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When Kaveh was drunk, he was loud.
They didn't call him the Light of Kshahrewar for nothing: brightness seemed to emanate from him at every point, each freckle or smudge of ink on his skin was like a little star sending rays of warm light outwards in every direction. His arms were covered in such constellations, and his hair was a shimmering gold that Alhaitham could spot from afar.
But the glowing halo that seemed to cling to his silhouette was even more noticeable when alcohol was swirling freely through his veins, giving his brightness a, for lack of a better word, more apparent capacity. His fiery, impassioned speeches were no longer privy just to Alhaitham's careful ears or Tighnari's frustrated ones, but quite literally to anyone passing by. Lambad had probably already heard his life story dozens of times over, yet Kaveh still claimed he liked to keep his troubles "private."
After a bottle of wine, the red in his eyes started to shimmer like ruby, as if letting go of the constant anxiety and guilt hiding behind it. It would have been almost pleasant to see if it wasn't tragic that he almost never looked like that while sober.
"Haitham!" he exclaimed, breathless amid a bout of laughter. "Remember when you stepped on a watermelon and fell?"
His chuckles morphed into desperate cackles as the memory seemed to replay in his mind over and over, until he was coughing over the table and reaching for more wine to clear his throat.
"This is how an altruist thinks of my painful moments?" Alhaitham asked dryly, but he knew that Kaveh, even in this disoriented state, would be able to catch the amusement in his voice.
"Come on, even you laughed," Kaveh retorted, giggling. "Was funny."
It often happened that he randomly recalled old memories when drunk, of the kind Alhaitham would have assumed he had long forgotten. This watermelon incident had taken place almost ten years ago, on a walk through the Bazaar in their student days. It had been as inconsequential as it seemed now, but they both remembered it regardless.
"Hey!" Kaveh called, poking a random man passing by their table. "I know you! We know each other!"
The man turned back with a polite smile. "Senior Kaveh! Yes, I was a year below you at the Akademiya. It's been a long time."
"You…" Kaveh slurred, cocking his head. "Yes, we had a— group project. You left all the work to us and didn't do anything."
Not biting back a chuckle at the man's suddenly reddened face, Alhaitham waved Lambad over.
"Please bring the bill."
Kaveh's eyes shot up at that, growing the sort of pout that would have instantly devastated a weaker man. He looked like the perfect image of a wounded puppy. "What—! I'm not done yet."
"You've had plenty," Alhaitham replied, taking out his mora pouch. "Enough to start yelling at people over grudges from ten years ago. You'll tell me off tomorrow if I let you embarrass yourself."
Kaveh tried to roll his eyes, but it seemed like he couldn't gather enough coordination for the full movement. "I can handle myself just fine."
"We can leave and take a walk around Razan Garden."
"Oh! Yes! Yes!" Kaveh grew an immediate glittering smile, standing up from his chair so quickly that he had to brace himself on the tabletop to not fall over. "Let's go. Just like old times."
It was adorable how predictable Kaveh was when drunk, seemingly stripped of all his pride. Alhaitham could play him like a flute, saying exactly what he knew would get him to collaborate: Razan Garden at night had always been one of Kaveh's favourite spots, and a stroll amid fresh air came with the benefit of helping him sober up. Alhaitham did not quite enjoy having to brush his teeth for him.
"I's jus' so… so pretty," Kaveh breathed, enamoured as he looked up at a gazebo. "I love it here."
"I know."
Kaveh hummed an old song out-of-tune as they paced between the flowers, and even in the dark, illuminated only by moonlight, the pale glow of his hair and the shimmer of his eyes still seemed to stand out between the shadows.
"What's your favourite flower?"
Alhaitham approached him with lazy steps. "You've asked that several times before."
"You keep saying you don't have one."
"I don't think about unnecessary things."
"Flowers are necessary!" Kaveh countered.
"Did I ever say they weren't?"
"I don't know, did you?" Kaveh asked, frowning. "I already forgot."
He tipped his head back in laughter that was much too excessive for how funny the situation actually was, but this was the sort of loudness Alhaitham did not mind. His earpieces were hanging around his neck.
"You drank too much today," he murmured absentmindedly, rubbing a stain of wine off the edge of Kaveh's lips. It was the kind of small intimacy he nurtured his affection through, to try to quench the yearning that had been simmering beneath his fingers for so long. "Let's go home."
Kaveh remained quiet for once, glittering eyes resting on Alhaitham's receding hand and then roving over his face. Moonbeams seemed to dance on his irises in little speckles of light, and there was a silent contentment in them that Alhaitham rarely ever saw.
After a long moment, Kaveh laughed then looked away with a lighthearted smile. "Now I remember why I had such a crush on you in the Akademiya."
Alhaitham was used to Kaveh's mouth sometimes blabbering something unexpected, but nothing could have prepared him for the sheer force of those words. They casually slipped off Kaveh's tongue and fell onto Alhatham's chest with such suffocating weight that all the air was instantly knocked off his lungs. He stared blankly and dumbly at the easygoing glow in Kaveh's eyes.
"No, you didn't," he replied, brushing the sentence off as a joke.
"Of course I did!" Kaveh exclaimed, lips curling around the words before he rolled his eyes. "Oh come on, you knew."
