Archive of Our Own

∘₊—✧༓ 𖧧 ༓✧—₊∘

It happens on a humid summer evening, when instead of collecting a drunk-out-of-his-mind Kaveh from the floor of Lambad's tavern, Alhaitham is halted at the entrance by the sight of him, surrounded by friends, laughing with a glimmer of lucidity.

He equalizes the sound on his hearing aids, at last tuning into the din. His right ear doesn’t particularly need it, but the imbalance of one is jarring, and it makes spatial sounds simply easier to hear. The crowd around Kaveh is a mix of faces, most of them recognizable, others not. Cyno and Tighnari are seated around him, and by the vague threat he can read off Tighnari's lips, Cyno probably just set up a pun his partner wants no part in hearing.

The rest of the group is a more eclectic mix. Candace, Dehya, and a few of their Eremite friends, Alhaitham figures, are seated to Kaveh's left, quickly tossing back shots. To his right sits Madame Faruzan, looking a little concerned at all the alcohol, urging them to slow down lest they heave it all up later. Nilou is across from her, engaged in a deep discussion with Kaveh about something that has his eyes glittering. Thankfully, he doesn't seem to be drowning in his cups yet; the tips of his ears are only slightly red, and his cheeks are still a rosy, subtle flush, not the rash-like rouge of intoxication Alhaitham is so used to seeing.

Alhaitham puffs out a breath of relief. It's not that he was worried, per se. Kaveh is not necessarily a reckless drunk, but... the sight of him when it happens, disconnected and feverishly hot, never ceases to unnerve Alhaitham. Especially at this time of the night, especially on weekends like this, it’s a familiar dread in the pit of his stomach. The smiling and awareness are a welcome change.

Alhaitham is so focused in his thoughts that he doesn't notice the pair of blue eyes turned in his direction. It isn't until he catches the manicured fingers on Kaveh's wine glass, surreptitiously switching it out with a flute diluted with water, that he sees her. Nilou. She's looking at him with a grin, miming a “shush” as Kaveh takes another swig of his 'drink.'

Kaveh must realize what she’s doing, of course. But he's preoccupied. And on his better nights, he can endure the sobriety.

Then, suddenly, another pair of eyes catches him by the counter. "Oh my gods, Alhaitham?" "Speak of the abyss!" "It's Alhaitham!" "Come here, Alhaitham!"

Beckoned over, Alhaitham goes. He doesn't quite have the social capacity for a party this large, but these are his friends; they will hardly mind his reservedness.

The attention of the group is uncharacteristically centered on him as he steps closer. Even Kaveh, who usually wilts when he arrives, flashes him a smile, liquid-bright. "Here to take me back, now, are you?"

Alhaitham's heart flies up his throat. There are so many people here, and yet Kaveh's asking if he’s here to take him home, as if he doesn't care who of their group might hear, as if he doesn’t mind that they find out. Alhaitham considers answering with the truth, uninhibited and just a little bit damning, but what comes out is something else.

"Who knows. Perhaps I was just curious what form of slander you'd been spewing in my absence."

Kaveh scoffs, his cheeks flushed high with challenge. "It would only be slander if I were saying something untrue."

A couple "oohs" echo across the table, and Alhaitham has to admit, it sends a pleasant pinprick of sensation up his spine, just seeing Kaveh look him up and down.

"So you admit you were complaining about me after all? And here I thought you were trying to set a good example as my senior." Alhaitham waves a waiter over as he sits down, not once breaking eye contact.

"Some juniors are beyond even my most benevolent efforts, I'm afraid! The most exemplary senior in the world couldn’t make a conformist out of you." Even as he says it, the lilt of Kaveh’s voice is playful. 

Alhaitham snickers, sitting before him now, a few precious breaths away. “A conformist? You’d never want me that way, Kaveh.” He plucks Kaveh’s wine glass from his fingers, full now to nearly spilling from the brim, and takes a sip. “How many breakthroughs have come from conforming, anyway?”

Before Alhaitham has even noticed, the world around them fizzles into the background. It is only when Kaveh stays quiet, almost contemplative, that Alhaitham notices the absence of noise where he has come to expect it. The rest of their friends are watching all too closely, curious eyes flickering between each other, no doubt continuing a wordless conversation about the spectacle before them. What was it they said when he came by? Speak of the Abyss?

At last, Kaveh comes back to himself, pulling his lips into a dizzying grin of feigned perturbation. “Get your hands off my drink, you heathen! Haven’t you the slightest inkling of patience, if not propriety?”

“Do relax, senior. I don’t believe either are necessary at the moment.”

Kaveh becomes a tad dramatic after that, hand-signing at him angrily, but the crowd around him surges with energy as he does, a tide pulled by his gravity. Whatever silence overcame them before is quickly replaced by giggles as Alhaitham responds, and the half that understands the sign language can hardly keep up with Kaveh’s irritation, while the half that doesn’t devolves into laughter at how animated and affectionately ridiculous Kaveh becomes.

Kaveh attempts to snatch his drink back a few times, of course, to no avail, but soon Alhaitham’s own drink and snacks arrive, and the group moves on. Permitted to sink back into comfortable reticence, Alhaitham turns his hearing aids low again, and the room simmers to a gentler buzz. Really, he’d like to take them off, but there’s something about the way Kaveh’s voice pricks at his ears from this volume that makes him feel like he’d be missing the accompaniment to a brilliant performance without them.

Not that Alhaitham is well-versed in musical arrangement. Which, speaking of — the tavern has a live band playing tonight. That’s certainly new. A consequence of the abolishment of Azar’s ridiculous anti-performance laws, he guesses. But the dress of the players suggest they are a travelling band of some kind, likely from Liyue or Mondstadt. Alhaitham first noticed their playing from his hearing ear, and then the rumbling in his chest as they started playing dance music in earnest.

This must be the reason for the crowd today. Dehya and Candace are the first to join the fray, a vibrating hum of people dancing before the stage. Nilou goes next, fluid and graceful, after teasing Madame Faruzan out of her otherwise stubborn determination to remain seated. Kaveh is quickly captivated. He doesn’t say it, but Alhaitham can tell; his eyes are already bright, lit like fires, the shapes of the dancers flickering inside them like wisps off a candle.

Nilou beckons Cyno and Tighnari over, and her practiced ease makes Alhaitham wonder if Nilou might have personally invited the band for the night, if that’s why she’s getting everyone to dance instead of enjoying herself alone on the stage. Alhaitham is not so inclined to join the crowd, but he hasn’t yet been asked or ushered, either. Just when he thinks he’ll be spared the question (and the repetitive denials he’ll have to give), Nilou plops down again beside him, sweating and fanning herself a few minutes later, surprisingly without Faruzan, who is still enjoying herself on the floor.

“Aren’t you going to dance, Kaveh?” she asks, clearly having noticed his admiring eyes. Kaveh sputters, looking askance; with the tavern lights now burning low, his flush is less visible, but his embarrassment is still clear as day in the way his fingers twitch and his eyes zip around the room.

“That’s… well. I don’t know. It looks fun, but I… I’ve had a lot to drink, and—” his eyes pass Alhaitham’s, mirroring his gaze like a tangent. “I haven’t really danced. Much. I wouldn’t know the first thing to do.”

Nilou laughs. “Nonsense! Nobody in Sumeru City really knows how to dance. And how will you learn if you don’t try? Don’t you scholars say something about research and data before drawing conclusions?”

Alhaitham grins into his glass, and Nilou catches it, though Kaveh is far too distracted. Whether he’s realized it or not, the Light of Kshahrewar himself is already being swayed—literally and figuratively—halfway out of his seat, rocking to and fro.

