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"Shh! You'll wake him up!”
“He has to wake up. We have work to do.”
“But he’s…. More… Alhaitham when he wakes up.”
“Calling him by his name doesn’t give it any extra meaning, Kaveh.”
As life often did for Alhaitham, it started with that telltale blaring of the sirens. It used to reverberate in his ears when he first joined paramedicine, though eventually turned into occupational background noise. With the station housing both the ambulance and the firetruck, there was always someone up and about.
This time, it was even worse than a beckoning emergency. He knew that irritating voice anywhere; it was Kaveh.
“You know, it defeats the purpose of whispering when you do so at the same volume as normal talk.”
Both heads spun around to Alhaitham’s bed, Kaveh with defeat and Cyno with his typical flat look.
“We have joint training to do. You slept in.”
The city of Sumeru was almost nocturnal due to its unique nightlife. Not only did it create a flourishing economy, but it did wonders to bother Alhaitham’s rest between bouts of study and sensible sleep hours. If he could be bothered opening his mouth and talking, he’d point out that he wasn’t sleeping in, but rather catching up on the rest he didn’t get overnight.
No rest for the wicked, or the overworked and underpaid emergency services.
“You know,” Kaveh began, his thick steel-capped boots clicking against the floorboards. “You really should start going to sleep a little earlier. Maybe then you’d find it easier to wake up in the mornings.”
If Alhaitham were any less of a decent guy, he’d likely throttle his former roommate.
He barely got the chance to check the time before the emergency doors flew up and alarms started blaring. The station doors flew open for the trucks, and the sudden movement made an unobservant student outside drop her notebook.
—--
The apartment complex was deemed structurally unsound even before the moron charged his way up there.
Even with Cyno ordering him to “get out of there, now”, Kaveh could be heard with his usual prattling and nonsensical bumbling
“I can do it,” he calls out through the intercoms. “She’s here somewhere, I can hear the scratching.”
Typical.
The rest of the crew had assembled back at the truck. Nilou nervously fiddled with her hands as she watched, while Collei fussed over a cut Dehya had somehow gotten on her arm. Cyno’s white knuckled grip on his radio was only ever really brought out by Kaveh’s idiocy in times like these.
The smoke continued to gather, to swarm like tendrils and curl into the sky from the building.
“Get out, now. Your life matters more than a cat. That’s an order.”
Although, Kaveh had always been a little slow in situations like that. Alhaitham recalled the years they lived together, the five agonizing years of that selfless idiocy that left nothing but lint and sandwich crumbs at the bottom of Kaveh’s wallet.
Alhaitham had never understood the way Kaveh’s mind worked, not when he begged to move in, and not when he slammed the door on his way out. Not that he could work out why, but Alhaitham’s mind liked to replay that last argument like a broken record.
“You really don’t care at all, do you? Not about me, not about anything else outside of your own small world.”
It really didn’t mean anything to him, Kaveh said it with intent to hurt in the heat of a particularly rough argument, and there was a low chance that he actually meant what he said. Yet, it stuck.
Alhaitham wasn’t a moron like his roommate. Based on the rate the fire was progressing, the lack of movement from the fire officers and the increasingly frustrated panic on Cyno’s face, he knew that the building wouldn’t be standing for much longer.
Kaveh had gotten himself into a situation he clearly couldn’t get himself out of.
“Hey, where are you going?”
He didn’t reply to Tighnari’s question at first, instead riffling through the fire truck’s stock of facemasks and shrugging the oxygen tank over his back.
“Alhaitham, entering the building will be an obstruction of justice and the direct orders from two superior officers,” Tighnari sighed, more defeated than stern.
When Alhaitham put the PPE on and began running toward the building, Tighnari could only watch him go.
And when Alhaitham entered the building, all he could do was keep moving, lest his own mind catch up.
—-
The march of time lingered in the forefront of his mind, surfacing in brief, suffocating moments. Sometimes, it raced ahead, catching him off guard and leaving him stumbling for balance.
