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The courtyard after dusk keeps secrets better than any person. Lanterns along the eaves flicker as if unsure whether to live or die, and the blossom tree in the center holds its breath—boughs heavy, petals unwilling. The stones are still warm from the day, but the wind that moves between columns has the thin edge of a blade. It cuts through silk. It carries away noise.
When Alhaitham steps through the gate, the world is already quieter than it should be.
The argument in the Hall had ended badly: quills raised like spears, ledgers used as shields, the sort of righteousness that grows loud because it is afraid. Alhaitham had left before the last voice finished posturing. He does not enjoy the spectacle of people saying what they do not mean. Besides, Alhaitham knew where he would be if he wasn’t still standing there bleeding his convictions into the floor.
The blossom tree is a habit of his. He once said that beauty needs witnesses, otherwise it wastes itself. Alhaitham had told him that beauty has no need for witnesses; it simply is. He said then, Alhaitham was unromantic. Alhaitham had said romance wasn’t a requirement for truth. He laughed and did not give up the argument for three days.
He is beneath the tree now, sitting as if someone removed the bones from his body and left only stubbornness to hold him together. Petals have collected at his shoulder like snow that refuses to melt. Light drapes over him; it makes the pallor sweet, which is not a kindness.
“Kaveh.” His name leaves Alhaitham’s mouth quieter than intended, as if the night has trained his voice.
Kaveh lifts his head. He always looks surprised to see Alhaitham, which is absurd; the most reliable forecast in Sumeru is that Kaveh will overextend, and Alhaitham will arrive exactly when he is about to fall. “Ah… it’s you, Alhaitham,” he says, the syllables soft, like he is speaking through a silk screen. He tries to smile and almost succeeds. “You didn’t have to come.”
“That has never stopped me.” Alhaitham crosses the stones. Kaveh’s eyes follow his steps with stubborn clarity that makes Alhaitham’s throat feel tight. Kaveh’s hands are trembling, not from fear but from depletion. Close up, Alhaitham could see where Kaveh scraped his palm, where ink had run along lifelines, staining them with the day’s argument.
“I thought-” Kaveh inhales. The breath catches. “I thought it was worth saying. Even if they wouldn’t listen.”
“You always think it’s worth saying,” Alhaitham answers as his knee touches stone. The chill climbs through the cloth into his skin. Alhaitham studies Kaveh as he would a line of text he intends to memorise. “Did you eat anything?”
Kaveh blinks as if Alhaitham had asked whether he remembers his own name. “There was no time.”
“There is always time.” Alhaitham takes his wrist, counting the beat out of habit; it trips against his fingers, fast and thin. Kaveh's skin is cool. The petal on his shoulder rides the lift and falls as he breathes. “You’ve overdone it.”
“It’s only-” Kaveh searches for the word, fails, and his mouth twists at his own body’s betrayal. “-‘m a little tired.”
“You are terrible at lying.” Alhaitham presses his thumb against the pulse point once more to be certain. “Up.”
Kaveh tries. The effort drains his face of colour, and the world swims for him. Alhaitham sees the moment fear crosses his features. Not fear of pain, but fear of being a burden. Alhaitham does not allow it time to settle. He slips an arm beneath Kaveh’s knees and another around his back. He weighs less than his opinions. He makes a small, embarrassed sound low in his throat that tries to protest and fails.
“A-Alhaitham, put me down. I can walk.”
“You can argue. That is not the same as walking.” Alhaitham rises. The motion shifts the night. Petals loosen themselves from the tree and spiral around his elbows, as if the air itself has decided to show respect. Kaveh’s hand, startled, clutches at Alhaitham’s collar; the warmth of his fingers blooms through cloth. He could feel the shape of Kaveh’s breath against his neck: quick at first, then lengthening, as if the body remembers health by imitating the pace of the one who carries it.
Kaveh tries again, “…someone will see.”
“Let them,” Alhaitham says. “They already see what they want to see.”
The courtyard acquires distance with every step. Stone gives way to wood; wood gives way to the hush of corridor matting. Shadows adjust themselves to allow passage. It is not heavy to carry Kaveh. Whatever weight there is belongs to the day—spilled words and sharpened looks and a kindness that refuses to call itself by any other name.
