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“Ten.”
Alhaitham was nothing if not consistent. Kaveh could attest to that, considering he was currently perched on his boyfriend’s back as though it were the most natural seat in the house (because the other seat was basically their couch, in which Kaveh still had a hard time convincing Alhaitham to change it—the cushion wasn’t the best to sit in, and the design, please, horrendous, but it was Alhaitham’s anyway). A sketchbook rested across his lap while his pencil tapped thoughtfully against his chin, tracing invisible lines through the air.
“Now that I think about it…” Kaveh muttered, eyes narrowing at his draft. “I should add more pillars to the inner frame. It’d distribute the load more efficiently, and—”
“Eleven.”
Kaveh glanced down just in time to watch Alhaitham lower himself with infuriating control before pressing back up again. He did his best to work on this draft anyway. And the deadline was like, in one week. And he still had to deal with Alhaitham's seriously working-out-mode biceps. So a tease wouldn’t hurt.
“Oh? That one took longer.” He grinned. “Slacking, Mr. Scribe?”
“You’re adding approximately twelve kilograms to my body weight.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“Just a matter of fact.”
“Mhhm,” Kaveh adjusted himself with exaggerated innocence, settling a little more of his weight onto Alhaitham’s lower back because he could, and he was a menace like that. It wasn’t like Alhaitham couldn’t carry this weight. “Maybe I should lean a little harder. Just to motivate you.”
Alhaitham inhaled slowly through his nose before lowering himself into another push-up.
Kaveh had, admittedly, put on a little weight. It wasn’t enough for anyone else to notice, perhaps, but Alhaitham certainly had. Kaveh himself was quietly proud of it. There had been a time when his eating habits were so abysmal that entire days disappeared beneath commissions and deadlines. His meals were forgotten in favor of just one more revision from demanding clients. That no longer happened—not while they lived together. Alhaitham had made it a habit to drag him away from his desk, place a warm plate of Sabz Meat Stew in front of him, and wait until every bite was gone before letting him return to work. The last time Faranak visited, she’d laughed, pinching Kaveh’s cheek and declaring it the weight of love.
Kaveh couldn’t really argue with that.
“Twelve.”
“See? Faster already.” Kaveh laughed, pressing his index fingers against Alhaitham’s lats. Looked so much better with Kaveh covering half of his back. Maybe even better for later if Alhaitham let him paint the surface with kisses.
“You’re insufferable.”
“But you let me do this every week,” Kaveh pouted. “No, actually, thrice a week. This is our third time this week. And it is only Wednesday.”
“I’ve accepted that stopping you would require more energy than continuing.”
Kaveh gasped dramatically, pressing a hand to his chest. “That’s the most romantic thing you’ve ever said to me!”
Alhaitham didn’t answer but he lowered himself, gently, then pulled the weight back up.
“Thirteen.”
Kaveh barely looked up. He was already back to his sketch, pencil darting over the page in rough strokes before stopping just as abruptly. He frowned, erased a line, and redrew it.
“Mm… no. If the foyer opens into the central hall, then the pillars should frame the entrance instead of dividing it.” He tapped the graphite against the margin of the blueprint. “Otherwise, people won’t know where to look first.”
“You’re assuming visitors enter in groups.” Alhaitham said between his sets. He held himself at the top of the push-up for a beat before lowering again, bending his elbows.
“They will,” Kaveh insisted without missing a beat. “It’s a communal building. Think of somewhere Nilou would perform. People don’t attend those alone.”
Alhaitham narrowed his eyes as he pulled himself back up. “I attended Nilou’s performance alone.”
“Yeah,” Kaveh snorted, almost ironically. “Because your single ass used to do that.”
“I was occupied,” Alhaitham replied, lowering himself until his chest hovered just above the floor before pushing back up with a measured breath.
