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Alhaitham has Kaveh’s schedule memorized.
It’s not too hard. His classes usually end up being in the morning. He sometimes stays late, asking the professor questions he has, but he usually never takes more than ten minutes, and after that, he goes to the canteen to grab a snack, during which he will spend time with his friends until it’s time for his afternoon classes.
If he doesn’t have any, he tends to retreat back to his house. Probably studying more, and then in the evening he’ll come out for a walk and to grab dinner, and afterwards, he’ll spend more time with his friends and juniors, helping out where possible, and during the night, he goes to the library to study. Sometimes he falls asleep there, only to be woken up by the librarian to ask if he wants to go back home, which he does.
All in all, Kaveh does live a quiet lifestyle.
Which makes it all the more easy for Alhaitham to track him down whenever he wants.
Which definitely makes it easier to leave little gifts on Kaveh’s desk when he knows he’s feeling down, and then hide and watch Kaveh’s expression when he sees the gift. It always makes Kaveh smile happily, and that makes Alhaitham’s heart melt into a puddle.
So what if Kaveh doesn’t know who Alhaitham is at all? It’s enough that he can be the source of his happiness.
Alhaitham’s content to let things be, content to stay in the shadows and shower Kaveh with a gift or two he’ll know he enjoys, but then…
But then it happens, and Kaveh stops eating.
Alhaitham doesn’t think hate is a word he’d have for a human being. Hate is usually reserved for getting his socks wet, or when he’s in a crowd and he can’t get out, or when he doesn’t look at where he’s going while reading and ends up tripping over his own feet.
But for Kaveh’s mother, it comes close.
And it’s not like Alhaitham can’t understand the grief of losing someone you loved, having to look around and know that you’d have to go through life without them… it does hurt.
But, he finds himself thinking, as he watches Kaveh hug his mother goodbye before she boards the ship heading for Fontaine—what about Kaveh?
Who had taken care of his mother, tried to be happy for her despite all the guilt he felt? Where was the justice for Kaveh, who let his mother leave him because he thought she would be happier elsewhere? Alhaitham can’t imagine being happy somewhere that doesn’t have Kaveh in it.
For the next few days, he resolves to get Kaveh a few more gifts to cheer him up. He gifts him little stationery that he knows Kaveh will like. Drops off little snacks he knows Kaveh likes eating, and perhaps it’s because he sees Kaveh eating those that he only notices that something’s wrong after a few days.
Kaveh isn’t eating. It could possibly be lack of appetite, because he still eats the snacks Alhaitham gets for him—Kaveh just isn’t getting anything to eat if he’s by himself. It’s not that he can’t cook, either, because Alhaitham has seen him cook for both himself and his mother.
Was it that, since his mother was gone, Kaveh didn’t want to bother cooking for himself at all?
Alhaitham waits and watches, but Kaveh doesn’t get anything from the cafeteria either. When pressed, he’ll get himself a fruit drink and tell his friends that he already ate earlier or that he’s already full, despite the fact that Alhaitham can see, as the days pass, that Kaveh’s visibly losing weight. No one else seems to notice this, either, and Alhaitham’s judgement of Kaveh’s friends increases, and definitely not in a favourable way.
There’s only one way for it, Alhaitham decides, when he watches Kaveh almost faint from the lack of nutrition. He’s going to have to take matters into his own hands.
It’s quick, paltry work to get into Kaveh’s house, because he doesn’t use any locks on the windows. It’s easy work for Alhaitham to make a simple chicken soup on Kaveh’s stove for him while he’s in class, and he even manages to time it correctly so that Kaveh should be back just a few minutes after Alhaitham’s set the table and spooned out a heaping bowl of chicken soup for him to enjoy.
The lock twists in the door, and Alhaitham slips away through the window. Watches Kaveh take in the food in front of him, eyes wide and surprised, giving a cursory look around his house like he might be able to figure out who it is, and when he doesn’t, he shrugs and sits down to eat. Alhaitham smiles in victory, and starts thinking about other recipes he thinks Kaveh could like.
