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The six of them are gathered together, the group of them, at Alhaitham and Kaveh’s house when the conversation happens. They’d invited Dunyarzad and Nilou, both of whom had begged out in favour of helping with organizing another festival and were working overtime, and Sethos, who had unfortunately not been able to make it due to an issue at the Temple, and even the Traveller and Paimon, who were also unfortunately caught up with some business in Nod Krai that they weren’t able to get out of to come and visit.
“With the way you two are living together, you should just get married already,” Dehya chortles. She’s dressed down for the night since she’s not working, dressed in light pants and a sleeveless top that Candace coos over for the embroidery stitched onto the edges. It’s a delicate piece, and Cyno understands why she can’t wear it during her normal job.
“Don’t mention it,” Candace says, shaking her head. Both of the women spend more time out of Sumeru than in it, and even they’ve managed to catch wind of the rumours of Alhaitham and Kaveh, as well as the attempts to get them together.
So far, Cyno’s almost ashamed to admit that they’ve made no progress at all, despite how much time he’s invested into it, along with the many, many people of Sumeru. All the investigative cases he’s worked on, and this one seems to be the absolute worst. If he could award his friends for it, he would.
Tighnari, had, of course, begged out of it early, telling Cyno that he wanted absolutely no part in this “tomfoolery.” But Cyno knows that his heart is as soft as tofu, and so even Tighnari can sometimes be seen trying to nudge the two of them together, but he’s also the one who gives up the quickest with a why do I even bother because Alhaitham and Kaveh are, unfortunately, really just good at giving people headaches.
But their words give Alhaitham pause, because he looks up from where he’s been very unsubtly checking out Kaveh’s ass as he’s bent over the kitchen counter. There’s something in his eyes that’s being calculated at the speed of light, and Cyno’s not sure what it means for any of them involved.
It catches Kaveh’s attention, though he’s far more distracted—“Ah?” he says, hunting for the last mug in their house he can give to Cyno because, despite his love for collecting mugs he finds funny, their house is rather full-capacity at the moment. “We’ve been married for, like, a decade already. That reminds me—should we celebrate our ten-year anniversary?”
“If you don’t make me plan it, sure.”
“Please,” Kaveh scoffs. “You wouldn’t know how to organize an event if your life depended on it.”
Everyone in the room tactfully doesn’t mention the one event Alhaitham planned—a coup—and how it went off flawlessly, because sure, being on Alhaitham’s hit list is all fine and normal, but being on Kaveh’s? You might as well just move to Inazuma while you’re at it.
Silence.
And then—
Tighnari says faintly—“Married?”
“Hm?”
“Since when were the two of you married?”
“Ten years. I think I just said? Since we… yes, since my third year when we were in the Akademiya, right, Alhaitham?”
“You don’t remember the exact date? I’m hurt. I thought you would care more about things like that.”
“Oh, shut up. It’s not like you remember it either.” Kaveh triumphantly holds out another mug. It’s so very slightly cracked at the handle, but he has nothing better to offer. “Aha! Here you go, Cyno.”
“Thank you,” Cyno says, reaching out for the cup after Kaveh pours a healthy amount of plum wine in it, and then immediately turns back to the topic. How can he call himself the General Mahamatra if he didn’t even know that two of his closest friends were dating? Though, he’s sure that Alhaitham would deny being friends with him in the first place. “What do you mean, ten years ago? You haven’t said anything to any of us.”
“Of course he wouldn’t,” Dehya snorts, looking absolutely delighted by this new knowledge, where she’s draped over the couch with her head half in Candace’s lap. “You think Mr. I’m-so-Mysterious-All-The-Time would deign to reveal the fact that he has a husband?”
Kaveh squawks. “I’m not mysterious! And I wasn’t hiding anything!”
“Like the fact that you were hiding the fact that you were living with Alhaitham?”
“Listen,” Kaveh insists, “That was an extraneous circumstance, okay! I don’t advertise it now but I’m not hiding it anymore!”
“And yet you were so vehement about it that everyone thinks you’re about to throw hands with Alhaitham every time you cross paths with him,” Tighnari says dryly, taking a sip of his pomegranate juice and humming in appreciation. “I think it’s too late to turn around and tell the public that you’ve been married for a decade now.”
