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“You’re so lazy,” Kaveh mutters, nineteen and miserable and lying on Alhaitham’s floor.
“You don’t get to insult me while you’re bleeding on my rug,” Alhaitham replies curtly as he stands over Kaveh’s prone body. “I expect you to replace it.”
“No, you don’t, Haitham.”
Alhaitham doesn’t. The bin of medical supplies in his bathroom is running low because of Kaveh’s unfortunate habit of turning up half-dead at Alhaitham’s lavish apartment. By now he’s lost count. Kaveh hates hospitals slightly more than he hates Alhaitham, or so he says. Kaveh won’t move from his spot and Alhaitham won’t carry him, so after gathering his first aid supplies, Alhaitham makes himself comfortable on the floor.
With one hand, he pulls Kaveh’s shirt up to reveal the bloody bandage beneath. The wound smells infected. Briefly Alhaitham considers putting out his cigarette on Kaveh’s skin, but he tucks it behind his ear instead and gets to work.
“What happened?” he asks.
“They sent me out with Collei to watch over her.”
So Kaveh took a hit for her. “You can’t keep doing this when you haven’t recovered fully from Corruption,” Alhaitham says for the thousandth time as he peels back the ruined bandage. “You’ll kill yourself.”
“I wouldn’t have Corruption if I was meant to survive it.” Kaveh winces as Alhaitham pokes at the ragged slash in his side. “It’s your ability that’s the problem.”
It’s an old argument. Kaveh’s ability, In Bitterness of Soul, allows him to control gravity, but in its most unrestrained form, Corruption, he loses control of his mind and body until the pull of his gravitons tears him apart. He can’t stop it once it starts. But Alhaitham can: he’s the only person in the world who can save Kaveh from himself.
“You’re childish and indecisive. If you want to kill yourself so badly, jump off a very high ledge. At least then you wouldn’t trouble me with saving you.” Kaveh has torn his stitches. Alhaitham hates stitching up wounds. “This is infected, Kaveh.”
Kaveh scoffs. “You have no right to call me childish. It hurts, Alhaitham, I want a drink. Will you get me a drink?”
Alhaitham doesn’t bother to give Kaveh any warning for the sting when he begins to disinfect the wound. “Children who won’t behave don’t get a reward,” he says evenly.
“That’s not fair.”
“Nothing is. Stop whining.”
When Alhaitham met Kaveh, he was fourteen and Kaveh was sixteen. There was a freak accident in Kaveh’s hometown and Sangemah Bay suspected that an ability user was at the heart of it. Alhaitham was delivered to the scene because his ability, A Discourse on Light, allows him to nullify the effects of any other ability—patently useless, until Kaveh turned up in the centre of a newly-formed crater, spitting blood. He looked very beautiful, but soft. The sort of boy who had a mother and couldn’t imagine her doing anything worse than not loving him enough.
Now Alhaitham has grown fond of Kaveh. He’s like a comet: bright and otherworldly, but short-lived by nature. There was a time that Alhaitham tried to speak kindly to him, but Kaveh never liked it very much.
Once Alhaitham closes up Kaveh’s wound and dresses it, he leaves Kaveh on the floor and picks the book up off of the divan just a few feet away. Kaveh tries to follow but the movement clearly pains him. In the end, he rifles through Alhaitham’s cupboards for the bottle of wine he left last time he came around.
“This is what I mean,” Kaveh says once he settles beside Alhaitham again. “You’re lazy. You’re an executive. You have so much work to do, but you’re reading fairy tales.”
“It’s called a work-life balance.”
“We are literally part of the mob, Haitham. This is an organized crime syndicate.”
“It’s a job like any other.”
Instead of responding, Kaveh takes a long drink and leans his head on Alhaitham’s shoulder so that he can read, too.
Alhaitham’s role is dealing in intelligence. The business of intelligence has taught him that most of Sumeru is very stupid. As for Kaveh: he is more of a pet than a coworker. He openly dislikes his superiors and cannot be trusted with sensitive information; Alhaitham is the only person he occasionally cooperates with. Mostly, he’s sent out on combat assignments or as protection detail. But he’s trapped by his debt to Sangemah Bay for the city he accidentally destroyed in this place that he hates.
