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Alhaitham doesn’t think he’s asking too much of Kaveh.
Really, he’s not the exemplary example of a good junior. He knows he can be a little bit too contrary to other people. He’s well aware of his faults, and most of them, according to other people, stem from the fact that he would actually prefer to never come out of his house if possible, and to that, Alhaitham would say that he’d come out of the house if there were no other people around.
The first time he’d said something along those lines to Kaveh, he’d laughed and said people can get pretty tiring sometimes.
Anyways, he doesn’t think he’s asking too much—he just wants to follow Kaveh wherever he goes.
Is that too much to ask?
“Yes!” Kaveh says exasperatedly, when Alhaitham voices the question. He’s trying to leave the room they’ve rented out in the library to go meet someone else. Alhaitham is barring the door. While he’s aware that he’s maybe slightly overreacting, he’d thought that he and Kaveh would be spending the entire day together, but that thought was very rudely interrupted by Kaveh gathering his things and offhandedly mentioning that he’s going to be meeting someone for lunch.
Hence the stalemate.
Kaveh’s staring at him like he’s grown another head, and, at this point, even Alhaitham himself isn’t sure why he’s so adamant on having Kaveh stay except he recognizes this feeling, that it’s the same one when one of his toys ripped when he was a child and he’d been inconsolable about having to throw it away.
“Alhaitham,” Kaveh says, finally. “It’s just lunch. I can come back to studying afterwards.”
“It’s not about studying.” Alhaitham doesn’t pout as he crosses his arms. He doesn’t.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about it beforehand,” Kaveh says, like he’s trying to soothe a particularly angry cat. “But I’ll get dinner with you afterwards, is that okay? We can take a walk in the gardens too, if you want.”
“Okay.”
“Okay. Now, please let me go.”
Begrudgingly, Alhaitham slinks away towards his own seat. Kaveh gathers his things and pats him on the head as he leaves, and Alhaitham resists the urge to follow the touch.
And then the room is empty, and Alhaitham burrows his head in his arms.
He can’t study. It’s irrational. He shouldn’t be affected this much by something, much less because of another person, and yet he finds himself moping. About the fact that Kaveh isn’t here with him. He shakes his head of the thoughts and attempts to study. This time, it goes marginally better because he’s trying more to focus on what he’s reading instead of the fact that normally Kaveh would be mumbling notes about his own books and schoolwork, and now it just sounds too quiet without him here.
He gets through a few more pages, and then he bookmarks it before putting the book away. Forcing himself to read in this situation would just frustrate him, so Alhaitham does what he does best in times of distress—put his head down on the table, pillowed by his coat and his arms, and go the fuck to sleep.
When he blinks awake again, Kaveh’s back in his seat, looking over some papers. Alhaitham, fortunately, has the chance to observe him while he thinks Alhaitham is still asleep, because he can just peek out the corner of his eye as Kaveh goes about shuffling his papers into a pile and thumbing through another one. He has a pencil tucked behind his ear, and he looks no different from when he left, but Alhaitham feels something inside him settle at the sight of Kaveh being with him again.
He's strangely warm, is the second thing he notices. He’d thought he’d be running cooler, since he’d chosen to use his coat as a pillow instead of a blanket, but then he realizes that Kaveh’s divested himself of his cream-coloured sweater, and Alhaitham hadn’t noticed because he’s wearing a similar white long-sleeved shirt underneath.
“Awake?” Kaveh says, when he notices Alhaitham staring unabashedly at him. “I’m not sure how hard you’ve been working that you fell asleep at the table, but you should eat. Here. Extra spicy, just for you.”
Alhaitham raises his eyebrow as he sits up and stretches. As he does, something slides off his shoulders and he catches it before it falls to the floor—and sure enough, it’s Kaveh’s coat, warm with his body heat and the smell of Kaveh’s detergent. Alhaitham resists the urge to bury his nose into it, at least not right in front of Kaveh, where he can see it.
But more surprising is the food. They’re in the library. Did Kaveh sneak it in?
When he voices the question, Kaveh just laughs. “Let’s keep it between you and me, hm?” he whispers conspiratorially, pushing the paper container towards Alhaitham. “I got you spicy sausages and egg rolls with some meat skewers. And mushrooms because you need your vegetables.”
“Mushrooms aren’t vegetables.”
“Listen,” Kaveh says, exasperatedly, “the lady gave them to me for free, so stop being ungrateful and just eat them.”
“I wasn’t being ungrateful,” Alhaitham sniffs, though he does draw the cup closer to himself. It’s still a little warm from being fried in spices. “Thank you.”
“There’s a good junior,” Kaveh coos, and it makes Alhaitham almost choke on the mushroom piece he’s eating—but thankfully, after a painful grimace, he manages not to get mushroom into his lungs.
There would not have been mush-room in his lungs for that anyways.
His own stupid joke makes himself smile, and so he shares it with Kaveh who demands to know what he’s thinking.
“That’s such a stupid joke,” Kaveh groans, burying his head in his hands, but Alhaitham can see his lips twitching. “Stop.”
