Chapter Text
Kaveh isn’t very good at hiding his emotions. Even when he wants to, and he stops talking, the words are written all over his face — and Alhaitham doesn’t need to be good at feelings to read him.
But recently, his roommate's behavior has become… strange. Instead of huffing and stomping off in a fume, Kaveh has begun to say exactly what’s in his mind. And Alhaitham can tell it’s true because all he has to do to check is make eye contact with the architect. What’s weird about this is that normally, if there’s a real reason to be angry, Kaveh stops talking. Alhaitham has never been more confused than the day he made an admittedly rather crude remark and Kaveh looked him dead in the eyes and said “Alhaitham, shut the hell up, and never, ever say that again. Not only was it plainly rude, it was offensive to me, and now I’m just really pissed off.”
Alhaitham shook himself out of his stupor when Kaveh opened the front door. “Where are you going?”
“ Out .” It was the only word he said before he slammed the door shut and didn’t come home for a week.
Alhaitham doesn’t really feel emotions. Well, of course he does. He definitely dislikes Cyno, he’s a little scared of Candace, work makes him happy and without a doubt he is annoyed by Kaveh. He is constantly annoyed by that man, by every little thing he does, how he does it, why he does it. He understands feeling emotions, but he doesn’t understand letting those emotions interact with your daily life at all. Why would you let your feelings pour into your work, wouldn’t it poison the productivity? Why would you let your feelings into your conversations, wouldn't it be so much harder to communicate properly? Why would you let your feelings slip, wouldn’t it be considered a weakness on the battlefield, and be the kind of evolutionary trait that died out a long time ago? He would never understand the reason behind Kaveh’s entire being, and that annoyed him because he’d overheard what the Dendro archon had to say about him.
He’d heard Lesser Lord Kussanali talking to the Traveler about the famed architect in debt, Kaveh. She’d told the traveler that Kaveh had a near perfect understanding of what it meant for Sumeru to be the nation of wisdom. She’d said that it was a shame because how he understands the world will never be the mainstream. As he’d left, he had a heavy feeling in his heart, not one he’d felt often. He muttered angrily to himself on his way out, as he used Kaveh’s keys to open the house. “Of course Kaveh’s way of life would never be mainstream.” He only grew angrier when he flung the keys down in their shared bowl and he slammed the door. “It’s sentimental and silly and, above all else, it’s stupid.”
“What’s stupid?” There he was, the man in question, having made dinner and cleaned the whole house. He was smiling, and in Alhaitham’s red tinted vision, he looked like a stranger.
“You! You’re stupid, and everything you stand for!”
Kaveh’s smile faltered, but he managed to attempt civility. “Now, now, Alhaitham. At least tell me your day was bad before you go off on me. Look, I made your favorite dinner and even cleaned your house! Plus I’ve got my rent right here, it’s even on time-”
“ I hate you . I hate that you’re so touchy feely, and that you waste your hours on emotions instead of thinking for once, and that you think getting rent to me on time a single time in two years will make me hate you any less.” He slammed another door, this time to his own bedroom door, without even thinking about the fact that Kaveh had indeed made his favorite meal, even though Alhaitham had never told him what it was.
When Alhaitham woke up the next morning, the scarlet of anger had dissipated, and when he looked at the time, it was far past when he should’ve woken up. He scrambled out of bed to flatten his clothes down in an attempt to look less disheveled. He’d forgotten entirely about the words he’d said to Kaveh last night, all the way up until the moment when he opened the fridge to see if there was something he could eat on the way out when he saw his favorite food all wrapped up with a note that read “sorry”.
He pulled out the food and contemplated the note. “Sorry?” What did he have to be sorry for? I’m any case, it was the fact that Alhaitham had come home angry that had caused the whole ordeal. He knew that, so didn’t Kaveh? Although perhaps that was a pointless thought, that Kaveh would understand the same version of events as him. Right from the get go, and telltale through Nahida’s words, they saw the world differently. They saw Sumeru differently, they saw emotion differently, and they saw knowledge and wisdom as if from two separate worlds. But to think they’d see the same few sentences in such a drastically different light… a cold feeling swirled in the pit of Alhaitham’s stomach, but without the time to dwell on it, he threw the pre-made lunch in his bag and headed out the door. He’d try to talk to Kaveh about this later, though he’d have to mentally prepare himself for the apology he would undoubtedly have to execute.
Work was boring, for once. He waited patiently for a break to eat his food, since he hadn’t had anything this morning, but they kept him with busywork until even past his allotted daily work hours. So at about 9pm, after the day had already ended, he opened up the food container to eat and read the last document he would need to transcribe. But the second he took one bite, his mind was elsewhere. When he took two, he stopped eating, and at three he left the last bit of work for tomorrow and headed home. When he arrived, he still hadn’t heard Kaveh once that day. Maybe he needed sleep, or maybe he had gone out. Alhaitham hadn’t considered the idea that maybe Kaveh had found work, although he did have his rent on time yesterday.