Alhaitham likes Kaveh very much. He dislikes holding his leash, and has never once asked Kaveh to use Corruption. Kaveh just likes the idea that he might die from it. Since it can’t go on like this forever, Alhaitham will get him out one day.
But when Kaveh calls him lazy, it’s true. He watches from the sidelines and predicts things before they happen and steps in at the very end, when everything has gone exactly as it was supposed to. So he plans and plans and patches Kaveh up in the meantime.
“Alhaaaaitham,” Kaveh groans, “I hate myself.”
“And the grass is green and the sky is blue,” Alhaitham sighs. “What do you want, Kaveh?”
Today is a day off, or, as Kaveh calls it: ‘a miserable reprieve from a miserable life’. His favourite thing to do on days off is sit in Razan Gardens at the Akademiya and pretend to be a student, and so here they are, pretending. Alhaitham reads and Kaveh reads over his shoulder.
“My mother was an architect, so I was going to be one too,” he announces suddenly, leaning away. The only other time Kaveh has ever mentioned his mother was on the day they first met. He said that she was home with him on the day of the incident, and Alhaitham said that she was probably dead. Every other day in Razan Gardens, Kaveh makes up some new story. If I was a student, I’d study the mating habits of duskbirds. If I was a student, I’d research the funerary rituals of the Remurians. If I was a student, I’d learn every language in Sumeru.
“Of course you’d be a starving artist,” Alhaitham agrees.
Kaveh laughs. “Yeah, I would be. But it would be honest. What about you?”
Alhaitham frowns. Kaveh has never asked him to participate in his stupid game before. But since Kaveh gave away a piece of himself in his admission, Alhaitham decides that he’ll tell the truth. He folds over the page of his novel and replies, “I don’t think I would do anything different. I would get a degree so I could find some cushy office job with good pay.”
“You’re so weird. I don’t understand you.” Kaveh stares up at the dome covering the pavilion, tracing its intricate patterns with his shining eyes. “Of course some stupid office job is different from… what we do. How can you think like that?”
“Working for the Akademiya would only mean climbing a different stairway of corpses to get to the top,” Alhaitham points out. “Is it that you care about what other people think of you? You’re ashamed to be a dirty crook?”
It’s true. His memories of childhood are fuzzy and faraway, but Alhaitham’s mother and father were researchers, or so he’s read. In another life, Alhaitham would have followed in their footsteps. But after the death of his grandmother, when Sangemah Bay found him, it soon became clear that nowhere was truly safe. Most of the idiots begging for forbidden knowledge are Akademiya staff. Most of the sages at the head of the country have debts to Sangemah Bay.
“It’s not an appearances thing. Regardless of the sages, the people that believe in the Akademiya are faultless. The public, I mean. The common people. What about those people? You’ll step on them, too?” Kaveh lets his head loll to the side away from Alhaitham. “I just… I don’t know, Alhaitham.”
Alhaitham watches Kaveh’s eyes flick back and forth. “Maybe you’d know if you were sober. It’s twenty past, let’s go find a lecture to watch.”
And so they sit in the back of a lecture hall while a professor drones on about eigenvalues. Alhaitham hates math but Kaveh seems to be following, mouthing to himself as the professor writes long equations on the board. If anyone knew they were here, Kaveh would be punished, and Alhaitham’s punishment would be to know that Kaveh was punished, but Alhaitham is very careful to make sure that they’re never caught.
Alhaitham hates when Kaveh uses In Bitterness of Soul to walk on the ceiling. Kaveh likes to bother him so much that Alhaitham has taken to looking up every time he enters a room just in case there’s someone leaning on the light fixture.
Today, there is. Kaveh doesn’t feel the effects of gravity like everyone else. If he so chooses, he can hang upside down for hours without all of his blood rushing to his head. But he always decides to let it happen anyway.
“Kaveh, you’re going to pass out, and when you fall you’ll hit your head,” Alhaitham says. They’re in a warehouse. More accurately: the warehouse. Kaveh’s ‘apartment’ on the outskirts of the city. He lives in very well-decorated squalor.