Tighnari is the one catching his arm then, tugging him to the edge of the seat. His tail whips hard enough to nearly knock over a shot glass, and, almost frightened, Kaveh resists. “Ha… Ha, um, Nari, you know I’ve never… I don’t…” Kaveh looks to Alhaitham, and it’s almost painful to watch, the inevitable self-denial Kaveh always performs whenever faced with something he wants, but does not consider himself allowed to do.

“If you’re too afraid to dance, we could always go back home,” Alhaitham finally ventures, turning the hearing aid up once more. “After all, if you’ve never danced before, you might end up standing still as a stone and bore your partner to death anyway. And I’d rather not deal with the outcome of that endeavor later.” His words are a little lazy, but the glare Kaveh then directs at him is the clearest, sweetest vindication that he’s about to get what he wants.

“Alhaitham, you—Ugh!” For the briefest of moments, Kaveh almost looks hurt. And then it is gone as quickly as it came, and he is pointing at Alhaitham square in the face. “Bore them!? Speak for yourself, you—you stalagmite! I’ll show you! Tighnari, come—” his muttering melts away as they stumble onto the dance floor, and Tighnari goes easily, drunk and giddy himself, whipping his tail into every other passerby.

Alhaitham slips another smile into his drink. He lifts his hand to undo his hearing pieces, this time ready to remove them and put them away, the dimness of the room and his buzzing nerves rendering him oblivious to the person still beside him.

“Why do you do that?” she asks, suddenly, and he almost jumps in his seat. Nilou smiles, not unkindly, raising a hand in apology. “Sorry. Loud?”

He shakes his head, rubbing the lobe of his hearing ear. “I’m fine.”

And then, “What do you mean?”

She tilts her chin toward Kaveh, who is now trying his best to coordinate between Cyno and Tighnari, so far gone in their reverie they might as well be dancing to an imaginary song.

“Why do you provoke Kaveh like that?” She asks it like a foregone conclusion, but her voice is soft, and her eyes perceptive, as though she knows something Alhaitham is not willing to divulge. 

He considers her. Nilou may not have studied at the Akademiya, but Alhaitham knows from experience how little knowledge on its own truly correlates with intelligence; and, even more than she is clever, Nilou is bold. One cannot last as an artist in a nation so bereft of art without being at least a little bit scrappy. 

“It’s not because you really feel that way. I know that much,” she continues.

Alhaitham would like to ask how exactly she ‘knows,’ but only sighs and leans back, letting the cool fabric of the chairs ground him. He’s deflected most of her curiosities in the past like that. But disarmed as he is this evening, the truth slips out unbidden, and a few beats of his heart go with it.

“Kaveh…” he starts, voice low, “…rarely does anything for his own sake unless he is tricked or challenged into doing so.” The truth of those words sits in the air, suspended for a moment, heavy with sentiments unsaid. Then, shrugging, he adds, “But, that’s just my experience.” 

Alhaitham does not look Nilou in the eye.

∘₊—✧༓ ⾕ ༓✧—₊∘

“What? A—wedding venue?”

Nilou’s smile is pearly, teeth flashing as she laughs. “Yes! She wants you to design it, start to finish, and she won’t have anyone else but you!”

Kaveh blinks the next few seconds by slowly, feeling as though the words are hanging over him, as real and tangible as a passing cloud. 

“She—“ He tries again, gathering himself. “She wants me to design—”

“—and construct!”

“—and construct an entire wedding venue for a week’s worth of celebration?”

And Nilou, as if he hasn’t just said the most ridiculous and exorbitant sentence in the world, nods eagerly. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen her eyes look quite as blue as they are right now, crystal and luminous, perhaps only slightly less aglow than when she’s on the stage.

“And you’re sure she’s… a trustworthy sort of person? That’s a rather large sum of money, just considering material costs and—“

“Kaveh, she’s a legitimate client! I’d trust her with my life!”

He melts a little, at that. Nilou wouldn’t recommend someone shady or needlessly difficult. She’s a purehearted, empathetic girl who understands his artistic plights more personally than any other soul in Sumeru. A client being overly picky with the artistic process? Criticism that reads like blatant ignorance of the most obvious social commentary? Nilou knows it like the blood in her veins. That’s what makes it all the more terrifying that she’s recommending him a client like this. More than fearing it is too good an opportunity to be true, Kaveh finds that, if it’s real, it’s all the more terrifying.

Weddings in Sumeru have never been a small affair. Even for the rigorous apostates of the Akademiya, a wedding is a union of houses and minds, and families have at least always formed political alliances, if not entanglements borne of love. But to purchase land on Pardis Dhyai, and build upon it a permanent fixture that would outlast even the lives of the couple themselves; to hire him as the architect to do it—frankly, the bride must be wealthy enough to buy half of Sumeru City and all its goods. She might even be wealthy enough to buy Kaveh himself, from the strands of his hair down to his trimmed architect’s nails. Kaveh tries to imagine such wealth, and he shivers, frightened the way a starved man might fear the apple’s sweetness.

However, fear is only a fuel for imagination in Kaveh’s case. A wealthy client, especially a patron of the arts, means a generous salary, and (hopefully) unfettered artistic freedom.

Briefly, Alhaitham’s voice comes to his mind, saying something infuriating, like “Most offers that seem too good to be true usually are,” and “Be prudent, you still have this month’s rent to pay—” But then, against his better judgement, Kaveh considers the money. Even if she ends up being a hard and picky client, with a sum like that, he could pay off his principal to Dori in one lump sum. And, maybe, he could take Alhaitham out to that new restaurant he’s been meaning to visit on a moon-drenched night when the jasmines are in bloom. Perhaps, even, they could visit the venue after hours. And maybe, just maybe then, he could build up the courage to…

“Kaveh? What do you think?”

Nilou’s voice snaps him out of his daze. It’s clear she’s anxious to hear his answer; perhaps this patron’s relationship with her also hinges on his acceptance. Whatever concern she has is unfounded, however. Imaginary spires and arches have already begun to impress themselves upon the inside of his eyelids, whispers of the future filling his mental map of Pardis Dhyai with splendor untold.

He clasps her hands in his, gentle yet firm, nearly bursting at the seams.

“Nilou, I’ll do it.”

They order another round of tea at the cafe while discussing the terms and conditions. As it turns out, this mysterious client of his prefers to work through a proxy—that being Nilou—for all their initial requests. It’s a little odd, but nothing Kaveh is personally unused to. Sumeru’s wealthiest class, the sons and daughters of bustling merchants and essential export companies, often tend to keep a low profile at the edges of society, pulling the strings in their favor from afar. He has only had the pleasure—or is it misfortune?—of working with a few, and one of them essentially has a lease on his life.

As for the rest, well.

“She’s not particularly decided on the date yet. The Rtawahist astrologer she consulted suggested late April to early June as auspicious dates, but she doesn’t know what effect the weather might have on the flora…” Nilou looks up at him inquisitively. “What do you suggest, Kaveh?”

“Me? Oh… Well, the dry season is the busiest time for weddings, of course, but... If it were up to me, I would choose a date later in the spring, just before the rain starts.” 

Evidently curious about his answer, Nilou prompts him to continue. 

“Tighnari has told me that some plants synchronize their blooming in the higher humidity. I’ve been to the greenhouse around then as well, and…” He remembers the rich blooms that had adorned the gardens that time of year, their endless petals in thick profusion. “I can think of no better season for a wedding.”

Nilou tilts her head. “Isn’t it a bit risky, though, planning it so close to the rainy season?”