So he knocked particularly gently on Kaveh’s door, almost hoping he was asleep. But a voice came out from behind it, groggy and tired, letting him in. Alhaitham knew the sound of it all too well: Kaveh was exhausted. But why? He opened the door, and found that the room once strewn wall to wall with designs now only had a single bulletin board of sketches, it’s organization halfassed yet present. Alongside Kaveh’s table was a trash bin full of papers, and Kaveh himself was lying face down on his bed. When he heard Alhaitham come closer, he rolled over and faced the wall instead. Alhaitham’s heart dropped at the sight of the room, but like always, he didn’t say a word regarding it.
Unlike always, he sat down on Kaveh’s bed. “Hey,” Alhaitham was nervous, and he didn’t know what to say. “Are you… okay?” The words came without his permission, and he cringed at the thought that he would be appearing as emotionally attached to this man, or exercising some sort of sympathy. But the feeling in his stomach wouldn’t go away, and at least logically he could convince himself that this action was worth it, in order to make the feeling go away. But the feeling didn’t go away.
“Not really.” Kaveh’s body didn’t crumple or recoil as he said it, nor did it shy away from the weight of Alhaitham on the mattress alongside him.
“…What's wrong then?” Those were the words that made Kaveh curl in, flinch, and he stayed quiet unlike his recent forwardness. Alhaitham was already tired of having to wring the truth out of Kaveh, so for the first time in his life, he decided to talk to Kaveh in a way Kaveh could understand. Was this the best choice, logically? Why did he seem to be abandoning his way of life, even if only for the smallest moment, because Kaveh was upset? It’s not like Kaveh hadn’t been upset before. Then Alhaitham looked up and realized what it was. Kaveh, the ever constant, ever present emotional annoyance had been trying to do the same for him. Instead of storming off when he was upset, he would tell Alhaitham why and simply leave the area so as to not incur more of a fight. He went and made Alhaitham’s favorite food, he asked Alhaitham to communicate properly with him when Alhaitham was angry at him for seemingly no reason, he said sorry even when it wasn’t his fault. These were all things Alhaitham had done in the past. Well, other than cooking and cleaning. But eventually, Alhaitham had taken to ignoring the problem, and Kaveh had directly confronted it instead: stripping his walls of the creative and “stupid” designs he’d loved so much and worked so hard on, based on Alhaitham’s thoughtless words.
And it made Alhaitham feel awful. Truly awful, and guilty, even abhorrent. The feeling in his stomach ripped through every piece of his flesh and left him feeling ruined and empty. In short, Alhaitham felt bad.
Alhaitham could only leave the room. He could only slowly click the door shut and stand there, on the verge of hating himself. He didn’t want to, he didn’t know why this particular argument hit him so much harder than the others they’d had over the years. Kaveh had done things like this before, but it had never been because of him. Perhaps that was it. Alhaitham could logically piece together that it was his fault, and that unchangeable, tangible fact made him empathize with Kaveh.
A long time ago, when he was a kid and hadn’t settled into his logical routine yet, many of the scholars at the Akademiya had called his work pointless, witless, and worthless. Having worked so hard on those projects, it felt like those words were tearing into his being, rather than being a criticism of his work. Later, when he grew up, he realized it had been meant to be a constructive criticism of his work itself, and had nothing to do with him, but the fact that as a child he was not as sophisticated as they thought he could be. They hadn’t realized he was a little kid, and had judged him like an adult. They hadn’t realized how much thought and effort and logic went into his work, so they discarded it without a moment’s thought. They had not looked him in the eye and said it to his face. And had they thought about it from a child’s perspective, perhaps they could never have said it to his face. But it was enough that it had been said at all, and the scar had remained with Alhaitham his whole life, contributing to why he was so ruthlessly rational even now.
But in his logical and self centered world, he had done the same to Kaveh. Remembering his lowest moment, and thinking of how he had done it to someone else killed him more than he thought it would, and when he reached his room, a disillusioned tear fell from his face. He opened his bag and brought out the unfinished food and read the note aloud, understanding its meaning now. “Sorry” wasn’t Kaveh apologizing for himself, it was him apologizing for being incapable of making him happy. He was the child who tried his very best, and Alhaitham had taken the center of his work and shoved it into a trash can, literally screaming about how he and his work was stupid and worthless.