“The market aunties all know!” Kaveh protests. “I thought that all of them would’ve spread the gossip by now!”
“Oh,” Candace says quietly. She’s been quiet for most of this conversation, so as soon as she opens her mouth, everyone turns to her with rapt attention. “That’s why they were all talking about Kaveh being cursed.”
“Cursed?!”
“They’re not wrong,” Alhaitham points out coolly, where he’s sitting on the loveseat, where Kaveh joins him after retrieving his own and Alhaitham’s drinks. “You do yell at me a lot in public. In private too, for the record.”
“That’s because you deserve to be yelled at,” Kaveh says grumpily, but Cyno watches him lean into Alhaitham and relax in a way he’s never really done around any one of them. They’re all his friends, of course, Cyno’s belief is staunch, but he supposes that nothing’s quite the same as someone you’ve been married to for ten years. Hell, they’ve been friends for almost that same amount of time, and yet the both of them keep surprising him.
“Wait, wait,” Dehya says, rolling off Candace’s lap and leaning forward to stare at them inquisitively. “During your third year? Before the famous thesis breakup that I’ve heard about?”
Cyno always winces at the way she puts it; her blunt tone makes her almost sound insensitive, but he knows she’s just curious. Still, it’s not exactly the most tactful way she had to say it. Fortunately, at least neither of them seem offended by the way she phrased the question.
“We did part ways for some time,” Alhaitham answers first, and even that seems to surprise Kaveh, but he shrugs and turns back to his drink, sipping it as Alhaitham speaks. “After the whole… thesis breakup,” he quotes, “And for about five years of our marriage we didn’t actually see each other at all. It was only when Kaveh moved in that we started talking again.”
Everyone falls silent, taking in the new information about their friends—and it makes sense as to why they wouldn’t know this, because upon graduating the Akademiya, they’d all been busy with their own lives. Tighnari had been apprenticing in the forest and barely had time to come back to Sumeru City, and Cyno was settling in and quickly moving up the ranks among the matra, and he’d left most of his friendships on hold for progressing as quickly as possible. And they hadn’t even known Dehya and Candace by that time—so it’s a wonder that Dehya even knows about their “thesis breakup.”
“But it helped,” Kaveh continues where Alhaitham left off, “When I was… a little down on my luck. And so we never annulled it, because it was convenient for me and Alhaitham didn’t actually want to go through all the paperwork for it.”
Dehya’s confused but he’s the Grand Sage, can’t he get it expedited? gets drowned out by Tighnari’s very sudden and very uncoincidental coughing fit.
“Which is why we’re still married now,” Kaveh says, and then continues jokingly, “and so if I get something out of this marriage, it’s a damned ten-year anniversary party.”
“I’m not planning it.”
“But you are paying for it.”
“Out of the kindness of my heart.”
“And on account of our joint bank account.”
“Is that so? Is that why it’s been dwindling recently? Because you impulsively bought more furniture?”
“Um, excuse you—”
“Excused.”
“Shut the fuck up. You’re the one with the awful taste in furniture and always bringing stuff back to piss me off!”
“Am I not allowed to have that thing you so often call ‘artistic freedom’?”
“Not when it’s a hazard to my mental health!”
“You’re a hazard to my mental health,” Tighnari mutters, but it’s been a long day and his voice ends up loud enough that everyone in the room hears it and turns to him. “Whoops,” he says, and steals Cyno’s very alcoholic drink and downs it all in one go.
“Ignoring that,” Kaveh says. “But yes! We have all our paperwork and everything, if you don’t believe us.”
“It’s not that we don’t believe you,” Candace says, voice low and calming. “It’s just…we’ve spent so long trying to get the two of you together, and now that we’ve finally found out that you’re married, it’s just a bit of a shock.”
“Getting us together?” Kaveh parrots. “What on earth would give you that idea?”
“You’ve been pining since your Akademiya days,” Cyno says, and doesn’t understand why Kaveh immediately turns bright red and turns a panicked glance towards Alhaitham. Shouldn’t they be used to such words after their ten years of marriage? “We’re just glad to know that you confessed your feelings for each other, and that it’s been that way for the past decade. Makes all our effort a little bit wasted, but what matters is that you’re happy in the end.”
