Work Text:
Alhaitham woke up wrong.
The ceiling was his. Same beams, same geometry, the same light angle he’d memorized without trying. But the body beneath it woke wrong. It did not arrive in silence; it arrived already in motion, like a decision had been made elsewhere and his muscles were merely receiving it late.
He sat up too fast.
Hair fell into his eyes.
Too long. Too soft. It caught on his lashes and the irritation flared instantly, hot and unreasonable. He shoved it back and the gesture overshot—his hand kept going after the problem was solved, as if the movement needed to finish the thought even when the thought had stopped.
He looked down.
Different hands.
Different wrists.
A small nick on a knuckle he didn’t own.
Kaveh.
The fact landed cleanly. It should have calmed him. It didn’t.
Instead his body treated the name like permission.
He stood—already standing—and the room tilted a fraction from the suddenness. His balance corrected itself immediately; this body knew how to hold itself. But the correction didn’t bring stillness. It brought more forward pressure, an internal insistence to go that pressed against his ribs like a hand.
Alhaitham tried to pause, to make the next step a choice.
His foot moved anyway.
Annoyed, he crossed the room without washing his face, without fixing the hair properly, without performing any of the small rituals that usually proved he was the one driving. The hallway found him. The stairs found him. By the time he realized he was going downstairs, he was already halfway down.
He caught himself on the banister, knuckles whitening.
This wasn’t clumsiness. This wasn’t confusion.
It was the gap. The gap where choice lived had become thin, and he could feel it—like reaching for a familiar handle and finding it shaved down to something too narrow to grip.
Sound floated up from the kitchen: the careful clink of ceramic, a kettle hissing low, someone moving as if noise itself might trigger consequences.
Alhaitham descended the rest of the steps because stopping would have required more control than continuing.
Kaveh stood at the counter in Alhaitham’s body.
The sight was wrong in a way that went past novelty. Alhaitham’s body was built for minimal broadcasting. It didn’t confess through posture. It didn’t plead with expression. It held itself the same whether it was bored or irritated or thinking about nothing at all.
Kaveh, trapped inside it, looked like a storm sealed in glass.
He turned when Alhaitham entered—and his gaze went straight to Alhaitham’s face (Kaveh’s face now), searching for a familiar read. A soft apology. A quick brightness. Something that would tell him what kind of morning this was supposed to be.
What he found was an expression that moved too much.
The pressure prowled under his skin. The way Kaveh’s mouth wanted to speak before he’d chosen the words. The way Kaveh’s brows tightened. The way irritation leaked out through his face like heat through a crack.
“You’re awake,” Alhaitham said.
The edge in his voice arrived uninvited.
Kaveh blinked once, too slow, then replied with a careful flatness that didn’t match his eyes. “Yes.”
On the counter sat the remains of a small breakfast attempt: dried dates, a bit of flatbread, nuts in a small dish. No warmth. No indulgence. Food that existed because eating had to happen, not because anyone wanted it.
Kaveh picked up a cup as if giving his hands a job. He held it too long, not drinking.
Alhaitham’s body wanted to move again. He forced himself to sit at the table because sitting was expected, because sitting was what he would do in his own body when he needed to think.
It did not help.
His leg bounced once before he noticed. His fingers flexed. His attention snapped to the kettle, the window, the exact position of the spoon on the plate.
He stilled the leg. Stilled the fingers. Forced his gaze forward.
Kaveh watched him with a tense suspicion that was half confusion, half offense. “Why are you… doing that.”
“I’m thinking,” Alhaitham said, clipped.
Kaveh’s mouth twitched—an almost-smile that never made it to the surface because Alhaitham’s face didn’t do almost-smiles unless it meant them. Kaveh looked away first, irritated by his own lack of leverage.
His hand lifted toward his forehead on reflex—then stopped mid-gesture.
Kaveh’s eyes flicked toward the window glass where it caught a faint reflection. He stared at the face he was wearing.
Alhaitham’s face stared back.