Kaveh let out a scoff, not even looking up from the blueprint. “You were lonely.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You absolutely were.” Kaveh finally glanced down at him, lips curling into a smug grin as he twirled his pencil between his fingers. “Who voluntarily attends a dance performance alone?”
Kaveh absentmindedly shifted his weight as he scribbled a few more notes in the corner of the page, entirely oblivious to the extra pressure settling onto Alhaitham’s back.
“But now,” he continued, sounding entirely too pleased with himself, “you have me. Which means you don’t wander around cultural events looking like some mysterious scholar avoiding eye contact with everyone.”
Alhaitham lowered and lifted himself a bit quicker than before, biceps shaking from the shifting weight. “I’ve never avoided eye contact.”
Kaveh barked out a laugh, shaking his head. “You avoided conversations.”
“I avoided unnecessary conversations,” Alhaitham corrected, his voice only slightly rougher from the growing exertion.
“Exactly.” Kaveh beamed as if he’d just won the argument. He leaned forward just enough to poke the side of Alhaitham’s shoulder with the eraser end of his pencil. “Some people call that being a hermit.”
Alhaitham lowered himself down, and Kaveh had forgotten the count. Not Kaveh’s fault, really—he was here to look pretty and work. Alhaitham was here to look hot and work out. And count the set. It was like 50:50.
“So,” Kaveh concluded triumphantly, circling a section of the blueprint with his pencil, “my assumption still stands. Visitors come in groups.”
Alhaitham stilled in position. “Are we a group?”
Kaveh blinked, finally glancing down at him.
“What?”
“You said visitors come in groups,” Alhaitham took a deep breath, then continued. “You and I are two people.”
“Yes?”
“So are we a group?”
“Oh.” Kaveh scratched the back of his neck with the end of his pencil. “I mean… if you want to be technical.”
“I usually do.”
“Fine.” Kaveh rolled his eyes dramatically. “Let’s say we add Cyno and Tighnari.”
Alhaitham answered with nothing more than a hum, lowering himself into the next repetition… only to remain there a heartbeat longer than before. Like Kaveh wouldn’t notice!
“Hey!” Without looking up from the blueprint, Kaveh reached down and gave Alhaitham’s shoulder a sharp pinch.
“Aow,” Alhaitham muttered into the floor, his complaint muffled by the carpet.
Kaveh clicked his tongue. “Don’t think I didn’t catch that.”
“Catch what?”
“The pause.”
“I am completing the exercise.”
“With a suspicious amount of contemplation.” Kaveh shifted the sketchbook higher onto his lap before lightly drumming his pencil against the back of Alhaitham’s neck. “Come on, Mr. Scribe. I have a draft to finish.”
“I am aware.”
“You used to knock out fifty of these without blinking.” Kaveh frowned, trying to remember—with so much exaggeration. “And we were only at…” He counted on his fingers, lips moving silently. “Wait. How many was it?”
“Twenty.”
Kaveh nodded automatically.
“Mhm. Twenty.”
Uh. Really? That didn’t feel like—wait, so while they were talking, Kaveh surely didn’t see-saw in Alhaitham’s back twenty times, because when they were last counting at thirteen, or was it fourteen? Kaveh slowly lowered the sketchbook and narrowed his eyes at the back of Alhaitham’s head.
“No! We were at seventeen. You—” Kaveh grumbled, flicking his fingers against Alhaitham’s cheeks just like what he did when it was still chubby back in Akademiya days. “You liar. Lied right to your senior face.”
Alhaitham’s shoulders twitched. “I wasn’t facing you, Senior.”
“Okay, but still—You!”
A laugh escaped Alhaitham before he could suppress it, the usual kind that was low and warm, his entire body shaking beneath Kaveh with the sound. The movement rippled through his shoulders, traveled up Kaveh’s legs, and jostled the sketchbook in his lap until the pencil left an accidental streak across the page. Kaveh stared at the ruined line for exactly half a second before the laugh reached him too.
Archons. That was unfair.