Kaveh shrugs. “It’s up to her, of course, but I quite like the early rain. It gives the plants much-needed hydration, and it cools us down after the harsher dry spells. And just imagine watching it from under the glass roof. Wouldn’t it be lovely?”

Nilou considers this and her eyes widen. “Oh, you’re right. That does sound lovely. I’ll have to tell her. Thank you, Kaveh!” she says, scribbling it down on a note.

“It’s nothing at all. If you’re curious, you could always ask Tighnari more about it, too,” he says, peering over her note. “Ah, but out of curiosity, didn’t you say she already booked the venue? How come she hasn’t decided on the week yet?”

At this, Nilou jerks her head up. “Oh! That’s—well, she hasn’t told me all the details exactly, but…” She looks at her paper, then back at him, then back at the paper. “Her friend is… an elite official who’s contributed a lot to the development of Pardis Dhyai, so I think she worked something out with him and booked off extra time just to decide…”

She what? Kaveh mentally doubles his estimation of his client’s net worth from what it was before. And then he doubles it again.

While he’s nodding numbly along, paralyzed by the sheer amount of money he’s dealing with, Nilou moves on to the next topic.

“Now that that’s settled, she was also hoping to have…”

In the end, their first ‘consultation’ goes extraordinarily smooth, thanks in no small part to Nilou, who is reasonable and amicable and understands the client as well as himself. Kaveh briefly considers acquiring an apprentice as well and making them proxy for him, weeding out unruly clients and unrealistic requests before they ever grace his architect’s ears. And then, mentally, Kaveh smacks himself for the idea, because that ‘delegate and avoid’ modus operandi is entirely something Alhaitham would do. He’s been spending too much time with the man.

“So, anyway, what is her name?” he asks, finally, sipping on his tea, long since cooled since they sat down.

“Pardon?” Nilou asks.

“Her name? My client, I mean.” 

She regards him strangely until at last she seems to realize something, looking at the empty space on the draft agreement.

“Oh! Ah, right. Her name. Don’t, ah… tell anyone, alright? About her, or the commission.” She says, conspiratorially looking him over, and Kaveh nods. 

Obviously. He’s not the type to gossip about his clients.

“Her name is… Parisa.” She writes it on the document with a grin and then packs their papers away. “I’ll arrange another meeting with you for the payment and the other details soon. Thank you again, Kaveh! You don’t know how much this means to me!”

Eventually, Nilou heads off with the proposal draft, and Kaveh orders a bag of coffee beans and padisarah pudding to take home, thinking of the face Alhaitham will be making as he eats it.

∘₊—✧༓ ⾕ ༓✧—₊∘

When Kaveh steps through the door, what he finds is not the Akademiya scribe leisurely enjoying a book by the window, but an unkempt and sleepy Alhaitham, bundled in blankets on the divan.

Kaveh stands at the foyer unmoving, gripped vice-tight by the sight. Alhaitham isn’t wearing his earpieces, his hearing ear pressed to silence in the pillow, and his other blocking out the rest of the world. Plumes of silver-silk locks fan his face, and they float just a little when he breathes, light and delicate. His book is not so fortunate, opened haphazardly and half-crumpled under the weight of his hand.

Kaveh extracts it and sets it right on the coffee table, tracing the warmth of his fingers where they’ve seeped into the paper. Alhaitham doesn’t know it, but he makes little noises in his sleep, likely ones he cannot even hear. Kaveh leans in a little to catch them, the shifts of his breathing, and the quiet echoes of his dreams. Kaveh has a difficult time admitting it, but in moments like these, stolen in the quiet, away from the world, Alhaitham looks every bit as much the sweet junior he once adored. That’s not the part that’s difficult to admit, though—it’s that he adores the present version just as much.

He brushes a lock from that beloved junior’s sleeping face, and murmurs, “Bastard,” to himself, not meaning it at all.

Alhaitham hums then, and reaches up to touch his fingers, probably having felt the vibration of his voice. 

“K’v…eh.” 

He slurs the syllables slightly, and Kaveh’s knees go a little weak. Alhaitham sounds a certain way when he can’t hear himself, and it reminds Kaveh of fluff and cotton, condensed milk and foam.

Kaveh drops his hand to his empty fingers and signs inside Alhaitham’s wrist.

“Sleeping beauty.”

Alhaitham huffs, an almost shy smile tugging at the corner of his lips.

“Have food,” he signs right after.

Kaveh doesn’t remember the tactile sign for ‘pudding,’ but the nice thing about this grammar system, he’s found, is that it takes very few words for Alhaitham to understand him.

Alhaitham opens his eyes slowly, and Kaveh indulges himself in brushing more wisps of Alhaitham’s hair away from his face before he loses plausible deniability and has to admit he just wants to touch Alhaitham.

Alhaitham doesn’t seem to mind. He eyes the pudding and draws it toward himself, swirling the cream inside with the tiny dessert spoon. Kaveh should head to the kitchen and put his things away, but there’s something fragile about the scene that he doesn’t want to disturb. Alhaitham, sleepy-eyed and relaxed without his hearing aids, letting Kaveh exist in his personal space like he belongs there. And Kaveh wants to. Belong there, belong here.

So, he finds something to tether himself to the moment.

“Book?” Kaveh signs, pointing at the cover of what he now notices is… one of his books?

Alhaitham smiles and signs “architecture” as the realization dawns on him, smiling like the cat who got the cream.

That’s one of his books. Not a book in Kaveh’s catalogue, but a book that he authored. Or, well, contributed a significant portion to it, more as a guest contributor than a true author. But—

“Wh—Why??” Kaveh does not trip over words so much as gasp incoherently and unsteadily flail his hands around, caught between two or three signs that he didn’t know to use first. “Buy When?? Where?” 

His cheeks feel oddly hot. It is only a book. Alhaitham has read his publications before, having critiqued almost all of them to bits. There’s nothing scandalous about it, but…

“Market. Curious,” Alhaitham signs, and grins again, picking the book up with his right hand, its embossed letters glinting. Afferent Architecture, reads the cover, peering back at him coyly. 

He watches in suspended motion as Alhaitham flips over to his earlier page, and reads off of it, with his sleepy voice, the words Kaveh had written so long ago.

“…especially for individuals with either dulled or heightened senses, experiential engagement hinges on the affective and cognitive dimensions of a space. For example, when I was still a student in the Akademiya, a dear friend of mine pointed out how simply looking at the exposed brick on the garden walls would make him shiver with disgust. I, at the time, had only hated them for being ugly; but his words gave me insight into how discordant the original architecture had been. For this reason, when I was commissioned to redesign Razan Garden years later, I used self-healing cement, glazed with a natural finish that—”

Kaveh presses his hands over the page before he can read any more. "A-Alhaitham, you don't need to read it to me. I already know what I wrote—”

And Alhaitham laughs, lopsided and melodic, touching the lobe of his hearing ear by instinct.

“Why are you shy, Kaveh? It’s valuable research you did with a dear friend.”

Research I did for you.

“I’m not—shy!!” Kaveh flails his hands, signing subconsciously while he talks. “I just—don’t need to hear what I already know! That dear friend of mine doesn’t even visit the gardens, anyway—”

Hearing it reminds him of how he had ached, passages he had written because of an anecdotal experience with the younger Alhaitham, watching him go about his life and being sucked into it. It reminds him how he had loved Alhaitham to the point of invention.

Alhaitham goes back to the book, lips moving to read another passage, and Kaveh—“Put your mouth to some better use than annoying me and eat!”—stuffs the pudding in his mouth and leaves.

