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Despite the popularity of the game, it had taken a while for Kaveh to actually pick up Tomodachi Life, and only after both Collei and Nilou had recommended it to him. Kaveh is not usually much of a gamer, despite Cyno’s repeated attempts to convert him to whatever Genius Invocation sequel has just come out.
(And as much as he’d love to design his latest masterpiece in Minecraft or play some sort of multiplayer with Cyno and Tighnari, he’s usually too busy with his work to have the time for games. Tomodachi Life had seemed manageable under his current workload, and so here it is on Mehrak, his PC / briefcase / assistant.)
“What is it you do in the game?”
Alhaitham is standing behind Kaveh, seemingly having taken an interest in the game despite his previous dismissal of getting it himself and playing with Kaveh.
(Kaveh doesn’t know if Tomodachi Life allows for multiplayer, but it seemed like the socially responsible thing to do to make his roommate the offer.)
“You, er, manage an island,” Kaveh explains. That’s about all he knows, given his general policy for both new movies and games is to go in blind. “You can make characters called ‘miis’. And, well, they interact. I’m going to figure the rest out as I go.”
“You didn’t do any research first?” Alhaitham makes a sound of disapproval, and Kaveh resists the urge to stomp on his foot.
“Collei and Nilou both enjoyed it!” he huffs. “And given they both have better taste in media than you, I’m willing to trust their judgement.”
Alhaitham hums, folding his arms as Kaveh waits for the game to load. “I recall you enjoying my last few movie picks.”
Kaveh rolls his eyes. “That’s because they were actually good.”
“And that has nothing to do with the one who picked them out because…?”
“Oh, shut up.”
Thankfully, Alhaitham obliges, even if he’s only doing so because the game has finally loaded and the menu is now more interesting than a debate with Kaveh that clearly seems to be going nowhere (as most of their debates do).
The first step is to create miis for his island, and Kaveh spends an embarrassing amount of time scrolling through all the appearance settings before finally starting to actually create something.
(He’s starting by creating himself on the island, because as the artist he’s allowed to draw a self-portrait and frankly he’d like it if he got to bear witness in pixel form to whatever masterpiece or disaster he’s able to create in Tomodachi Life.)
“Interesting,” Alhaitham notes, tilting his head to the side. “It seems even in video games, the pride of the artist persists.”
“Oh, shut up,” Kaveh mutters. “Look, I’ll make you next if that’s what you want. Happy now?”
Alhaitham’s tone is infuriatingly smug. “Only if you put as much care into mine as you did for yours. Your sketchbook indicates you have plenty of practice drawing me, so my expectations are set high.”
Kaveh snorts. “I’m going to make your mii ugly on purpose,” he declares, knowing that he won’t.
<><><>
If anything, Alhaitham’s mii ends up being the one Kaveh is proudest of, even though he’s only created about four so far. Alhaitham has dragged both another chair and the signature not-soup he calls Ideal Circumstance over, and is now beginning to eat, much to the annoyance of Kaveh.
(He’s offered it to Kaveh as well, but still.)
“Don’t get crumbs on Mehrak,” Kaveh hisses. He’s creating Tighnari’s mii now, and is finding it rather difficult to add his fox ears and tail. There are a fair amount of customization options in the game, including the ability to draw features onto miis, but it doesn’t seem to have been made with hybrids in mind.
Alhaitham seems unconcerned about the potential messiness of his not-soup. “I designed the dish to not be messy, senior. And given you seem unlikely to get up from your computer anytime soon, we both need to eat.”
“You could just eat on your own,” Kaveh points out through a bite of Ideal Circumstance (which, admittedly, is delicious). Alhaitham hums.
“Watching you work is interesting.”
Kaveh pointedly ignores the last comment. He never can tell when Alhaitham is being serious or sarcastic, or if he happens to be both at the same time, or if he’s just cloaking one as the other. His roommate is a puzzle that Kaveh has left half-solved, and the idea of returning to it to fit in the remaining pieces seems too daunting.
“Well,” Kaveh mutters. “I appreciate you sharing your abomination of not-soup with me.”
“Mhm.”
They fall silent as Kaveh finishes his work on Tighnari’s mii, then pushes himself away from Mehrak with a yawn. He hasn’t been keeping track of the time, and it’s getting late.
“We should both be getting to bed,” Alhaitham points out. “Finish your miis in the morning.”