No wonder Nahida had said Kaveh was the only one to understand what it meant to have wisdom. Wisdom and knowledge were not interchangeable. Kaveh let his feelings guide him in the beautiful designs that would last thousands of years, and serve the next generations well. It would be a symbol of Sumeru and it would be a symbol of learning. No one could ever know everything, not even the Archon of Wisdom. And that’s because she is not the archon of knowledge, but of wisdom: the constant ability to learn and apply knowledge. Kaveh would never be the best. He constantly made mistakes. He gave money to the poor who didn’t exist, he got into massive debt, he never paid his rent on time and he had only just learned how to clean properly, but that had never once stopped him from creating. He had never ceased experimenting with design, with thinking of ways to improve himself and his work. Like him, art would never be perfect, but if there was someone who could get it as good as possible, it was Kaveh. Alhaitham thought about his masterpiece, the Palace of Alcazarzaray, how it circular patterns and domes would constantly run back into themselves, completing a cycle of unstoppable thinking and rethinking, and gently push away the heavy rains, hold up the heavy snow, and shield their insides from the heavy hail. Kaveh himself was in his work, and how he saw the world was in the designs of his best piece. Unfortunately, the debt he worked up from building that may hold him back as an architect forever, and more of his beautiful designs could never see the light of day.
Alhaitham looked at his watch, a strange determination filling him where he had just been so empty. He’d been sitting in his room with regret and self pity for two hours. What a waste of time. He should’ve realized sooner and done something. Because you do not gain wisdom, you use it. That is what makes you wise, and after all these years Alhaitham almost found it funny that it was something he’d only just realized, yet it was a rule the ever emotional Kaveh had been following his whole life. Kaveh was a man of action where Alhaitham sat and pondered impossibilities all day. That was the difference between the two of them. But one day Alhaitham had taken action, and Kaveh had gotten mad at him for it. Not because he’d done it, but because he’d suddenly participated in such a large action. An action to overthrow the government. Wisdom was not what to think, but how to think. It was not the scribe's writing, but the architect's designs. That was why Alhaitham had overthrown the Akademiya that day, because he’d seen that idea to be the truth. Yet as soon as it was over, he’d retreated to his old ways. How foolish he had been.
So he opened his door and decided to be more of a man of action in his life. Even if he couldn’t change his lifestyle, or how he went about his very particular work, he had a life outside of it. He could do things then and there. A small, frustrated part of him hated that he was agreeing with Kaveh’s way of life, but logically he understood it and its merits. So he let emotion take him over for a moment and he quietly knocked on Kaveh's door. No noise came from inside, but Alhaitham opened the door anyway. Kaveh was breathing softly on the bed, asleep. Alhaitham walked in and picked up the basket of discarded works, careful to not let any of them fall. He set the basket outside and walked back over to the harmless man sleeping soundly. Alhaitham grabbed the edge of his blanket and covered him with it. Tonight will be a busy night.
He flipped through the designs that had been thrown in the trash, and as he judged them, flipping mindlessly, he found one right at the end that he thought would suit him well. It must’ve been the first one he threw away, the one with the most conviction, the one design he couldn’t stand to look at. But Alhaitham, for the life of himself, could not understand why. He slowly took the full design out of the pile and stared at it. It felt like it was made for him, with its triangles stuck inside circles and the many interconnecting lines. It was beautiful. It was creative and unfinished and had so much emotion poured into it. With every stroke of the pencil, Alhaitham felt the energy that went into this design. Why would Kaveh throw away a design he worked so hard to create first? Why would he hate it so much that he chucked it as soon as he could? Alhaitham stood up and rolled up the design, tying it with a green and gray ribbon he had hiding in the corner of his room and writing on a yellow and red note: “I like this one the most.”
But that wouldn’t be enough. Alhaitham contacted Tighnari, more willing to deal with him than Cyno. Alas, Cyno came on the line anyway to berate him when Alhaitham confessed he was asking after Kaveh’s favorite dish. But he found the dish and made it as best he could, leaving another note there that read: “Your way of thinking is not stupid, and I am the foolish one for saying so.”
Finally, he cleaned the entire house as quietly and as well as he could, and left one last note on Kaveh's keys: “I’m sorry.”
He then took his own keys and left for work surely before Kaveh even awoke.
He wasn’t restless at work, but he felt… expectant? He thought maybe Kaveh would try and find him, bully him into giving answers, whine annoyingly like he does when things go back to normal. Even though Kaveh never showed the whole day, he didn’t feel weird about it, he thought it would simply be saved for when he got home. He finished early, even though he had to do the work he left the night before, and decided to take his leave at a much more proper time. He still wasn’t bothered when he got home, nor when he unlocked the door, but when he opened it the sight struck him.
Kaveh was standing there, waiting. He didn’t look mad, but he certainly wasn’t normal. Alhaitham opened his mouth to say something when Kaveh spoke. He sounded upset, but for once Alhaitham couldn’t place the look on his face. “Wasn’t it enough?”
