Work Text:
Kaveh is not having a good day.
First he woke up late, almost missing a meeting with a client - it was an important one, too, the second time they’d met. The second meetings were always the most important ones, more so than the first meetings. The first meetings were easy to get - his reputation and skill brought in a variety of potential clients. He could almost always sweet-talk a client into a second meeting, and the ones he couldn’t convince are the clients he didn’t want, anyway: the ones who were convinced he overcharged, the ones who were determined to get him to create an impossible building, and the ones who insulted his character or the character of those he held dear.
This client was not like that - they had been nothing but kind from the beginning of their first meeting, with expectations for a new home renovation that were easily met and a budget that left room to play with as well. An ideal client. Kaveh couldn’t fuck this one up.
The second meeting was important because it convinced the client to stick with him over any other architect. It was when the client would deliver the verdict, when they viewed Kaveh’s initial sketch ideas and decided if he was worth their time and money.
The client decided to go forward with Kaveh’s ideas, but with hesitation. Kaveh knows it was because of his unprofessionalism - he showed up late to their meeting, shedding papers in a trail behind him. And yet the client still wanted a home designed by him.
After that, he had hope that his day would start to look up. If a client can give him the benefit of the doubt and still choose to work with him, then perhaps he can look past other negatives in his life.
Until then he realized he accidentally booked a meeting for next Monday, which was his day off, and it had already been rescheduled three times and he was loath to reschedule it a fourth time.
Until it suddenly started pouring on his way home for a quick lunch and he ended up soaked to the bone, the feather in his hair drooping sadly.
Until later that afternoon, when Alhaitham dragged him to the middle of the forest to inspect some sort of issue with the ley lines (“Really, Alhaitham, I only took one elective on ley lines at the Akademiya, I’m no expert, there’s no reason to bring me along - ”) and now, thanks to some sort of mishap with elemental energy that he doesn’t fully understand, he’s stuck with this -
“Stop thinking so loudly.” Alhaitham says from the other side of the living room, more command than statement.
“It’s my brain,” Kaveh hisses, looking up from his diagrams spread across the coffee table. “I’ll think however loud I want.”
Alhaitham thinks like a collage, Kaveh has found. Pictures and images slide together with bits of sound and words. Mostly, though, it’s just emotion. Overwhelming emotion. No one would believe him if he told them, from how impassive Alhaitham appears from the outside.
He’s so noisy, Kaveh can hear Alhaitham thinking. It’s accompanied by a memory of people talking too loudly, a faded panic, and the feeling of being deep underwater. I didn’t realize it extended to his mind as well.
“Well I didn’t realize your rudeness extended to your mind either,” Kaveh says.
Alhaitham frowns. “What about that was rude?”
In his head, Kaveh can feel the slight flicker of Alhaitham’s confusion. He sighs. “Nevermind.”
Honestly, this whole mind-melding whatchamacallit is quite possibly the worst thing that could’ve happened to Kaveh. He already feels like he needs to hold in his words around everyone he meets, and now he needs to hold in his thoughts, too -
Alhaitham breaks him out of his thoughts. “You hold in your words around me?”
Now it’s Kaveh’s turn to frown. “You don’t hold your words in around me?”
No, of course not, Alhaitham’s mind helpfully answers. In Kaveh’s mind, he sees a basket tip end over end, slips of paper with words pouring out. You’re Kaveh.
“Wow, so helpful,” Kaveh throws up his hands and starts to roll up his designs. Clearly he’s not getting any work done here this evening. He’s off to work in his office before he goes to bed.
“You’re not going to get any more work done there,” Alhaitham says. “Because - ”
“Because of the whole mind-link thing, I know . But I can try to pretend I can block you out at least.” It’s so impossible to get rid of Alhaitham. He always seems to be there when Kaveh doesn’t want him to be, following him around like a lost puppy, only much more aggravating.
“Is that really what you think of me?” Alhaitham asks. His voice is even, but Kaveh can feel the tinge of hurt that pings through his mind.
“What?” Kaveh says, going back through his train of thought to figure out what he said. “What, no, you know what I think of you.”
“And what if I said I didn’t?”
“Then I’d tell you to stop lying to yourself. Bye.” Goodnight , his brain wishes Alhaitham.
“Goodnight,” Alhaitham says back, but Kaveh can still feel the hurt floating around in his mind. Good , he thinks slightly vindictively, it’s his turn to feel hurt by my words .
