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A loud, rhythmic pounding stirred Alhaitham from a light slumber. Through the darkness he felt around the mattress in front of him. Empty. Explanation enough as to why the knock at his front door had disturbed him in the first place. Any other night the sound wouldn’t have bothered him. Though, any other night Kaveh’s soft breaths would have kept him under the cozy spell of sleep, assuring him the eight hours he needed to function optimally.
The noise continued as Alhaitham flipped on his bedside lamp, the steady, even pace of the sound too deliberate to be a branch caught in the wind. Someone, not something. A quick glance at the clock had him wondering who would be calling on him at three in the morning.
Everyone knew business could, and would, only be conducted during the hours he had set. Even the newest students of the Academia knew not to bother him. It was easy enough to deduce that it was a friend at his door, and the unhurried patter suggested that this was no emergency. Likewise, he was in no hurry to greet them as he slipped into loose cotton pants and a button up that he didn’t bother to clasp shut.
“It’s about time,” Cyno remarked tiredly as soon as the door opened. He stayed the end of his staff mid swing to keep it from smacking Alhaitham in the face, then spun it deftly to rest at his side despite his apparent exhaustion.
“What’s he done now?” There is no reason to dance around the subject. Cyno was well-versed in his and Kaveh’s relationship. It was rather surprising most of Sumeru wasn’t as well, considering the intimate details of their relationship seemed to be one of Kaveh’s favorite subjects once he had enough wine in him. And it was easy to guess this was precisely why Cyno was here on his doorstep at such an unconscionable hour.
“Nothing out of the ordinary,” Cyno confirmed, already heading down the road without waiting for Alhaitham to follow.
That could mean anything.
Alhaitham breathed a quiet sigh through his nose, locking the door behind him and walking after Cyno. “Then you don’t really need me, do you?” He asked, catching up in a few long strides.
“He won’t leave the bar,” Cyno explained, “He’s insisting you don’t love him and that you won’t let him inside your house.”
It was enough to give him pause, if only for a moment. They had had their share of troubles in the past, Kaveh more than most (a number of them his own doing). But Alhaitham had thought they had moved beyond these stilly insecurities. They were a couple, had been for some time now. It had been discussed, spoken aloud in terms they had both understood and accepted. They did all the things he thought couples did, both banal and the more intimate things. How could Kaveh still have doubts about how he felt?
Cyno continued with a loud yawn. “He left the bar earlier, but came back a little while after. He said the locks had been changed and you wouldn’t answer when he knocked. My guess is he tried the house next door. It’s empty right now, isn’t it? Tighnari tried asking about it, but Kaveh won’t listen to reason.”
“You let him leave when he was that drunk?” The slightest edge rose in his voice.
“It’s not my place to stop a grown man from walking himself home,” Cyno countered as they turned a corner. Every shop was locked up tight, every stall emptied, every light shut off, except for the warm glow still emanating from behind the windows of their favorite bar.
Cyno held the door open for Alhaitham, barely concealing a heavy yawn as the scribe walked passed him.
Kaveh and Tighnari were the last patrons in the bar, their table the only one not to have its chairs overturned and resting atop it for the night. Tighnari’s head rested on the table, slumped over his folded arms as Kaveh spoke animatedly in the seat next to him. Scattered across the table were a number of cups and more than one empty bottle. As Kaveh continued to chatter to a slumbering Tighnari he picked through the cups, trying to find another drink amongst them.
“I thought we were getting along.” Alhaitham could hear Kaveh bemoan as he strode towards him. “Everything seemed fine when I left but then he changed the locks. I don’t know what I did.”
Kaveh’s voice wavered as he spoke, a harsh sniffle punctuating his thoughts as he continued to sift through the same group cups as though they would suddenly be filled. If he had seen Alhaitham approach he made no sign, his focus too absorbed by his search. Alhaitham could see that only one of the cups between Kaveh and Tighnari still held anything. He quickly reached down to grab it, finally catching Kaveh’s attention, and downed the warm wine left inside to save Kaveh from himself.
“Hey!” Kaveh slurred through puffy narrowed eyes. How much has he cried already? “What are you doing here?”
“I came to bring you home,” Alhaitham explained.
The bitterness in Kaveh’s expression melted in an instant, his bloodshot eyes inexplicably tearing up at Alhaitham’s words. He’d have thought Kaveh would be happy he was there to collect him.
“You did?” Kaveh hiccupped.
“We’re leaving,” Cyno announced pulling his own partner up and wrapping Tighnari’s arm around his shoulders. “You need more than that kit nap. Get it? Like cat nap but because you’re a fox it would be–”
“Cyno!” Tighnari groaned, awake enough to be embarrassed as they made their way out.
“I did,” Alhaitham assured pulling out Kaveh’s chair to usher him home.
Even seated Kaveh wobbled in place, his face flushed with more than just his inebriation. He probably couldn’t stand at this point, and Archon knew how long it would take to guide him home on such unsteady legs. It would be more efficient to carry him.
Without bothering to ask Alhaitham scooped him up like a bride to be brought through the threshold to their new home; it wasn’t an unfitting description, he supposed. Kaveh’s arms instantly wrapped around Alhaitham’s neck, his face pressed into Alhaitham’s shoulder even as he protested this treatment.
“I can walk!” Kaveh noisily declared though he made no effort to escape, nuzzling his face deeply into Alhaitham’s throat.
“This is faster. The sooner you’re home the sooner we can both sleep,” he explained.
