Chapter Text
I bet on losing dogs.
-Mitski
But I’d never have thought that I’d be the losing dog.
Kaveh lets out a shaky exhale as he feels the sharp, stinging blade graze the back of his left hand, leaving a clean line across his skin, tinted a pale pink before the red of the blood begins to slowly pool near the middle of the cut, he dabs it away on the stained black fabric of his pants with a sigh. He knows he went too far this time. This one’s probably going to leave a scar.
With a soft ring, Kaveh's Akasha Terminal, which lay discarded in a heap alongside the remainder of his meek belongings, lit up with a pale sage green glow- alerting him that he's getting a notification.
He sighed shallowly, placing the blade down on the pavement and placing the thin, earbud-like apparatus of the akasha in his ear. The gentle voice of the Dendro Archon speaks into his ear. Of course, it's an automated imitation of Kusanali's voice, but it calms him none the less.
"You have recieved a deposit of 20,000 Mora. Your balance is now 20,102 Mora. "
The blonde lets out a breath of relief. His client was generous this time. Tonight, he wouldn't have to choose between a bottle of wine and a hot meal. Perhaps, he'd even have enough money for a hotel for the night.
"You have 2 message notifications, comes the soft voice once more. "Both are from Aekal- <3"
Kaveh lets out a defeated squeak, murmured softly under his breath.
Instinctively, the former architect curls up, shielding his body, his arms curled up at his chest and his knees pressed so tightly together that he could feel a dull ache beginning to settle in under his kneecaps. Tapping a scroll bar on his Akasha, he closes his eyes and begins to listen to the voice message.
"Hello there, dear Kaveh."
His back aches.
"I've missed you."
The dull stabbing in the back of the former architect's head thickens.
"You see," the deep, raspy, yet slurred voice utters through the speakers of the Akasha. "It's quite... lonely here. Without you, oh.. my bed feels so cold, and empty."
Kaveh already knows exactly where this is going, and he dreads every second of it. He tightens the grip of his arms around his chest- the sound of the voice in his ear becoming unbearable.
Yet somehow he can't bring himself to rip out the earbud. He enjoys the sensation. The thrill, the fear, the excitement. He enjoys the tender soreness that runs through his muscles, and the gnawing sensation in his bones- evidence that somebody is still there. Still willing to be with him.
The voice continues, echoing through what seems like an endless crevice inside his head.
"So, my dear, dear Kaveh. Sweet. Darling, my beautiful, gorgeous Kaveh.."
Sickeningly sweet. He hated the sweetness. It just meant the bitterness afterward would be even more potent.
"Please come over tonight. Meet me.. I know you'll make time for me, dear Kaveh. Or, maybe, if you don't.. I could come find you?"
Hidden behind the guise of tender care, came a carefully planned, well worded threat. One Kaveh had heard hundreds of times before.
Yet, his mind still wandered. Past the threat, past the hatred, and into the sweet escape that the smooth, calm voice in his ear provided.
He was beautiful.
He was cared for.
He was of value.
He was wanted.
"I'll pay you well," murmured the voice, before the recording cut off with a sharp click, leaving an empty echo in his mind- of jumbled thoughts and muddled feelings.
And it might have been in someone's bed, and maybe he might be worth nothing more than some cheap Mora, but he was wanted by someone, and in that moment, drunken on alcohol and sorrow, that was all he cared about.
_____________________________________________________________________________
The Grand Bazaar wafted with the sweet scent of Candied Ajilenakh Nuts and the tangy and scathingly potent odor of Scented Meat Balls when Kaveh finally awoke, the voices and footsteps of stray merchants selling handmade crafts, flowers, and various alchemical supplies muffled behind the flimsy fabric of the stall his sleeping body was slumped against when he finally awoke, strung together in a hazy symphony that seemed to exist solely to mock him. By the time the chimes, swinging idly in the seemingly angrily cold draft, rang 6:00 pm, he slowly rose, his back weighed down by the numb ache in his bones.
Once more, he mindlessly reaches for the bottle set down haphazardly next to him. Clutching the neck of the bulging glass bottle in his fingers, he brings it to his lips, letting his lower lip rest on the slightly cool rim of the bottle.
