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No good news knocks at the door in the middle of the night, especially not when it’s delivered by the Matra. Kaveh would know.
And Kaveh is quite sure that Cyno arrives in the capacity of General Mahamatra, not his friend, because there’s this tightness to his eyebrows and a slightly haunted air; he holds a familiar cape with a Dendro Vision flickering a dim green glow. Cyno doesn’t need to say a single word.
Everything stops for a second.
Twenty minutes later, Kaveh is pacing the waiting hall in the Bimarstan.
Houses of cards are fragile. Flick one, and the rest will collapse on top of each other, smashing into a chaotic pile. That’s what happens with time after Alhaitham meets the wrong crowd on his research trip. There’s a blurry face of a head of an Eremite group hired by the Akademiya to ensure the staff’s safety. Illegible voices. A moving ceiling with white linear lamps, and the dark room filled with a distinct smell of chlorine. There are moments of darkness in between, and—not pain—rather, heaviness in his body that suggests he better not move anything at all. There’s a faint memory of him throwing up.
Beeping awakens Alhaitham. It’s not a familiar soft sound that Akasha used to make when you’d move in and out of big places; it’s loud, nagging and consistent, if only slightly quickened as Alhaitham’s eyes open. It’s the same dark room. Alhaitham winces, wiggles his toes and fingers, and turns his head. His throat is dry.
“Excuse me,” he calls out.
His voice is quiet and gruff, but it rings in his head like a Mondstadtian cathedral bell nevertheless. Speaking hurts. His legs won’t bend. He can’t lift his torso off the bed, and there’s a sensation of skin around his nose consistently rubbing against something narrow and long. He wants an explanation, a glass of water, anything, but there’s no one, so he tries to speak louder.
It’s the second time—or the increasing speed of the beeping that alerts someone— and he’s pushed back onto a bed; a voice is talking to him. He blinks, and the darkness returns.
Next time he wakes up, it’s daytime in a different, smaller room. There’s no pipe on his face, but there’s Kaveh fast asleep at a small table, hand outstretched to cushion his face. Alhaitham knows he’s in the Bimarstan and that he must be out of deep water if Kaveh is allowed to be in his room. That suffices for now; for all his selfishness, Alhaitham doesn’t have it in himself to wake Kaveh up, especially when Kaveh looks so tired and vulnerable. He waits, letting pieces and chunks of time squash again.
What do you do when something bad happens to a person you know?
You go and help them. Kaveh’s mom went to look for his dad in the desert just in case Matra were wrong. Tighnari would keep a watch on Collei and not let her patrol too far away from Gandharvaville because her ‘something bad’ used to be a permanent nagging presence.
Kaveh runs here.
You then do your best to preserve what remains of your sanity. Kaveh’s mom returned, dehydrated, faint, nearly delirious, not even a piece of Dad’s clothes to bury on her person. Tighnari would quietly negotiate with himself: he’d offer all he could, yes, but palliative care, no matter how advanced, could only do so much.
Kaveh waits till the morning, leaves his contacts with the nurse, and dutifully attends all the work meetings. He tries to eat, to draw, and even takes quick naps in the hallway.
He pretends that the news of the arrests in the desert truly means something, even if Alhaitham is still in the ICU. He picks up a book during one of his quick stops in the house and reads two pages, even if it takes him over an hour to do so.
A week goes by like this.
Finally, you accept the outcome, whatever it may be, and move forward. Kaveh’s mom had buried an empty casket and eventually moved to Fontaine. Tighnari would and still helps Collei to figure out what to do with the time she’d thought she didn’t have.
Kaveh stirs half an hour before his alarm rings because his subconscious registers a shift on the bed in the middle of the room and realises that he’ll figure it out: after all, Alhaitham is awake. It’s not the first or the last time Kaveh will have to be around him at his worst. Besides, he reckons dressing someone else’s wounds is easier than your own.
Alhaitham is awake. Everything else will sort itself out. Kaveh stands up—he needs to get a nurse and maybe ask for a glass of water.
Alhaitham has a diagonal, uneven stitch from his sternum all the way to his hip—and that’s the one he may see if he actually manages to stand upright for more than five minutes, which would be a miracle; the others, on his organs, are deeper. Scar is something he can deal with.
There are plenty of things that are harder to deal with.
While in the hospital, he's hooked up to one of the different IVs he needs all the time. Not a single venous catheter that the nurses try to put into him lasts longer than a day. Both his arms look good enough to be used on a poster discouraging substance abuse. One vein pops as a nurse tries to find a new spot, sending an explosive wave of pain deep inside his hand. He summons all the composure he has to save his face.
A mild headache he gets during the second blood transfusion he needs escalates into a full-blown seizure within a couple of minutes, and he ends up having to try to sleep through the assaulting noise of the anemo pump till the morning.