∘₊—✧༓ ⾕ ༓✧—₊∘

Parisa, Kaveh is beginning to learn, has very opulent taste. The expansions she’s proposed for her side of Pardis Dhyai are more reminiscent of a glass mahal than a greenhouse, and yet the vision is crystal clear in all the facets of his mind.

“How about—if she’s amenable—” He points to the wedding aisle on Mehrak’s three-dimensional map. “Instead of tile, a deep pool here, and a path of kalpalata lotuses leading to the altar?”

Nilou gasps. “Oh! Like the ones surrounding the main fountain?”

“Yes. You said she has a dendro vision, right? She can make them bloom as she follows the path, leaving a trail of petals and pearls behind her.”

Mehrak’s interface visualizes the idea, bringing forth a path of lotuses. Something of myth and legend coalesces on the screen.

“Kaveh! Oh, that sounds—wonderful!” Nilou leaps in front of him, and around the greenhouse itself, imagining the path as Mehrak leads her down. She seems so elated, Kaveh wonders if the wedding might be for her.

Still, it warms his heart. It’s been years since anyone has gazed upon his work with such utter wonder, with complete trust in his creative vision. That it’s a dear friend, an artist at that, admiring his work, is even better.

“Say the altar is here,” he proposes, standing in the centre of the courtyard, flanked by sumeru roses and glittering lilies. “We could put a rose window above the couple, so that when the sun is at its apex, its rays fall directly upon them in a spotlight of colour.”

Nilou comes up to stand beside him and looks up at the glass ceiling of the greenhouse curiously. “Might I suggest something else, as well, Kaveh?” 

Kaveh perks up. This is her first amendment to his ideas.

“How about a sprinkler? Around the perimeter. Or a fountain. So that water falls around them, like a veil.” To illustrate her point, Nilou calls up a canopy of water to surround them, and Kaveh’s eyes go wide.

“Parisa found your insight about the rain rather inspiring,” she says, a twinkle in her eye. “It’s a perfect place for a new beginning, don’t you think?”

And Kaveh nods, because she’s right. It is perfect.

They call the mechanism a ‘rain veil,’ named after the gossamer-thin sheet of water that pours down.

∘₊—✧༓ ⾕ ༓✧—₊∘

“You seem to be in a good mood,” Alhaitham remarks at dinner, that smug baritone of his voice pulling Kaveh from his thoughts.

“Hm? Is that a problem?” Kaveh murmurs. He’s already halfway through his tahchin when he realizes that Alhaitham hasn’t brought a book to the table.

“I was just wondering what motivated the elaborate dinner.” Alhaitham, for his part, has already cleared his plate once, and is now helping himself to a second serving. Or is it his third? “The ingredients are rather expensive, and you are a week late on rent, after all.”

And just like that, the bubble pops.

“You—Ugh! It’s just a simple dinner. I already told you I’ll get your money after I—“

“I’m not concerned about that,” Alhaitham interrupts, leaning back with his plate in hand. “I was just asking. There’s usually an occasion.”

Kaveh huffs at him, unfairly worked up now with nowhere to direct the energy. Really, Alhaitham has this amazing ability to rile him up for seemingly no reason and then flatten the conversation into something plain and mundane, making him somehow feel like the crazy one.

Kaveh swallows and looks back at his plate. “I wouldn’t say I’m… happy, exactly. Hopeful is a better word,” he offers, smushing the last dregs of the sticky rice between his fingers. 

He had taken a dizzyingly large check to the Sumerian Bank today, but the funds take a few days to transfer. If they are legitimate, which he hopes they are.

“My luck could be turning around very soon if all goes well.”

At this, Alhaitham shifts, leaning against his clean hand.

“Meaning?”

Kaveh smiles at him. “Untold riches, of course. And your rent, in full. So don’t worry.”

Alhaitham looks at him skeptically but doesn’t voice any of the other questions in his eyes. “…Okay. Nevermind, then,” he replies instead, standing with his now-empty plate.

Something sinks to the pit of Kaveh’s stomach. What? Why is Alhaitham giving up like that? He’s not supposed to give up; he’s the one that keeps pushing. Quickly, Kaveh speaks to right himself, not entirely sure of what’ll come out of his mouth.

“It’s really nothing big, Alhaitham. I just might have gotten a promising project, for once.” 

Alhaitham spares him a glance, intrigue and that same distrust glittering in a veil above in his eyes. “You don’t need to justify yourself to me, Kaveh. What you do in your time is your business.” He flicks off his hearing aids and whisks away to the kitchen.

Why is he making it sound as if Kaveh had done something untoward? Kaveh’s spending his time on completely respectable matters! No, more than that; luxuriant, wealthy matters! Yet he cannot bring himself to speak it, the fact of his commission or whom he’s committed it to. It doesn’t help that he’s technically not supposed to, anyway.

Truth be told, Kaveh’s only being cautious. What if, when he breaks down the commission, Alhaitham catches onto a detail Kaveh missed, and the whole thing unravels as some big scheme? He trusts Nilou’s judgement, sure, but what if Nilou’s also been fooled by her so-called friend? Kaveh can’t face the possibility right now. And, just thinking of it—bringing up the topic of weddings, marriage, eternal love when their own relationship is still so mercurial feels ill-timed.

Perhaps he’s worried Alhaitham will ask after his own tastes, his own plans. And what will he do then? What if his heart, mutinous thing that it is, reveals all to Alhaitham in one melodramatic outpour of infatuation? What if all his hopes and dreams and too-tender wishes become transparent? That he has no plans to settle down or look for a life partner that isn’t Alhaitham? That he wants everything—the romance, the wedding, the full nine yards of a married life—with someone he’s sure would scorn the very idea of it? He wouldn’t do that, a part of him protests. He would listen to you.

Somehow, that is worse.

No, Kaveh doesn’t have the strength to confront the future quite like that yet. He has a plan—albeit a vague one—but he’ll do it right.

Kaveh finishes the rest of his tahchin in silence and decides to fall into bed with his work, sketching dreamy landscapes with Mehrak and thinking of someone else’s wedding instead of his own.

∘₊—✧༓ ⾕ ༓✧—₊∘

Kaveh’s next meeting with Nilou comes a few weeks later, after a quarter of the funds have already gone through to his bank. There is an old adage in the desert: those who worship wealth will only end up kissing the sand, but for someone whose future seemed to be buried in dunes, even a drop of gold tastes like salvation. 

Kaveh has managed with less for so long that he’s forgotten what it’s like to have, and so everything in the bazaar catches his eye. He stops by at least a dozen stalls on the way to Nilou, picking up trinkets and knick-knacks and gifts he never had the luxury of buying before. An atomizer made of red crystal cut to resemble a pomegranate, a set of earrings that branch up the auricle, a book bag of shimmering gold ink, brand-new blueprint paper, and sketching utensils; he’s nearly drunk on his acquisitions by the time he turns up beside Nilou.

“Kaveh, you’re glowing.” Nilou, of course, notices his demeanor accurately. “What’s all this? An impromptu shopping spree?” She peers at the bag on his arm, slinking and heavy with its weight.

“Ah—well, I just thought I’d restock some stuff back home.” Which isn’t entirely a lie, but if she spots the decorations and the crystals, she’ll certainly wonder what he means.

Luckily, she does not.

“Well, I was just about to head out as well, if you’d like to help me.” Nilou begins walking, just like that, toward the busiest part of the bazaar, where the thick air of perfumes and oils is so pervasive it weighs down his lungs like feathers.

“Sure,” Kaveh says without thinking.