As the now lukewarm liquid seeps between his parted lips, a sweet yet slightly bitter taste that sinks down his throat in a soothing caress, he leans back in contentment, before curling his knees to his chest once more in a relaxed gesture. With a heavy sigh, the architect drops the bottle down onto the pavement- it clinks lightly a few times, playing a distraught melody for him, before shattering against the curb, a few tempting, crimson puddles of undrunk wine staining the wooden floor of the Grand Bazaar.
He checks his backpack to see if he has another bottle, tucking the fabric pockets back one by one, but to no avail. The architect had drunk what little had remained of his vice.
In full truth, he admitted to himself, it was probably better that he didn’t go to his meetup intoxicated. The man he was meeting was, after all, not the most trustworthy person in Teyvat, and who knew what kind of trouble he’d get himself into if he wasn’t sober.
Sure, he trusted his “client” not to do anything illegal, but it was always better safe than sorry when it came to men like him.
As Kaveh was just about to attempt standing up, his Akasha terminal rang out a weary, quiet tune. The only way he’d be able to describe the noise would be “strangled.” Partially that would be because the constantly ringing headache that tugged at his temples led to even the hum of the bustling evening crowd sounding drained, muffled, and muddy.
Speak of the devil. Another message from Aekal.
With heavy hands, he taps the button atop his earpiece to listen to the message. A series of short crackles begin the recording. Strange. Maybe he’s in a crowded place.
“...”
Then silence.
Kaveh taps the earpiece again, wedging it deeper in his ear.
Perhaps he was hallucinating it?
After a few more seconds of sitting and waiting, he hears a familiar, deep male voice in the distance. The voice of Aekal rings through the speaker.
“Useless whore!”
Kaveh flinches. Him? He didn’t even do anything…
His inner question was answered moments later when he heard a second voice- a soft, timid, male voice in the background letting out a choked whimper, almost a sob. Suddenly, the sob was muffled. Almost instantly.
It reminds him of how he used to be, and those memories hurt him desperately, pressing against the corners of his mind, pressuring his brain.
A young, newly homeless former architect wandering the streets. When told he could live rent free with a rich man, he couldn’t resist the offer.
Yet, free cheese is somehow always in a mousetrap.
The offer came with a price that would plague him for what is now 4 years. Every night, he’d give this rich man “favors,” in exchange for sleeping in a safe home, with food and water. Soon, though, “every night” shifted to twice a day, then…
to every moment Aekal wanted.
Kaveh was purely at the mercy of this man,
He’d tried to escape, to deny… to refuse.. He tried to say no. But that…
he didn’t want to remember any more.
“Shut the fuck up! You useless goddamn slut… good for nothing..” the voice comes through the speaker again, shaking the former architect out of his crushing daze of memories and back into the present.
Then, he hears the sound of plates smashing, presumably against a wall or floor, and a desperate cry coming from the soft, unknown voice.
It was a choked out cry, better described as a plea-yet there was nobody there for the voice to be speaking to, except for.. Aekal..
He hears the noise of another plate smash, now a more dull and angry noise rather than a theatrical and loud one, and a fearful, desperate sob.
Then the recording falls silent.
Kaveh pauses for a moment, trying to comprehend the recording that he’d just been sent. Why… was this a threat? No, Aekal would never threaten him… he’d… he cared about him, right?
The echoing, gnashing noise of the plates breaking continued to echo through his head for a few moments- overriding any other thoughts he could have had in the moment.
Yet, it wasn’t exactly the plates that he worried for, but the young man on the receiving end of Aekal’s newfound violence. What did that poor thing have to go through? All for what, to fulfill Aekal’s perverted needs..?
Am I not enough? Did he find someone else….
Oh, Dendro Archon.. Let me be enough…..
The soft voice on the other end of the Akasha sounded so gentle, fragile, and hurt.
“Aekal never did that to me..” Kaveh murmured under his breath, letting his runaway logic spill from his lips in the same absent way a sleepy poet would speak his poetry in the middle of the night. He wondered, would his client ever get worse? Past trashy words and into physical violence..?
He feared for the young man on the other side of the Akasha terminal, but above all- he feared for himself, for if Aekal ever became that way to him…
It’s not like he’d be able to escape…
Instinctively, his hand snakes over the straps of his backpack in hopes of pulling out another of his precious bottles of wine to keep the thoughts at bay. Yet, despite knowing that nothing would be there, the disappointment he felt was immeasurable when no cold, heavy bottle fit itself into his grasp.