It becomes a habit, then. Every few days Alhaitham will cook something for Kaveh until Kaveh looks healthy and hale again, and the routine is once again settled into place when it’s broken.
By Kaveh approaching Alhaitham in the library.
Listen, he’s aware that his methods of taking care of Kaveh aren’t exactly ethical, but… Kaveh had never seemed to mind. Had he found out, somehow?
The answer seems to be no, because Kaveh makes absolutely no indication that he knows that Alhaitham is his secret admirer, but he does keep coming up to talk to him, and over time, Alhaitham finds himself initiating contact first, joining Kaveh for lunch.
At first, he only sits at the table where Kaveh is with his friends, sometimes leaving halfway through when the noise is too much for him to bear. But over time, Kaveh starts making more and more space for him, and Alhaitham, never one to turn down Kaveh’s friendship, starts engaging with him more and more, and it makes Kaveh’s other friendships slowly dwindle away because he’s giving Alhaitham so much time.
Good, Alhaitham finds himself thinking, they didn’t deserve his friendship, anyways.
That’s the new routine he settles into, even if it does make it harder for him to leave Kaveh his anonymous gifts now that he’s spent more time than ever with him, and sometimes Alhaitham finds himself skipping his own classes to make sure he can have lunch or dinner ready for Kaveh—even though Kaveh seems happy to eat out with him most of the time, he still selfishly wants Kaveh to enjoy his own cooking.
And then their thesis happens. Harsh words are said, yelled, and it all ends with a thesis torn on the floor, tears streaming down Kaveh’s face and yet he never makes any indication, any mention of his gifts when Alhaitham accuses him of never caring for himself.
Afterwards, it gets worse.
They avoid each other, but that avoidance only makes the itch grow on Alhaitham’s heart. He’d grown complacent, he thinks, after being gifted Kaveh’s time so freely, being able to stick to Kaveh wherever he went—and it only hits him then, in full force, how much he’d been reliant on Kaveh up until the point where he wasn’t allowed to rely on him anymore.
And so he turns his attention to the only thing he knows will make Kaveh happy: his secret admirer’s gifts.
The first time Alhaitham had gifted him something—a pair of earrings, a little nondescript and vague, since everyone knows he likes little trinkets—Kaveh had stared at the box for a solid few minutes with a complicated expression on his face. And then he’d sighed, but he’d also smiled, and something in Alhaitham’s heart had settled.
So he’d kept on with it.
Over the years, Alhaitham finds himself keeping tabs on Kaveh. When he starts apprenticing. When he starts making blueprints of his own—Alhaitham makes sure to record all these dates in his little journal about Kaveh for future reference. When he starts working on his magnum opus, Alhaitham makes sure to make him food more often, reminds him to keep himself fed.
And when Kaveh pushes it just a little too much, staying up too late trying to perfect his drafts, Alhaitham really can’t be blamed for putting a few sleeping pills in Kaveh’s food so that he’ll finally be forced to rest.
He’d thought that Kaveh would stop accepting his food after that, now that Alhaitham’s drugged him—it had been a necessary evil, he thinks, to try and get Kaveh to rest—but he doesn’t. Keeps eating all the meals Alhaitham’s left out for him in his house, and Alhaitham can’t decide whether he needs to be worried about Kaveh’s blind trust in his secret admirer or be thankful that it makes his job easier for him.
And then, the one time Alhaitham has to leave Sumeru for a work-related matter, he comes back and finds out that Kaveh’s sold his house.
When he hears the news, Alhaitham grips his cup so hard it cracks.
It doesn’t take him too long to find out where Kaveh is exactly, and he’s found at the tavern, chatting with Lambad—Alhaitham doesn’t know why, exactly, he’d chosen to show up in person instead of his other avenue, but… but he’s aware that he can be all kinds of irrational when it comes to Kaveh.
But Kaveh doesn’t yell at him. Doesn’t seem surprised at all, when Alhaitham takes a seat next to him and orders a drink. Only looks at Alhaitham and sighs, drawn out and weary. He looks so much older, more tired, than the last time Alhaitham saw him properly.