“Wait, what are you going out to buy?”

“Oh! I forgot to tell you. We’re going to check out jewelry sets—you know, for the couple!”

As an architect, Kaveh’s involvement with his commissioners usually extends as far as the building. Sure, he has on occasion worked with truly influential clients, who have, for better or worse, affected the trajectory of his life, and he has had wonderful working relationships with some who remain viable connections today. But never has Kaveh been so personally involved as to find himself on Treasures Street, being tugged around like a pearl on a string, looking for someone else’s wedding jewelry.

“Would you say she likes gold or silver?” Kaveh asks, flipping between two pages of a high-end catalogue.

Nilou squints at him as if doing so will reveal some hidden answer, invisible ink under open flame. “Gold, for sure.”

According to Nilou, the wedding rings are still being designed, but she’s currently shopping for the shabka: a gilt set of earrings, bangles, a necklace, and a diadem. It’s a tall order, even for someone like Kaveh, who is aching to exercise his aesthetic sensibilities on any given day.

At their second stop, Kaveh comes across a crown that wraps around the underside of the wearer’s head—more like a wreath of laurels rather than a typical tiara. It probably wouldn’t suit an opulent bride like Parisa (not because he’s seen her, but her tastes seem altogether more ornate), but Kaveh can’t help imagining it on someone else. Someone who, with his elaborate earpieces, has proven he looks rather striking in a circlet of gold.

“Do you like this one, sir?”

That snaps Kaveh out of his thoughts. “Oh sorry, don’t mind me! I was just… It just reminded me of somebody, that’s all.”

Unfortunately, once Alhaitham enters his mind, Kaveh has no hope of clearing him out for the rest of the evening. At every stall that follows, he thinks of Alhaitham. Of how turquoise and tourmaline just barely capture the glow of his eyes, of branches of gold, cut to resemble the dendrites of a tree, nestled in fine tufts of silver-gray hair. A spindle-like necklace that extends down the collar, wrapping around a hollow space by design—would his gem fit in there? The colour would certainly be…

“Kaveh, look at these earrings! Aren’t they just like yours?”

Nilou holds up a pair of gold drop earrings, engraved with intricate branches like the arms of a cypress tree. Somehow, even the inner facets have been carved, making the light that hits them sparkle out like specks of tiny gems. At the apex hangs a red sapphire, like a fruit.

“Ah, The Courtyard of Makhaira,” says the merchant. “It’s based off the architecture in one of the alcoves of the ruined city, which was once said to be a sprawling garden. Would you like to buy it, sir?”

Kaveh’s mouth goes dry. “The Courtyard of Makhaira, as in one of the first architectural wonders of the time? I can’t believe you managed to distill those detailed carvings into such a small sheet of metal. And to keep it so symmetrical, and straight, when gold bends so easily to hand-carving…”

The merchant laughs, delighted in the way any craftsman would be upon true recognition of their work. “It’s not only a matter of technique. I was experimenting with alloys to support the gold. Even though gold is a noble and bright metal, it still needs something more solid, like silver or platinum, to give it structural strength.”

Nilou’s completely enraptured with the set, and insists a few times for him to try it on. But they’re not here for him, they’re here for Parisa, and he ends up dragging her (and himself) away from the stall with great difficulty.

“I might have to go jewelry shopping with her personally, at this rate. Shall we turn our attention elsewhere?” Nilou offers, at last, eyeing something in the distance.

“What else is there to get?” Kaveh supplies, exhaustion and something annoyingly close to disappointment in his bones. Getting an adequate set of jewelry shouldn’t be difficult, but perhaps if he weren’t so distracted.

“The mirror and candelabra for the Sofreh Aghd. She still hasn’t gotten one yet.”

Kaveh returns to the moment. Ah, the mirror of destiny, for the wedding table. He’s about to suggest a shop that carves the most elaborate candlesticks—but he already has a solution for the mirror at home.

A sentimental part of him protests. You don’t even know this person. It’s too precious to you. Another, older and still ridden with guilt responds, I trust Nilou. And I owe Parisa that much—I’m not sure I even deserve all the riches she’s giving me.

Something about giving it feels right when he puts it like that.

“If you’d—if she’d like, I could lend you mine.”

“Pardon?”

“My father was a Rtawahist scholar. He designed the mirror for his and my mother’s wedding with hydromancy, and apparently they saw prophetic glimpses of me within it.”

Nilou turns to him, a little wide-eyed.

“Of course, it couldn’t predict his untimely death, but…”

“Kaveh…”

“It’s not like it’s getting any use at my house. If the history of it doesn’t bother her, why not use that? You could use your Vision to activate it.”

He recognizes the look in Nilou’s eyes. It’s something like sympathy, or pity and gratitude. He’s certainly given that look many a time, but having it turned on him is a little off-putting.

“Is it really okay to use an heirloom of yours like that?”

“Well, I just feel bad. We ran around the market and still couldn’t find anything for the Shabka. I want to help, at least a little, if I can.”

“There’s no need to feel guilty about that. I’m the one who roped you into it!”

“Still, leaving it all to you seems unfair. If you’re worried about that, just return it to me after. And I’ll work on the rings, or something. You said they’re not finalized, right?”

Conflict crosses Nilou’s face. She looks this way and that, seemingly unsure of herself. But, finally, she replies, “Okay, Kaveh. Let’s do that.”

When they part, Kaveh feels vaguely childish, like he’s stuck his nose too far in a pie or committed some unknown crime against etiquette.

But it’s fine. He isn’t doing it just for Parisa, but for Nilou, and it’s an excuse to pull out his old wedding ring drafts from when he was still young and naïve, daydreaming of a future with a doe-eyed boy two years his junior.

∘₊—✧༓ 𖧧 ༓✧—₊∘

Few scholars of today can imagine an Akademiya without the minarets of Razan Garden or the organic arched bridges at Port Ormos, growing from the gnarled roots of massive trees. It seems as though overnight Kaveh appeared, and made himself indispensable, and life in Sumeru had never been the same. Even now, many students flock here, not knowing how much care and consideration was put into every petal-like structure of the stained glass, the natural give of the self-healing cement that’s been glossed to be easier on the senses.

Only Alhaitham remembers, because it was he who once sat with Kaveh while he drew, enduring the jittering under the uneven scrape of brick against his fingers and being drawn out of his thoughts by every slight change in the wind or new angle of the sunlight.

“Haitham, are you okay?” is how it had started. Kaveh had been even more innocent then, even more kind. Where he didn’t have the words, Kaveh would give them voice. Little by little, bit by bit…

One day, Kaveh said, “It’s okay, I’d rather sit in the shade anyway.” Even though he turned to the sun like a flower.

Another day it was, “I brought a blanket and snacks. It’s like we’re having a picnic!” And when Alhaitham had asked why it was only ‘like’ a picnic, Kaveh’s response was, “I—well, I don’t know. We didn’t plan a picnic beforehand.”

“Since we’re both here, can’t it be one anyway?”

Alhaitham hasn’t sat with him here in some time, but there are many students enjoying it now, speckled across the grass in small clusters as numerous as blooms.

Padisarahs have flourished in the Razan Garden of today. They are said to be noble yet capricious plants, difficult to cultivate because of their picky soil conditions and temperature sensitivity, and yet here they are, blooming without a care.

Alhaitham twists his index finger around one, gently plucking it from its home on the ground.

Pardis Dhyai had also been full of padisarahs when last he visited.

Admittedly, he hadn’t paid them too much attention at the time, caught by the sight of a secret rendezvous with Kaveh and Nilou, all but dancing around him inside the gardens.

