Work Text:
Al-Haitham has come to associate the gentle sounds of sunrise with a bubbling dallah and murmured expletives from down the hall.
The bubbling and expletives are not unique to early mornings, but they normally fade into the ambient sound of life through Al-Haitham’s noise-canceling headphones, so they’re usually not as… profound as they are in the early light of the morning. Nothing is.
Morning is soft, though, and so are the noises. He’s okay with them as long as the light is dim.
Chickpeas simmer in a pan atop a crackling flame as cut-up pieces of pita sizzle lightly inside the stove, and his own footsteps against the kitchen tile soothe him, harmonizing with the melody of dusk birds and insects coming from outside.
At this time of day, everything is music. The wooden handle of the pan is smooth but firm, like the sound of a mallet hitting the stretched leather on a drum. The tile beneath his feet is warm like the lullabies his grandmother used to sing, and rays of light reach through the window with surety — notes held strong beneath raw fingers on strings.
Today, his headphones rest firmly against his collarbones, and the morning envelops him in sound.
Al-Haitham loves sunrise, despite being a late sleeper. The time is unforgiving but not unworthy. In fact, if mornings didn’t usually start with another body curled into the divots of his own, Al-Haitham might be up at this hour more often.
Alas…
“Where is my rain cloak?” Kaveh mutters as he speedwalks past the kitchen, and Al-Haitham smiles.
“Hall closet, by the guest room.”
“Why is it– Ugh, yes. Thank you.”
This is a unique situation.
On mornings like this — as rare as they are — the sounds of life around Al-Haitham are so palpable they feel organic, like they, too, are alive. The curses coming from the bedroom and the cracking of the wood in the stove take on a presence of their own, filling space and conversing — singing, even, if you want to be romantic about it.
“Should I take it in my luggage?” Kaveh asks, his aura buzzing as he hovers in the doorway. “Or should I wear it? What if it rains on the way?”
Al-Haitham hums, pulling the tray of pita from the stove to check the color. “Just leave it accessible. Near the top of your luggage, in a bag that won’t be sealed.”
“Right…” Kaveh agrees distractedly. “What if I lose the bag, though?”
“Have you ever lost a bag on your travels?”
“I’ve lost small ones.”
Al-Haitham shoves the tray back inside and shudders at the sound of metal on metal. “Put it in a big one, then.”
Kaveh nods, scurrying back towards the bedroom with a clatter and a curse spit out under his breath. “I didn’t break anything!” he calls, and Al-Haitham knows. The cabinet that makes that sound is sturdy, picked out on purpose with this reason in mind.
A chickpea pops inside the pan, and then another, the skin breaking open from the pressure inside. They’re almost done.
“Do you think I need more than one suit?”
Al-Haitham looks down at his forearms. “Will there be formal events multiple days in a row?” he calls back, watching as warm shapes dance over his skin with the movement of the leaves outside the window.
This, too, is musical.
Adjacent, at least.
“I don’t know, maybe?” Kaveh responds, clearly distressed. “They didn’t give me much information.”
If it were Al-Haitham, he’d just bring one and make it work, but it isn’t. “Would you rather play it safe?” he asks, and they both know it’s a leading question.
Kaveh sighs, audible even from here.
It’s a yes — Al-Haitham can hear him pulling the second suit from the closet and removing the protective lining from the outside. The crinkling sound of the thin paper hitting the ground is only temporarily grating, though. He hears Kaveh fold it and return it to the shelf a few moments later.
“I just don’t know what I need,” Kaveh groans, and Al-Haitham hums in familiar sympathy. “I don’t– They didn’t tell me anything!”
“You’ve been to these kinds of things before,” Al-Haitham points out, his tone intentionally agnostic.
“Not one this selective.”
He’s being honest. That’s a good sign. “Selectivity doesn’t mean it will operate differently from how they always do.” Al-Haitham dips his spoon into the chickpea pan and pulls one out, blowing on it so that it’s cool enough to taste.
Crash. “Sorry! I didn’t see the– What are these?”
