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For the second time in his life, Alhaitham is watching Kaveh walk away.
There are no harsh words exchanged, no tearing of paper or hands balled into fists. Just Kaveh putting his stuff into boxes while Alhaitham watches, a mug of chai in his hands as he tries not to say anything.
Like don’t move out or I love you or you are the star my world revolves around.
Kaveh brushes the dust off his hands, stands up. “I think Mehrak and I are done with the boxes now,” he says, turning to Alhaitham. “Thanks for standing there.”
Alhaitham’s lips quirk. “I was providing moral support.”
He hears Kaveh chuckle, almost to himself, before he summons Mehrak and has her move all the boxes to the door. It’s less than Alhaitham thought he would take – all the furniture is stuff Alhaitham bought, and so Kaveh hadn’t seemed comfortable taking it, even though Alhaitham had said he could.
You can stay, too, he wants to say.
Kaveh grins, though the smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “I already found a place,” he says, throwing himself onto the divan. “You can come over and see it sometime, if you’d like. It’ll probably be a little unpolished for the first few months, but it’s decent.”
“Mm.”
Alhaitham doesn’t trust himself to say more.
<><><>
“Aand that’s the last of them,” Kaveh declares, looking over his new living space. The boxes are now stacked against the wall, along with the drafting table Alhaitham had insisted Kaveh take since ‘it would just take up space in the house were it to remain.’
Every time Alhaitham brought up his house over the course of Kaveh’s move – which he had strangely insisted on helping with, given his uselessness when Kaveh was actually packing his stuff up – he always refers to it as ‘the house’. Never ‘his house’. Sometimes, he’ll pause before he says it, like he really means to say our house.
Kaveh looks back at Alhaitham, who stands, arms folded, in the center of the tiny space. “Say something,” he prompts, waving a hand in his direction. Alhaitham shrugs.
“I think it looks rather small for the Light of Kshahrewar.”
It’s hardly more than a single room, the kitchen and bathroom both essentially closets in terms of the space he has available in there. And while Alhaitham is right, it bothers Kaveh to have it pointed out. He huffs, folding his arms as he glares at Alhaitham.
“I think it’s perfectly sized,” Kaveh lies. “And I’ll add some furniture eventually. That’ll make it look more… home-y.”
He won’t add any furniture. Unless a miracle happens, he won’t be able to afford any.
“Guess this is it, then,” he adds when Alhaitham doesn’t respond. “I’ll see you around, I guess? Maybe we could meet up for coffee or something, but only–”
He doesn’t have time to finish his sentence, Alhaitham unexpectedly wrapping him in a tight hug that leaves Kaveh breathless. What’s more unexpected is that he doesn’t let go, burying his face in Kaveh’s neck and throughout it all, not saying a word.
“...only if you’re the one paying,” Kaveh finishes weakly, wondering if he’s supposed to hug Alhaitham back or not.
Alhaitham makes the decision for him, abruptly breaking off the hug and turning away.
“I’ll pay,” he says, voice uncharacteristically hesitant. “Only if I get to select the place, though. I’ll see you later.”
And then he’s gone, leaving Kaveh standing alone in an empty apartment with the strangest urge to run after him, to chase him down, to call him back.
He remains rooted to the spot, sunlight trickling through the windows and illuminating the dust mites dancing through the air. As they settle around Kaveh’s feet, Kaveh realizes that his face is wet and that he has forgotten to breathe.
<><><>
Alhaitham hadn’t meant to hug Kaveh. This was supposed to be a quick, painless goodbye. A clean break.
There is a chasm in Alhaitham’s chest, and lead on his tongue.
He is not experienced in goodbyes. He does not trust Kaveh to come back.
Still, the hug felt right. For once, Alhaitham feels he has taken the emotionally appropriate route in a conversation.
He has not cared about that before.
Alhaitham does not regret the hug, but he does regret letting Kaveh leave. But, as he stands in the hallway, one hand on the wall to brace himself and the other hovering uselessly at his side, he realizes that he has never told Kaveh that he could stay.
Maybe he should have.
<><><>
A week passes. Kaveh is still unpacking boxes.
He does not have many, but he wants each item to have a place, and so many things remain in their boxes.
Like his mother’s journal, something she had left behind for him when she went to Fontaine. He had thrown it to the side then, too full of hurt to want another reminder of her. It had gathered dust among his belongings, forgotten for years.
When Kaveh finds it, he instinctively calls for Alhaitham, wants him to see what he found. The words die on his lips as Kaveh stares into empty space that should contain Alhaitham.