Kaveh frowns. Alhaitham has been sleeping in the living room for the past few nights, after the day they arrived home to find his window smashed open and room trashed. Kaveh has put a sheet in front of the broken glass and has been searching in vain for a replacement, but he hasn’t yet found anything that matches the aesthetic of the house. “Did you get all of the glass off your floor, or are you still sleeping on the divan?”
Alhaitham shrugs. “Divan. I don’t appreciate hearing city noises when I’m trying to sleep.”
“Do you need anything?” Kaveh asks, not sure exactly why he’s offering. “More blankets, maybe?”
“I have plenty of my own,” Alhaitham says with another shrug, gathering their plates and sweeping the few crumbs on the table into his hand. “The only problem is that the divan offers less back support. My sleep quality is sub-par.”
Kaveh rolls his eyes. “Of course his highness has to get his beauty sleep.”
“Given how often you stare at me, I would say my beauty sleep is having its effect.”
“You–” Kaveh can quickly feel his face heating up; he slams Mehrak shut and glares at Alhaitham. “You are a decent model for my drawings. Nothing more!!”
(Admittedly, Alhaitham is gorgeous. Despite his laziness, he clearly puts effort into how he presents himself, and more than once per day Kaveh finds himself drawn to the sharp curve of his eyeliner or the baubles dangling from his waist. More frequently, it’s Alhaitham himself he’s drawn to – the gemstone-like shades of his eyes, the defined lines of his chest, or the way the corner of his mouth quirks upwards when he’s amused.)
(No, Kaveh definitely does not have a crush or anything like that. He’s an artist, for Buer’s sake. He knows how to appreciate beauty, and that is it.)
As he watches Alhaitham head for the divan, Kaveh briefly entertains the idea of letting Alhaitham borrow his bed. Despite their disagreements, Alhaitham is still his junior, and he feels guilty having him sleep on the divan.
It would mean switching places with his roommate and taking the divan on his stead, but Kaveh is used to discomfort.
Of course, they could just share a bed, but that seems even more ridiculous. Kaveh quickly dismisses the thought.
<><><>
He finishes the miis the next morning, and Alhaitham shows up once more to watch him work. They bicker over things like the exact color of Cyno’s eyes and if Nilou’s hair is loose or in ponytails, until photos are pulled up and repeatedly zoomed in on and Kaveh judges the miis to be satisfactory.
(Kaveh would like it to be known that most of Alhaitham’s complaints were straight-up wrong and only caused him to waste unnecessary time searching for close-up pictures of his friends.)
When he sets the miis loose on the island, Kaveh has to admit he wasn’t exactly sure what they would do. He was expecting some cute interactions, maybe some miis getting shawarma together, perhaps even Cyno’s mii managing to badger the others into playing Genius Invocation with him.
He was not expecting his own mii to immediately fall in love with Alhaitham’s.
The speed at which it happens is concerningly fast; one minute they’re walking home, and the next Kaveh’s mii is staring starry-eyed at the one representing Alhaitham and asking if this is love.
“That’s interesting,” the real Alhaitham comments, the corners of his mouth twitching. “Which option will you choose?”
“No, obviously!” Kaveh hisses. “What do you think?”
Alhaitham lifts an eyebrow. “I think you should select the other option.”
The audacity of that man. Kaveh folds his arms, turning away from his roommate to glare at the stupid love-struck face on his mii. “Why in Teyvat would you suggest that?”
“It will be interesting,” Alhaitham suggests, tone mischievous.
Kaveh whips around, Alhaitham now the focus of his glare. “No, it will not!”
Alhaitham huffs. “What, does the cluster of pixels that represents me not reciprocate? That must be rather awkward.”
“It’s only been two minutes!!” Kaveh insists. “There’s no telling what’s going to happen.”
By now, Alhaitham’s smirk is painfully evident in his tone. “Which is exactly why you should see how this plays out. Surely you’re curious as well, senior? Or do you think that your mii is incapable of successfully wooing mine?”
“I’m not–” Kaveh sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “You know what? Fine. I WILL get your stupid mii to fall in love. Surely a ‘cluster of pixels’ is nowhere near as ridiculous as the real you.”
All that Alhaitham offers in return is a hum. “I look forward to what happens next.”
<><><>
Since Kaveh has meetings with clients the next morning and blueprints to work on in the afternoon, Tomodachi Life cannot be attended to for the rest of the day, something he’s partially grateful for given the awkwardness of his mii’s decision to fall in love.
(Really, did he have to do that? And of all the miis on the island, Alhaitham? It’s ridiculous, honestly.)