The meeting shouldn’t have meant anything in particular. Alhaitham saw it only in passing, having been reluctant to be in Pardis Dhyai anyway, on business delivering documents too ‘high profile’ to entrust to anyone else. (Naphis’ appointment as Grand Sage was overall a good thing, aside from the fact it meant he knew of Alhaitham’s competencies explicitly and would use him whenever efficient.)

But he re-examined it later that evening, when Kaveh, for archons-knows reason, outright denied it happening at all.

Nothing “big” had happened, he said. He was hopeful, not happy. Something something, untold riches, which, for all Alhaitham knew, could have been rhetorical or literal in nature.

Had he been referring to Nilou?

The thought makes his stomach drop, and he has to will his mind back to his body before he crushes the poor flower in his palm.

Suddenly finding the wind unbearable, Alhaitham makes his way back to his office, where the sunlight doesn’t quite reach his desk but still suffuses the room with a gentle glow. He could spend the next twenty minutes wrapping up the last (largely unimportant) files of the day, or he could spend five writing tomorrow’s to-do list and leave early.

…

He leaves early.

No one pays him any mind, clearly used to his irregular schedule, but he finds a certain pointy-eared child sitting by the entrance on her own.

“Hello, Alhaitham,” she says without turning around.

“Hello, Nahida. Do you have some business in the Akademiya today?”

She turns around, a childish grin on her full, round cheeks. “No more than usual. I was just taking a break to enjoy the flowers.”

As are many others, Alhaitham thinks. 

Then, she reaches out her little hand to him. 

“Walk with me?”

Alhaitham is well aware that Nahida doesn’t have much time to herself very often. It’s not exactly Alhaitham’s concern; worrying unduly about the wellbeing of the archon is well beyond his scope as a citizen of Sumeru and, one could argue, an unnecessary reversal of their respective roles. Still, she has not yet grown into the omniscience that being the god of wisdom demands, and more meaningfully, he likes her company.

Alhaitham takes her little fingers, and they walk around the long way to his home, looping around Puspa Café and the merchants of Treasures Street.

“I’ve read that Sumeru’s seasons reflect the inner state of the Archon. Were you in a particularly floral mood this year, Nahida?” he asks, watching thin petals of needle flowers flutter in the breeze.

She laughs and curls her little fingers around his own.

“Is it that obvious?” She hums and then looks out toward the horizon. “Actually, the flowers here have flourished thanks to everyone’s care. I didn’t till the land nor infuse it with fertilizer.”

“Even so, your good health is the baseline for abundance. If you were unwell, the land would be, too,” Alhaitham posits, walking slowly to match her gait.

Nahida tugs him along the cobblestone, fitting her feet over the rocks so as to avoid stepping on a ‘crack.’ Then, when she stops to look back at him, he realizes she’s waiting for him to follow. He does.

“Who is to say it is not the other way around? That everyone’s care for Sumeru also takes care of me?”

It’s the kind of argument Alhaitham would make, and he cannot help the small smile that comes to his face.

“Still, how a plant flourishes is up to them in the end,” Nahida continues, taking measured steps.

Alhaitham hums. “The gardener?” he asks.

“The plant.” She takes his hand again when he meets her three stones away. “After all, the gardener will only miss the sight of the blooms when they fade away. But if the plant blooms, it must eventually mourn the loss of its flowering body as well.”

Because Sumeru is humid year-round, blooming periods never truly end; Alhaitham hasn’t considered what a life of eternal bloom entails in depth.

“Mourn is an interesting choice of words,” he says, because there is very much a flowering plant by that name, with drooping, crimson heads that he knows a certain architect is very fond of.

Nahida flashes him a grin. “Mourning flowers are surprisingly resilient, despite their name, you know. I would say the most delicate flower, in a perpetual state of mourning, must be the padisarahs of old.”

Alhaitham tilts his head. “What do you presume that they are mourning? The Goddess of Flowers, with whom they died?” he asks, though it’s difficult to imagine that something that has already died can mourn.

Nahida shakes her head and meets him with an upward look of her peridot blossom eyes. “It is the jinn who mourn their master. But the flowers, borne of her longing, held all the wishes she could never fulfill.”

Alhaitham breathes deeply through his nose. In truth, he is well acquainted with the mourning of loss. However, the other shades of grief, such as the one Nahida suggests—the mourning of a moment passed, a wish unfulfilled—are more novel to him. His ambitions have always been simple and clear, and he has achieved them and more by his own means. Still.

“There is little she could have done to avoid being cast out of heaven,” he suggests instead, as if trying to alleviate the burden of a goddess long gone.

 “Life can be unpredictable, for gods and humans alike.” Nahida nods, sagely. “Which is why even I must come out to enjoy the flowers sometimes.”

Alhaitham stands before his door now, having been escorted personally by Devi Kusanali through the city. He turns to her, the kiss of the breeze in his hair carrying a sea of petals and fragrant scents.

“Goodbye, Nahida.”

“Goodbye, Alhaitham!”

When he heads inside, he finds he is more than thankful for her company. The walk had momentarily distracted him from the fact he’s alone at home today, and despite the tepid heat of the afternoon, Kaveh’s absence makes the house a few degrees colder. Shucking off his shoes, he slinks into the study, lined with his personal collection of books—and today, he settles on a fairy tale rendition of a thinly veiled lesson in history.

The table is already messy when he brings it over, though it’s not his fault this time. Alhaitham reads Kaveh’s signature lettering over the leather cover of a book and smiles to himself, unable to contain his fondness. For all his blustering, Kaveh leaves just as much mess as him when it comes to his own workspace. Alhaitham only bites his tongue on mentioning it because he likes to see the evidence of Kaveh’s life here. He would rather hold onto the lost pencils and sketches rather than stop seeing them altogether.

As he moves the book to the side, though, a few stray pages spill from its mouth. Alhaitham gathers and sets them back, one on top of the other, and is about to open his book when the last one catches his eye.

It’s a page of blueprints, naturally. Of course. But not of a house—of a set of rings.

∘₊—✧༓ ⾕ ༓✧—₊∘

Excited as he had been at the start, a few weeks in, this commission is quickly becoming more than Kaveh had bargained for. The mechanism of the fountain has undergone three revisions already, and yet the prototype is still lackluster. This on its own is expected; he’s designing something from scratch, after all, but combined with the design of the rings as well, along with the structure of the rest of the venue, it’s all quickly choking up all his free time. There’s also another burgeoning problem…

“What’s this?” Alhaitham says suddenly from behind him, making Kaveh jump out of his seat. He almost ruffles up his papers in shock as he whips his head around.

“You—don’t sneak up on me! I get this is your house, but can’t you at least—” 

And then Kaveh sees it. In Alhaitham’s hand is a mug, filled to the brim with a steaming pool of coffee.

“I did knock.” Alhaitham brushes him off coolly, setting the mug down off to the side. “It seems you were too wrapped up in your sketching to notice.” 

The light from the window glints off his eyes as he leans in, and as if illuminating their inner workings, Kaveh can see the curiosity in his gaze. He ought to say something, but words desert him quickly.

“Thank you,” Kaveh signs instead, and takes a sip. “I was thirsty.” The coffee is hot, but not scalding, and it slides smoothly down his throat as he signs the word “thirsty” with his index finger down his neck. Alhaitham blinks at him for a few moments, momentarily quiet.

“You’re welcome,” he signs back.