Thankfully, the wine he’d had earlier hadn’t hazed his mind enough to forget the generous deposit of Mora that had made its way into his bank account a mere seven or so hours earlier. He hated the life he lived, but at least it brought good money. Enough to buy a couple more bottles from Lambad’s. Maybe even treat himself to the imported Dandelion wine from Mondstadt that one of those Mondstadtian tourists had recommended he try.. That would hold him off for a day or two- depending on how harsh the world chose to be with him tonight.
For once, he thinks about fighting the dependency. The rational part of him tells him to save money- to break out of this cycle, save it, rent a place, buy food- not spend it on a foolish vice that drains his wallet and what little is left of his mental health, leaving him vulnerable and hopeless, sleeping on the streets, and reinvesting every last Mora he has left into a bottle that’ll never give a payoff.
You’re so goddamn weak…
Yet, his body screams louder. The aching desire to be free, his trembling hands. He needs to do something to rid himself of the craving, and the only thing he’s able to do is submit and find comfort at the bottom of a bottle.
Forfeiting, and with a deep, laboured breath, Kaveh stands, resting his sweaty palms at his sides, subconsciously pressing his elbows into his waist to conceal the curve of his waist. Other than a slight dizzy and absent sensation in his head and a sour aftertaste in the back of his threat, the alcohol’s effect has pretty much worn off, leaving him with the continuous and exponentially increasing desire for more.
He bends down, to grab the now empty backpack, kneeling slightly and bending his back down. He flinches involuntarily. The face of his client bears into his memory- he can almost feel the large, possessive hands grabbing hold of him, pushing his shoulders into the ground, and leaving him helpless from anything that would be done to him.
“Stop that.. Stop that.. He’s not even here.. Why would he be here..?” he murmurs to himself. “You chose this pathetic life for yourself- you have no damn right to complain.”
His words for himself were harsh, he knew, but the truth, the reality, was right there, shining blindingly in his face. That he had chosen this life. That he chose to be dependent on drink….
And all he could think about as he walked numbly to the tavern, his backpack slung carelessly across his shoulder, bouncing against his shoulderblades, were Aekal’s words and harsh shouts.
“Nothing but a worthless slut, are you?”
“Just a little fucktoy.”
“Useless whore.”
“Disgusting.”
“Used up.”
Yet, he still did it anyway. He loved the pain, for no matter how much pain he endured, there was always love behind it, right?
There was love behind it.
He was loved.
His ever-intoxicated mind could never be able to comprehend otherwise.
______________________________________________________________________________
By the time his shaky legs had carried him to the tavern, he felt slightly more tired, and the itch for drink was beginning to settle from the corners of his mind into the bottoms of his bones, weighing him down and making every motion difficult to complete. The only thing driving his shaky legs towards the tavern was the ever-inviting thought of a cold bottle of Lambad’s signature snake wine flowing through his bitten lips and drowning his soul in bitter, biting liquid once more.. The mid-evening rush was about to take over the tavern, the queue of relaxing Eremites and tired Akademiya students lengthening with every blink of his weary eyes.
On other occasions, he’d just hold back the craving, plant himself in line, and wait for a spot at a table in the back, where he could just drink until he inevitably blacked out, leant up against the wall or a table, nooked in the corner of the second floor, where he could spend hours sipping on glasses of wine and drawing odd doodles and shapes on the backs of his hands over the scars that had accumulated there over the years.
On several occasions, the feeling of dark blue or black ink settling inside the fresh knife marks stung him just enough to keep him conscious. On others, not even the squeezing, angry sensation of digging the toothpicks that were strewn across the table into his deepening, unhealed scars was enough to hold onto the pitiful reality that people choose to call consciousness.
Tonight, though, he was already running late, and the need for just one more sip was now flooding his once rational mind.
Ignoring the sharp looks and threatening words from the waiting Eremites and the meek, yet judgemental glances from the scholars, he stepped around the line crowding around Qishan and walked into the tavern. Slowly, the sensation of the patterned wood tavern floors under his feet soothed him, focusing on the hollow noise of the wood instead of the overwhelming cacophony of conversation flooding his head.