Alhaitham shut the door and slowly put down his keys, his mind moving at the speed of light to try and figure out the ending of this conversation before he got there. “Wasn’t what enough?”
Kaveh ignored Alhaitham’s question, trudging along with his words, his voice starting to quiver. “Wasn’t it enough for you, all this time? I had to beg you to let me stay here, I paid your rent, I cleaned your house. Sure, I was whiny and I nagged at you all the time and you were always somewhat mean to me, but I never expected you to do this.” Alhaitham’s confusion grew. Didn’t he apologize? Didn’t he help? He wasn’t as in tune with emotions, yes, but all his gestures should’ve been kind ones, no? Making dinner, cleaning for him, complimenting the same designs he always said took up too much time? Hadn’t he been nice? Why would those actions be received with this? Alhaitham couldn’t wrap his mind around it, it didn’t make sense, it wasn’t logical in the slightest. “How could you do that? Go ahead, make my favorite food, leave my keys at the house for me, apologize through notes-”
Something crunched in the silence. It was then Alhaitham realized that Kaveh had the wrapped up design in his hand, and it had crumpled a little when he gripped it harder. It suddenly clicked. Alhaitham hadn’t considered one thing: the designs had so much energy and time and effort and emotion poured into them… that they were personal. Each and every one was a peek into Kaveh’s soul, and Alhaitham had shuffled through them all without a second thought. On top of that, despite his attempt at an apology, he’d only liked one design out of the hundreds Kaveh had tried his hand at. It not only crossed a personal boundary, it was an insult to injury. In Alhaitham’s self centered grief, in his righteous path to action, he’d hurt Kaveh again.
Alhaitham stared at the ground as if its existence bewildered him, but Kaveh didn’t stop. He said everything that Alhaitham had just realized, but in a tone of confused anger and misplaced sadness. “You rifled through my room, my belongings, my designs. I get it, Alhaitham, you’re not an architect. You’re not the artist that I am. But artists only published the works they are proud of, the ones they think turned out well. There was a reason these were in the trash, Alhaitham! They were works I spent hours trying to make right, mistakes I couldn’t fix no matter how hard I tried! Did you even notice the tears stains I know I left on so many of them?! Did you even stop to think what kind of an invasion this was?! Did you bother to remember that I have feelings ?! I know you don’t. I know you don’t understand emotions, and you can’t understand letting feelings guide you to anything, but this time it was logical. All you had to do was think about what this would do to me. You thought it was a nice gesture, but like any other artist I just feel embarrassed and cracked open like the hard boiled eggs you eat without a second thought each morning. So thank you, but no thank you.” He shoved the wrinkled paper into Alhaitham’s hands, and cried.
He stood there and sobbed, not even bothering to leave the room, not even moving an inch. Alhaitham slowly opened the crushed parchment, the ink having rubbed blurry in areas. There were new, fresh tear stains on it that he couldn’t help but notice now. “You’re right, I don’t get it.” Kaveh didn’t stop crying, but Alhaitham knew Kaveh could hear him, and that he was listening despite himself. “And you’re right, I didn’t think. It never occurred to me why these were in the trash when I could feel the effort you put into every single line. It took me hours to look through them because I couldn’t help but stare at them all, to weigh their merits, not unlike you. It surprised me that you had the dedication to make these, yet the heart to throw them all away. I wrapped this one up because…” Alhaitham paused, trying to figure the right word to describe it. “Because I couldn’t leave it alone. I’m not one for art, but this design… I wanted so badly to see it in all three dimensions, not just as a sketch on paper. I wanted to walk through its halls and see it from the inside out. It’s beautiful to me. It's beautiful and it’s astonishing that you can think this way when all I do is organize books. Knowing you, the sophistication here almost surprised me, but the more I thought about it… the more it made sense. And the more I liked this design. I just wanted you to know that the trash you shove these drawings into is not worthy of masterpieces like this. But I apologize for looking, I realize now that you’re right: it was your private business, and I didn’t respect that.” Just by looking, I’ve tainted the image of this architecture somehow .
He tore his eyes away from the picture and looked back at Kaveh. He’d stopped crying all together and was staring at Alhaitham. His face was completely flushed, and Alhaitham’s stomach flipped. Did he say something wrong again? Why had he even said as much as he did? It couldn’t be that he felt bad, that he was getting sentimental? No, that wasn’t it. Alhitham simply understood that telling Kaveh the truth about his own feelings would clear up the unfortunate misunderstanding, and serve them both better in the long run. It was a win-win situation, right?
Kaveh continued to blush as he grabbed the plans out of Alhaitham’s hands and muttered to himself. “I’ll make this my next project, I guess. I’ll find people to fund me, it’ll be fine.” And then he looked back at Alhaitham and nervously asked “do you think, I could run some future designs by you?”
Alhaitham didn’t bother to smile as he said “okay”.