Other times, it crawled slow enough for a layer of dust to settle.
The entranceway to the apartment complex was a poorly painted shade of off-white, but the walls had since been coated with a thick ash and smokey tint. That was the moment that felt like hours, the one where he realized that Kaveh could already be dead before he even gets inside.
One second passed.
His lungs prepared to inhale a large plume of smoke that barreled towards him, but ended up grateful for the oxygen mask wrapped around his face. It was getting thicker from the darkening look, likely reaching the more important structural beams of the building.
Two seconds passed.
Alhaitham’s grip on the axe betrayed his clammy palms. His legs were moving, following where he last saw his college roommate to be. Though his mind was clear, his intentions were not. All he could do was follow the spot where he saw Kaveh last, and wave the smoke away from his vision. Yet somehow, the watch on his wrist ticked on.
Three seconds passed.
Kaveh wasn’t exactly a small and easy-to-blend-in man, particularly not with his bright yellow PPE and tall stature. He was easy to spot in a crowd, but apparently, not a burning building. That slight nagging worry began to sink into something tighter, fear.
“Kaveh, call out!”
His voice sounded quiet against the roar of flames and groans of protest from the fraying floorboards, and he could hear intermittent crashes from different parts of the floors and ceilings caving in. Yet still, he continued searching, shouting.
Four seconds passed.
Five seconds passed.
He had to be here somewhere. It wasn’t a big house, and he wasn’t a small man.
“Alhaitham, what are you doing here!?”
Ah, there he was. That fool.
There was a fleeting moment of relief, of realizing the reason it was he braved the fire to find Kaveh, which didn’t last more than a few seconds. Alhaitham brushed more of the embers off his jacket and gave Kaveh an incredulous look through his mask.
“Are you stupid,” was all Alhaitham could say, absolutely baffled at Kaveh’s reaction. “This building is about to collapse, you’re risking your life to find some stranger’s cat, and you’re asking why I’m here? I thought you were- never mind.”
“Hey! I’m very much alive, and Sugar is too,” Kaveh interjected, the cat hiding in his PPE jacket meowing in approval. “I’m just looking for that lady’s cellphone, she said it was still in here somewhere…”
Somehow, Alhaitham’s frustration was bubbling hotter than the fire that roared around them.
“This is a drug house. You’re a firefighter, you know full well what’ll happen when flammable materials meet out-of-control fire.”
“Okay, when you put it like that…”
As if on a deadly cue, the floorboards that had been beneath them seconds ago splintered and dropped away. The house was collapsing fast, and they only likely had seconds to get out of there.
“Haitham!”
Six seconds passed.
Kaveh grabbed onto Alhaitham’s arm, yanking his body out of the way of the crumbling ceiling. There was no gentleness to his desperation, no more of his misplaced priorities. His grip was like iron, his fear was real, and all Alhaitham could see was the Kaveh he knew, the one he’d always known.
That stubborn bastard.
Seven seconds passed.
The ceiling was getting worse. The smaller beams turned into larger chunks of plaster and wood, and their running slowed down to a frantic series of careful dodges around the debris.
Kaveh yelped in pain, crashing to the ground underneath a slab of plaster and burning wood atop of him.
They weren’t going to make it.
“Haitham! Get out!”
Kaveh’s voice was frantic, not even bothering to lift the too-heavy pile that had him trapped. He knew that Alhaitham had a chance, and that self sacrificial idiot was always looking at ways to be the hero.
The ash-haired man paused, looking at the light that spilled out from the smoke. The exit looked around 20 paces ahead.
“Please just go, it’s my fault y-”
“No.” Alhaitham’s voice even surprised himself with how uncharacteristically forceful it was. “Not without you.”
Eight seconds passed.
Looking death in the eye, there was only one thing he could do.
He grabbed onto Kaveh’s hand and held on tight.
Nine seconds passed.
Ten seconds passed.
The house collapsed.