“Thumbtacks,” Al-Haitham replies easily, reaching for the salt.
Kaveh appears in the doorway again, the pat, pat of his slippers on the hardwood floor preceding him. “Why do you have three-hundred boxes of thumbtacks?” he asks, slightly out of breath.
“One hundred and fifty.” Al-Haitham shrugs. “Spantamad was getting rid of them.”
“So you brought them here?”
“They won’t be here for long,” Al-Haitham clarifies, removing the pan from the flame and setting it down to the side. “I’m taking them to Aaru Village next week.”
Tap, tap, tap. Kaveh’s fingers drum anxiously against the wall beside him.
“For the library,” Al-Haitham says.
Kaveh’s eyes widen. “For free?”
Al-Haitham replaces the chickpea pan with a smaller, empty one, and the clang is nicer than the last. “Yes, for free.”
“That’s wonderful,” Kaveh breathes.
“Shouldn’t you be packing?”
The tap, tap, tap starts up again.
Al-Haitham looks over, his arm frozen halfway towards the bottle of oil next to the stove. Kaveh isn’t looking at him, though — his gaze is locked on something far away, something only he can see.
He’s holding something back. Al-Haitham knows this, and Kaveh probably knows it, too, even though he’s probably just as clueless as Al-Haitham when it comes to what it actually is. Kaveh gets like this sometimes: uncertain, unsure. Hesitant, both to speak his mind and to examine it in the first place, afraid of what he’ll discover if he does.
Unfortunately, Al-Haitham can’t help. That’s a lesson he had to learn the hard way, and many, many times.
“Do you think…”
Wait, Al-Haitham thinks. Let him figure it out.
It takes a while. Al-Haitham fills the pan with pine nuts and takes the dallah off the heat. Kaveh stands there, buzzing, while Al-Haitham mixes the spices and lemon juice into the yogurt, and he stands there, buzzing, while Al-Haitham pours the coffee through the filter and into their mugs.
The drip, drip of the coffee against porcelain is quiet, but so is Kaveh. Anyone else might describe this silence as loud. It isn’t, though — not to Al-Haitham. The gears that turn in Kaveh’s mind are well-worn and rounded with time. They don’t click like they used to, but turn softly, like pieces of sea glass rolling together in the flexing palm of a weathered hand.
“Do you think I’ll belong there?” Kaveh finally mutters.
Al-Haitham takes a second to calibrate, then asks, “Amongst your peers?”
“Peers?” Kaveh scoffs. “I’m not sure I’d describe them as peers.”
Patience.
“They’re all… I don’t know, current, I guess.”
There it is.
“It’s just–” Kaveh says, cutting himself off to make space for a breath — the kind that overflows from too-full lungs, the kind that sounds like hard truths and molasses. “I’m about to take a boat to Inazuma to network with the best architects of the modern world. They selected one architect from every region, Al-Haitham, I’m– I haven’t done anything worthy of this spot in fifteen years.”
His gaze drifts to the northeast, where Alcazarzaray still stands proud. Really, he’s looking at a painting of the Jade Chamber on the kitchen wall, but Al-Haitham knows that the Palace is clear in Kaveh’s mind.
“Fifteen years, Haitham,” Kaveh whispers. A bow made with sumpter beast hair drags lightly across resin strings. “I don’t deserve this.”
That sentence leaves his lips with a lasting resonance; the bow is lifted from its instrument, and the note is left to dissipate in empty air.
Al-Haitham stands, blinking, in a state of resounding shock. His fingers itch, his breaths come short — he hardens, stone-like, the hairs on his arms standing stiffly on end. He should be used to this.
He will never be used to this.
“Kaveh,” he sighs, his voice ringing in his ears.
Kaveh shakes his head. “Don’t,” he says, trailing a finger along the doorway. “I’m still going. I’ve already told them I would.”
With that, he turns back towards the bedroom and retreats, his footsteps hollow and his body out of tune. His presence groans with the weight of his revelation — it’s heavy, and Kaveh is tired. He’s been carrying it for almost forty years.
Not this one, exactly, but the mindset. The doubt.