He’ll press the button, asking the nurse to close the door, for them to leave it open on their way out. On the rare occasion that they do, nobody will knock before entering. Lights are on even in the middle of the night. There’s reassurance that the food here is fine and nobody ever complains about it, but thankfully what he has isn’t gastrointestinal, so save for fatty or overly spicy foods—something Alhaitham wouldn’t like on a normal day, either—he can have about anything Kaveh brings.
He'd kill for a cup of coffee, though. On day three, he isn't even sure whether that's an exaggeration.
A silver lining, if there is one, is that Alhaitham can get plenty of sleep, as much as he wants. It’s not a good sleep by any measure, but between the feverish flickers of reality, he even dreams. In his dreams, he sees something other than bloodied sheets and a white ceiling and even gets to rest his head on Grandma’s lap on a particularly good occasion.
But then a beep from the hallway, a conversation too loud, a pain in his back because he’s not used to lying so still drag him back to reality where he needs to call for help if he wants to do so much as get up, and a few drainage bags are connected to him at all times, collecting differently hued fluids.
One more thing: Kaveh’s here. Through most evenings and nights, Kaveh’s here. He’s here to clean Alhaitham’s face with a wet cloth, brush his teeth, and apply moisturiser that Alhaitham insists he doesn’t need. He convinces nurses to let him wash Alhaitham’s hair and brings a few of Alhaitham’s favourite books to read aloud.
He complains about his clients and talks about blueprints. He, surprisingly, knows when to make himself unnoticeable. Alhaitham suspects Kaveh is also the reason as to why Cyno, Tighnari and Collei’s presence is only visible through handwritten notes piled on the table.
Kaveh’s here, and Alhaitham’s all the better for it.
“Kaveh, a word.”
Alhaitham’s voice cuts Kaveh mid-sentence; he has a question for Alhaitham’s doctor, but, frankly, it’s more to be safe than sorry.
“I’ll… Just ask later,” Kaveh quickly concludes. “Sorry for taking your time.”
Of course, the doctor leaves the door open. Of course, Alhaitham cocks his head, staring at it until Kaveh closes it.
“What’s up?”
“I can prolong my stay here and then make the Akademiya cover the expenses if there are any. I know how to fill a form.”
“I don’t doubt that. You’re the Scribe, for crying out loud.” Kaveh squeezes the discharge papers a bit more tightly.
Where is this coming from? Does Alhaitham think he’d do a bad job looking after him? Has he become so much of a nuisance that the thought of spending extra time in the hospital is more appealing to Alhaitham than being in his own house, without the silly rules?
“Don’t you want to come home?” Kaveh asks, his voice hesitant and soft.
“What I want right now isn’t very relevant.” Alhaitham gives a non-answer. “I’m not the most jolly personality to be around on my best day, and being confined to a bed hardly makes me any more agreeable.”
Kaveh actually takes a seat at that, placing a palm under his chin. Alhaitham hardly shares Kaveh’s amusement—his frown makes that much clear.
“Dear junior,” Kaveh starts, “do you seriously think that your nasty temper is news to me?”
“You didn’t sign up to be my nanny. It’s an adequate proposition.”
“Well, here’s a proposition to you: you cut this nonsense, come home with me, and I’ll brew you coffee, ignoring what these papers say. Tighnari greenlit this,” Kaveh gets up.
Unbelievable. Is he being considerate now of all times?
“Sounds good?” Kaveh checks in one last time.
Alhaitham’s tired nod is all the answer he needs. Kaveh's hand is still in reluctance for half a second, but he ruffles Alhaitham’s hair anyway.
The road mustn’t be as hard as it is. The short path from the porch to the bedroom has Alhaitham’s thighs trembling. He doesn’t fall over only because Kaveh holds him.
“I’ve got you.”
Alhaitham presses his forehead against Kaveh’s shoulder. He closes his eyes, and there’s a pulse behind his lids, and, although Alhaitham doesn’t look at the ceiling, the room spins, and spins, and spins.
“Let me bring you water,” Kaveh’s soft voice reaches his ears.
Who is this man? What did he do to his Kaveh?
Thanks to the Archons, the room is dim. Alhaitham smiles faintly. If he speaks right now, he won’t hear the end of it. It’s almost tempting.
Alhaitham is tired, though. He’s so tired that he can’t bring himself to speak. His body melts into the mattress, the distant whiff of burnt coffee reaches his nose, the city buzzes behind the window, open barely enough to let some air inside.
Shapes and colours dance before his eyes. If he lets them melt into the sound, he can almost see something like a hive of bees scurry around the frame. Reality ultimately fades despite the few futile attempts to resurface. A spoon drops with a ring. Tap lets a stream of water joyously hiss. Alhaitham falls, and falls, and falls, and sleeps like a baby for the first time in the past week.
