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The last thing Kaveh remembered was locking his apartment door and thinking, I’ll just grab my sketchbook from the studio downstairs.
The fever made the air feel thick, like he was walking underwater. His limbs were heavy, his heartbeat loud in his ears. He could see the hallway stretching ahead of him, a blur of gray and light. Then—nothing.
Black.
Cold tile.
Pain.
Then, beeping.
He woke up to antiseptic light, a stiff pillow, and an IV needle in his arm.
Panic hit first—Where am I?—and then confusion—How did I get here?
And then he saw him.
His neighbor. The unreadable one. The one who never said hello, who always walked with earbuds in, who once gave him a subtle but unmistakable side-eye for using glitter on a model and leaving some in the hallway.
Alhaitham.
Sitting beside his hospital bed, arms crossed, like this was all a major inconvenience.
“You’re awake,” Alhaitham said.
“You… brought me here?” Kaveh croaked.
“You fainted. In the hallway. I called the ambulance.”
Kaveh wanted to die. From embarrassment, not illness.
But that feeling changed, slowly, over the next two days.
Because Alhaitham stayed.
When he was discharged, the man even carried his bag and silently followed him into his chaos of an apartment without comment—until he did, of course.
“You live like this?” he said, deadpan.
“Organized chaos,” Kaveh replied with mock dignity, trying not to blush at the overturned coffee cups and half-dried glue bottles.
Alhaitham brought him soup. Told him to rest. Then left without asking for anything in return.
Which was… new.
Kaveh had never expected his grumpy neighbor to care. Not even a little.
He left a thank-you note under Alhaitham’s door.
Didn’t expect a reply.
But when he texted him a few days later—“I owe you lunch. Let me buy you noodles. No arguing”—he got a blunt reply: “Fine. Pick a place that doesn’t give me food poisoning.”
It was the beginning of something.
Lunches became a ritual. His week started to feel incomplete without Alhaitham’s dry humor or disapproving eyebrow raises over Kaveh’s chaotic stories.
It was strange, how easy it became.
Alhaitham rarely smiled, but when he did—just the faintest upward twitch—Kaveh felt like he’d won something impossible.
He didn’t realize he was falling until he found himself thinking about him at 2 a.m., fingers hovering over his phone, wondering if he should send a meme or a voice note or nothing at all.
And when he did see him the next day?
His heart raced like he was back in undergrad and hopeless over some guy who didn’t know he existed.
Except Alhaitham did.
Alhaitham showed up.
Alhaitham listened.
The rooftop night sealed it.
Kaveh had brought him cheap beer and a blanket. Alhaitham didn’t even grumble about the rooftop access code he always said was “a waste of security resources.”
They watched the lights together. Talked quietly.
“You care more than you let on,” Kaveh had said, glancing sideways.
Alhaitham didn’t argue.
Kaveh felt his heart thud painfully in his chest.
He wanted to say more.
But he didn’t.
Seeing Alhaitham in the hallway the next week—when Kaveh’s client had walked him to the door—felt… tense. It was the only time Kaveh had seen Alhaitham genuinely annoyed. Not his usual stoic wall, but a flicker of something sharper.
Possessive?
Kaveh hoped.
He showed up the next morning with coffee and a half-prepared speech. “That was a client,” he blurted.
Alhaitham stared. “I didn’t ask.”
“But you looked like you wanted to incinerate him with your brain.”
Silence.
Then: “You’re important to me.”
Kaveh felt exposed.
And then: “You, too,” Alhaitham said, voice quiet.
It wasn’t a confession. Not yet.
But it was something.
Rain was falling sideways the night it finally happened.
They’d missed their dinner reservation.
Kaveh’s umbrella was pathetic. His shirt was clinging to him, his sneakers soaked, and the wind had flipped his hair into a disaster. Alhaitham looked damp but otherwise unaffected, the smug bastard.
“You and your weather luck,” Alhaitham said.
“I hate everything,” Kaveh muttered, shivering.
They huddled together under a narrow awning, shoulder to shoulder.
And then something wild leapt out of Kaveh’s mouth before he could stop it: “I’ve been thinking about kissing you.”
Alhaitham didn’t blink. “So do it.”
He said it like it was obvious.
Natural.
Kaveh didn’t hesitate.
The kiss was slow, warm despite the rain, cautious and certain all at once.
It didn’t feel like fireworks. It felt like a door quietly opening.
Later, curled on Alhaitham’s couch in a borrowed hoodie, tea in hand, Kaveh stared at him through the steam.
“You sure about this?” he asked, voice softer than usual. “I’m… complicated.”
“You’re loud, impulsive, and make terrible life choices,” Alhaitham replied. “I’m still here.”
Kaveh smiled.
“So, you’re saying you love me?”
“I’m saying I plan to.”
Pause.
“...But yes. I do.”
Kaveh laughed, and then kissed him again, just because he could.