Kaveh doesn’t reply. The ceiling of the warehouse is very high, so there’s no way for Alhaitham to get him down.
“When I told you to jump from a high place, this isn’t what I meant,” he tries again. “You’re still troubling me.”
Finally Kaveh opens his eyes. With a sigh, he lets himself float down in a long, meandering path, like letting a sheet of paper fall. He lands with a thud on the floor.
“Touch me,” he says. “Please.”
So Alhaitham sits on the floor and pets Kaveh’s hair. He likes the feeling of A Discourse on Light on bad days. Once, while inebriated, he confessed that it made him feel like nothing inside, which was apparently a good thing. Another time, while sober, he said that when Alhaitham touched him and In Bitterness of Soul was nullified, it grounded him, because it reminded him that everything was his fault. Alhaitham thinks that Kaveh is an idiot.
“You should just move in with me,” Alhaitham offers finally. “I can’t stand the draught here.”
“But the ceilings are so low,” Kaveh moans. “And I never asked you to come here.”
“You can still do that thing in my apartment, no matter how deeply unappealing it seems to me. You just won’t fall to your death if I’m not there to get you.”
“You’re not my mother.” Kaveh opens his wide red eyes and stares up at Alhaitham. “I’ll do it if you let me redecorate. Philistine.”
Kaveh redecorates and Alhaitham takes down his decorations. Kaveh makes dishes and doesn’t wash them. Kaveh sleeps in Alhaitham’s bed and snores very loudly. Alhaitham pretends he doesn’t like it when Kaveh kisses him in the soft early mornings. It’s all very dramatic.
When Alhaitham returns from a meeting with Sangemah Bay covered in blood, Kaveh frowns, as if he doesn’t have a bandage covering his right eye and another on his back.
“Well, it’s not my blood,” Alhaitham announces.
“You’re really a terrible person,” Kaveh sighs. “Come on. You’ll get a disease or something.”
Kaveh runs a bath while Alhaitham undresses. In the bathroom Kaveh has created little floating globes of water with In Bitterness of Soul and he drops one on Alhaitham’s head, so Alhaitham pokes him in the back over his healing wound.
“What happened?” Kaveh asks. “You never tell me anything.”
“That’s because you’re very fragile,” Alhaitham replies as he steps into the bath. It’s just this side of too hot. “I don’t feel guilty like you do.”
“Yes, you do,” Kaveh argues. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t be friends with me.”
Friends is a very silly word for what they are. Juvenile. Friends are for children at school.
“We’re just coworkers,” Alhaitham answers easily to avoid Kaveh’s prodding. “It’s rude of you to assume.”
“I’m your senior. You shouldn’t speak like that to me. Come on, I’ll wash your hair.”
“I’m your superior, though.”
“But I’m older.”
“That’s not important.”
“Not to you. I have dreams outside of the Port Mafia.”
“Like being older than me? You already are, and you didn’t do anything to achieve that.”
Kaveh splashes water into Alhaitham’s face.
On the top of the Divine Tree, Kaveh tells Alhaitham about the constellations, so Alhaitham tells Kaveh off for trying to explain something he already knew.
“My dad knew all of them,” Kaveh admits instead of arguing. It’s new information and extremely out of character. He’s hanging from a branch a few feet above the one Alhaitham is sitting on so their faces are only a few inches away from one another. His voice sounds strange when he’s upside down.
Alhaitham has no interest in tact. “Your father’s dead, too?”
“Yeah. He was an astronomer. Or a physicist. Maybe both? Once, he went on this trip because I thought the pictures he showed me of all these, these machines, I don’t even know. I thought they looked cool, so he travelled for a few months to… do whatever, with those machines. I’m sure it was of some interest to him, but he did it for me.” Kaveh sighs. “I know he did. But something happened when he was gone. Must have. He was kind of erratic after, jumpy and weird, and it went on for years. Then he died in a car accident one night when I asked him to pick me up early from a sleepover. That’s all.”
Unlike every other time he’s ever spoken to Alhaitham, Kaveh sounds emotionless when he says it, like he’s gone over the memory so many times it lost all meaning.