Al-Haitham looks down at the food in front of him. The chickpeas are cool enough to eat now, and the pine nuts are acceptably browned. Proof of life. Proof of love. A symphony of sounds and smells and tastes and colors, the tune finally taking shape in Al-Haitham’s mind.
He gets two plates down from the cabinet and revels in the clink of porcelain against granite. He gets the last few ingredients from the ice box and inhales on the thump of the lid falling shut. He breaks up and sprinkles some of the pita onto both plates, covers them with chickpeas and yogurt, and finally gets to work.
Five main pieces upright in a rectangle with a gap in one side, more balanced delicately in a crested shape on top. Details, here and there, where he can add them — Al-Haitham is not a sculptor by any means, but he’s picked up a thing or two over the years. Osmosis by proximity, maybe. More likely by choice.
In the end, it’s messy. Even he can admit that. It’s recognizable, though, and that’s all that matters. He leaves his own plate on the counter next to the mug meant for himself, taking Kaveh’s breakfast in one hand and Kaveh’s coffee in the other.
It feels right, being burdened like this: the weight of Kaveh pulling at the tendons in both arms.
He’d never use that word aloud — burdened — because Kaveh would spiral. To Al-Haitham, though, it isn’t negative. It carries no connotations at all.
The meaning is simple: ‘a load, typically a heavy one,’ according to Al-Haitham’s mother’s dictionary, and it makes sense to him. Loving Kaveh has taken work. It is as arduous as it is natural, to him, but he has never once thought it purposeless. Has never once considered setting it down.
Loving Kaveh is a charge that Al-Haitham accepts daily, consciously, and with enthusiasm — it’s worth the effort in a way that almost renders the phrase meaningless, because the effort required could be ten times what it is now, and Al-Haitham wouldn’t flinch. Of course it’s worth the effort. Of course it’s worth the weight. In fact, the mere concept of Kaveh being “worth” the burden is a funny way to put it when the burden itself is part of the reward.
Nothing — truly, nothing — brings Al-Haitham as much happiness as Kaveh does, and that includes the way his wrist is currently falling asleep.
He bumps the door to the bedroom open with his hip and finds Kaveh on his knees, folding the last of his clothing into neat piles in a trunk. There is no music in here; the air is still and the mood unreadable.
He can fix that.
Al-Haitham sets the coffee down and sits sideways on the bed, placing the plate right in Kaveh’s line of sight.
“I can come and eat with you when I’m–” Kaveh starts, but freezes when he sees the ‘sculpture’ on the plate. He stares at it for a moment, stunned, then whispers, “Fatteh?”
“Your specialty,” Al-Haitham confirms. “With a twist.”
Kaveh tilts his head with a crack, and the music begins. “Is that… our house?” he asks.
Al-Haitham nods.
“Why?”
“Well, you usually make this with the Palace of Alcazarzaray recreated on top, but, like you said, it’s been fifteen years. It’s time to celebrate your more recent achievements, is it not?”
Kaveh scoffs, his face contorting like he’s not sure if he’d rather cry or roll his eyes.
“You said that you don’t deserve to be at this conference because you’re, what, old news?” Al-Haitham asks.
“That’s a terrible way to phrase it, but yes.”
“So I’m showing you that you’re not.”
Kaveh looks up at Al-Haitham, his eyes glistening. “It’s just a house, Haitham. It’s no Palace.”
“Do you remember where you got the kitchen tile?”
Kaveh swallows thickly. “The kids,” he admits, “that first year the library was open to the public.”
Al-Haitham nods, remembering it himself. “You bought two-million mora’s worth of blank, white tile and brought freedom to those kids. You handed them paints and brushes and let them dream, and that’s immortalized, now, in our home.” He inclines his head towards the garden. “Do you remember where you got the stones for the walkway?”
“The Akademiya,” Kaveh says, his voice a little stronger. “I took them from the–”
“–bridge that got ruined in that storm,” Al-Haitham finishes, and Kaveh breaks out into a hesitant grin.
“We went over there in the middle of the night and pulled the stone up from the walkway by our study spot.”
