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The day had started off with good intentions - or at least, that’s what Kaveh told himself when he agreed to 'assist' Alhaitham with the Akademiya’s latest bureaucratic mess.
By noon, however - as always seemed to happen when Alhaitham was involved - Kaveh regretted every noble impulse he’d ever had. 'Assist,' apparently, meant reorganizing a century’s worth of disordered archives while Alhaitham hovered nearby like a demanding, unhelpful cat.
“You’re stacking those in the wrong order,” Alhaitham said absently as he turned a page of his book, perched peacefully at the edge of the desk instead of lifting a finger to help. “Should be chronological, not thematic.”
Kaveh shot him a glare over the edge of a large tome. “I am sorting chronologically.”
“You started with year 232 then jumped to 229.”
“That’s because 229 was misplaced!”
“Then place it correctly.”
Kaveh inhaled through his nose and imagined a world in which Alhaitham had the capacity for basic gratitude.
Still, they fell into an easy rhythm: Alhaitham reading, Kaveh stacking, the faint rustle of paper filling the silence between them - a silence that was, in truth, more comfortable than Kaveh liked to admit. Every so often, Alhaitham’s shoulder brushed his when Kaveh brought him a book written in an unfamiliar language to verify the date.
But it all unraveled when Kaveh tumbled from a ladder, knocked off balance by the weight of a swaying stack of papers. The fall was prevented - Alhaitham flickered forward and caught him with strong, steady arms - but the damage had already been done somewhere far less tangible.
Instead of asking if Kaveh was alright, Alhaitham’s only remark was, “Don’t drop those. You’re too distracted.”
Kaveh bristled. “I’m not distracted, I’m -”
“Talking too much?”
“Trying to help you, you fungus,” Kaveh corrected sharply.
“By creating more work for yourself?”
Kaveh turned on him fully, only mildly distracted by the warm palm that hadn’t yet left his waist. “By making sure you don’t spend the entire day buried alive under your own arrogance. And it’s your work anyway!”
The space between them warped as Alhaitham simply stared at him with an odd, unusually soft expression, sunlight and air bending under the gravity of their gaze. A ray of afternoon light caught on Alhaitham’s lashes and softened his features, eyes alight - not with irritation, but with familiarity.
Then, voice low and absentminded in the hush between breaths, Alhaitham muttered to himself, “I don’t know why I’m in love with you.” A faint exhale followed. “It’s profoundly inconvenient.”
Struck silent by the abrupt confession, Kaveh tried to breathe beneath the weight of the words as they compressed his lungs. “P-Pardon?” he eventually managed to stammer out.
Alhaitham went still, every line of his body locked in belated realization.
For the span of several agonizingly long moments, they regarded each other in mute surprise - a rare, genuine stillness that made Kaveh’s chest tighten with each passing second. Eyes widening, Alhaitham’s throat bobbed as if he could somehow physically reach out and drag the sentence back in.
If it had been unintentional, Alhaitham would’ve reacted with his usual flat annoyance. If it had been platonic, he’d have simply brushed it off. But this wasn’t either of those; instead, it felt like truth slipping out through a crack too deep to seal.
Alhaitham cleared his throat, stepped back, and looked away. “I - that wasn’t... forget I said that.”
“Forget?” Kaveh echoed, his voice unsteady. “You just told me that you -”
“It was a lapse in phrasing.”
“A lapse in phrasing.” Kaveh’s heart pounded. “You just confessed to being in love with me due to a lapse in phrasing?”
“I was... just speaking figuratively,” Alhaitham said stiffly, every word chosen too carefully.
Kaveh studied him - the tightness in his jaw, the faint flush creeping down his neck from beneath his headphones. The great, rational Alhaitham was panicking.
And still, Kaveh couldn’t quite breathe properly, either. His pulse felt like fire caught between his ribs, quick and chaotic.
“Then you should really choose your words more carefully, Haitham.”
“I’m aware,” Alhaitham replied tightly.
“Because,” Kaveh continued, stepping into the space Alhaitham’s retreat had left between them, “I’d hate for you to say something like that again if you didn’t mean it.”
Alhaitham searched his expression with something between frustration and fear in his eyes. “Are you being purposefully obtuse?”
For once, the silence that followed held more than friction; it shimmered with the quiet ache of possibility, outlining the fragile shape of a love Kaveh had never quite let himself believe in.
Kaveh could feel his heartbeat everywhere - in his throat, his wrists, the tremor of his breath - as he slowly lifted his palm to Alhaitham’s crossed arms, drawn by something deeper than reason.
“No,” Kaveh said softly. “Though I do agree with your sentiment.”
“... Sentiment?”
“I don’t know why I’m in love with you either. You’re right; it’s terribly inconvenient.”
For what felt like an eternity, Alhaitham just stared. Then, almost imperceptibly, a tiny, private smile ghosted across his lips - one that felt, absurdly, like grace itself.
It wasn’t a grand declaration - no dramatic music, no sweeping, rain-soaked confessions. Just two men standing too close in the dusty sunlight of the Akademiya archives, hearts colliding somewhere within the tender stillness between revelation and understanding.
“At least we’re on the same page for once,” Alhaitham breathed, voice shaking slightly.
Disbelief and joy melted into a small laugh that slipped from Kaveh’s lips. Trust Alhaitham to turn a love confession into a metaphor about books.
“Don’t get used to it,” Kaveh murmured, brushing his thumb over Alhaitham’s knuckles.
“I wouldn’t dare, senior,” Alhaitham said - too quiet to sound smug, too soft to be anything but sincere.