Alhaitham shrugs, continuing to eat, and then they lapse back into silence as Kaveh mutters under his breath about what book he needs to look for next. When Alhaitham’s done, satiated for the moment with a few snacks, he returns to studying too. The room they’ve taken for the moment is fit for about five people, but between the two of them and their books and papers, there’s no room for much else, which also gives Alhaitham the prime opportunity to lean close to Kaveh and sit pressed up next to him whenever needed. Kaveh doesn’t seem to mind.
Between the two of them, Alhaitham’s always been the more tactile one. While he might be more sensitive to textures and sensations he doesn’t like, it only means that he’s more drawn to what he does like—namely, the warmth of Kaveh’s skin when he’s pressed into it, the smell of his laundry detergent, and even the little shifts in his posture as he moves around, seemingly unable to sit still for longer than a minute.
The silence is only broken by either of them pondering a question out loud, at which point the other will take a look to see if they can figure it out. They might be in different darshans, but they’re both smart and quick with their thinking. If there’s a logic puzzle that they can’t solve, Alhaitham doesn’t think anyone else can either.
Thoughts like these are labelled as arrogance. He knows people whisper behind his back about how he thinks he knows everything—which is false. Alhaitham just knows that he at least knows more than the people gossiping about him do.
They study late into the evening. It’s dark out by the time they wrap things up, putting the books away, bookmarking them for tomorrow, and at some point Kaveh gives up rearranging his papers to shove them all into his bag, which looks concerningly like it might explode at any moment when he hefts it onto his shoulder. Alhaitham winces at the visible weight it puts on Kaveh.
“Come on, I promised you dinner,” Kaveh says, and Alhaitham perks up, following obediently along behind his senior as his hunger starts to make itself known. On the way to the food hall, Kaveh makes idle chatter about what he’s heard about what’s happening in the other darshans, what research topics are being talked about, and even who’s trying to form a relationship with who.
Who needs an information network, Alhaitham thinks wryly, when he just has Kaveh instead? At this rate, he’s more informed about the goings on of the Akademiya than the Grand Sage himself.
“—and can you believe he had the gall to deny everything?” Kaveh’s saying after they pick out their food and head over to a table in the corner for their orders to be called, “There was photographic evidence and he was all like oh no it must’ve been tampered with, I of course could never do—”
“One would think he was your boyfriend, the way you talk about him,” Alhaitham says, and then stifles a laugh at how Kaveh’s face scrunches up in disgust. They pass the time with idle chatter about one of their classes—that Kaveh took one semester before Alhaitham did—before their buzzers light up.
Both of them are fast eaters. Kaveh because he can’t do anything less, and Alhaitham because he’s learned to keep up with Kaveh because Kaveh gets hungrier when Alhaitham’s eating after he’s finished and tends to start nibbling at anything within reach. It’s funny when he’ll start eating the salad leaves on his plate, looking like a rabbit, and less funny when he starts reaching towards Alhaitham’s plate to “help him finish faster so we can go studying quicker.” It was survival instinct, then, for Alhaitham to finish his food faster before Kaveh started looking like he was going to start chewing on his own plate out of boredom before Alhaitham finished.
After, with full bellies, they stroll through the Razan Gardens. It’s a beautiful place, even at night, lit up by the dim glow of the lampposts and the moon shining in the night sky. Their murmurs of conversation float through the air.
It’s late enough that not many people are here anymore, and Alhaitham finds himself shivering as they walk along the path.
“Cold?” Kaveh says sympathetically. “Here, have my sweater.”
“No, don’t,” Alhaitham protests, but he’s already taken it off and shoved it into Kaveh’s arms. “Now you’ll get cold…”
“I run hot,’ Kaveh says smoothly, “and I still have long sleeves! You need the sweater more than I do.”
Alhaitham takes it gratefully and sticks close to Kaveh, while they stop to feed any cats they meet that frequent the garden. Kaveh has quite a little cult following already, and apparently the cats like Alhaitham by association, so he makes sure to feed them regularly in case they have need of a cat army sometime in the future.
And besides—the image of Kaveh feeding all the cats that come up to him is simply too precious. Alhaitham has to discreetly take a picture of it—and he’s already got quite a good collection already.
Afterwards, they find a spot to sit under a tree, looking up at the stars—neither of them are Rtawahists, but they can appreciate it all the same, as the stars twinkle in the sky. Alhaitham sits close to Kaveh, pressing their sides together so that Kaveh gets some of his warmth.
“Sometimes,” Kaveh starts quietly, “I think I can reach out and touch them. The stars, I mean. It feels so… doable.”
“An idealistic dream,” Alhaitham murmurs, head drooping onto Kaveh’s shoulder.
Kaveh laughs softly as he adjusts to make the position more comfortable for him. “Perhaps,” he allows, and raises his other hand to reach out towards the sky. “But one day, it might be possible.”
Alhaitham hums. “It might not be impossible,” he thinks aloud—“But you’d have to have the strength to get there. What if it disappears before you get to it?”
“I can still reach for other stars.”
“What if you burn out first?”
Kaveh’s quiet, seemingly left without an answer. Alhaitham almost thinks he isn’t going to reply until his voice floats through the air.
“At least I’ll know I tried.”
Alhaitham hums. His and Kaveh’s philosophies are different as night is from day, but he doesn’t want to ruin a perfectly clear night by bringing that up. Instead, he closes his eyes and relaxes into Kaveh’s warmth.
When he falls asleep, he dreams about stars burning out.