“You don’t even want me there,” Kaveh tried to argue. Even if that were true– and it stabbed through Alhaitham’s heart that Kaveh would even think such a thing –the grip Kaveh had on him made it clear that he wouldn’t be abandoned so easily.
They left the bar, Alhaitham calling an apology to the bartender, wherever they might be, and that he would settle the tab in the morning.
“Of course I want you there,” Alhaitham told him as the cool night air hit them; Kaveh shivered and curled himself closer against Alhaitham’s chest.
Kaveh sniffled loudly. “Only for the rent.”
He was beyond drunk, and spiraling away from Alhaitham to a place he was afraid Kaveh might not be able to be pulled back from. Honesty hadn’t always worked between them in the past, but he still believed it was the best way to communicate, even with his stubborn, beloved fool.
“It hurts to know that’s how you see me,” Alhaitham said evenly. “I can’t wear my emotions as freely as you, Kaveh. But that doesn’t mean your words don’t hurt me. More than I think you can even imagine.”
Kaveh let out a sob against Alhaitham’s neck, covering the skin in wet kisses that were not entirely pleasant but he would manage the sensation for the time being. “I’m sorry,” Kaveh wept, his grip around Alhaitham’s neck tightening before finally falling silent.
The trek home was short, and he thought Kaveh might have fallen asleep by the time Alhaitham was fumbling between the man in his arms and the knob of their front door. He spoke once the door shut behind them, casting them into the darkness of their home.
“Alhaitham?” Kaveh mumbled in a voice heavy with fatigue. “Do you love me?”
What an inane question. Of course he loved Kaveh. Did Kaveh think he didn’t? He wasn’t always upfront with his emotions, nor was he as attuned to others as well as Kaveh was. But he would have assumed that Kaveh knew how he felt, at the very least. There was no one in all the worlds that understood him better than Kaveh did.
Or maybe it was something Kaveh simply couldn’t believe without a verbal affirmation, no matter the evidence Alhaitham provided day after day. Maybe what Alhaitham had always thought were signs of his devotion were no more than tokens in Kaveh’s eyes, eccentricities or charity bestowed upon his “roommate”, not his lover. The revelation tore the breath from his lungs.
“I love you, Kaveh,” Alhaitham told him easily.
He settled Kaveh on their bed, helped lower him to the mattress so he didn’t collapse on the spot. Kaveh wiggled at the admission making it hard for Alhaitham to remove his shoes, and then his pants. Kaveh was dead weight as Alhaitham tugged his shirt off, everything tossed to the floor to be dealt with in the morning.
“I love you too,” Kaveh cooed and sloppily tried to kiss him. Sleep was rapidly creeping up on him now that Kaveh back home where he belonged, and all he could manage was brushing his lips against Alhaitham’s bicep as he arranged Kaveh’s pillows beneath his head just the way he liked. As expected Kaveh nestled down into the bedding, his lamentations from earlier replaced with blissful sighs.
“You always take such good care of me,” Kaveh murmured as Alhaitham pulled the covers up around him.
Not much caught him off guard, but Kaveh’s words were enough to stop the shirt halfway off Alhaitham’s body, at least for a moment before he tossed it into the darkness of their bedroom. A tiny smile worked at his lips as he crawled in to nestle beside Kaveh, a hand resting on top of Kaveh’s belly and over the blankets. He wondered if Kaveh would remember any of this in the morning. Doubtful. But even the drunken acknowledgement felt good.
Kaveh’s stubbornness and pride were enough that Alhaitham never mentioned the little gestures, hoping so many times that they weren’t completely unnoticed and that his love would shine through when words on the subject often failed him. A basket of Kaveh’s favorite fruits left on the table, a book he’d been hunting down suddenly appearing in Kaveh’s study, the pittance of rent Alhaitham charged so Kaveh didn’t feel indebted, and so many other things he did. He had been through so much pain and loss, and Alhaitham wanted to protect him from more. Kaveh didn’t always make that easy, but it was a struggle worth fighting until his last breath.
“You took care of me first,” Alhaitham told him.
“Alhaitham?” Kaveh mumbled into the quiet air, his voice more soothing than any other sound.
“Yes, Kaveh?” Alhaitham responded, curling his fingers affectionately over Kaveh’s stomach as the quiet breaths of his lover began to lull him to sleep.
“Would you marry me one day?”
His fingers twitched before resuming their strokes.
When they were younger, much younger, Kaveh had asked this very same question. Alhaitham hadn’t been able to formulate an answer back then, and Kaveh had laughed it off as a joke no matter how his face had burned with embarrassment; that was the first time he’d made Kaveh cry, and every second of that encounter had become seared in his memory. Now he knew answers didn’t need to be complicated, that Kaveh just needed assurance sometimes. He would give it over and over until it stuck, and then give it more until there were no doubts in Kaveh’s heart or mind.
“Yes.”
Kaveh curled up on his side to face Alhaitham, giggling. “Can we have a wedding in the spring?” His voice was low, ready to taper off any moment as slumber overcame him. “Can we invite all our friends?”
When he was this far gone Alhaitham knew that Kaveh wouldn’t remember a thing in the morning. Still, Kaveh’s excitement was enough to make him smile, to lean in and press a soft kiss to Kaveh’s mouth. Quick as it was, when Alhaitham pulled away Kaveh’s breath had slowed and evened. He whispered out a prayer that Kaveh’s dreams would be pleasant.
On his next day off Alhaitham would start looking for a proper ring. The next morning he would tell Kaveh that he loved him, and that time Kaveh would remember it.