It felt like he was being a good boyfriend with so much control when he was on top of Alhaitham (literally, as we speak). But whenever he laughed like this, it always sounded like—like Kaveh fell in love all over again. Like he saw this opinionated asshole with a neat haircut in his silver hair inside the class they were both studying together, and the next day, Kaveh found himself by his side, being annoyed, ragebaited, and hopefully, those arrangements never change.
Because it made being annoyed significantly more difficult.
“Pardon my lackluster performance, angel,” Alhaitham said after catching his breath, his voice carrying that infuriatingly dry humor Kaveh had learned to recognize. “It was a tactical error to eat two portions of shawarma before exercising.”
Kaveh snorted as he finally slid off Alhaitham’s back, landing lightly on the rug beside him.
“That was your excuse for extra protein,” he said, dusting invisible graphite from the front of his shirt. “Now you’ve earned the consequences.”
Alhaitham let out a gentle hum, remaining sprawled on his stomach for another moment. His breathing was heavier than before as his shoulders rose and fell with each measured inhale.
Kaveh crouched beside him, resting his forearms on his knees before dipping his head into Alhaitham’s line of sight.
“So?” he asked, unable to hide the smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “You good, Mr. Scribe?”
Alhaitham lifted his head just enough to meet Kaveh’s eyes, still lying comfortably on the rug with one cheek pressed against the floor. There wasn't an immediate retort waiting on his tongue. Kaveh waited for his dry remark like Alhaitham always did when he teased, but Alhaitham only looked at him, breathing still uneven from the workout, strands of silver hair clinging to his forehead while the faint flush across his cheeks softened the otherwise sharp lines of his face.
It was still unfair. Alhaitham had always possessed the infuriating ability to look at Kaveh as though he were the only thing worth paying attention to, and every single time those teal eyes settled on him with that warmth hidden beneath their usual composure, Kaveh felt his chest tighten all over again. Six years together should have built some sort of immunity. Instead, it only seemed to make the effect worse.
It reminded him of the same look Alhaitham gave him in Razan Garden, to that afternoon when Alhaitham had confessed with all the romance of a research paper. He brought no bouquet of padisarahs, held no note in his hand to rehearse last night’s practice. Instead, it was absurdly a long silence before Alhaitham looked him straight in the eye and admitted, with complete sincerity, that there appeared to be a persistent emotional response whenever Kaveh was around him, and that the phenomenon warranted further observation.
It had been the least romantic confession Kaveh had ever received, painfully logical and unmistakably Alhaitham, yet he’d fallen hopelessly in love with it anyway.
Looking at him now, warm from exercise and still catching his breath beneath Kaveh, that same unbearable fondness bubbled up again, accompanied by the dangerously familiar urge to lean down and kiss him. Which, under any other circumstance, Kaveh absolutely would have done. Unfortunately, experience had taught him that kissing Alhaitham immediately after a workout had never once stayed innocent. It always snowballed into something that left blueprints forgotten on the table and being pinned down on the floor, or the fridge, or settled on the countertop until they broke another vase that Kaveh had collected from a merchant in Liyue.
He still had drafts to finish, deadlines to meet, and at least a shred of self-control to preserve (hopefully). Tonight, though, perhaps? Kaveh might consider that if he wasn’t too tired. But right now, however, he needed to remain a functioning architect instead of an embarrassingly lovestruck boyfriend.
“Stop looking at me like that,” Kaveh muttered.
“Like what?”
“Like…” Kaveh waved a hand vaguely between the two of them before letting it fall into his lap with an exasperated sigh. “Ugh. You know exactly what you’re doing.”
The corner of Alhaitham’s mouth lifted into the smallest, most self-satisfied smirk. Asshole.
“I don’t.”
“Liar,” Kaveh scoffed. He leaned forward and, unable to resist, lightly poked the tip of his graphite pencil against Alhaitham’s cheek. A faint gray mark bloomed across his skin.