And then he shifts his chair closer to Alhaitham so that their thighs are pressed together, drops his head down on Alhaitham’s shoulder. It’s a weight Alhaitham hadn’t known he’d missed until the moment he got it back.
“Come live with me,” he says quietly. It’s not a question.
Kaveh sighs, and wraps his hand around Alhaitham’s wrist. “Okay,” he says, and that’s that.
As soon as Kaveh moves in, he starts renovating Alhaitham’s house. There’s a point, he thinks, that he tried to stop Kaveh, but Kaveh just looked so absolutely horrified by Alhaitham’s insistence that the wall was fine as the grey color it originally came in that Alhaitham had just given up and let Kaveh do what he wants—it’s coming out of his own funds anyways.
The fact that Alhaitham often conveniently forgets to ask Kaveh for rent or that he buys groceries for the both of them is irrelevant.
Slowly, they settle. Kaveh nags at him for everything under the sun but he also moves the furniture for Alhaitham to get the most amount of sun while he reads on the couch. He complains about Alhaitham leaving his books out everywhere and builds him a whole new bookshelf that takes up most of their living room wall. He yells at Alhaitham to make dinner even as he’s working on baking little desserts for the both of them to share over a book.
Sometime during that, they get together.
They don’t talk about it—they don’t need to. Alhaitham presses a kiss to Kaveh’s lips as he leaves for work one day and comes home to a very irate Kaveh who pushes him into the wall and makes out with him for thirty minutes before backing away, kicking Alhaitham and blaming him for making their dinner go cold, but his hand is held so very gently as Kaveh leads him to the kitchen for dinner.
Slowly but surely, the gifts from Kaveh’s “secret admirer” decrease, because most of the time, Alhaitham just hands them to Kaveh himself. Gets a few kisses for them if he’s lucky, and oftentimes, he is.
Domestic bliss, Alhaitham thinks he could call it, when he gets to kiss Kaveh’s stupid cute face and cuddle with him on the couch and monopolize his time after work. Today, Kaveh’s the one coming home late, complaining about another client yet again, and Alhaitham considers the legalities of scaring the woman into listening to Kaveh, just a little. Nothing drastic.
“UGH,” Kaveh says dramatically as he throws himself onto the couch, already worming his way into Alhaitham’s lap and staring up at him with his dramatic doe eyes that has Alhaitham folding to whatever he wants, which, in this case, is a kiss smacked onto his lips. “I miss the days when you used to make me soup. Nowadays you treat it like it’s your mortal enemy.”
Alhaitham raises an eyebrow. “I’ve never made you soup.” Not that Kaveh knows, anyways.
Kaveh frowns and stares up at him. “Yes you have?” he asks, sounding baffled, and sits up to cup his palms around Alhaitham’s cheeks. “Have you forgotten? Are you getting dementia?”
Alhaitham shakes his head. “When?”
“Back in the Akademiya, before we talked,” Kaveh says promptly, and Alhaitham’s heart damn near stops in his chest.
He knew?
“You knew?”
Kaveh stares at him.
And laughs.
Almost doubles over himself laughing, still holding Alhaitham as he patiently waits for an answer.
“Oh, Alhaitham,” he coos, “Did you really think I didn’t know, even back then? Sure, it took a while to figure out, but come on. You can’t just break into my house to cook me food and think I wouldn’t figure you out.”
“Oh,” he says, a little faintly. “Then… you…”
“Of course I was happy,” Kaveh tells him, adoring, and presses a kiss to his lips that Alhaitham happily leans into. “I was going through the toughest time of my life, and I wasn’t eating properly, and you were the only one who noticed and did something about it. I’ve always noticed you staring at me, y’know?”
He shakes his head.
“You’re so precious,” Kaveh coos, squeezing his cheeks. “So cute back then, all shy and nervous. I thought you were going to faint when I first talked to you.”
This, he can reply to. “I thought I was going to get arrested.”
Kaveh laughs, loud and boisterous and happy, and Alhaitham can’t help it—he kisses Kaveh, still giggling and pulls back only when Kaveh pokes his cheek in reproach.
“My little stalker,” he says affectionately. “Of course I knew it was you. You’ve always been the one taking care of me.”