Alhaitham always says what he means, often uncaring of how the other person will react. It’s a very different interaction style than the one Kaveh prefers, where he throws out pleasantries to everyone he meets so they will like him, until they like him, and it has yet to fail - except in the case of Alhaitham, whom Kaveh is certain hates him.
He thinks I hate him . The words float into Kaveh’s mind, accompanied by a complicated swirl of images and emotions. Kaveh’s face. His hands. A snippet of what might be his voice. The outside of the house they live in together. Regret. Sorrow. A touch of anger. Something Kaveh can’t - won’t - refuses to identify.
Kaveh ignores the thoughts, trying to go back to his drafts. He doesn’t have any meetings tomorrow, thank the Archons, so if this ends up lasting overnight - which it probably will, it doesn’t have any reason to dissipate , Alhaitham’s brain helpfully interjects - so if this ends up lasting overnight, Kaveh will be fine to just stay home tomorrow and… suffer, he supposes.
Is it so bad, to be forced to interact with me? Alhaitham thinks. He seems genuinely curious - the thought pulls with it memories of their past arguments, but also memories of their Akademiya days: rose-tinted views of Kaveh studying, Kaveh smiling, Kaveh laughing - Kaveh, Kaveh, Kaveh.
Kaveh ignores him. He leaves his drawings at his drafting table and gets ready for bed as quickly as he can, keeping his mind carefully blank, focused only on what he’s doing, but also careful not to look at his naked self. He does not need Alhaitham having that beamed directly into his brain.
He falls asleep quickly, exhausted, hoping that Alhaitham won’t be able to see his dreams either.
—
Kaveh’s dreams that night are wild and out of control. He typically dreams semi-lucidly, aware that he is dreaming and somewhat able to control it, but tonight it is like his very self is fighting him.
He dreams he is watching the house burn down from the top of Sumeru City.
Their house , a little voice corrects. Sure, their house. He’s watching their house burn down.
Nothing else around it is on fire - the rest of the city continues on in blissful ignorance of the disaster that is wreaking havoc on Kaveh and Alhaitham’s home.
Kaveh is content to sit down and watch as the roof beams give in and the building collapses in a shower of fiery sparks, but the little voice says, We should look at it up close, and then up close they are.
He imagines he can feel the heat from the flames, that a burning ember lands on his skin and it stings, that he hears the crash as the roof collapses and the fire becomes more intense with the added fuel.
Go inside, the voice says. It’s just a dream. Any pain is temporary.
“Are you crazy?” Kaveh says. Thinks. The distinction isn’t really there in a dream.
Against his will, he starts to move forward towards the burning house, and as his outstretched hand brushes the licks of flame, he screams and forces himself awake.
Kaveh wakes up in his bed, covered in sweat, gasping for breath.
A knock is at his door a second later. Alhaitham.
Is he awake yet? He has to be. He woke us both up by screaming like that. This thought is accompanied by the color purple and the smell of coffee, for some odd reason.
Kaveh tears open the door, still in his sleep clothes, hair mussed and eyebags yet to be covered with makeup. It doesn’t matter. Alhaitham has seen him at his worst, which is definitively not this.
Alhaitham stands just outside the boundary of the room, looking annoyed. Why couldn’t we go inside the burning house? Memories of the dream. A hand on a doorknob. The feeling of an electric shock.
“Why are you thinking instead of talking - nevermind. I don’t actually care.” In his mind, Kaveh understands. Talking is so exhausting sometimes. It would be easier to just send his pure thoughts across, if they weren’t so disorganized and unruly. No one would understand them. He resolutely ignores Alhaitham’s quiet I would , just like how he ignores how easily he seems to understand the way Alhaitham’s mixed-media mind seems to function.
Referring back to Alhaitham's earlier question, Kaveh says, “Maybe because I don’t like to be in pain, even in my dreams?”
That could prevent you from acquiring a complete understanding of your subconscious mind, Alhaitham thinks. A wrought iron fence. A web of green light, with the word Akasha. A face Kaveh can’t place, accompanied by the name Azar.
“I think you’re getting plenty of my subconsciousness right now,” Kaveh says, leaning on the doorway. He runs a hand through his hair in an attempt to tame it.
From Alhaitham, he gets an image of what he looks like right now, plus that of a maned Rishboland tiger. Following the images is the slightest impression of a laugh, and a wish for a Kamera.