They’re suddenly so cordial when words are not involved. Yet when the warmth in Alhaitham’s eyes begins to look like more than just a captured ray of sunlight, Kaveh’s fingers sit adrift, unmoving in the air. What else should he say? Or do? If Kaveh looks long enough, he could convince himself Alhaitham is staring at him because he wants to.

Kaveh spares a glance at his draft, and then at Alhaitham, who tugs at the sheaf of papers on the desk.

This iteration of the fountain is not anything substantial yet. Still only a suggestion of a circle, and a new composition of a rose window. Alhaitham hums at it, shifting on his feet, the downy feather tufts of his hair swaying slightly. He almost looks unsure of himself. It’s a strangely unguarded look on him, but before Kaveh can ask about it, he leaves.

This is his other new problem. Or rather, an old problem in a new disguise. Alhaitham has been acting weird lately.

It started with small things, mere minutiae in the grand scheme of everyday life.

Alhaitham would clean away his books before Kaveh asked. Would start making dinner before Kaveh got home. Would even have normal discussions with him at the dining table, without riling him up, or teasing him unnecessarily. It’s nice, of course, but weird.

Just yesterday, Alhaitham approached him in the kitchen and started squeezing at his back. “You’ll only exacerbate your bad posture if you hunch over the counter like that,” he said while Kaveh was too stunned to react. “At least while you’re cooking, try to balance the weight on your hips.”

Alhaitham had slowly kneaded at his scapulae and down the ridges of his spine, so gently that Kaveh was expecting to wake up from a dream. But the rest of dinner passed as usual, and he had gone to sleep replaying it.

The problem is that now Alhaitham occupies even more of his mind than he did before. It is pure greed, on his part, really, because he was a frequent feature in his memory to begin with. Now when Alhaitham enters the living room, Kaveh pays him too much mind, and beckons him over with his eyes, talking to him, doing anything but carving away at the mechanism in his sketch.

“That window—is it inspired by Tulaytullaian architecture?” Alhaitham asks as he sits down, setting a bowl of grapes and sliced peaches on the table. “It’s rather reminiscent of the sapphire cupolas of the old courtyard.”

“Yes,” Kaveh says, suddenly a little breathless. “I’m trying to inscribe a verse of poetry around the perimeter without affecting the veiling mechanism. But it’s proving to be more difficult than I anticipated.”

“Veiling mechanism?” Alhaitham asks, leaning in just a bit too close so Kaveh can feel the warmth of his skin and the whiff of jasmine in his hair.

“This part of the window is meant to respond to a cue, and then produce a thin fall of water—” Kaveh guides him along with his pencil. “—which has to evenly veil the cou—people inside.”

When Kaveh looks up again, Alhaitham isn’t looking at the page anymore but him.

“And you’re worried the inscription will redirect the water flow,” he says, “or rust away from moisture over time.”

Kaveh nods.

“Hmm. What verse of poetry are you trying to write?”

Kaveh snorts slightly. “I never thought you of all people would someday be asking me that.”

“Who better to help you than a linguist of Haravatat? Read it to me. Perhaps I can find a more efficient translation.”

Kaveh hums and leans in. He highly doubts that, but he’s gone over it so many times, he has no trouble reciting it from memory. “In the mirror of my soul, my love, I see now only your luminous face,” he says, and watches with satisfaction as Alhaitham’s lips part, just so.

“My soul and yours are one.”

Alhaitham swallows. Opens his mouth. Closes it again.

It’s sweet, really. How plush and pink they look like that. Kaveh drinks in the sight of him before venturing a glance up at his gaze.

But the sight is not what he expects. When he meets Alhaitham’s eyes, Kaveh sees a glossy translucent sheen has come over them, making it look as if he’s about to—

“Alhaitham?”

Alhaitham turns away. “Try—inscribing it on an inner circle, rather than the edge. The original ancient script would be more exact and shorter to write, as well.”

And with that, he pushes off the couch, leaving Kaveh with his shot heart beating like a siren in his ears.

“Alhaitham—” 

Kaveh goes after him, tracking his steps down the hall.

Alhaitham had seemed just fine a moment ago, but there’s no denying the swell of saltwater in his eyes, the unshed tear that had sat on the lip of his waterline.

“Is something—are you—okay?” Kaveh sputters out, grasping the edge of his door before he can close it. Alhaitham could slam it on his fingers if he wished, but he just stands there, looking entirely untethered, lost. “Did something happen?”

Alhaitham doesn’t meet his eyes. “If something did happen,” he begins, voice low and almost tremulous, “Kaveh, would you tell me?”

“What do you mean? I’m asking if—if something happened to you. You’ve been acting…”

“I’ve been acting as I always do, in my own interests.” It’s such an untrue statement that Kaveh almost wants to laugh. “But I mean you. Has anything happened with you?”

Alhaitham’s watching him with such scrutiny, Kaveh feels like a child again, murmuring his answers to an oral exam he hadn’t known he had to study for. Only the examiner is Alhaitham, and his heart is stuck in his throat somewhere, blocking the sound.

“I don’t know what you’re asking me, Alhaitham.”

Alhaitham huffs, an almost bitter twist to his voice. 

“It’s fine then, Kaveh. Don’t worry about what doesn’t concern you.” And then he closes the door in his face.

∘₊—✧༓ ⾕ ༓✧—₊∘

Worried as Kaveh is, Alhaitham doesn’t give him any leeway to make up for his mistake, whatever it could have been. He acts the next day as if nothing happened, and—believe it or not—apologizes, insisting he was only feeling cranky because he’d been getting more hours at work.

Kaveh wants to prod. Of course he does, but the wedding week is fast approaching, and he still has a laundry list of tasks to coordinate with Nilou before then. She must also be busy out of her mind, given that she asked him to meet her at Zubayr Theatre instead of the venue, so he doesn’t question it and heads there ten minutes early.

What he doesn’t expect, at the foot of the theatre’s stage, are two other familiar figures, clad in the garments of the desert, all tawny skin and ebony hair.

Nilou appears beside them, still dressed in her rehearsal garb. He had heard Candace and Dehya were also friends of the bride, but seeing the three of them together is still striking.

“Yo, Kaveh!” says Dehya as he approaches, cuffing him hard on the back. “We were just about to head out. Nilou told me you’re coming with?” 

Kaveh gives Nilou a look, wondering what’s become of their appointment.

“Ah, well—um. Actually, Kaveh, I was hoping we could buy our garments for the wedding today,” she hums. “You haven’t decided on a suit yet, right? And I also need to pick something for myself.”

“Huh—wait, what I’ll wear to the wedding?” He wasn’t aware he was invited. How often is the architect of the venue suddenly an attendant in the wedding party?

Apparently, to the others, this is a strange thing to say. Never before has he seen three people all look at him as if he had three heads. Would that mean he really has nine?

“Yes, of course. You’ve got some ideas about what to wear, surely?” Nilou waves her arms around and grasps him as if he’s said something ridiculous.

“But, I haven’t even met the bride yet! How could I possibly know what to—”

He doesn’t get to finish his question. Three ladies are more than enough to overpower a meagre architect, especially one so physically outmatched and, frankly, out of his depth, so Kaveh gets dragged around the bazaar with the ease of pollen in the breeze.

Parisa, it seems, is not only of high-end and expensive taste but also rather indecisive about her wedding. Kaveh’s been thinking that since he learned she booked extra time simply for decision-making, but he feels it even more now.