Kaveh's head leans, finally, against Alhaitham’s shoulder. This is not surrender; Kaveh does not surrender. It is trust, which is more frightening. The shape of his cheek fits the hollow between collarbone and muscle with the inevitability of repetition. Alhaitham thinks, not for the first time, that the body is capable of learning what the mouth refuses to admit. Habit is truth rendered into motion.
“You shouldn’t have argued alone,” he says. It is neither reprimand nor comfort. It is simply accurate.
Kaveh makes a quiet noise. It could be amusement. “Well… you don’t agree with me.”
“I don’t agree with your proportions,” Alhaitham simply answers. “You measure hearts so precisely you forget to count the cost to your own.”
“That sounds like something you think often,” Kaveh murmurs, half-asleep honesty loosening the laces of his sentences. “I know you do. You look at me and… how do I put it—‘sigh in a rational manner’.”
“Impossible. Sighing is emotional waste.”
“Mm.” The sound is drowsy. “Then you only pretend not to sigh.”
They pass the small turning where courtyards divide like thought branching into thesis and antithesis. The moon chooses the left path and spills itself in sheets over the walkway. It paints their shadows long, overlapping; it is an unasked question and an answer unneeded.
“Did they… listen at all?” Kaveh asks after a time, voice fraying thinner.
“They heard you,” Alhaitham says. “Listening may take longer.” He shifts Kaveh a little higher. He is warmer now, which means the body has remembered itself. “I will make them read the figures. No one escapes arithmetic.”
Kaveh laughs. Soft, breathy, grateful, too tired to lace the gratitude in thorns. His fingers unclench from Alhaitham’s collar and spread instead over the fabric at his chest, as if mapping steady ground. “You’ll do it your way,” he says.
“Of course.” Alhaitham glances down. The evening has made him fragile the way a clear glass is fragile: a thing made to hold light that can nonetheless break when pressed wrong. “And you’ll do it your way. Then we will meet exactly in the middle where the result is correct.”
“Then we… are on the same side.”
“We have always been.”
Silence takes the lead again. The air cools in thin, careful degrees. Somewhere beyond the walls a bell turns once and decides against ringing. Alhaitham feels Kaveh’s breath lengthen further, falling into the simple logic of sleep. Then, as if the body cannot help one last attempt, his mouth searches: “It would be easier,” he says, barely louder than the cloth moving between them, “if I didn’t care so much.”
The sentence lands as softly as a petal and cuts like the same petal pressed against the pad of a finger until it bleeds. Alhaitham imagines answering that ease is overvalued; that caring is the only reliable engine of civilisation; that Kaveh is necessary exactly as he is. He imagines telling Kaveh the truth, which is that he terrifies Alhaitham a little, because he reminds him that calculation without a heartbeat is only a machine. But Kaveh is too close, and the night is listening, and they do not offer grand speeches to those who are already paying too much.
So Alhaitham settles with, “Don’t try to change what is correct.”
Kaveh hums. It is an assent or a refusal; with Kaveh, it can be both at once. His eyelashes lay soft shadows upon his cheeks. The tips of his hair tickle my jaw when the walkway takes a turn.
They reach the threshold.
***Cue “Trace of Grace”***
The door is half-closed, as if the room expects them and is shy about it. Alhaitham adjusts his hold. Kaveh stirs, pulled briefly back to the lip of waking by the shift in balance. His eyes open, clear despite exhaustion, the colour of amber caught in snowmelt. For a breath they look at each other, and there is no debate, no old grievance worn into comfortable shape. There is only a question neither of them will ask: Will you keep carrying me? There is only an answer neither of them will say: As long as you refuse to put yourself down.
“Alhaitham,” Kaveh whispers, and Alhaitham does not know what Kaveh intends after his name; Alhaitham only knows the syllables feel as if they were made to end in the space between us.
“Mm?”
Kaveh seems to forget. He smiles instead. It is the smallest thing, fragile as the sheen on fresh ink.
Alhaitham tilts his head forward. A petal has stuck in his hair, pretending to be a jewel. He removes it with his free hand and does not let the hand linger. Restraint is a religion and Alhaitham practices it devoutly. Still, his knuckles brushes Kaveh’s temple. The warmth there startles him every time, as if he keeps a quiet fire behind the skin, banked but inexhaustible.