When Kaveh shakes him awake because Alhaitham has to take his prescriptions (that also means that he has to eat something, much to his chagrin), the disposable bed pad Kaveh laid out is covered in blood; apparently, Alhaitham tossed in his sleep.
Sure, if they returned home, they could overcome something like a little blood on the bed.
Sure.
Alhaitham needs his bandages changed every other day in the Bimarstan. He can’t bend to properly scrub his feet in the shower. He takes an antibiotic, a painkiller, an anticoagulant, an iron supplement and something to prevent his stomach from revolting against this onslaught of everything. He is prescribed an hour daily in the pressurised anemo chamber, and when Alhaitham’s doctor doesn’t like the bloodwork results once, they stay at the Bimarstan till dusk. Alhaitham keeps staring at one of the IV bags with that same glare he reserved for groupmates before they dropped out of their thesis project back in the day.
In all fairness, Tighnari does warn Kaveh that this will happen; Kaveh prepares as much as anyone can. He buys all the medicines and draws a board for a better visual reference. He asks Mehrak to set up a bunch of alarms. He takes a hiatus from work and hires a friend of a friend to monitor the sites in the meantime. He rents a carriage and follows Alhaitham to every procedure and appointment, cooks him his favourite meals, keeps the house clean, and reads books because Alhaitham dozes off too easily.
It’s hard.
Kaveh is alright with it being hard. He can take it; he’d rather take this, because he didn’t know for a week whether Alhaitham would ever wake up again, and, thanks to the Seven, he did, and Kaveh would handle even more, happily, anything, as long as it meant that Alhaitham didn’t—
Kaveh swallows back tears. He has no time for this. After all, each day is a tad more tolerable than the previous one. He’ll give Alhaitham Abyss for putting them both through this once Alhaitham feels well enough.
Kaveh will see to it that Alhaitham feels well enough to receive an earful and, probably, a smack on his forehead.
He stands up and gets back to cleaning the kitchen.
Gradually, Alhaitham’s world begins expanding again. On one sunny day, as they rest outside the Bimarstan, waiting for the carriage, Kaveh suggests they stop by Puspa and then walk home. Alhaitham agrees.
Kaveh picks a table with benches so that Alhaitham isn’t forced to sit upright. They have a hearty breakfast and drink their coffees, and talk, and watch people go about their days. Something in Alhaitham’s chest is lighter.
A life can be squeezed into a house for the most part. It’s freeing when it’s a choice and a curse when it’s forced. Alhaitham drinks in the sights and the smells.
The shortcut he’d use when his schedule was tight takes him half an hour, and he has two breaks, leaning against the vines of the Divine Tree. He takes a deep breath. The bark under the back of his shirt is bumpy and uneven; the sunbeams and shadows caress his skin.
At home, Kaveh barely catches him before Alhaitham’s back hits the mattress. His palm stays on Alhaitham’s face, thumb slowly tracing his cheek.
“It’s a nice day.” Alhaitham feels his voice vibrate in his chest, content and quiet.
“It is,” Kaveh easily agrees. “Do you feel alright? It must have been tiring.”
“I’m doing quite well.”
His stitch is a bit tight and pulsates from all the walking. His back aches, and he’s out of breath because climbing steep elevations of Sumeru City is an exercise in itself, but it’s all manageable. He leans into Kaveh’s hand.
“I’ll file a complaint with the Akademiya.”
“Oh? What for?” Alhaitham asks. “Is it about them not forcing me back to work just yet?”
“You’re a ridiculous man, dear junior.” Kaveh’s voice is soft and pleasant to his ears.
Alhaitham knows he’ll eventually exhaust Kaveh’s patience. Kaveh must have been restraining himself a lot, not snapping at Alhaitham once in these few weeks. Alhaitham shifts and opens his eyes.
It’s the same Kaveh, save for some polish. Concealer doesn’t stand a fighting chance against the dark circles beneath his eyes; his freckles look paler; there’s a tension in his shoulders similar to the one that became inseparable from Kaveh back when he first moved in.
It’s Kaveh, and there are seasons in life when Kaveh will look like this. It’s a fight Alhaitham will keep losing no matter what, but now he’s why that season returns.
“What is it about, then?” He asks.
“I’ve just been looking at the city, you know. The path from Puspa to our home—do you know that there’s not a single bench there?"
Alhaitham, frankly, does.
"What if a person needs to rest? We’ve created all these elaborate care plans for Eleazar, but we can’t throw in an extra bench for people who had Eleazar to rest on their way home? It’s outrageous!”
“Over this?” Alhaitham huffs. “Please do that before I’m back to work. I don’t want to deal with that.”
