with him. Alhaitham was hardly concise by any means but wouldn’t engage in petty back-and-forth with anyone other than Kaveh. Anyone else wasn’t worth his time or energy.
“I can practically hear the gears turning in your head,” Alhaitham said, breaking the comfortable silence that had fallen over them as they approached Treasures Street. “What could you possibly be thinking about so intensely? I hope it has something to do with how much you racked up on that tab tonight. Have you no shame?” He threw a glance over his shoulder as he spoke, fixing Kaveh with a teasing gaze.
“You…! Can’t I have a good evening? Can’t my dear junior treat his senior to drinks out of the goodness of his heart?” Kaveh replied. Despite the nature of their conversation, neither of their words held much bite. “You could’ve joined us, you know.” This was said rather softly, almost woefully.
Alhaitham shook his head slowly as he pulled out his keys and unlocked their front door. “I was catching up on some reading,” he said simply, to which Kaveh groaned. They both toed off their shoes by the door, unconsciously arranging them beside each other. At the same time, Alhaitham hooked his keys onto a rack beside Kaveh’s keys. When Kaveh noticed, his heart jumped into his throat. The domesticity of it all… He tucked this thought away for the next morning, when he’d be sober enough to decide how to feel about it.
As Kaveh settled into bed for the night, after noting that Alhaitham had already set out a glass of water for him, he mulled over his conversation with Tighnari and Cyno. The more Kaveh thought about it, the more their claims seemed to hold merit. Something uneasy twisted in his stomach, and he chalked it up to the alcohol. He didn’t want to think about it, because he knew Alhaitham. He knew the Alhaitham from their Akademiya days that he had torn up their thesis paper over, the Alhaitham that he told he wished he’d never met. This Alhaitham loomed in his heart and mind. If he let himself believe Alhaitham loved him the way Kaveh loved Alhaitham, he’d only end up crushed in the end.
—
When Alhaitham finally expressed his feelings for Kaveh, it was a decisive announcement of a thing that sounded more like a thesis statement than a confession of love. His confession fell on four ears, none of which were Kaveh’s.
“You’re kidding, right?” Cyno leveled. Beside him, Tighnari’s ears were pressed flat against his head and his jaw had dropped to damn near rest on the table.
“No. Was it funny?” Alhaitham asked, slightly concerned. He leaned back in his seat and scanned the bar across the room. He could make out Kaveh’s shimmery blond hair as he flitted around the bar, talking to anyone who would listen as he waited on his order of another round of drinks. Alhaitham didn’t have long to discuss with Cyno and Tighnari before Kaveh would make his way back to their table.
“Hilarious, actually. Your comedic timing is great,” Cyno replied breezily. “A few weeks ago, we had this exact conversation with Kaveh himself.” Alhaitham considered this for a moment.
“You’re saying Kaveh feels the same way.” It wasn’t a question, but a statement. He looked between Cyno and Tighnari, who had managed collect himself in the meantime.
“Yes. Don’t tell us you haven’t noticed,” Tighnari said, exasperation in his tone.
Alhaitham nodded slowly. “Kaveh’s behavior has shifted since he moved in with me. This could be a result of the years we spent apart, but my deduction of the situation leads me to believe it’s more than that.”
“He didn’t believe us when we told him that you were in love with him. He’ll have to hear it from you. He’ll never make the first move.” Cyno nodded solemnly as Tighnari spoke.
“Why is that?” Alhaitham asked. “Is it a lack of trust in me?”
“Could be,” Cyno said, absentmindedly shuffling his TCG deck. “He could be afraid to jeopardize what he currently has with you. He has more to lose than you do if you were to turn him down,” he reasoned. Alhaitham nodded. “He probably thinks it would ruin the friendship you have managed to rebuild.”
“How do you suggest I tell him?” Alhaitham asked, pointing his question more at Tighnari than Cyno. While Cyno was a fierce and competent warrior, his sense of humor alone made Alhaitham wary of his skills when it came to delicate social affairs.
Tighnari’s tail swished back and forth. “Don’t tell him point blank. Build it up a bit. Not too much,” he warned, his gloved hands jutting out to wave discouragingly at Alhaitham, who raised a single eyebrow in response. “Do something nice for him; use that obnoxious vocabulary of yours to say something charming.”