Alhaitham frowned without any real annoyance. “Don’t smudge my face.”
“You’ll survive.”
“I have thirty-three more repetitions.”
“You’re counting again?”
“I never stopped.”
Kaveh rolled his eyes dramatically.
“Let me finish my set of fifty,” Alhaitham said as he shifted onto his hands once more, “then.”
“Okay—wait.” Kaveh was already setting his sketchbook aside. “Let me get on top again.”
“No.” Alhaitham shook his head once before positioning his hands beneath his shoulders. “Lie down here.”
Kaveh blinked. “…Come again?”
“Under me.”
Under him. Kaveh’s imagination sprinted several miles ahead of the conversation. The only time he was under Alhaitham was—the best time that happened in the bedroom, or that awkward fall from the stairs after they finished their joint class in Vahumana’s wings, which was like, nth years ago, so.
Drafts. Right.
Kaveh looked at Alhaitham up and down with narrowed eyes before his gaze landed, almost involuntarily, lower. To his pants. Because. One can only make sure of that.
A laugh escaped Alhaitham as he caught Kaveh’s confusion, the sound rumbling low in his chest. “Really?”
“What?”
“You’re checking.”
“Basically a risk assessment. I have drafts to finish.”
“There is no risk to assess,” Alhaitham replied, amusement still lingering in his voice. “Trust me. I’m perfectly capable of finishing a workout without turning it into something else.”
Of course Alhaitham could. He had always been respectful after all. But Alhaitham was also—surprise, surprise—after they got together, he was almost always the one who initiated it, so a pretty man like Kaveh, whose boyfriend always, always down for the deeds, could only take some precaution.
But he saw no boner.
“I don’t know whether I should be relieved or offended by that.”
“You should be practical.”
Kaveh huffed through his nose, pretending to weigh the proposition as though it required serious architectural consideration (the drafts!). Finally, he relented with an exaggerated sigh.
“Fine,” he muttered, lowering himself onto the rug beneath where Alhaitham would be. “But you’re going to have to endure another lecture about load-bearing columns.”
“I’ve endured worse.”
“I wasn’t asking!”
Kaveh adjusted the blueprint across his chest, angling it so he could still scribble notes while lying down. “This draft is due next week, and inspiration waits for no one. If you interrupt my train of thought, I’m billing you for emotional damages.”
Without missing a beat, Alhaitham positioned himself above him, careful to keep his weight balanced on his own arms before glancing down with the same infuriating composure.
“I’ll take my chances.”
Before Kaveh could protest, Alhaitham reached over, plucked the blueprint from his hands, and placed it safely on the coffee table beside the couch.
“Hey!” Kaveh stretched an arm after it, missing by several inches. “My draft!”
“It’ll survive a few more minutes.”
“My deadline won’t.”
“Neither will my workout if you keep using it as an excuse.” Alhaitham planted both palms on either side of Kaveh’s head before glancing down at him. “Just a few more sets. You can still ramble about your pillars.”
Kaveh let out the most theatrical groan he could manage before sinking further into the rug.
“Ugh, fine.” He folded his hands over his stomach in surrender. “Anyway, besides the pillars, I was reconsidering the ceiling height. The client insists on a high ceiling because they want an enormous chandelier, but structurally speaking, the building doesn’t actually—”
Then, Alhaitham bent his elbows.
Instead of stopping an inch above Kaveh as expected, he leaned the remaining distance and brushed a quick kiss against his lips.
“Eighteen.”
Kaveh’s sentence dissolved into complete incoherence. His eyes widened. Heat rushed straight to his ears.
“Hey!”
Alhaitham pushed himself back up as though absolutely nothing unusual had happened.
“That,” Kaveh sputtered, pointing an accusing finger upward, “that was cheating!”
“I completed the repetition, like you asked, Senior.”
“You weaponized the repetition!”
Without offering so much as a defense, Alhaitham lowered himself again. With another brief kiss.
“Nineteen.”