A silent sort of panic muddled Alhaitham's mind as he simply stared forwards, lips for once completely at a loss for what to say. Gradually, the arch of Kaveh's smile faded to a simple line. The colour of his features seemed dimmer now.
"You knew," he repeated quietly. "Everyone knew."
I had such a crush on you, Kaveh's slurred voice repeated in the throbbing, echoing chamber of Alhaitham's mind. Had, past tense. That implied finality.
"When?" he asked breathlessly, stepping closer to Kaveh. "What made you— For how long?"
"Forget it," Kaveh replied, turning away.
"When?" Alhaitham repeated, pulling on Kaveh's shoulder. His heart was beating so fiercely he thought Kaveh might feel its feverish rate through the contact between their skin. "When?"
"I don't know, for a long time!" Kaveh exclaimed, a nervous edge bleeding into his tone. He looked down at the floor. "I, um, in the last year or so before our— our thesis, I guess. it was nothing, just forget about it."
He said forget about it as if it were easy, as if it were possible at all. This kind of revelation on an ordinary moonlit night was exactly the sort with the potential to haunt Alhaitham for the rest fo his life, echoing like the words of a ghost within his dreams and his days. He would not forget, because he had wanted to hear something similar to that for so many heartbreaking years that, though he was the least pious man in Sumeru City, on difficult nights he kneeled and prayed to Celestia that Kaveh could come to one day feel for him what he so achingly longed for.
His memories quickly invaded his mind once more, imbuing him with a sense of nostalgia as he remembered Kaveh's last year at the Akademiya. How excitedly Kaveh had spoken, for minutes on end, about their shared project; how Kaveh used to cook for him whenever given the opportunity; how Kaveh laughed delightedly at him while no one else understood his dry humour. How Kaveh climbed into his bed on nights that he struggled to sleep through on his own, letting Alhaitham wipe away his tears.
They were all familiar images Alhaitham had recalled too many times to count, but he seemed to be watching them with a different tint in his eyes now. The adoring gaze colouring Kaveh's pupils was no longer the kind a best friend would show the other— it was the same yearning glance Alhaitham had been dissecting him with for over a decade.
"Everyone knew?" he murmured. It was not what he had been meaning to voice, but he was too disoriented to fully control his mouth now. Why had no one ever told him, then? If he'd known, he would have instantly—
"You really didn't?" Kaveh replied quietly. "Sorry for… making things awkward. I didn't mean to say that."
He hiccuped. Alhaitham wished he could see his face, to try to read the emotions behind his eyes. And then,
"I felt the same," he confessed.
Kaveh instantly turned, pupils blown wide at the statement. His head swayed slightly, as if the movement had been too sudden for his still-tipsy joints. "You— I… Really?" he breathed. "Since when?"
"Always," Alhaitham replied, unable to hold back his honesty. "Since always."
They held each other's gazes for a long, maddening moment that had Alhaitham's heart suffering in its poor accelerated pace. And then, unexpectedly, Kaveh's eyes shimmered a little more brightly, like glass, and a tear escaped the side of his eyes.
"When did you fall out of love?" he asked in a whisper, wiping his cheek.
Alhaitham did not know what to answer. The truth? But what if Kaveh's feelings had long fully dissipated? Would he be making a fool of himself, if he confessed that what Kaveh considered a schooltime crush was a love that had consumed Alhaitham for so long that he could not remember who he was before this silent devotion?
"I never did," he replied quietly, and it felt oddly relieving to finally voice it. It felt lighter than the weight of the decade and a half it had been hiding in his mouth for.
The answer seemed to be too profound for Kaveh's alcohol-addled brain, because he looked on dumbly, blinking at Alhaitham as his mind processed the words. His lips repeated the 'never' soundlessly, and then, his jaw dropped.
"You…" he started, lifting a hesitant, trembling hand. "Really?"
"Really."
Alhaitham felt every emotion from the past fifteen years crushing his heart at once, and he thought, if Kaveh rejects me, I'll collapse on the spot. Unexpectedly, tonight was the resolution of over a decade of pathetic pining, and Alhaitham had no idea what the raw sentiment in Kaveh's eyes was betraying. Surprise? Relief? Guilt? Perhaps he had let go of his 'crush' after their fight, but it could potentially be revived, no? Maybe. Alhaitham muttered a desperate prayer within his mind.
And then, Kaveh laughed. Giddy and heartfelt and honest and light and beautiful, he let his head fall back in a joyful cackle, golden hair framing his face. He cupped Alhaitham's face with unexpected tenderness and pulled him forwards, causing him to stumble with widened eyes.
"I never got over you either," Kaveh murmured with twinkling eyes, before ending the sentence with a kiss.
Alhaitham exhaled a sigh of relief so heavy that its air seemed to carry with it the little strength that had allowed his legs to hold his body weight. Though he wanted to savour the wine-rich taste of Kaveh's lips he had spent so many nights fantasising about, his thighs buckled, causing him to fall to his knees on the grass.
With quivering hands, he wrapped his arms around Kaveh's legs with fervent reverence. "I love you," he whispered, mind completely blank. "I love you."
"Alhaitham…" Kaveh mumbled, hovering his hands in the air before letting them settle gently on grey curls.
"Let's go home." Alhaitham looked up at him with a rare smile, the kind that had his lips fully curved while etching two deep dimples into his cheeks. "Together."