Al-Haitham smiles back. “We spent a lot of time on that walkway.”
Kaveh huffs out a laugh, leaning closer to inspect the dish. “We still do.”
“The left wing is modeled after–”
“–my parents’ house, yes,” Kaveh interjects proudly, “and the right wing is–”
“–my grandmother’s.”
Kaveh looks up again, his eyes bright. “What are you doing?” he asks quietly, the awe in his voice a key lower than the song playing in Al-Haitham’s head.
Al-Haitham lets his smile soften. “What constitutes success?” he asks.
“For…?”
“For whether your work is conference-worthy.”
Kaveh frowns, thoughtful. “I don’t think there’s a scale, or anything,” he says. “It’s just hard to think myself successful when my magnum opus was built in my early twenties, and here I am — thirty-eight and counting.”
“Thirty-eight with more joy under your belt than most people create in a lifetime.”
Kaveh’s lips part, but Al-Haitham doesn’t give him the chance to counter.
“You built a library that gave hundreds of children a purpose in life,” he continues. “You designed new infrastructure for the Akademiya, allowing more people to study there than ever before. That’s huge.”
“Al-Haitham–”
“You’ve made tens of hundreds of individual dreams come true, too, and I’m speaking from experience,” Al-Haitham says, pushing the plate forwards just a bit. “You are the beautiful, unhinged, untethered mind behind so many people’s happiness, Kaveh, and that has nothing to do with Alcazarzaray. It never did.”
He drags his gaze over to the window, stained green and red around the edges.
“If I’m honest, I’ve never been partial to artists’ most popular works. It’s always the random pieces in their collections fueled by passion and insanity that stand out to me.”
“Sabz Meat Stew for the Soul,” Kaveh breathes. “That stupid book of poetry you love that’s all about soup, for some reason. That author is–”
“–renowned, yes, for her philosophical collections. I find them derivative.”
Kaveh presses his lips together, understanding finally settling behind his eyes. “So do I.”
“Well, there you go,” Al-Haitham says matter-of-factly. “You built Alcazarzaray when you were twenty-three, and everything since then has been–”
“Poetry about soup.”
“I’m not saying Alcazarzaray was derivative, by the way.”
Kaveh laughs a tinkling laugh, getting to his feet. “I know.”
“It’s an amazing achievement,” Al-Haitham says, moving the plate to the bedside table.
“I know.”
“I was just–”
He’s cut off by Kaveh’s lips on his, salty (and with too much teeth) but prideful. Relieved. Kaveh kisses with the passion of a ballad and the devotion of a hymn, and he comes forth like a full orchestra — balanced, confident, and complete.
This is a song that Al-Haitham knows well.
“I can’t believe you,” Kaveh laughs against Al-Haitham’s lips. “Where did you learn to do this?”
“The fatteh or the logic?”
Kaveh rolls his eyes. “The fatteh, I guess. You’re made of logic.”
I’m made of truth, Al-Haitham wants to say. Yes, that includes logic, but it includes love, too. Truth includes the things he understands and the things he doesn’t, and the things that are somewhat in-between; Kaveh has built parts of Al-Haitham from the ground up that Al-Haitham will never truly know how to describe, but they’re there, sturdy, like the beam in the living room wall that has their initials carved into the wood.
“Thank you,” Kaveh mutters with one last kiss, and then he climbs off the bed and back onto his feet, crossing the room in record time. “I think I’ll bring another pair of pants, just in case — the black ones you got me for my birthday would be nice, don’t you think?”
“They would,” Al-Haitham agrees easily, looking back out the window as Kaveh continues to pack.
The sounds of shuffling and fabric stop, though, after a moment. “You’re not wearing your headphones,” Kaveh says. “Have they been off this whole time?”
“Mm,” Al-Haitham answers.
“And that’s… okay?”
Al-Haitham turns, blinks, and hears nothing but the joyous lilt of Kaveh’s presence in the room, accompanied by the steady beating of his own heart. “Yes,” he answers honestly. Happily. “It’s okay.”