Just as Alhaitham was going to ask another pressing question, Kaveh rejoined them at the table carrying a tray of drinks. “I’m back!” he announced cheerily. “I hope you’re ready, because I intend to win this round!” He looked at Cyno, who returned his gaze with all the fierce competitiveness and intensity befitting the General Mahamatra.
“A formidable opponent you shall be,” Cyno said gravely, his fingers ghosting over his TCG deck in anticipation.
Alhaitham tuned out the game and retreated to his mind palace. He had no reason to distrust Cyno or Tighnari’s analysis of Kaveh — they both knew him well, after all. They each saw him in a different light than Alhaitham could and gave valuable input, which Alhaitham knew would prove useful to expanding his Kaveh database. Don’t tell him point blank, Tighnari had said. Build it up a bit. Not too much. He repeated this to himself a few times, committing it memory.
Alhaitham stared into the distance as he mentally flipped through his mind’s library, which was far from sparse, being the dedicated reader he was. The books he enjoyed reading the most, however, did little to inspire him in this matter. While “A Short History of the Mikage Furnace: Kannazuka Island’s Military Influence” is a riveting page turner, it would lend Alhaitham no help with romance. Romance, while not a genre of choice, still made its way into his book rotation every so often. He would have to consult a title from Yae Publishing House when he returned home…
—
“I’m headed to the bazaar. Would you like to join me?” Alhaitham asked one day after returning from work.
Kaveh’s head whipped around so fast he halfway expected it to twist right off and fly into the wall. “The bazaar?” Kaveh asked, setting his pencil down. From where he sat on the floor in front of the divan, he fixed Alhaitham with a quizzical stare. “Right now?”
Alhaitham shifted his weight from foot to foot, almost nervously. “Right now. It’ll be getting dark before soon and I wanted to pick up some groceries, as well as browse for a moment.”
Kaveh closed his notepad and rested it on the divan as he stood. “Okay,” he agreed, a small smile forming on his lips. “Let me get ready. Give me just a moment — I need to do something with this hair of mine!” he called as he disappeared down the hallway. Your hair looks perfect as it is, Alhaitham didn’t say. The way it pools around your collarbones is beautiful. The braid held back by your little red clips is work that could rival the Palace of Alcazarzaray.
“Okay. Let’s go,” Kaveh said after returning. He had applied kohl to his eyes — his brilliant vermillion eyes. His earrings dangled delicately from his ears and caught the light as he turned his head. His hair looked even more perfect than it had before, and Alhaitham briefly wondered how that was even possible. Kaveh cleared his throat. “What are you staring at? Is there something on my face?” he demanded.
“There’s something on your shirt,” Alhaitham said. Kaveh immediately dipped his head down to look. Alhaitham deftly stuck his arm out in front of Kaveh’s face and flicked it upwards, swatting his nose in the process. He snickered as Kaveh whipped his head up to squawk accusingly at Alhaitham. “Hey! What was that for?” he demanded, but Alhaitham was already out the door. “Hey! Don’t ignore me! Alhaitham!”
They walked in comfortable silence until they arrived at the first stall at the bazaar. “We need coffee since you blow through it like it’s your job,” Kaveh murmured, carefully inspecting each bag of coffee beans. “Did I tell you about my new coffee grinder? It’s nearly silent and it grinds so finely. Such an instrument should be used with the finest coffee. How about this one?” he asked, holding a bag up for Alhaitham to inspect, who simply nodded. As Kaveh turned to pay, Alhaitham wandered to another stall and picked out a selection of fruits and vegetables. Kaveh rejoined him moments later and immediately inspected Alhaitham’s bounty.
“No, no, no,” he said, shaking his head. “These fruits are all bruised. Let me find some good ones,” he offered. “Where would you be without me?” he murmured, picking up fruits and turning them in his hands.
Alhaitham stared at him for a moment before shrugging. “I’d have bruised fruit, I suppose.”
“You’d lack any kind of artistry and aesthetic input in your life, that’s where you’d be,” Kaveh replied, handing Alhaitham the replacement fruits. “There. Isn’t that better?”
“Sure.” Alhaitham paid for the fruits and vegetables, now bearing the Kaveh seal of approval, and shuffled to the next stall.
“Speaking of a lack of aesthetic input,” Kaveh said, approaching a stall stocked with furniture and various ornaments and trinkets. “That ugly table by the divan has got to go. Look at this one,” he said, ghosting his fingers over an admittedly beautiful handcrafted table. “How can you own an eyesore like that when pieces like this exist?”