“Don’t you dare take a photo of me,” Kaveh hisses. “I look like a mess.”
You are a mess , Alhaitham thinks, but fondness rings through it.
Kaveh stares at him. Fondness? From him ?
He slams the bedroom door in Alhaitham’s face and moves to get ready for the day.
—
It turns out that thanks to Alhaitham’s actions in their shared dream, they both woke up at about 4 in the morning. This is not a problem for Alhaitham, who can sleep just about anytime and anywhere, but for Kaveh, who struggles with insomnia at the best of times, it is a problem. So while Alhaitham snoozes, he sits down at his desk and works on the drafts he’s drawing up based on what his client told him at their meeting yesterday.
He’s working hard, making progress - line after line fills the page - thankful for the blessed silence in his head that always appears when he works, until he starts to… see things, out of the corners of his eyes.
It must be from Alhaitham’s sleeping mind - flickers of faces, of voices, of colors and light and sound, reminiscent of the way his thoughts had felt in Kaveh’s head the day before.
Kaveh sets down his pen. He’s gotten enough work done tonight - or is it this morning, now? Regardless, he’s not going to make any more progress with all these distractions. Better to quit while he’s ahead than make an error.
He lies down on his bed and slips into the dream.
—
Kaveh watches from a third-person perspective, as if he was a bird in the rafters, as dream-Alhaitham and dream-Kaveh argue in the living room.
“I just don’t know what you want from me,” dream-Kaveh says, and the living room warps around him as he wraps his arms tight to his core.
He looks a mess - flyaways everywhere, feather askew, no earrings in. He stands sockless on the carpet, looking like he’d rather be anywhere else.
The dream drops in temperature - Alhaitham dreams so vividly - and the lights spin and wheel. The windows glow with a cold blue light.
Dream-Alhaitham steps forward, opening his mouth as if to say something, but dream-Kaveh holds out a hand. “Don’t. I don’t want to hear it. You do enough to hurt me with your words.”
No, no, no , Kaveh hears, frantic, in Alhaitham’s voice, and it is then that he realizes this is not a dream - it is a nightmare.
Dream-Alhaitham stands stock-still, like a bird hit out of the sky. Like he’s falling. He opens his mouth again. Closes it. Takes off his headphones. Even in a dream, he still wears them. It gives Kaveh some sense of familiarity.
“Please,” he says, and it sounds like a prayer.
Kaveh didn’t think his voice could sound like that - that he could put that much emotion into it.
Dream-Kaveh just looks at him. His eyes are wild, like an animal’s. “No. You don’t deserve anything from me. I’ll never give you what you want. I’ll never love you.”
Kaveh would be reeling back in shock, if he had any semblance of control over this nightmare. Alhaitham wants him to love him? He certainly doesn’t act like it!
“Please,” dream-Alhaitham begs, despairing. Please , Alhaitham echoes. The room spins around and around, lights dimming and flickering.
“I just don’t know what you want ,” dream-Kaveh repeats.
“Everything,” dream-Alhaitham says, at the same time that Alhaitham thinks, Nothing . Images begin to overlay atop the dream - Kaveh is overwhelmed with their intensity and number. Flashes of hands, of eyes, of landscapes and buildings and flowers and people. Glimpses into Alhaitham’s life, his imagination. Kaveh sees worlds he’s never dreamed of.
Alhaitham! he cries out, desperate to stop the onslaught. If he had physical eyes right now, they’d be bleeding. Alhaitham’s mind is beautiful - but so, so overwhelming to be inside. Kaveh doesn’t know how he can stand it - living there, day in and day out. But he supposes that Alhaitham has never known anything else.
“You’re so confusing,” dream-Kaveh says, his voice cutting above the visual noise. “All your strange habits and routines - why can’t you just be normal?”
No, Kaveh thinks as hard as he can, but for the life of him he doesn’t know what to follow it up with, only that the very idea of a normal Alhaitham seems foreign and wrong. The two ideas contradict and clash like tectonic plates, forming cracks in a smooth surface.
With that idea, the dream shatters into pieces, and Kaveh is left in a black void, shards of glass floating around him.
Kaveh? thinks Alhaitham’s small inner voice.