Mehrak beeps at him, seemingly confused.
Kaveh shakes his head to clear it. There’s no reason Alhaitham would be here. As Kaveh brushes the dust off the cover and fails to get the dust out of the intricate locking mechanism protecting the contents, he tries to forget his old roommate. His old friend.
Because they had been friends, hadn’t they?
Of course, they had been friends in the Akademiya, but over the last few months, Kaveh feels like they had become friends again, then started to border into something new and tender. Their fingers brushing as Kaveh handed Alhaitham coffee. Alhaitham staying up late to make sure Kaveh went to sleep after working on one of his projects.
What had Alhaitham meant to him? The answer seems too complicated to piece together easily.
Kaveh thinks about it for a long while, then turns back to his mother’s journal. He has yet to guess the password to the fanciful device protecting it, and when he can’t even figure out what his old roommate was to him, he seems unlikely to figure it out now.
Still, he might as well give it another try. Take his mind off Alhaitham and everything that could have been.
The password is only supposed to be a single word, but Kaveh types I miss you anyway.
<><><>
Alhaitham has never been good with changes to his routine.
He likes it when his days are orderly, predictable, and contain large segments of time in which Alhaitham is free to do whatever he pleases. And over the past year, he has come to appreciate when Kaveh appears in his day.
His carefully constructed routines had been shifted and changed by Kaveh, around Kaveh, until suddenly Alhaitham was waiting for his roommate to make him coffee each morning – Kaveh was an early riser against his will, being unable to fall back asleep once the sun rose – hauling himself out of bed and starting his day with some quip about Kaveh’s coffee-making skills or his unkempt morning hair or the fact that he still had ink on his shirt.
And Kaveh would instantly launch a counterattack, and Alhaitham would hide his faint smile behind his mug of coffee, which was always made perfectly, because even after all those years, Kaveh still remembered how he liked it.
And then Alhaitham would walk to the Akademiya, his keys tangling with Kaveh’s as he grabbed them, and Kaveh would visit his clients and usually Lambad’s, and Alhaitham would either find him banging away at the door with some choice words reserved for Alhaitham or drinking his sorrows away at Lambad’s. Then they would go home and bicker some more, and by then Kaveh would be exhausted or thoroughly drunk and depending on which of the two it was, one of them would make dinner.
Then Alhaitham would badger Kaveh until he stopped working on his commissions and went to sleep, and Alhaitham would sleep as well.
It… wasn’t the perfect routine.
Alhaitham is well aware of that. The two of them did not often get along, and Kaveh was loud and disruptive and…
Someone Alhaitham cared about. A lot.
He tries to adjust to the change in routine. Alhaitham makes two cups of coffee in the morning and lets the second go cold. He brings home food for two sometimes. He knocks on Kaveh’s door automatically at dinner, about to tell him to stop working on his blueprints and eat. The words die on his tongue each time, and he’s left staring into an empty room, devoid of life, devoid of Kaveh.
He has been alone for much of his life. After his grandmother died until he met Kaveh. After Kaveh tore apart their thesis until Alhaitham found him in Lambad’s a decade later.
He has told himself that solitude is something he prefers. All evidence seems to suggest this to be the case.
But the absence of Kaveh is something else.
<><><>
Sometimes they run into each other, at the places the two of them used to frequent. Kaveh isn’t sure what to say, so he stumbles through conversation until an excuse to leave comes up.
He told Alhaitham he was doing well when they ran into each other at the Grand Bazaar, but that isn’t quite true. His commissions barely bring in enough money to cover rent – Alhaitham really was letting him off easy, since this tiny room he now finds himself in is twice the cost of his old one.
Kaveh slips back into old habits within a few weeks. He keeps his drinking away from Lambad’s, so Alhaitham doesn’t have to see his embarrassing displays, but they still run into each other anyway, Kaveh hunched over a glass at a small restaurant he didn't think Alhaitham frequented.
It was a place Kaveh liked, but not Alhaitham.
But Alhaitham sits down across from Kaveh anyway, his gaze lingering in a sad, almost intimate way.
“It’s funny,” Kaveh mumbles, just to break the silence. “You keep… showing up when I’m like this. You only get to see the worst of me. You’re the only one who gets to see the worst of me.”
“I know,” Alhaitham says quietly. “I saw some of your accessories at a pawnshop a few days ago. I thought you liked your earrings.”
Yes, but I needed to pay rent, Kaveh thinks bitterly.