“That sucks,” Alhaitham says finally.
“I try to tell myself that it’s all fine because it’s not like I didn’t kill my own father. But I can’t do it.” Kaveh looks down at the long drop between himself and the ground. Alhaitham imagines the splatter of his brains on the boulevard.
“When I killed all those people, I just missed him,” Kaveh goes on. “I didn’t know that would happen.”
“That sucks,” Alhaitham says again.
The next time Kaveh uses Corruption, Alhaitham almost doesn’t make it in time. A deal west of Port Ormos went awry and Siraj pressed the panic button, that is, had Kaveh destroy himself to take out a few grunts. Typical.
Corruption is horrific. Alhaitham always forgets. Kaveh isn’t himself; he’s not human. Corpses litter the ground and at the centre of them all is Kaveh, smiling in a way Alhaitham has never seen when he’s in control.
Kaveh gets upset when he steps on bugs, so seeing him knock one of Siraj’s men aside so hard his skull cracks on the ground is deeply unsettling.
In Bitterness of Soul would be a heavy burden to bear for anyone, but it has always seemed to Alhaitham that whatever god above was playing a joke when they bestowed it upon Kaveh. Even if he had everything—an education, a future, a living mother—Kaveh would manage to feel guilty for taking up oxygen that someone else could have used to breathe. Now, his power is the most destructive force in the world, and he sells his soul to pay for the damage he caused when he destroyed his hometown.
Alhaitham finally fights his way through to Kaveh. He grabs his ankle and does his best to catch him; abruptly, all of the floating debris around them drops too, creating a horrific cacophony of sound. But Kaveh doesn’t wake up. By now, his organs have turned halfway to soup, probably. He really might die.
But Alhaitham isn’t that nice, so he lifts Kaveh into his arms and tells Siraj to get help, right now, if Kaveh dies I’ll make sure you’re next, and when have I ever said something I didn’t mean, Siraj.
It probably isn’t Siraj’s fault entirely. Every time anything goes wrong, Kaveh is the first to offer himself up. But Alhaitham hates Siraj anyway.
Would anyone care if Kaveh died? Alhaitham only finds out about Corruption at the last second. He doesn’t want Kaveh to die young, and Sangemah Bay can only use Corruption because Alhaitham can stop it.
“How do you always know to come get me?” Kaveh asks. “With Corruption, I mean?” He still hates hospitals, so he’s hooked up to an IV in Alhaitham’s bedroom. He has to take it with him every time he goes to the bathroom and he hates it. Alhaitham can’t leave the house because if he does, Kaveh will rip out his IV. It’s miserable all around.
“I know everything,” Alhaitham answers without looking up from The Tale of Shirin and Shiruyeh.
“Don’t lie.”
Alhaitham rolls his eyes. “Okay. A Discourse on Light allows me to read minds, but only yours, so I know everything about you specifically. It shows me a mirror into your mind.”
“That’s not fair,” Kaveh mutters. “I’m hurting. You can’t be mean. Alhaitham, I can’t believe you’re seventeen, you’re just a baby. And somehow you’re this terrible. Does that mean it will get worse? Oh god.”
“Don’t call me a baby.”
“Well, you are a baby.”
Alhaitham puts an end to the useless argument before it starts. “Let’s go to Razan Gardens when you’re better. We can pretend to be first-years.” Beside him, Kaveh is pale and shaky. When he walks, it’s with the IV pole in one arm and a crutch in another. It was a miracle he didn’t break any bones, apparently.
“I’m onto you,” Kaveh hisses. “You’re being nice to me and I’ll find out why. It’s not normal. I’m supposed to be nice to you because it’s your birthday soon.”
Alhaitham gives up on Shiruyeh and Shirin entirely and lies down at Kaveh’s side. “Another birthday means another corpse to step on.” He doesn’t care for Kaveh’s melodrama, but lately, Alhaitham has been thinking. He keeps talking only because Kaveh has taken enough hydromorphone that he probably won’t remember any of this, if past experiences are any indication. “I suppose that’s what birthdays are. A new year, and so you dispose of the body of the old one.”