“Blame it on my financial freedom,” Alhaitham muttered, which Kaveh pointedly ignored.
“Hmph,” Kaveh gracefully responded. “I meant it when I said I have to come with you when you pick out furniture from now on. I’m choosing to believe that your sense of design is just… misguided, for both of our sakes,” he ranted. Alhaitham allowed himself a small smile as he listened to Kaveh drone on and on about his unsavory home decor. “I know you buy some of that junk just to annoy me! I just know it. There’s no way you could have purchased some of those… those pieces of trash for any other reason!” he spat, but his words lacked true venom.
After a while of shopping they returned home with armfuls of ingredients and trinkets that Kaveh had insisted upon buying — with Alhaitham’s mora of course. Shortly after their return, Kaveh set to the kitchen to cook dinner. “Shoo! I don’t want your lack of creativity looming over me while I cook,” he teased, ushering Alhaitham out of the kitchen. “Some of us care about the presentation of food just as much as the flavor, you know!” he called out, smiling to himself as he simmered vegetables in a pan. “Don’t go burying your nose in a book either — do me a favor and pour us some wine.”
Alhaitham did as he was told (not without jabbing at Kaveh about his entitlement to Alhaitham’s alcohol first, of course) and set two glasses on the table. Kaveh interrupted his contented humming as he turned and noticed the label on the bottle of wine Alhaitham was pouring. “Dandelion wine?” he asked, a grin creeping onto his face. “That’s my favorite.”
“I know,” Alhaitham said swiftly. Kaveh turned back around and smiled to himself. I know. I know. I know. Once again, he found himself crippled by the domesticity of it all. Kaveh had long maintained that a house without people and love and community was just that — a house. A foundation, walls, and a roof. Nothing more. He bitterly remembered selling his family home — or house, rather. As the years crept by after his father’s death and his mother’s emigration, it began to feel less and less like home. But this house, this home, that Alhaitham had extended to Kaveh in his time of need was warm. There was companionship here, people, love even. Kaveh saw it in the way his paintings hung perfectly leveled on the walls and in the way his belongings were peppered among Alhaitham’s. Their books had long mingled together in the bookshelves and Kaveh’s sketches often found themselves on shared surfaces. He saw it in the quiet morning haziness he and Alhaitham shared over cups of coffee. He felt it in the way they often shared space with each other, comfortably existing in each other’s vicinity. In the evenings, Alhaitham would thumb his way through a book and Kaveh would sketch. They easily fell into a routine with each other.
Despite this warmth, doubt tended to creep up on Kaveh. He had lost his home before, thrice. When his father had died, he and his mother felt as if everything they had ever known had been swept out from under their feet. The house was quiet and Kaveh tended to tiptoe around his mother. He was young — far too young to hold the amount of guilt and responsibility that pressed down on his small shoulders. They managed and just as Kaveh began to let himself feel comfortable again, his mother left. He was happy for her to find new purpose and create a new home in Fontaine, but indescribably lonely and hollow. Coming back to an empty house after hours of studying at the House of Daena was insult to injury.
Some say that Sumeruans build families around research and academic findings. Kaveh couldn’t refute this — his third home had been found within the young and abrasive Haravatat scholar he met in the House of Daena. Home at this time was translating King Deshret’s ancient runes and writing notes to each other in a script only the two of them could decipher. Home was sharing tea as they crammed for exams together. Once again, this had been cruelly ripped away from him. I wish we had never met. The tearing of paper, followed by desperate taping and gluing back together. Angry back-and-forth hashed out in academic journals.
But now, standing over the stovetop, he dared to let himself feel at home once more. Anxiety and doubt clutched his heart but all he could do was trust himself and trust Alhaitham. Kaveh quietly plated their food with delicate craftsmanship before handing one of the plates to Alhaitham, who accepted it graciously.
“Tastes delicious,” he murmured after a moment, to which Kaveh beamed proudly.
“Looks delicious too, right?” Kaveh asked boastfully. “A meal like this nourishes your soul as well as your body.”
“I don’t know about all of that,” Alhaitham replied, ignoring the way Kaveh dramatically rolled his eyes at him.