He only shrugs, trying to make the gesture as nonchalant as possible. “I’ve been… getting rid of some stuff. I have too much, anyway.”
Both of them saw how few boxes Kaveh took with him to his new place. Alhaitham doesn’t say anything for a while, beyond a quiet I’m not hungry when a server asks what he wants to order. Then, glancing at Kaveh, he adds, “Actually, we’ll have the masala cheese balls.”
The we is not lost on Kaveh. Neither is the fact that Alhaitham just ordered one of Kaveh’s favorite foods from this place.
“If that was a pity order, I don’t want it.”
Alhaitham only shrugs. “I have no intention of forcing you to eat any of it. But you don’t look particularly… well.”
Kaveh looks away, shame burning his face. He’s been surviving primarily off of Sumeru’s welfare meals, but that is the last thing he wants Alhaitham to know. And yes, the welfare meals are nutritious and they keep him alive, but if he has to force one more spoonful of flavorless, mushy rice down his throat, he’s going to choke.
He even misses Alhaitham’s horrid not-soup.
When the food arrives, the smell alone is almost enough to make him swallow his pride just to beg Alhaitham for a taste.
Instead, he watches Alhaitham eat and tries not to drool.
“Are you going to reconsider?” Alhaitham asks, pushing the bowl towards him. Kaveh shakes his head firmly.
“I already said I don’t want your pity.”
“It will go to waste, then,” Alhaitham says with a shrug. “I’m not hungry, and you know food loses its flavor the longer it spends in the cryo box. By tomorrow morning, I’ll have to reheat it, and it will no longer be as good. You’d be doing me a favor by finishing it.”
Alhaitham is giving him a guilt-free excuse to eat, Kaveh realizes. Slowly, he takes the offered bowl, trying to eat slowly so Alhaitham won’t see just how hungry he is.
Except as soon as he takes one bite, the taste of the spices and the warmth of a hot meal overcome all resistance Kaveh has, suddenly acutely aware of how hungry he is. Kaveh finds himself scraping the sauce off the edges of the bowl, Alhaitham watching him with an expression Kaveh doesn’t know quite how to decipher. Concern? Grief?
“I’m going to pay now,” Alhaitham says quietly. “I’ll see you later, Kaveh.”
Before he leaves, Kaveh catches a glimpse of the lion keychain hanging out of Alhaitham’s pocket.
<><><>
A month later, Alhaitham finds Kaveh at another bar on the edge of Sumeru City, having been directed there by one of the matra.
Go pick up your architect, they had told him. He’s causing a scene.
Alhaitham had scoffed, because Kaveh was by no means his, then entered the bar to find a half-drunk Kaveh loudly arguing with another patron over something related to scaffolding. Kaveh, even at his worst, never escalated these arguments into something physical, but the other patron looked like she might.
We’re going home, Alhaitham almost says, pausing with his mouth half-open before Kaveh.
“What do you want?” Kaveh snaps. In the background, the other patron is pulled away by a friend or partner. “Didn’t you want me out of your house so you wouldn’t have to come pick me up from the bar?”
“If I didn’t want to pick you up from the bar, I wouldn’t have,” Alhaitham says, not unkindly. He loops Kaveh’s arm around his shoulder automatically, and feels Kaveh instantly settle against him. It’s strange, how easily this routine returns to them, how easily they both fall into it.
Kaveh complains on the entire walk back to his place, jumping between the patron at the bar and his latest client and even throwing in Alhaitham’s name a couple of times. Alhaiham listens, occasionally inserting remarks of his own which only serve to rile up Kaveh further.
A pair of keys are handed to Alhaitham – Kaveh is probably too drunk to manipulate them right now – and the door is unlocked. Paper crumples under Alhaitham’s heels as he steps through the doorway, leading Kaveh inside.
Flicking on a lamp reveals a floor covered in paper. Blueprints, sketches, writing. Angry lines or tear marks mar each one. Alhaitham guides the now-quiet Kaveh through the mess, slowly easing him onto the mattress that sits on the floor. That, too, is covered with paper, and Alhaitham brushes several drawings aside before realizing one is of him.
The drawing is remarkably accurate given Kaveh wouldn’t have had Alhaitham sitting still as reference for it. All the details are correct.
Did Kaveh… just memorize what Alhaitham looks like? Or does he have a kamera photo sitting around somewhere?
Sitting down next to Kaveh on the mattress, Alhaitham summons light from his vision to better illuminate the drawing. He looks as he always does in it, a book clutched in his hands and headphones on, but something in his eyes is noticeably different, kinder. It’s not the disinterested, neutral glance Alhaitham offers strangers; it’s the soft look he reserves only for Kaveh when he thinks the other isn’t looking.