“Now you sound like me,” Kaveh observes, and it makes him giggle. “You’re so morbid, Alhaitham. How many bodies have you even… I mean, it has to be a lot, right?”
And then Kaveh laughs and laughs until he coughs, and then Alhaitham starts laughing too, smiling until his cheeks hurt.
If the point of Corruption was to kill Kaveh, then it would be his only ability. But In Bitterness of Soul has non-fatal uses, so if Alhaitham follows Kaveh’s logic, it must be true that he is meant to live.
“Kaveh, why do you always make your problems mine?” Alhaitham asks. “How long have you been here?”
Kaveh sits cross-legged on the ceiling of the back office of a cafe. The cafe’s owner owes Sangemah Bay money, so when Kaveh walked in, the owner must have walked out. With impossible serenity, Kaveh drinks a glass of some amber-coloured liquid. It even has ice cubes. How much effort does it take to keep it all from falling?
On cue, an ice cube hits the floor by Alhaitham’s feet.
“I won’t fall if I die,” Kaveh sniffs. “I mean I won’t die if I fall. So I’m not breaking your rules. And fuck you, Alhaitham, I didn’t ask for anything from you. Fuck you.”
It comes as a surprise that Kaveh cares enough to follow Alhaitham’s ‘rules’. Instead of replying anymore, Alhaitham lights a cigarette. The smoke floats up to Kaveh so he drops his drink onto the floor. It shatters on impact.
“Asshole,” Kaveh cries. “It’s your fault. You did that on purpose.”
“Yes, I did, because I’m an asshole,” Alhaitham agrees. But Kaveh stays on the ceiling so Alhaitham sits at the desk and reads a book about the geologic history of the Girdle of Sands.
Once, it’s Kaveh who finds Alhaitham sitting on the edge of a dock in the harbour. Kaveh takes off his shoes and sits beside him, dipping his toes into the cool winter water.
“I thought you were supposed to meet Sangemah Bay today,” Kaveh says. “Everyone’s saying you’re going to be the next boss.”
Alhaitham was always supposed to come next. But: “I didn’t go.”
“Why not?”
He pauses to think. It was only that if Alhaitham faced Sangemah Bay, he might have done something rash. Finally, he says, “I learned something I didn’t like this morning, so I’m reconsidering my feelings.”
“I didn’t think you had any.”
“Certainly there are many revelations happening today.”
Kaveh kicks water at Alhaitham. “Freak. You talk so weird for a kid. You know, I’m glad it was me finding you today. You spend a lot of time chasing me.”
“I don’t chase you. I always know where you are because I can read your mind,” Alhaitham reminds him patiently.
“Fuck off, man. Anyway, I thought it was weird for a while, but I guess I understand. Can’t have the panic button panic too hard. Would you be friends with me if I couldn’t kill everyone in the city?”
Alhaitham shrugs. “We’re not friends. We’re coworkers.”
“Coworkers who touch dicks.”
“Coworkers doesn’t mean we don’t do that. I’m not sure why you felt the need to specify.”
“When I die, it’ll be your fault.”
“Many people’s deaths are my fault.”
“Does that make you feel bad?”
“I am not sure.”
Today is Alhaitham’s eighteenth birthday and instead of celebrating, he drags Kaveh out to a meeting with a buyer in Caravan Ribat. Ever since Kaveh turned up at Alhaitham’s apartment after his assignment with Collei a few months ago, he’s been melancholy, so Alhaitham hopes that the brief illusion of a sense of purpose will cheer him up.
“I could be at home right now,” Kaveh whines as they wait. “Nothing ever happens to you. I don’t need to be here. The eremites never cause us any trouble. This is a bad way to spend your birthday. We should go to Razan Gardens. Why did you make me pack a bag, anyway? Are we going somewhere else after?"
“And you call me lazy.” Alhaitham checks his watch. “It’s not an eremite, it’s an Akademiya researcher. He wanted to meet in Caravan Ribat because he thought it would be less suspicious, I assume. He is looking into long-term abilities, the kind that lay dormant, and how to detect them.”