Calm. Composed. Slightly severe.
It did not look like Kaveh felt.
Kaveh made an expression on purpose—something exaggerated, a frown sharp enough to feel theatrical.
The face moved, but minimally. As if the muscles hadn’t been taught this language at all.
Kaveh’s jaw tightened. He turned away sharply, like the window had insulted him.
Alhaitham didn’t comment. He filed it away.
Kaveh set the cup down and said too briskly, “You should go out.”
Alhaitham blinked. “What.”
Kaveh’s eyes sharpened. “You said you would. Before—” he cut himself off and swallowed, then continued as if it didn’t matter how he knew, “—before you went to sleep. Groceries.”
Alhaitham hadn’t said that. Not last night, not in any conversation he could recall.
But Kaveh said it with certainty, and certainty was a tool Kaveh used when he didn’t know what else to do.
Alhaitham’s body was already rising. It was as if the suggestion had given the pressure a direction.
“I’ll go,” Alhaitham said.
The words came out sharper than intended again. He heard it and hated it. He tried to soften the follow-up and found his mouth uncooperative.
Kaveh flinched, then glared as if offended at his own involuntary reaction.
Alhaitham held Kaveh’s gaze for half a second, and in that half second he realized something cold:
Kaveh was watching him the way you watch a tool that has begun to behave unpredictably. Not afraid. Not empathetic. Just… ready to be disappointed.
Kaveh spoke, stiff and practical. “Don’t talk to anyone.”
“I won’t,” Alhaitham said.
He meant it.
He also didn’t trust his mouth to obey.
He stood too fast. Again. The body surged forward like it was relieved to have an excuse to move. Alhaitham grabbed the keys and left the kitchen without washing up, without fixing his hair, without the rituals that would have proven agency.
The door shut behind him.
The house remained.
Kaveh remained.
And Alhaitham walked into the morning with a growing dread that discipline alone wouldn’t restore the space where his choices lived.
—-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By midday, the house felt like it had been emptied of oxygen.
Kaveh tried to work because Kaveh always tried to work. It was what he did when things were wrong. He repaired his life with effort, with motion, with “just one more push.” He didn’t know how to be still.
He went to the drafting table first—because it was the most reasonable place to start—and laid down a clean sheet with unnecessary precision. Ruler. Compass. Charcoal. Everything aligned, everything within reach, as if the order could convince the day to cooperate.
He stared at the blank page.
He could see the first line in his mind. The angle. The curve. The way the structure would feel under his hand.
His hand didn’t move.
Not because he didn’t want to.
Because the drop didn’t happen.
He waited, waiting for the usual internal click—start—and got nothing but a thin, drifting distance, like the connection between intention and motion had been loosened.
The longer he waited, the worse it became, until the page stopped being “paper” and became a bright, empty pressure. Time slipped. He blinked and realized he’d been sitting there long enough to lose track of what he had even been trying to draw.
He shoved the paper away, annoyed with himself, and tried again on the couch with a sketchbook because the couch didn’t feel like it expected perfection.
He opened to a page he’d meant to fill weeks ago. Pencil in hand. Point hovering.
He could see the lines. He could taste the rhythm of them. His mind had already done the work and was waiting for the body to follow.
The body did not follow.
Fatigue rolled through him—not dramatic, not theatrical. Just heavy. A drag that made even standing feel like a decision you had to pay for.
Kaveh’s first instinct was the lever he always reached for when he felt wrong:
Food.
He’d forgotten to eat while working a hundred times. He’d ignored hunger until it turned into a headache, until his limbs felt full of sand, until he suddenly couldn’t think and acted surprised. Food fixed fatigue. Food restored function. Food was simple.
He stood, went to the kitchen, and decided, grimly, that he would make soup.
Not because it was a grand plan. Because it was one action he could complete from start to finish without needing to negotiate with the day.
He filled the pot. He stirred. He watched steam rise and felt, for the first time in hours, like he had done something that made sense. The smell was right. Familiar. Comforting in a way his nervous system recognized even if his mind didn’t know how to name it.