As the sun sinks lower in the sky and the two of them finish their dinner, Alhaitham once more starts to settle onto the divan, and Kaveh once more fails to hold his tongue.
“It doesn’t look like a very comfortable place to sleep.”
“It isn’t as if I have much of a choice,” Alhaitham points out. “My room is currently uninhabitable. The divan is the next best option.”
“It–” Kaveh bites his lip. He’s not sure about the wisdom of what he’s about to offer, but really, it can’t be comfortable to sleep on the divan, and Alhaitham takes his comfort seriously. Besides, it doesn’t feel right that Alhaitham should be sleeping on the divan in his own apartment while Kaveh takes the only bed.
“You can use my bed,” he says. “I’ll take the divan. I’m used to the discomfort.”
Alhaitham narrows his eyes. “That’s uncharacteristically generous of you.”
Huffing, Kaveh sits down on the opposite divan, then folds his arms. “That one is my line, not yours. Aren’t you always complaining that I’m too generous?”
“You are,” Alhaitham states, but he’s watching Kaveh almost curiously now. “But your generosity rarely extends to me. Especially since you’re offering to put yourself in a position of discomfort for my sake.”
(Kaveh is a restless sleeper, and both of them know that. On the average night, he turns over about as much as a kebab being grilled, and in the confined space the divan offers the chance of him rolling onto the floor is higher than Kaveh would admittedly like to admit.)
“Well, I’m offering it now,” Kaveh snaps. “You can take it if you want. It would be awkward if we both took the bed, anyway.”
Alhaitham shrugs. “I wouldn’t mind it.”
<><><>
Kaveh’s bedtime routine feels ten times more awkward with Alhaitham around. His roommate trails behind him, watching as Kaveh struggles to remove the clips from his hair – they’ve gotten tangled or something, usually he can remove them just fine – until Alhaitham finally offers to help.
So now Kaveh is sitting down on the bed, Alhaitham’s fingers running through his hair as he removes the clips. Kaveh’s insides are twisting themselves into knots at the sudden proximity and the surprising gentleness with which Alhaitham works, despite his teasing tone as he asks for an update on Kaveh’s Tomodachi Life game.
“I haven’t played since this morning,” Kaveh mutters, pulling himself away from Alhaitham as the last of the clips come loose. “And I have blueprints to work on tomorrow. Once I finish those, I’ll have time to check on the miis.”
He arranges the spare pillows to form a makeshift barrier between the two sides of the bed, since he and Alhaitham are not going to be cuddling tonight, even by accident. Alhaitham settles next to him on the opposite side of the barrier, pulling the blanket over his shoulders and glancing at Kaveh.
“I look forward to witnessing your mii’s attempts to seduce mine.”
“Oh, shut up,” Kaveh mutters. He rolls over to face the ceiling, glaring at a dent in the paint. “It’ll probably be pretty futile, given that mii is based off the real you. I can’t remember you ever having a crush.”
“I don’t get them often,” Alhaitham admits. “Everyone around me always seemed rather unrealistic when it came to romance. Especially with love at first sight.”
Kaveh scoffs. “What, don’t believe in it? Trust me, it happens.”
Alhaitham hums. “Like your mii’s nearly instant crush?”
“Exactly.”
A brief silence follows, broken at last by Alhaitham’s quiet voice. “I don’t believe love can exist at first sight,” he says, the blankets shuffling around him as he adjusts himself. “Attraction, perhaps. But I would consider love to be a matter of knowing.”
That’s… strangely poetic, for Alhaitham.
(Though, Kaveh supposes, with Alhaitham’s mastery of language, poetry probably comes naturally to him. Maybe Kaveh has just misjudged his roommate again.)
“I’ve met plenty of people that I love less the more I know them,” Kaveh scoffs. “Like you. You’re an asshole.”
“And yet you’re letting me sleep in your bed.”
Kaveh scoffs. “Because I’m not an asshole.”
In the dark, he thinks he sees Alhaitham’s faint smile.
<><><>
When Kaveh wakes up, his arms are wrapped around Alhaitham, who seems perfectly content to tuck his head against Kaveh’s shoulder. The pillow barrier seems to have been entirely ineffective, and worse, Alhaitham’s arms are also wrapped around Kaveh.
“It seems your mii’s infatuation is rubbing off on you,” Alhaitham teases as Kaveh struggles to remove himself from the scene. Kaveh jabs his finger in his roommate’s chest as he pushes himself away.
“Shut up!” he hisses, face heating up. “You are also clinging to me, I’d like you to realize. Now let go.”