“I– hic– missed you, you know,” Kaveh suddenly admits. He’s always more honest when he’s tipsy, hand now reaching to curl around Alhaitham’s wrist.
Alhaitham doesn’t say anything. This moment seems too fragile for his clumsy words.
“Alhaitham?” Kaveh’s look is slightly bewildered, his hair splayed about his face over the pillow. “Are… you going to ask about all the papers? The mess? Or are you just going to sit there and look at… what are you looking at?”
Turning, Alhaitham hands the drawing to Kaveh, whose eyes widen. “I… you…”
“I already know you enjoy sketching me,” Alhaitham says. “I always assumed it was because I was an easy model. I’m starting to consider that I may have been wrong.”
“You are an easy model!” Kaveh protests. “You’re always– always reading, or sitting in one place– it’s easy to draw you!”
Alhaitham hums. “I know I wasn’t present for this sketch, though.”
Kaveh removes his hand from Alhaitham’s wrist, turning over and closing his eyes. “No. Don’t think too hard about that.”
Instead of responding, Alhaitham carefully reaches out and removes Kaveh’s hairpins, careful not to let his hands linger in Kaveh’s hair for too long. He deposits them on the box serving as a nightstand, then moves to his earrings. They’re new ones, less fancy and clearly made of cheap material. Helping a drunk or tipsy Kaveh out of his accessories is another old routine, and now, Kaveh doesn’t even flinch as Alhaitham nudges him to access the other earring.
Kaveh’s choker and cape is next, his skin warm under Alhaitham’s fingertips. He keeps his touch light, not wanting to overstep any invisible boundaries.
For all his mastery of language, Alhaitham is clumsy when it comes to the kinds of words that instill comfort or ease nerves. His words are blunt and precise, not warm or soothing. His grandmother would know what to do here, know what words to say and where to place her hands.
And Alhaitham does not, so he settles only for this; a quiet presence he hopes will bring Kaveh comfort.
He maneuvers Kaveh’s hands into his, slipping off his rings and adding them to the ever-growing pile of jewelry and accessories. Kaveh turns around, eyes shining in the lamplight as he slowly blinks at Alhaitham.
When Alhaitham drops his hand, Kaveh wraps it around Alhaitham’s waist, pulling him closer and burying his face into Alhaitham’s side.
He stays there for a long while as Alhaitham tries to figure out if the better thing to do would be to place his hand on Kaveh’s head or shoulder or nowhere at all, eventually settling on rubbing slow circles into his back.
Kaveh makes a quiet, pained noise before pulling away.
“You– you can go now,” he sputters, pulling the blanket over his face. “Please go. This is too awkward.”
“Do you really want me to leave?” Alhaitham asks, frowning.
“No,” Kaveh murmurs. “But it will hurt less in the morning if you do.”
<><><>
Kaveh wakes up to an empty bed and an even emptier heart.
He doesn’t see Alhaitham for the next few weeks. Kaveh isn’t sure if it makes the whole thing more or less painful.
To pass the time between client meetings and dinners with Tighnari and working on blueprints, Kaveh attempts to crack the code to his mother’s journal. He tries every word that he could think of that might be related to her, every important date or family member or favorite food. Nothing works.
Alhaitham might be able to help, Kaveh realizes. He has a gift for word-related puzzles, something Kaveh envied in their Akademiya years until Alhaitham pointed out that Kaveh’s skill in mechanical puzzles far exceeded his own.
Given that, Kaveh could just try to break the combination, but that would hardly feel fair. Kaveh may have many flaws, but he doesn’t take the easy way out.
…which, in Alhaitham’s eyes, is a flaw, or maybe an annoyance. Kaveh sighs.
He tries words related to Kshahrewar, since it was both his and his mother’s darshan, then words related to his father’s darshan, and then architecture in general. He tries the names of the restaurants she liked. Eventually, he asks her old professor, and that leads to the answer: companionship.
That was it. That was all.
As Kaveh thumbs through the pages, he realizes he and his mother are alike in a lot more ways than he previously thought. They’re both perfectionists who obsessed over projects to the point where it worried those close to them. They both ran away from the people they loved, caught up in their own pain. Sure, Kaveh may not have moved all the way to Fontaine, and Alhaitham is definitely capable of taking care of himself, but Kaveh still left.
Archons, he’s just like his mother.