When it was ready, he poured himself a bowl and sat at the table with the kind of determination you used when you wanted to prove the day hadn’t won.
He lifted the spoon.
The first bite tasted good.
That was what made it infuriating.
He took a second bite, expecting momentum to carry him forward.
Halfway through swallowing, something in him refused to cooperate.
Not pain. Not disgust. Not “bad.” Just refusal, flat as a slammed ledger, as if his body had declined the transaction.
Kaveh went still with the spoon hovering above the bowl, blinking at it as if the soup had changed rules mid-sentence.
He tried again anyway, because he liked it. Because it was good. Because this should have been easy.
The second swallow demanded effort that felt wildly out of proportion to soup. Not chewing—the permission.
His throat tightened slightly, the way it did when he was forcing himself through something he didn’t want to do. His stomach drew in tight and sour, not “nausea” in a clean way—more like a warning clamp, an internal hand that said if you insist, I will make this worse.
Kaveh set the spoon down carefully.
He stared at the bowl, offended.
He could feel his frustration climbing with nowhere to go, because the face he wore didn’t give him the release of expression. In the window glass, Alhaitham’s face looked composed—almost serene—while inside Kaveh was grinding his teeth hard enough to ache.
He forced his brows up. Forced his mouth into a grimace.
The face barely changed. It held the expression like a mask someone else had placed on him.
Kaveh’s fingers curled against the table.
“I like you,” he muttered at the soup, voice flat in Alhaitham’s throat. “Why are you doing this.”
He tried one more spoonful, slower, respectful, like asking nicely would help.
It didn’t.
The “chore” feeling hit immediately—an ugly, disproportionate effort to push something through that his body didn’t want right now. The sour clamp in his stomach tightened sharper, as if the refusal had teeth.
Kaveh stopped before it escalated further.
He set the spoon down and pushed the bowl away a few inches like distance might reduce the argument.
The soup sat there, warm and good and useless.
Kaveh leaned back in the chair and stared at nothing for a long time, drifting. Not asleep. Not resting. Just sliding away from the day because the day kept presenting tasks that required permissions he couldn’t force.
When the front door finally opened, the sound hit him like salvation and accusation at once.
—-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The market should have been easy.
Get gorceries. Pay. Leave. Return.
In his own body, Alhaitham could walk through a crowd without caring that it existed. People were trajectories. Voices were background.
Today, the background had teeth.
A vendor called out and his head turned before he decided to look. Someone brushed his shoulder and irritation spiked so fast his mouth opened on its own.
He shut it again, jaw clenched.
He tightened his grip on the bag strap until his knuckles ached and tried to apply discipline the way he always did: slow down, narrow focus, do one thing at a time.
The discipline held for seconds at a time.
Then the body surged again—attention snapping, limbs moving, impulses arriving too early, too fast.
It wasn’t temptation. It wasn’t moral weakness.
Latency…
The gap between impulse and action had been shaved down until he could feel his autonomy slipping through his fingers. Resisting didn’t give him space. It only made the pressure louder, like bracing a door that wanted to swing open anyway.
He stopped in the aisle and tried the method that always worked in his own body: reduce cost. Step back. Postpone.
Leave. Return later.
The instruction landed cleanly.
His body did not relax.
The pressure stayed hot and restless, prowling for an outlet. Stillness didn’t soothe it. Stillness trapped him with it.
Alhaitham felt something cold climb his spine: the realization that the tool he relied on didn’t work here.
He moved because movement was the only thing that didn’t feel like being dragged.
He bought what he needed quickly. Rice. Vegetables. Eggs. Anything that required the fewest decisions. He avoided faces so his mouth wouldn’t betray him into conversation. Even then, he spoke once—too sharp.