He stood there anxiously for a moment, staring at the tavern owner with hazy, desperate eyes- pleading for another bottle and holding out a handful of mora with shaking, scarred, and discolored hands.
A thick sigh could be heard from Lambad. The man was, despite being a retired sailor with the ability to curse with the true spirit of one, a kind soul, and one who on many occasions looked after poor Kaveh when the man stumbled up the stairs with a bottle in hand, and couldn’t in good conscience allow Kaveh to drink any more. For he was a tavern owner, not a medic, and had no way of treating the poor blonde if he, as he often did, meet up with his old acquaintance, alcohol poisoning.
With an apologetic yet stern look, he stiffly shook his head, his deep brown eyes staring at the former architect with an expression full of pity.
Kaveh hated when people pitied him.
The shine in the eyes of those that pitied him was always revolting to him. It was as if they were judging him, judging his situation, and worst of all, seeing right through him.
Kaveh hated the fact that he wasn’t strong enough to escape the prison that he’d been put in by those wretched Archons and their spinning wheels of fate, but what he hated hundreds of times more was when others recognized that this was the truth.
With a displeased expression on his face, his cheeks ridden with visibly strained and broken vein marks and the skin beneath his eyes drooping, seemingly seeping down his cheeks, he turns away from Lambad without a second reaction, letting his legs carry him up the creaking stairs and past the flocks of tavern-goers, cheerfully laughing and clinking wine glasses with each other.
He was now close enough to his usual seat in the tavern that he could see the small blot of red on the wooden table from when the blood from an unusually bad night seeped onto the unlaminated wood of the table. Yet, just as he was about to sit on the formerly green cushion of the bench- now a sickly brown from years of use and stained in places with murky red wine, spilled from a drunkard’s glass, pressed up against the wall, he heard a voice he recognized.
It was a deeper, more level version of a voice he once knew- but still joyful, lively, and… happy.
He hadn’t heard a happy voice in a while.
“Kaveh? That you?” came the voice from behind him, a light and airy male voice.
Kaveh slowly turned, an irritated grumble escaping his lips. He seriously wasn’t in a position where he expected, or, quite frankly, even would have been alright with, being recognized, but who was he to be rude?
“Worthless human beings have no right to disobey.”
At a table a few metres away from him, sat a cheery Akademiya student, a glass of wine in hand and his beret slung messily across his mess of curly auburn hair. Upon seeing Kaveh turn around, his bandaged hand reached up to straighten his glasses, which were barely holding together with a string of polka-dotted masking tape.
“Ah! It is! Why hello there, old friend!” exclaimed the student, his eyes brightening as he jumped up and ran towards Kaveh, his wine glass tipping dangerously, drops gently splashing over its edge and onto the wood floor. Once he was standing only a few centimetres away from the former architect- so close that the latter could smell the strong scent of the tangy snake wine in the student’s glass.
Kaveh paused. He couldn’t exactly say that he was startled to see his old acquaintance in the tavern- after all, pretty much every Akademiya student rushed to the tavern the day that they found themselves of drinking age, but…
The tavern was a safe haven for him. Where he had to face neither the past, nor his future- and this man standing before him, flushed face, broken glasses and all, was the epitome of his past that he’d spent months attempting to drown, whether it be in blood or drink.
“Kaveh? You good? You gonna talk to me?” asked the student, a confused expression on his face as he cocked his head to the left and waved his hand before the former architect’s absent gaze.
“Yeah. Hey, Markus. What’s up?” Kaveh answered, a warm smile appearing on his face- one that was surprisingly genuine, raising his hand in an awkward wave. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”
The student’s eyes lit up once more at hearing Kaveh’s raspy yet cheerful tone. He reached out and playfully placed his hand on Kaveh’s shoulder.
Kaveh flinched at the touch. Thankfully, it was cold in the tavern and the assumption could easily be made that it was just a shiver.
“So long!! I haven’t seen you since we picked our majors and went our separate ways! Marine biology is incredible! I just recently managed to land myself on a trip all the way to Fontaine to study their marine creatures. Could you believe my shock when I came face to face with a real seal? The joy of it… I was so excited in fact, that I decided to write a paper on their…” the clumsy student continued, gesturing wildly.
Despite the loud enthusiasm of his former acquaintance, Kaveh found himself dissociating- watching himself smile and nod and gesticulate back as if he was a third person, an observer.