Is there a reason she chose companionship as the password for the journal? When she was younger, she had often told Kaveh that she hoped he wouldn’t have to spend his adulthood alone. Kaveh had always assumed his mother had been referring to a hypothetical potential spouse, but her password choice seems to suggest she had meant something deeper than that.
Kaveh’s eyes sting. His face is damp.
He doesn’t want to be alone.
But he had been the one to leave. Kaveh puts down the journal, furiously rubbing his eyes as Mehrak beeps nervously overhead.
Kaveh left. He deserves the solitude, this pain. Alhaitham wouldn’t take him back, anyway. He’s probably renovated Kaveh’s old room, turned it into storage for books or his atrocious pieces of furniture. Sold the bedframe and nightstand and all the pieces of furniture Kaveh had refused to take with him.
It’s fine. Alhaitham will be better off without Kaveh, anyway. Even Kaveh’s mother was better off without Kaveh.
He deserves this.
<><><>
Months pass. Life continues as normal.
Everything is different.
Alhaitham does not see Kaveh often. Every time their paths cross – at the House of Daena, at the market, in the crowds at Zubayr Theater – Kaveh quickly makes some excuse as to why he has to leave or Alhaitham simply doesn’t say anything.
He still doesn’t know what to say to Kaveh.
He still buys Kaveh’s favorite fruits at the market. Still checks Lambad’s on his way home from work. There’s an ache in his chest that doesn’t go away, a coldness that lingers in a house devoid of Kaveh’s warmth.
The grief arrives in full a month later, on the anniversary of his grandmother’s death. He’s been in meetings all day, which is easier now that he’s back to the calmer position of the scribe, but the day still wears him down like a rock eroded by wind and sand.
Halfway to his grandmother’s final resting place, he realizes that he has not gotten her flowers.
As he gathers a handful of sweet flowers – she always preferred the wild ones Alhaitham picked over the overly perfumed, too-perfect facades at the market – it suddenly hits Alhaitham that he is alone.
This has not been a reason for grief in many years.
In fact, it had been the preferred state of things for Alhaitham. He does not desire the company of others, does not feel as if anything is missing in the silence he craves.
The house is too quiet, now.
Just like when his grandmother died, except Kaveh chose to leave and Alhaitham fears it is his fault once more.
He kneels down on the grass in front of his grandmother’s grave and realizes his hands are empty. He must have dropped the sweet flowers without realizing.
There are already flowers there. Padisarahs, tied together with a ribbon and placed over the stone. Alhaitham pauses. No one else leaves flowers for his grandmother. No one alive, anyway.
Except–
“Hey there,” Kaveh says awkwardly. “Are… you okay?”
No. The question feels redundant, Kaveh hovering above him with a worried look on his face like he already knows the truth and is just asking to be polite. That would be very Kaveh of him, Alhaitham thinks.
He is not okay.
“I’d like to go home,” Alhaitham admits. His voice cracks as he turns to his old roommate. “There was no need for you to leave flowers for her.”
Kaveh shakes his head. “I know how important she was to you. We did this last year, too. You know, when I still… lived in your house, I guess. And in the Akademiya. Is there anything… well, is there anything I can do for you?”
Stay.
For once, Alhaitham says what he really means. “You can stay,” he whispers.
And Kaveh does, folding his arms around Alhaitham and running gentle fingers through his hair as Alhaitham breathes in and out, vulnerable in a way he will only ever allow Kaveh to see.
He lets himself fall against Kaveh, losing all resistance as Kaveh winds an arm around Alhaitham to keep him upright.
“Do you want to go home?” Kaveh asks. “I mean… back to your house.”
Alhaitham nods into Kaveh’s shoulder. Yes.
<><><>
Kaveh walks Alhaitham home after that. He’s always… different when he’s tired like this, quiet and clingy and oddly soft.
As they step through the doorway, Kaveh looks around. The house hasn’t changed. Alhaitham’s ugly furniture is still there. There’s still a bowl of bulle fruit – Kaveh’s favorite – on the counter. When Alhaitham puts his keys down, Kaveh sees his familiar lion keychain looking up at him.
“Well,” Kaveh says cautiously. “Now that we’re home– now that you are home, what do you want to do?”
Alhaitham looks at him. Blinks. “Sleep,” he deadpans.
Okay. Of course. Kaveh rolls his eyes, guiding Alhaitham to his bed only to find it stripped bare. Clean, neat, like it hasn’t been slept in in weeks.
“Other room,” Alhaitaham mutters.