—-
Alhaitham remembers why he chose paramedicine over firefighting.
The whole ‘rest and recovery’ after injuries really weren’t much his thing. The hospital sheets were itchy and overstimulating, the ‘beep beep beep’ of the monitors every second of every day was beginning to dig like needles into his brain.
Tighnari was there when he woke, not bothering with pleasantries like flowers and chocolates. He knew Alhaitham would hate them. Instead, he brought uno.
Apparently they should’ve very much died, Sugar the cat included. The building came down in such a way that even the structural beams were reduced to a pile of dust. Yet, somehow, the three of them all got out with their lives and limbs, plus some minor concussions and internal bleeds along the way.
“Why’d you do it,” Alhaitham breaks the silence, his voice still dry and raspy. “Let me go in there, I mean. You knew you’d get in trouble for it, so why?”
Tighnari huffs out a laugh, placing down a plus two card.
“You’re saying you would’ve stopped if I asked you to?”
No reply.
He wordlessly picked up his cards.
“That’s why. For people who bicker like an old married couple, you sure do care about each other. That wasn’t a medic on duty.”
“What’re you implying it was?”
“You’re smart enough, I’m sure you’ll figure it out soon enough. Or not.”
He couldn’t be bothered responding to that one. Instead, he continued the game with an unsatisfied grumble.
—-
The station was oddly quiet when Alhaitham and Kaveh were discharged from the hospital. Normally there was some sort of debate, board game, training, outlandish theory testing– though the silence walking into the station was atypical.
He locked eyes with Kaveh for a fleeting moment, before the blond turned his back and went the other direction.
Although the others were quick to fill that silence Kaveh was leaving, the confusion never did leave Alhaitham’s mind. The firetrucks went out to a call, then Cyno, Kaveh, Dehya and Nilou all came back covered in sticks, leaves, dirt and scrapes of all sizes.
Collei had already started looking over Dehya, Tighnari insisted on looking after Cyno, Nilou was in the office working on the paperwork.
Kaveh, of course, wanted nothing to do with Alhaitham.
“Kaveh,” he called out to the retreating figure, jogging towards the hallway he’d gone down. “You have scratches that need cleaning, stop being stubborn.”
Kaveh spun around at that, red faced anger ready to blow. He was furious and for once, Alhaitham had no idea why.
“You do not get to call me stubborn.” Kaveh snapped, eyes locking onto Alhaitham’s.
Two paces forward, and Alhaitham felt the cold wall press against his back. Kaveh stood mere centimeters in front of him.
“I think I do, actually. See those burns on your arm? Or did you get one too many to the head.”
It didn’t appear that Kaveh cared to listen. Instead, he took hold of Alhaitham’s collar and pressed him firmly against the wall. All in all, Alhaitham knew Kaveh well enough to know he wouldn’t actually hurt him, so he made no effort to get away.
“You weren’t supposed to be there, Alhaitham. You were supposed to be back at the truck, and you were supposed to listen to orders. You could have died in there, do you realize that!?”
Alhaitham couldn’t help but roll his eyes.
“And who are you, Superman? I don’t think you’d exactly enjoy being crushed to death by an entire house-”
“I don’t…”
For once, the blond looked lost for words. He took a breath, loosened his grip, and let a shakier breath back out.
“I don’t care about me. I care about you. Just shut up and let me be angry.”
What on earth was Alhaitham supposed to say to that in response?
Instead, he took hold of the arm Kaveh had on him, pulled him through the door of the cleaning supplies, and met his lips in a bruising kiss.
It wasn’t soft and warm, nor was it deep and passionate like the biweekly soap operas he often saw Kaveh watching. Kaveh kissed like he draws, full of passion, precision and with his soul laid bare. He was quick to reciprocate, hands grabbing tightly onto Alhaitham’s hair and keeping him rooted there.
They pull back for air, hair messy and lips kiss-swollen.
“I was thinking of meat stew for dinner…”
“Yeah, sounds good.”