He felt like a ghost in his own body. It was as if there was a rock jamming shut the place where the swallow started, and every breath just hit against it, eroding small chunks of it and washing them down his throat, letting them gather in his stomach until he felt sick- but there was nothing that he could do about it, because the rock wasn’t real.
It was all in his head.
Everything was just in his head.
He needed to get out. He wanted to run- run far away from Markus and his stories of success, away from this tavern and its ever-tempting scent of warm snake wine, away from this city and its damned Akademiya and its damned rules and his damned past.
But he couldn’t.
As the cheerful scholar standing before him completed his story, Kaveh plastered a smile on the face he felt was kilometres away from his mind and gave a little clap with his hands, which he could barely control, in congratulations.
“So.. that’s what’s been with me. How’s it going with you? How’s architecture going? Have you started your final project yet?” buoyantly spoke the man before him, looking up with hopeful green eyes.
Kaveh froze, the fake grin still plastered on his face.
“As a matter of fact, why’re you not wearing the Akademiya uniform? Or did you not have classes today?” asked the man, blinking expectantly at Kaveh.
“I.. yeah. I didn’t have classes today,” Kaveh answered, not missing a beat, shrugging simply and flicking his wrist up to brush a stray strand of damaged blond hair off his shoulder. He hated the feeling of his hair brushing up against the skin of his shoulder and back of his neck.
He made a mental note to buy a hair clip- one that he was sure he’d definitely forget within 5 minutes.
No matter.
“Yeah. I decided to come here to kill some time,” the former architect continued.
Nothing he said was a lie. And it seemed that the scholar was buying every second of his evasion, for his former colleague was once more grinning up at him, his dimpled cheeks risen.
“Hey, listen, Markus?” Kaveh asked, a thought coming to mind.
“Yeah?” came the warm response.
“Can I have a glass of that wine?” the blonde gestured at the bottle sitting atop Markus’s now empty table, resting in a metal bowl of ice, crystalline drops of condensation outlining the rim.
“Sure! I’m always happy to share with an old friend. Matter of fact… I’ve gotta go soon. So I’ll probably have one more glass and you can have the rest of the bottle,” comes the cheerful answer from the scholar, as he removes a pocket watch from the hidden pocket in his garb and checks it, squinting at the numbers engraved into the soft metal as if they were an ancient code. “Just.. give me a moment to pour myself a glass, and I’ll bring you over the bottle.”
Kaveh gave the scholar a smile that didn’t exactly reach his eyes, before turning around and walking back to his pathetic little corner of the tavern on heavy legs.
The moment he turned his back on the scholar, his posture slumped and his eyes glazed over with a mixture of tears and blankness. He felt further away from his body than ever. His body barely even listened to his commands, driven by nothing more than a desperate want for drink. The only thing that brought him the sensation of relief he so craved was the thought of the icy bottle of snake wine promised to him- but even that felt so far away from his physical existence that it took light years for himself to be able to feel the spark of anticipation in his aching chest.
After what felt like a short hour not long enough for Kaveh to even catch his breath, the bottle of wine tapped down onto the unvarnished table with a soft clink. He looked up, first at the tinted glass of the bottle, darker slightly near the bottom of the bottle where the liquid pooled, and then into the eyes of the man whose hand the bottle had come from. The eyes that met him were green and full of light, speckled with gentle yellow marks that reflected the dim lighting of the building.
Most noticeably of all to Kaveh, those eyes were happy. Those eyes were neither bloodshot nor dry. They had neither rough scratches on their eyelids nor greyish stains across their undersides. If one could condense a flourishing field, speckled with flowers and viridescent clovers, and form it into two perfect jeweled orbs, Kaveh would fully trust that those orbs were before him in the form of his old friend’s gentle pupils that stared back at him with an odd pity, his head cocked to the side.
He took a deep, achy breath, and wrapped his fingers around the bottle. It tasted a little off in comparison to the wine he usually drank, having a slightly more bitter and oddly sour tang to it, but he could care naught. As the liquid fell down his throat in a soothing yet bitter cascade, he closed his eyes and allowed himself to get lost in the ugly, harsh noises of clanking dishes and stabbing forks of the tavern.
Perhaps one day, he’d be free.