“That’s my– that’s my old room!” Kaveh sputters. “Are you seriously sleeping there?”
Alhaitham only nods.
Okay. It is definitely normal for Alhaitham to have moved all his personal items to Kaveh’s old room. Which, with the exception of said personal items, looks exactly as Kaveh had left it.
So Alhaitham didn’t convert it into a storage unit. That’s… unexpected.
Carefully, Kaveh helps Alhaitham onto the bed, arranging the pillows and blankets around him and taking his coat and headphones off. Alhaitham goes strangely limp, looking up at Kaveh almost desperately, his expression bewildered and lost.
It’s… not the Alhaitham that Kaveh knows.
The Alhaitham he knows is confident, sure of himself, and snarky. He moves through the world with an innate, untouchable presence, something Kaveh has always envied.
Kaveh’s old earrings, the ones he sold to a pawnshop to cover rent, are sitting on his old nightstand. Kaveh picks them up, turns them over in his hands.
“You bought these,” he whispers. “Why?”
“They were yours,” Alhaitham says. Kaveh settles on the bed next to him, sitting down by his legs and placing a hand over Alhaitham’s. He regards this man, his old roommate, with a mixture of fascination and longing.
“How have you been?” Kaveh asks. “I bet things have been more peaceful now that I’m gone.”
Alhaitham’s gaze flicks up to Kaveh’s face. “They haven’t.”
Kaveh sighs. “No need to spare my feelings. I’m aware of my own faults, Alhaitham.”
“I’m being honest,” Alhaitham says, his voice hoarse. “It hasn’t been the same without you. You… spoke frequently about the difference between a house and a home. This place is only a house now.”
Closing his eyes, Kaveh looks away. Something wet slides down his cheek. “I’m going to make some chai for you.”
Alhaitham reaches for him as he stands, then lets his hand drop to the mattress.
“You can help yourself to anything in the kitchen,” he says quietly. “You’re still welcome here, Kaveh.”
Kaveh nods. “I know.”
<><><>
Kaveh brings over two mugs of chai and a bowl of fruit, then sits back down on the bed and sighs. “I always thought you would be doing better than me,” he admits. “I thought I was going to miss living here far more than you’d miss having me around. But your house looks… I don’t know. It’s like you’re trying to pretend I’m still here. Do you really miss me that bad?”
Yes, Alhaitham thinks.
“You know I’m not one for sentimentality,” he says. “But I frequently find myself wishing you were still here. There are things I want to talk to you about, or articles I find myself bringing back from the Akademiya with the intention of showing you.”
Kaveh nods. “I keep wanting to show you my blueprints. But then I remember you aren’t there, and well–”
“You left.”
“I did.”
Alhaitham hands Kaveh one of the bulle fruits, because he got those for Kaveh and now he is finally here to eat them. “I never hated you.”
Kaveh’s smile is faint, sad. “I know. I think I realized that after I left, actually.”
He turns the bulle fruit in his hands, looking away from Alhaitham. “I never hated you either, you know. And I wish I hadn’t moved out. I… really miss you, sometimes. Even though you’re infuriating half the time.”
“You can always come back,” Alhaitham says. “I don’t see any point in stretching out your current arrangement given it only seems to be causing us both distress.”
“And then what?” Kaveh’s voice cracks, something wounded and hurt spilling out. “Be your tenant again, living off scraps of your pity? I can’t live like that, Haitham. You know I can’t.”
Alhaitham shrugs. “We could work something else out. You could cover half the household costs instead.”
“Maybe.”
They’re quiet for a while, Kaveh turned away from him, still seated close enough to Alhaitham that his warmth seeps through the blankets. “I have a meeting with a client soon,” he says eventually. “I have to go.”
Alhaitham opens his mouth to say something, but all that comes out is a croak. Kaveh pauses anyway, folds his hands across his lap. He regards Alhaitham with something bordering curiosity but which, on further examination, looks a lot like fondness.
“I’m going to come back,” he promises. “I’ll– I”ll bring us dinner after my meeting. And we’ll talk more then.”
Alhaitham nods, tongue heavy and leaden.
Kaveh stands up, walks out. The door shuts. The automatic lock clicks.
Alhaitham closes his eyes, draws the blanket over his head. Blindly, he reaches for the lion keychain, feels for the familiar weathered fabric and cool metal. It’s gone.
It isn’t on the nightstand. Or hidden within the folds of his coat, either. Kaveh took it, Alhaitham realizes. And the keys to his house – their house – with it.
For the first time in a while, Alhaitham feels himself smile.