—
Later that night, the two lounged on the divan under the glow of dim lamps and moonlight filtering in through the windows. Alhaitham’s nose was shoved in a book while Kaveh sketched. From what Alhaitham could see of his work, it looked like he had started sketching designs and blueprints that devolved into simple sketches of different things in the room — a fruit bowl, a lamp, a stack of books. Suddenly, Kaveh turned to Alhaitham and stared at him for a moment. “Do you mind if I draw you? I’m just taking a brain break from my commission.”
Disarmed, Alhaitham’s mind went blank. “Uh,” he said, clearing his throat. “If you would like to, be my guest.” He subtly adjusted his posture which made Kaveh whine. He whined.
“You looked perfect the way you were,” Kaveh mumbled, reaching out to put his hands on Alhaitham’s shoulders to guide him into the position he wanted him in. Alhaitham’s mind wandered for a moment as he relished in the proximity. He could feel Kaveh’s breaths puff against his face as he manhandled his head into a particular angle. Kaveh’s soft fingertips on his skin drove him wild. His skin erupted into goosebumps. “There.” Kaveh sat back on his knees, bringing his pencil to his lips as he observed his subject. Alhaitham stayed as still as a statue, save for blinking. “Stay.” Alhaitham couldn’t have moved if he wanted to. He was frozen in place as his eyes wandered over Kaveh’s form across him. His honey blond hair shimmered in the dim light and his eyes were alight with passion and intrigue as he sketched. His eyebrows pinched together in concentration. Cute, Alhaitham allowed himself to think.
There was something heavy and traitorous twisting in his stomach and the hair on the back of his neck stood up straight. He’s got me trapped. Alhaitham didn’t have long to stew in his desire before Kaveh turned his notebook around to show his work. “Oh,” Alhaitham breathed. It was like looking in a mirror. He reached out to hold the notebook with steady hands. His own pensive eyes looked back up at him as he studied Kaveh’s work. So this is how he views me, he thought, his lips quirking up into a small smile.
“Oh?” Kaveh repeated incredulously. “I’ve just drawn you a portrait and all you can say is, ‘oh’?” He snatched his notebook back from Alhaitham, whose eyes widened in shock. “You really can’t appreciate art, can you? Even if you’re the subject of it, huh? Since you’re such an egoist I thought that you’d—“
Alhaitham cut him off by snatching his wrist and pulling him in close before closing the small distance remaining between them by kissing him. Kaveh’s posture and response was rigid and unsure at first but he quickly became pliable and welcoming in Alhaitham’s grasp. Kaveh deepened the kiss and sat up on his knees to reach closer while Alhaitham’s hands roamed his torso before settling to rest on the back of Kaveh’s head. He gathered handfuls of Kaveh’s brilliant, soft, luxurious hair and gripped it gently. They broke apart a few moments later, both breathing heavily. Kaveh’s kiss-swollen lips pulled into a frown that did something flip-floppy to Alhaitham’s weak, weak heart.
“If you keep doing things like this, I’m going to get the wrong idea,” Kaveh murmured, his silky voice slightly hoarse and impossibly quiet.
“The wrong idea?” Alhaitham was confused. What could that mean? He thought back to Tighnari’s advice: build it up, but not too much. Use ‘obnoxious’ vocabulary to say something charming. Before he could gather his thoughts, his mouth was moving and he was speaking and he said, “I love you.”
Kaveh blinked at him, his bright crimson eyes staring at his own with something akin to disbelief swimming behind them. “You love me?” he whispered. “Don’t say that. Don’t say that like you mean it, like you want me to say it back.”
“Kaveh, I love you. I love you, I love you, I love you. I love you and I mean it. I love you and I want you to say it back to me,” Alhaitham breathed.
Kaveh was still staring at him. He bit his lip and chewed at it for a moment. “Alhaitham, I—“ he cut himself off before speaking again. “I love you, too.”
Curses to Alhaitham’s weak heart that did backflips and jumped into his throat only to sink all the way down to his toes, somehow at the same time. Perhaps the feeble scholar act was more of a truth than Alhaitham had accounted for, judging by the way his entire body buzzed, the way his head swam, and the way his bones felt as though they had turned to slime concentrate. “It feels so good to say that,” Kaveh said, his voice coming out in a breathy laugh that drew Alhaitham in and swallowed him whole. “So good. Haitham, kiss me again.”