Kaveh blinks. “So he’s just going to talk to you.”
Alhaitham shrugs. “We are all going to have a conversation.”
“Alhaitham, you’re the worst. Now I feel like he’s going to kill us. What’s going to happen? What are you bringing me to do?”
Again Alhaitham shrugs. “You’ll know.”
“This isn’t fair,” Kaveh hisses.
As they wait, Alhaitham reads. Kaveh reads over his shoulder. He hates all the books that Alhaitham reads, but he keeps doing this anyway. They read at the same speed, or so Kaveh claims, so it isn’t a bother, and like this, Kaveh gets to press their skin together so he can feel A Discourse on Light. It makes everything else be quiet, Kaveh said once. I only hate it sometimes, so that’s not too bad.
The researcher’s name is Sachin. He walks in ten minutes late and stops when he sees Kaveh.
“Is this… What is this? You’re Alhaitham, right?” Sachin demands. “Why did you—?” His eyes dance back and forth between Kaveh and Alhaitham. “Why did you bring him here?”
Kaveh looks up at Sachin with a frown. “Do I know you?”
“I would like to introduce you two,” Alhaitham announces, standing. “Sachin, this is Kaveh. You travelled with his father ten years ago. I can see that the photos he showed you of his beloved son stuck with you after you killed him. Kaveh, this is Sachin. You should ask him about the ability he used on your father.”
“You…” Kaveh trails off. Looks at Alhaitham. “Alhaitham, what is this?”
“Next year, you should be the one giving me a gift on my birthday, not the other way around,” Alhaitham suggests helpfully.
“What’s the gift?” Kaveh asks, still staring. Sachin doesn’t dare speak.
“He’ll take on your debt,” Alhaitham explains.
“Excuse me?” Sachin asks. “I came here to speak to you about the—”
“Or he’ll die,” Alhaitham goes on. “Along with his wife and children.”
“But Sangemah Bay,” Kaveh cuts in. “That’s not how any of this works, Alhaitham.”
Sachin opens his mouth to speak, but Alhaitham cuts him off. “You should also ask Sachin about the four other researchers that Sachin travelled with ten years ago who mysteriously perished in the following half-decade.”
“Alhaitham—”
“And then,” Alhaitham says finally, “you should ask him about who, exactly, funded that research.”
Sachin rears back, but the door behind him is locked and his ability isn’t useful for combat. Kaveh only stares. “What do you mean? Alhaitham, what does that mean? It was her—Sangemah Bay? But they won’t let me go. It’s like you said. The—the panic button.”
Alhaitham shrugs. “They control you because they have me. So they will not have me.”
“What?” Kaveh asks. “That’s stupid. Don’t say things like that. You were supposed to be—”
“We can pretend to be students in Liyue next time.” Alhaitham nods. “Or wherever. But not Mondstadt. I hate it there.”
“As long as we step on one more corpse, though,” Kaveh hisses. Alhaitham realizes suddenly that Sachin is quiet, but when he looks over, Sachin is frozen under the weight of In Bitterness of Soul despite Kaveh’s words.
“I only have you, so if we leave together, there’s nothing they can do to me.” Alhaitham sighs. “Let’s all hurry up. If we’re going to leave through Aaru Village, it has to be soon.”
“Alhaitham, this is insane,” Kaveh says. Sachin isn’t struggling anymore. His voice grows unsteady. “This is just another person whose life is in my hands. Do you think I want that?”
“I assumed that the answer was yes since you haven’t jumped off a very high ledge yet.” Alhaitham watches as Sachin falls to the ground with a thud. “I see it doesn’t matter all that much to you after all.”
Kaveh doesn’t look away from the body either. “Well. I heard there’s a nice law school in Liyue.”
“I think you should hang upside down from the Jade Chamber.”
“Is that what you’ve been thinking about? How cute.”
“You didn’t even tell me happy birthday. I’m a legal adult now. We’re leaving the nest and everything.”
“It’s just like moving off to school,” Kaveh sighs. The body on the ground twitches. “I need a drink.”
“Get one in Aaru Village, then.”
“Fine.”
“Fine.”