<><><>
That day, Kaveh sets ‘make the Alhaitham mii fall in love with his’ as his new goal.
He is NOT going to have Alhaitham holding this over his head anymore, especially not with the previous embarrassment of last night, even if it means trying to play matchmaker with two ‘clusters of pixels’ who are supposed to represent them.
It turns out, this is a lot harder said than done. Despite multiple walks, shared meals, and as much forced proximity as Kaveh could manage, Alhaitham’s mii remains stubbornly not in love.
Even more annoyingly, the real Alhaitham feels the need to add his snarky commentary on everything the miis do, from the games they play to the outfits they choose to wear.
“Be more respectful,” Kaveh chides. “One of them does represent you, after all.”
“The likeness doesn’t seem especially accurate,” Alhaitham muses, raising an eyebrow. Kaveh scoffs.
“Are you insulting my skills as an artist?”
Alhaitham shakes his head. “Your artistic talent has few flaws, as always. It’s the mii’s inability to have formed any opinion whatsoever on yours that seems inaccurate. I remember having quite the opinion after meeting you for the first time.”
“Such as?” Kaveh asks. He isn’t sure if he wants to know, but unfortunately he’s curious, so sue him.
“You were loud and pushy,” Alhaitham says. “And didn’t know when to leave someone alone.”
“HEY!”
“–and that you were much smarter than you led your peers to believe. And I found your willingness to stand up for what you believed in admirable, even if we disagreed. Far too much of the Akademiya was content to just be led unquestioningly.”
Oh. Kaveh blinks, shuffling his hands in his lap. “I thought you were a bit of a prick back then, to be honest,” he admits. “Doesn’t exactly seem like I was wrong, but I did realize later there was a lot more to you than that.”
“Such as?”
Alhaitham’s tone is teasing, baiting, and Kaveh is no better than a fish on a hook when it comes to these jabs. “I–”
He takes a moment to compose himself, something that proves to be futile, as his next words come out more bitter than he intended them to. “Yeah. That you were a massive prick. Now let me finish my blueprints.”
<><><>
However, Kaveh is NOT going to have Alhaitham going around saying his mii is inaccurate, and so after dinner, he invites his roommate to make several changes to his mii’s personality.
“Just so you know, I doubt this is going to make a difference,” Kaveh says, leaning over Alhaitham’s shoulder. His roommate shrugs.
“Make a difference in what?”
Again, that stupid fucking smirk in his tone, the one that drives Kaveh insane and that he has to pretend he isn’t ridiculously attracted to. Kaveh grits his teeth. “You know what I’m talking about, asshole.”
Except. When the two miis next interact – the Alhaitham mii falls in love. Instantly.
“What did you do to it?” Kaveh asks, aghast. “I swear you must have messed with the code. This– you– I didn’t think you’d stoop so low as to hack a video game to mess with me.”
“I didn’t.” Alhaitham leans towards Kaveh, watching the miis curiously. “Given you watched me the entire time, you know there’s no way I could have messed with the code. Though I appreciate your confidence in my hacking capabilities, I only made the mii more like myself.”
“And he fell in love instantly?”
Alhaitham shrugs. “I suppose so.”
In this moment, he looks oddly vulnerable, his gaze flickering away from Kaveh’s and mouth opened slightly. Kaveh stares, wide-eyed, taking in the faint pink slowly creeping out from underneath Alhaitham’s headphones.
“Wait. Did you– are you–”
(He can’t, Kaveh tells himself. Not after everything. Alhaitham, who’s seen the most of Kaveh, should reasonably have the lowest opinion of him. And yet.)
Alhaitham’s gaze remains fixed on the wall. “There’s hardly any reason it has to mean anything.”
“T-take your earpieces off,” Kaveh half-demands, half-stutters. “And actually look at me. I want to know–” he swallows down the anxiety rising in his throat– “if this did mean something to you. I always think you’re playing a game with me, but–”
“It’s your turn to wash the dishes,” Alhaitham says, like he didn’t just almost-confess to Kaveh. But he takes his earpieces off anyways, handing them and the cassette tape attached to Kaveh.
Underneath, his ears are dusted pink. Ever since the Akademiya, they’ve always been the only sign that Alhaitham was blushing or embarrassed, and now here every proof that Kaveh needs is in front of him.
He still can’t believe it. Still doesn’t want to believe it.
“How long?” he asks.
Alhaitham stands up, fits his earpieces back onto his head. As he moves to walk out – without even giving Kaveh an answer, damn it! – Kaveh follows, blocking his path to the living room. “Tell me the truth.”