Kaveh’s eyes narrow, and he straightens his back. Alhaitham couldn’t have possibly inserted a word into the rant that crashes on him in the next half an hour, even if he wanted to.
Alhaitham loves every second of it.
It’s a thought that pops into Kaveh’s mind while he strides to the Bimarstan, trying to stomach the image of Alhaitham’s Vision, nearly grey and barely warm: he doesn’t own a black suit. It’s not a colour he finds practical, working on sites and often stopping to pet stray cats.
It passes through his head again on the day they go to remove Alhaitham’s stitches, and he waits in the hallway. He doesn’t own a black suit. Mother hastily bought him one because it was customary at funerals, and it was one of the things he got rid of without any pity the moment the dress pants became short enough to expose his ankles.
He was very close to needing one once again.
Worse yet: Alhaitham’s bluntness is a ticking bomb. He’s never shied away from voicing what’s on his mind, even when he knew it could end up with a blade pointed at his chest. There’s no guarantee he won’t walk into another ill-fated argument right as they exit the Bimarstan.
To be fair, there’s no guarantee that something horrible doesn't happen without Alhaitham’s character actively contributing to it, either. A vine gone out of control due to an influx of elemental energy may pierce a column, causing the building they’re in to collapse the very next second. Horrible things don't need a premonition.
Kaveh is back at square one.
What do you do when you know a horrible thing may happen at any moment and separate you from a person you’ve realised you still love?
Kaveh has once again seen for himself that no amount of pondering will prepare you for the moment when the only thing left is to do what you can. Decisions will be made, solutions will be found. They won’t necessarily be the best.
As for what to do now, Kaveh has a few options. He may talk to Alhaitham and finally let Tighnari and Cyno arrange a visit or a TCG night at Lambad’s.
He may take Alhaitham grocery shopping since the weather is good and Alhaitham can now walk longer distances.
He may ask him out for a coffee and accidentally slip into a conversation that’ll last long enough for the city to drown in the explosive, peach-coloured sunset on their way back.
He may kiss Alhaitham in earnest, not just sneak a peck on his forehead when Alhaitham dozes off in the middle of anything, because the blood loss resulted in him having nearly constant fatigue.
As a matter of fact, he will do that. That way, he can navigate the next storm that will inevitably come their way with one less regret.
What does a person love—the body, the mind, or that unclear area where the two combine?
Alhaitham loved wrinkles on Grandma's hands and loved the way they'd cup his face when she spoke to him. He loves every hue of fire in Kaveh's eyes as much as he loves that particular glint in them when Kaveh gets another troublesome idea.
He loves Kaveh. It's been a given long enough for Alhaitham to be certain that nothing can change that.
If there was a chance that Kaveh could love him back, it disappeared the second Kaveh made a very Kaveh decision to stay by Alhaitham's side: Alhaitham's body shuts down and turns against Alhaitham's mind. Alhaitham's mind is trapped inside Alhaitham's body.
Books are a solace, and so is sleep. But as chapters finish and one of Kaveh's alarms rings, Alhaitham is back in the middle of a raging war. The body won't do things the mind trained it for.
It revolts. It oozes blood and lymphatic fluid; it makes him vomit because his stomach doesn't agree with one of his medications; it turns the simplest actions into mentally taxing, multiple-step tasks he needs to plan for ahead of time.
It makes him angry, even if he knows that it's his own mistake that landed him here.
It makes him helpless, even if a part of him is distantly aware that this perpetual distress is temporary and beats the second option by a long shot.
Kaveh sees it all and doesn't leave, but that's temporary, too.
At least, this is what Alhaitham thinks. He can now spend the remainder of his life coming to terms with the idea.
There's a bit of spotting and some stinging where the stitches are removed. Alhaitham rests as his doctor passes a generously wetted with alcohol cloth over the scabs. He listens to the last instructions and leaves the cabinet.
Kaveh sees him and nervously smiles. This is the moment when Alhaitham half-expects him to run away: now that Alhaitham can fry an egg without assistance, Kaveh must be eager to return to the site, and the sketches, and all the other duties he put on hold for the past six weeks.
But Kaveh doesn't leave; not from the hospital, not during the trip to Grand Bazaar, not even after they spend a few hours in Puspa.
Alhaitham takes a few steps in the dark hallway as they enter the house. He's kept up with the banter, but his voice leaves him now.
Kaveh's quiet, too.
There's a soft shuffle of bare feet against the hardwood and the heat of a body next to him. Dry palms cup his face and tilt it before warm lips press gently against Alhaitham's. Alhaitham's breath hitches, and he doesn't move—what if it all disappears?
Has he misread the situation so severely? Has he misjudged Kaveh?
His arms sheepishly wrap around Kaveh's back, and what's been a careful dip in the water turns into a deeper, more possessive kiss. This time, Alhaitham finds the courage to respond.