“Looking for something sweet?” a vendor chirped, reaching to tap his arm. Alhaitham’s hand shot up, deflecting the touch before his mind registered the movement. “Don’t distract me.” The phrase was a knife. The vendor recoiled, smile wiped clean. “No need for that, sir.” The shame was instant, hot, and entirely Kaveh’s body’s doing.
Alhaitham felt heat rise and hated that he could feel it rising before he could make it stop. Hated that the body was handing him reactions like weapons and expecting him to manage the recoil.
He left faster than necessary, pace too quick, breath shallow, jaw aching from being clenched.
On the walk home, he tried to slow down.
The body surged anyway.
The leash feeling returned—movement happening, autonomy lagging behind.
For the first time in a long time, a thought arrived uninvited and ugly:
If this continues, I will break something.
He didn’t know if “something” meant an object, a relationship, or his own composure.
Not knowing was worse.
—-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
When Alhaitham returned, the house looked the same.
Kaveh did not.
He was on the couch, sitting too still, eyes unfocused on a point that didn’t matter. When Alhaitham stepped inside, Kaveh’s head lifted slowly, like he had to drag himself back into the room.
Alhaitham set the grocery bags down carefully, because carefulness was the only proof he had left that he could still choose a thing.
Kaveh watched him with Alhaitham’s face—”calm”, “composed”, “unreadable”. The eyes were sharp, but the mouth gave nothing away.
Kaveh spoke first. “I made soup.”
Alhaitham’s gaze flicked to the table. The half-finished bowl sat there, cooled.
Kaveh’s jaw tightened. “Couldn’t eat it.”
Alhaitham said, “Did you eat anything.”
Kaveh stared at him, frustrated, and the feeling wouldn’t translate through the face he was wearing. He looked, instead, like a man calmly reporting weather.
“No.”
Alhaitham felt irritation spike at the situation, at the stupidity of biology, at the fact that he couldn’t simply fix this. He also felt, immediately after, a sharper irritation at himself because Kaveh’s face (his face) was probably broadcasting all of it.
He forced his voice slow. “Stop forcing it when your body refuses.”
Kaveh blinked. “I wasn’t forcing—”
He stopped. His throat worked as if the memory of the refusal was enough to make his body object again. He looked away, then back, and his eyes flicked—brief, involuntary—to a reflective surface, like he couldn’t stop checking whether his face was betraying him.
Then he snapped, “I hate this face.”
Alhaitham paused.
Kaveh’s eyes were hot. His mouth was neutral. The mismatch made him look cruel when he wasn’t trying to be.
“I’m doing expressions,” Kaveh said, voice tightening, “and nothing happens.”
Alhaitham turned toward the groceries because turning away was safer than letting his own body say something sharp.
Behind him, Kaveh asked, quieter, “Was it bad out there.”
Alhaitham’s mouth tried to answer too quickly. A dismissive line rose on reflex: deny, downplay, end the topic.
He caught it.
The catch cost him. He felt it in his jaw. In his throat. In the way Kaveh’s body stored aggression like it was always ready to be used.
He spoke carefully.
“This body moves before I decide,” he said.
Kaveh went still.
Alhaitham continued, controlled, because if he sped up he could feel the sentence sharpening. “Resisting does… little.”
Kaveh stared at him, and for once his face’s neutrality matched the way he’d gone quiet inside.
Then he said, small, “So what do we do tomorrow.”
Alhaitham set the last item into the pantry with deliberate precision, as if placement could rebuild a perimeter around himself.
He didn’t offer reassurance. He offered a plan that didn’t pretend to solve the unsolvable.
“We keep it small,” he said.
Kaveh exhaled, thin. “I did nothing today.”
Alhaitham’s jaw tightened. “Do less than fighting.”
Kaveh blinked.
The line landed.
Alhaitham forced his hands still. Forced his shoulders down. Forced his mouth not to sharpen.
Then he said, the only truth he could afford without tipping into something ugly:
“I am adapting.”
Kaveh nodded once, because nodding was one of the few actions that still completed cleanly.
Outside, the house stayed the same.
Inside, neither of them trusted the next morning.