Beside him, Tighnari has the bridge of his eyebrows pinched between two fingers like he’s fighting off a headache. Kaveh and Alhaitham both stare at him like he’s grown a second head, and it’s an uncanny experience because Kaveh and Alhaitham have faces that could not remotely be called anything similar, except that they’re wearing the exact same befuddled expressions on their faces staring at Cyno.
“I… Cyno,” Kaveh says a little awkwardly. “I think… you all might be misunderstanding. Alhaitham and I are married, but it’s only… platonic. We’re not actually in a relationship.”
Cyno blinks.
Tighnari blinks.
Candace blinks.
Dehya stares at them.
And blinks.
“…what?” he finds himself saying, because—because there’s no way, right? There’s absolutely no way his friends are that stupid? “Platonic?”
“Yes?” Kaveh says, bewildered, though a blush is rising on his cheeks as he steals furtive glances at Alhaitham. “We’re not… together.”
“Are you sure?” the question comes from Dehya.
“Yes?” Kaveh says, very unconvincingly, and then turns to Alhaitham. “We’re not, right?!”
“No,” Alhaitham confirms. “We are not. I do not understand why everyone is under the impression that we are.”
“Oh Archons, they really are stupid,” Tighnari mutters under his breath. “Are you two serious right now?”
“Just because we got drunkenly married after a final exam doesn’t make it a romance,” Kaveh scoffs, though there’s definitely something wistful Cyno can detect in his voice. His next words come out mumbled, as if it’d been an afterthought that he’d meant to keep in his brain but he’s been drinking along with Dehya and therefore a little more loose-lipped than he normally would be. “No matter how much I wish it could be.”
Alhaitham startles. “What?” he snaps. It’s the most expressive Cyno’s ever seen Alhaitham.
Kaveh freezes. “What?” he says, a little feebly, pointedly ignoring any point of eye contact. He shifts, tenses like he’s preparing himself to flee from the couch, but Alhaitham’s hand wraps around his wrist.
“Kaveh,” he insists, turning to face him, fully ignoring everyone else in the room, a feat which Kaveh is less successful at doing, as his eyes flit from each of them back to Alhaitham.
Cyno props his chin on his hand and watches the soap opera unfold in real time.
“What?!” Kaveh snaps, clearly a lot stressed. “I—just ignore that, okay! I’m drunk, I don’t know what I’m saying.”
“Is that really the excuse you’re going to make?”
“Yes. No! It’s not an excuse. I—just ignore it. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“Yes it does,” Alhaitham insists. “Kaveh. We’ve been married for ten years. Surely you can tell me.”
“If I tell you I have feelings for you you’ll try to get a divorce from me!” Kaveh shrieks, clearly stressed, “And I don’t—I don’t want that to happen! Even if it’s just only because we got wasted! I like being married to you, you—you enormous bag of mouse poop!”
“No,” Alhaitham says gently, and Cyno startles at a nudge from Tighnari, who hands him a small box of popcorn. Where did he get popcorn? Wordlessly, Tighnari hands him two more boxes, which he dutifully passes out to Candace and Dehya. “I wouldn’t have divorced you. If I’d known, I would have proposed to you for real.”
Kaveh is silent for a minute.
“Really?” he says, in a small voice, “Even if—even if you find me annoying?” Cyno makes a mental note to beat more self-love into Kaveh later.
“Especially because you’re annoying,” Alhaitham says, and continues before Kaveh lets out an offended squawk. “You infuriate me. You’re so smart yet you waste your talents on your dreams and ideals. You leave the cupboards open so I get bruises from walking into them. I wouldn’t trade you for the world.”
As far as love confessions go, Cyno thinks, it’s pretty subpar, but Kaveh’s tearing up like Alhaitham just professed his undying love to him—for Alhaitham, Cyno thinks, it probably was—and just as they’re leaning in, looking like they’re about to kiss—
Kaveh actually does squawk as they’re pelted by popcorn from four different angles.
“Alright!” Dehya cheers, “The plan’s done and successful! Now, please just wait before we leave to get touchy touchy with each other, thank you!”