Alhaitham? thinks Kaveh. I - I didn’t mean to see that, I’m sorry for invading your privacy -
Thank you, Alhaitham thinks, and it stops Kaveh in his mental tracks. I was - spiraling, the word would be, I suppose. I’m not a lucid dreamer like you are. You broke me out of it.
Well - I - You’re welcome, stutters Kaveh, at a loss for words. His mind is spinning - literally. The shards of glass whirl around him like blurry stars.
You should wake up now, Alhaitham suggests, and Kaveh abruptly does.
—
The sun is barely cresting the horizon as Kaveh barges into Alhaitham’s room to find him still peacefully asleep. He rips the blankets off of him, leaving him to curl into nothing, and yells, “Alhaitham!”
Alhaitham’s eyes flash open. Voice deep with sleep, he says, “What time is it?”
“No idea,” Kaveh admits. “But we need to talk about the dream you just had.”
Alhaitham turns a color Kaveh has never seen on him before. Absolutely not, he thinks. No. No. No.
“Why not?” Kaveh tries to ask, but Alhaitham has already grabbed his headphones off the bedside table and slapped them on, flicking them to noise-canceling mode.
Kaveh tries again. Why not? he thinks.
A flurry of words hit Kaveh so hard he flinches back. You’ll know , seems to be the prevailing message, once Kaveh can pick past the flotsam. Because then you’ll know .
Know what? That people are telling you to change? I already knew that, Kaveh thinks. He sits down on the bed. You always ignore them. Unwillingly, his thoughts continue: I always admired that.
The flush on Alhaitham’s cheeks grows more intense. Not that.
That I’ll know that you have nightmares? I knew that too. You always walk around in a bad mood after you wake up, and it lasts beyond when you have your coffee.
It’s not that either! Alhaitham thinks, and it’s almost a mental yell. Along with it comes the echo of a raised voice, the sting of a wasp, and Alhaitham’s perspective of Kaveh flinching backwards, from just a few moments ago.
Kaveh sits and stares at him for a moment, surprised at his forcefulness. Usually Kaveh is the one to get worked up when they argue - but Kaveh didn’t think this was an argument. Or that it was going to turn into one.
It’s not going to become an argument, because we’re not going to have this conversation, Alhaitham thinks. Images of thick, brick walls, like desert ruins, the sounds of a desert eagle cawing and a professor dropping a book onto a table accompany the thoughts. Get out of my room.
No, Kaveh thinks right back. There’s something you’re not telling me, and it’s about me. I was in that dream. He mentally runs back through the contents of it - what he remembers, at least. He doesn’t have a near-photographic memory like Alhaitham apparently does.
Luckily for him, Alhaitham is thinking about the dream too - and unwittingly sending a specific part across the mind link.
“I’ll never love you,” dream-Kaveh snarls.
Not true, Kaveh thinks, unfiltered.
“What?” Alhaitham says, aloud, startled.
“What?” Kaveh repeats. “Did I say something?”
“No,” Alhaitham says, slowly. “But you thought something.”
Kaveh thinks back. “Oh. Oh fuck.” He moves to get up, to leave, to escape what is quickly becoming the most awkward situation of his life.
“No, wait,” Alhaitham grabs his hands.
“What, you still want me in your house? I was ready to pack my things and leave. Isn’t that what you’ve wanted all this time?”
“You have no idea what I want,” Alhaitham says seriously. His eyes widen, as if shocked by what he just said. “No. You have no idea what I want. Because I never tell you.”
“Yes! That! What you just said!” Kaveh would throw up his hands in relief and exasperation with this fool, if Alhaitham wasn’t still holding onto them, staring off into space as if he just made the discovery of a lifetime.
Alhaitham refocuses and turns to him, lightning quick. “I’m in love with you.”
“Yes, we knew that - what? Wait just a second. You what?”
“I’m in love with you,” Alhaitham repeats. “And now we kiss. You love me, I love you, that’s what happens next.”
“No, hold on a moment,” Kaveh says, flustered beyond belief. “This is what you want? Wait - is the mind link gone?”
“Kiss first,” Alhaitham says, entirely serious.
“No, really, is the mind link gone? Think something super intensely, we need to test this.” Kaveh tugs at where Alhaitham holds his hands.
“Kiss first,” Alhaitham repeats, and when Kaveh turns to look he sees a sparkle of humor in his eyes.
Kaveh can only hold out so long against that gaze. “Fine. Kiss first.”
They kiss. Today is looking up.