“Sleep,” Alhaitham whispers softly.
Kaveh does.
Inside, the room drinks them without complaint. Alhaitham knows where everything is. The couch by the lattice window; the folded quilt he claims is too plain; the set of sketches scattered like the wreckage after a small, polite storm. He lays Kaveh down. The wood beneath the couch creaks once, a courteous bow. When he steps away, Kaveh’s hand follows instinct; it tightens in the air until it finds nothing and relaxes only when the quilt covers him from shoulder to ankle. He always leaves his ankles out. Kaveh had said it is artistic. Alhaitham tucks them in anyway.
A draft runs its careful finger along the floorboards. Alhaitham closes the window’s lower panel and leaves the upper open; the moon demands admission and has earned it. The light cuts a neat rectangle across the rug and climbs the far wall, where it stops as if aware lines should be respected.
On the table, the day’s fight has shed its disguise. The drawings are furious and beautiful: a public hall that lets in wind and people in equal measure; a façade that chooses openness over intimidation. His notes accuse the margin numbers of lacking soul. The numbers reply by balancing columns until even his exclamation marks cannot budge them. Alhaitham gathers the papers, aligns their edges, and slides them into a neat stack. There is no argument in the gesture. Alhaitham will revisit them tomorrow, when morning removes the night’s poetry and leaves only calculus. Kaveh will complain that Alhaitham had stripped his work of feeling. Then he will read Alhaitham’s corrections and claim them as his own. On paper they are enemies. But there is only one name, at the end.
Behind him, Kaveh turns in his sleep, chased by a dream that will not catch him. Alhaitham returns to the bedside. Kaveh’s fringe had fallen over his eyes. Don’t pamper him, a practical voice suggests. Alhaitham brushes it back anyway. It is not pampering; it is maintenance.
“You’re pushing yourself again,” he says softly, a diagnosis uttered to the dark.
Kaveh does not answer. He doesn’t need to. Alhaitham sits for a while, not because there is anything to guard against but because leaving would make the room feel larger than it needs to be. The night outside holds its breath again. Somewhere, a petal decides its branch is no longer sufficient and leans into falling. It lands on the sill and does not move.
There is a myth that silence means emptiness. It is wrong. Silence is the cupboard where they keep the good porcelain. They open it only when there is something precious to carry.
Kaveh takes another slow breath. Alhaitham matches it without thinking. The pace is comfortable: in for four, out for six. The body corrects itself when given a model; the heart, more stubborn, requires longer.
Alhaitham stands at last. Practicality has not lost its claim on him. He sets water to warm, measure a packet of herbs—something for exhaustion that does not taste entirely like penance. The first bubble shouldering itself to the surface sounds like the smallest applause. He pours it into a cup to let it steep, then places the cup on the table where Kaveh will see it when he wakes and accusingly ask who made him drink terrible things again. Alhaitham will then tell him it was necessary. Kaveh will then argue that necessary and kind are not the same. Alhaitham will then concede the point and hand him honey. Kaveh will then put too much. He always does.
Before Alhaitham blows out the lamp, he looks once more. The quilt, the lift of breath, the open window. The blossom tree is a pale suggestion beyond the lattice, a page left unturned.
“He never learns,” Alhaitham thinks. The thought is mild. It holds more affection than disappointment, the way a librarian holds a book gently, knowing the spine is already cracked. Then another thought rises without permission and sits beside the first as if they have always shared a chair. But then again, neither do I.
The flame thins to a bright needle, wavers, and goes. The moon takes the room in custody. Cool light folds itself over Kaveh and spares Alhaitham entirely, as if he is unnecessary to the picture. He allows indignity; the moon is an old friend of his. It can have this.
Outside, the wind stills.
The petals do not fall. They wait, stubborn as the scent that lingers after a festival, as the echo of an argument already won in the way that matters.
Alhaitham closes the door halfway, a courtesy to the night, and carries the remaining silence with him. It is not heavy. It simply occupies the exact shape of two people who will never admit aloud the most obvious fact in the room, and therefore must spend a lifetime proving it instead.