“Alhaitham,” Kaveh warned, attempting to sound stern despite the obvious pink spreading across his cheeks, “this is your official warning. If you keep doing that—”
He never got to finish because Alhaitham never stopped. Twenty. A kiss. Twenty-one. A kiss. Twenty-two. Another one, just as fleeting, stealing the words from Kaveh’s mouth before they had the chance to become complaints. Twenty-three. And officially, Kaveh had abandoned all discussion about chandeliers by then, replacing architectural criticism with increasingly indignant noises that sounded suspiciously unlike actual annoyance.
“You’re impossible,” he mumbled somewhere around twenty-four, though the words lacked any real conviction.
By the time Alhaitham reached twenty-five, Kaveh’s face was warm enough that he was convinced even Mehrak would mistake it for henna berry.
“W-wait!”
Laughing despite himself, Kaveh pressed both hands against Alhaitham’s cheeks before the next repetition could descend into yet another stolen kiss. The contact halted Alhaitham halfway down, their faces lingering only inches apart.
“That’s enough.” Kaveh was smiling now, hopelessly betrayed by the corners of his own mouth. “Twenty-five. We’re stopping at twenty-five because some of us have actual work to finish.”
Alhaitham remained perfectly suspended above him for another second before exhaling through his nose.
“What a pity, Senior.” His voice was quiet, threaded with amusement. “You wanted fifty.”
“I wanted you to do fifty.”
“I was planning to.” The smile tugging at his lips widened just enough to be dangerous. “In fact, I was considering fifty-five.”
Kaveh narrowed his eyes.
“Why the extra five?”
“No particular reason.”
Because his boyfriend was a menace. What else?
“Although…” Alhaitham tilted his head ever so slightly. “We could always finish the remaining thirty in the bedroom after you’re done with your draft.”
See! Kaveh knew that tone. He’d heard it enough times to recognize exactly where that sentence was headed—and his face immediately turned another shade red.
“Drafts,” he declared, placing both palms against Alhaitham’s chest and giving him a firm shove that accomplished absolutely nothing. “Blueprints. Deadlines. I am the Light of Kshahrewar with professional responsibilities and a demanding client.”
Alhaitham furrowed his eyebrows like he hadn’t just committed a crime against Kaveh’s heart.
“A-and that wasn’t an invitation!” Kaveh huffed, though the smile tugging at his lips betrayed him immediately. “You’ll have to wait until after dinner, or after I’ve finished revising the ceiling plan, or after my client stops changing their mind every other day—”
“I don’t mind,” Alhaitham said with a small shrug, as though he were commenting on the weather. “I waited for you through the Akademiya. I can wait a few more hours.”
There—that infuriating habit Alhaitham had of saying the most devastatingly romantic things without changing his expression in the slightest.
Back then, the unbearable certainty that whatever impossible feeling had taken root between them would remain exactly that: impossible. Ah, looking back now, it was painfully obvious. Alhaitham hadn’t merely tolerated him all those years. He had waited for Kaveh.
“You’re unbelievable,” Kaveh muttered, though his words came out far softer than intended.
Before he could think better of it, he pushed himself up just enough to close the distance between them, pressing a quick kiss to Alhaitham’s lips. When he pulled away, he smiled with unmistakable satisfaction.
“One.”
It was Alhaitham’s turn to blink.
Kaveh didn’t give him the opportunity to recover. With a grin far too pleased with itself, he twisted out from beneath him, snatched the abandoned blueprint off the coffee table, and hurried toward his drafting desk before Alhaitham could reach for him again.
“You still owe me thirty-five, a sit-up doesn’t count,” Alhaitham called after him.
Kaveh glanced back over his shoulder, walking backward for exactly three steps before pointing his pencil at him in warning.
“After dinner!”
Then he disappeared into his workspace, humming to himself as though he’d escaped unscathed.
(Not with Alhaitham. He never wanted to, anyway.)