“Is there a reason this matters so much to you?”
“I–” Kaveh’s eyes trail down to Alhaitham’s mouth, to his half-parted lips. He’s distractingly close, though really, it’s Kaveh’s own fault for putting himself here. Alhaitham smirks.
“You’re staring at my lips, senior,” Alhaitham teases, and Kaveh feels his face flushing with heat once more. “I suspect your mii may not be the only version of you with some level of interest–”
Their lips meet. Kaveh is only half-conscious of the way he’s leaned forward; sure, trying to shut Alhaitham up with a kiss hadn’t exactly been his plan, but given it seems to be working he’s hardly going to complain. Alhaitham melts into the kiss as if he had practically been waiting for it, something almost desperate in the way he presses ever closer.
When Kaveh pulls away, the look in Alhaitham’s eyes is, for lack of a better word, almost intimate. It’s not a look Kaveh thought would ever be directed at him.
“Bastard,” Kaveh says halfheartedly, pushing Alhaitham away from him. “I only did that to shut you up, you know.”
Alhaitham smirks. “I see. In that case, I might have to increase the frequency with which I verbally bother you if this is the result.”
“Oh, don’t you dare.”
(He will, Kaveh already knows. And Kaveh has to admit… he wouldn’t exactly be opposed to using this method to shut Alhaitham up a second time.)
<><><>
They don’t talk about the kiss. Or Kaveh’s almost-confession.
(Kaveh would like to, if he has to be honest with himself. But he’s the one avoiding Alhaitham, and so really, he doesn’t get to complain.)
Of course, Alhaitham has to go and ruin this, interrupting Kaveh’s work by barging into his bedroom.
“You left Mehrak on,” his roommate informs him, arms folded as he leans against the doorframe. “Tomodachi Life was still running.”
The smug look on his face makes Kaveh’s stomach uneasy. He hasn’t mentioned the kiss yet, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t planning on doing so. “Did you turn it off?” he asks. “I need Mehrak fully charged for tomorrow.”
“Mhm. Our miis want to get married.”
What.
“I– the fuck, Alhaitham?”
Alhaitham smirks. “Given you were the one who decided to smash your face against mine an hour ago, I went ahead and approved their marriage. They should be getting ready for a pixelated wedding soon enough.”
“You–”
He can’t believe this man. Why are their miis even trying to get married now? It’s only been, what, a few in-game days since they started dating? “I don’t even know what to say to you right now. I hope you feel appropriately embarrassed by this whole situation.”
“I don’t,” Alhaitham says casually, sitting down next to Kaveh. He’s unusually close, the warmth of his skin bleeding into Kaveh’s.
“Kaveh,” he adds, quieter this time. “To answer your earlier question, it was since the Akademiya. I had assumed that I would be able to distance myself from older feelings when I invited you to live with me, but it seems I was wrong.”
Since the Akademiya. All this time, and Kaveh had thought his silly student crush followed by awkward not-crush on his roommate was entirely one sided.
“What you said earlier,” he starts. “Er– last night. It was about me, wasn’t it?”
Alhaitham nods. “I’ll let you draw what implications from that you will. I want to sleep.”
“On the divan again?” Kaveh asks. “Or in my room?”
(Why does he feel so nervous about this? He was the one who decided to kiss Alhaitham in the first place, so now he has to reap the consequences, for better or worse.)
“Are you offering your bed again?” Alhaitham asks. “And how do I know you’re going to keep your hands to yourself?”
“I have self control!” Kaveh hisses, earning him another one of Alhaitham’s smirks.
“It didn’t seem like that when you kissed me to shut me up.”
“And I’d do it again,” Kaveh snaps, his mouth moving far faster than his brain. Archons, what is he saying right now? “Er– I mean– only if you want to– I’m not going to if you aren’t okay with it–”
This time, it’s Alhaitham who closes the distance, his lips pressing against Kaveh’s for only a moment before pulling away.
“I wouldn’t mind doing it again,” he murmurs quietly, “if that’s what you’re asking.”
Kaveh huffs, feeling something in his brain short-circuit. “Well, that seemed implied by the fact that you decided to kiss me.”
Alhaitham’s lips quirk. “You did so first, senior.”
And he’ll do it again, Kaveh thinks as he pulls Alhaitham in for another kiss. They still have a lot to talk about – especially Alhaitham’s hastiness with that mii wedding – but for now, Kaveh is going to enjoy every moment of this.