Nestled within an alcove of the bazaar is an imported silk merchant who’s known for his wedding attire. Apparently, Parisa has demanded her entire entourage pick out their garments of the week from here, even though the majority of their inventory is almost exorbitantly expensive. Then again, according to Nilou…

“Don’t forget, she’s not a traditional bride!” she says, looking at a lineup of red and white saris the shopkeeper, Ormaz, has pulled out. “She might even wear a shalwar kameez instead of a dress. But then again, she was also considering a lehenga—" 

The conversation is beginning to make Kaveh dizzy. If he had met her, perhaps he would be able to give some input into fabric choice and cut. But he hasn’t a clue what would suit Parisa.

“What are you spacing out for, Kaveh?” says Dehya, as she taps him on the shoulder. She’s just finished fitting Candace in a stunning blue shalwar, with a gathered georgette fabric that swishes at her ankles when she walks. 

“It’s your turn to pick a suit. I was thinking something like this—” She whisks a bolt of orange shot silk from the rack, embroidered with red thread and glimmers of green as it shines.

Kaveh ought to deny something so flashy—it’s not his wedding, after all—but the vibrance of it does suit the fawn tone of his skin, mixing in a look like umber and smoke, ochre and copper.

“It’s very nice, Dehya. How much is—”

“I, for one, think this would suit you better,” cuts in Candace, and to Kaveh’s horror, she drapes a gold brocade along his shoulder, along with a velvet sash the colour of his eyes. 

“Candace, isn’t that groomswear? I can’t possibly wear red to my own client’s wedding!”

Nilou, hearing the commotion, trots over in a dazzling azure-lilac lehenga herself, pulling the velvet sash around his waist. “Oh, Candace, this is beautiful! Maybe something with even more embroidery to match the sash—Ah, sir, could you pull that Anarkali Sherwani down for us?”

“Are you three even listening to me? I’ll get kicked out of the wedding dressed like this!”

The problem is that while, yes, it’s true that everyone attending a wedding must be dripping in gems and suited to perfection, it’s also common knowledge that gold, red, and most colours adjacent to them (such as the rich crimson he’s being swathed in right now) are extremely disrespectful to the couple being wedded.

Nilou only laughs, as if privy to some secret Kaveh doesn’t know.

“I already told you! She’s not a traditional bride. She might even show up in a sherwani herself, or a kurta, or a foreign gown from as far away as Mondstadt!”

“I—still, Nilou, I’m not sure—”

“Just try it!” they all say, and then he is shoved into the changing room, never to be seen again.

As much as he loathes to admit it, the red and gold drape across him in a perfect fit. The glint off his earrings and choker seems almost a purposeful addition to the garment, and the velvet makes his eyes appear like illusory, deep-set gems, glittering with a hidden mystery he himself can’t seem to decipher. Suddenly, it feels all too real.

With the money from this commission, things could change. Really change. Kaveh wouldn’t have to live under Alhaitham’s roof anymore. He wouldn’t have an excuse to live under Alhaitham’s roof anymore. He thinks back to that day when Alhaitham asked him if something had happened. Should he have said yes, and warned Alhaitham that he was about to be out of debt in one fell swoop?

What could he have said that hurt Alhaitham so, that day? He thinks about everything from the beginning, and still none of it makes any sense.

Perhaps—and this is a risky perhaps—he wouldn’t need an excuse to stay. Perhaps, Kaveh thinks, running his fingers over the fine sash, he could build the courage to tell Alhaitham how he feels. He never wants to see that lost look in his eyes again.

Kaveh thinks of a possible moment when he might confess. He pictures it after a day out at the bazaar like this, instead of a moonlit night. Maybe when they’ve both drunk and eaten their fill, he can slip his hand into Alhaitham’s, apologize for being a coward, and tell him that he…

“Kaveh! Are you done yet?”

Kaveh tucks the thought somewhere safe.

∘₊—✧༓ 𖧧 ༓✧—₊∘

The bazaar is especially lively today. There are children weaving around unsuspecting shopkeeper’s stalls and blaring music from the flute players and the flood of spices everywhere Alhaitham turns. It’s usually not so bad as long as he turns his hearing aids down, but today his whole body feels prickled with sensation, a livewire waiting for a shock.

Ironically, the bustle dies down a little closer to his destination, despite his reluctance to continue down the path.

It’s usually not an unpleasant thing, wandering through the bazaar. The residents are welcoming to everyone, despite being made up largely of outcasts themselves, and the breath of life that fills this place usually affords him more than a modicum of comfort.

Today, though, the space itself is personally wounding. He sees reminders of the Twirling Lotus of the Theatre everywhere he goes; posters, signboards, messages like petals around a flowerhead.

He has always known that Kaveh finds solidarity with her, given the rarity of their professions in Sumeru. They’re also both masters of their own craft, and unfairly, the inherent volatility of artists allows them to pick up skills from each others’ domains as well.

Perhaps it is because they have a mutual understanding. Nilou certainly finds Kaveh beautiful, because she has called him such before, and though Kaveh has not been so liberal with his words about her, it’s plain to see that she’s aesthetically pleasing by any stretch of his standards.

But Alhaitham is not here as a form of self-mutilation. He tried, quite sincerely, to get the truth out of Kaveh, and selfishly indulged himself in his presence in the process—but now just seeing Kaveh working away at some romantic invention for someone else makes him wish he would take the chisel to Alhaitham’s chest instead and carve out his heart already. The rings, the poetry—he would think Kaveh was about to propose.

It isn’t any of his business, he tried to tell himself.

If it makes Kaveh happy, he has no right to get involved.

But theories can be refined more quickly with a negative conclusion, and he wants, so badly, to be proven wrong.

Alhaitham arrives by the edge of the stage expecting to do just that. However, it isn’t Nilou he sees first, but a shock of gold hair and a cerulean feather in the breeze. Kaveh. As if his fears are being confirmed in real time, Alhaitham stares, wide-eyed and nearly agape, when two other figures join them too.

It is not… a romantic rendezvous, as far as Alhaitham can tell, though the dappled light through the leaves and Kaveh’s gentle smile could have certainly fooled him. Kaveh is the last person he wants to see here. Alhaitham, in his endless naivete, was hoping that at least if Kaveh would not tell him, Nilou would have answered in good faith. She might have forgiven him for becoming intrusive.

His guts churn at the picture of them, arranged in a diagonal composition (the principles of which he only even picked up because of Kaveh.) His body crawls with unease, the way it does the moment something goes horribly wrong; the way it did some ten odd years ago, before he spoke without thinking and watched his dearest friend walk out of his life.

But he can’t back away. No, against his better judgement Alhaitham steps closer, and he turns his hearing aids up, up, up.

“…buy our garments for the wedding,” Nilou says. “You haven’t decided on a suit yet, right? And I also need to pick...”

Oh, Devi Kusanali. Alhaitham’s heart stops in his chest.

“Huh—wait, what I’ll wear to the wedding?” Kaveh all but sputters.

Wedding. Wedding. Wedding.

“Yes, of course. You’ve got some ideas about what to wear, surely?” Nilou flails her arms around and grabs him, as if it’s easy, as if it’s nothing, and Kaveh doesn’t pull away.

Kaveh’s getting… married.

Kaveh’s getting married.

“But—I haven’t even met the bride yet!”

Kaveh’s getting married to—

What?

Alhaitham once stood under a waterfall, whose current had beat so loud and hard against his back that it drowned out every murmur of the world around him. This moment is almost the same.

It’s not Nilou. Kaveh is getting married, but not to Nilou. The knowledge should relieve him, but it doesn’t. Because Kaveh is still getting married.

Kaveh? The lovestruck romantic, the amorous architect of all things sweet and sensitive? Kaveh, marrying somebody that he doesn’t even know?

It seems—it must be impossible.

But then Alhaitham pauses. What if money is somehow involved? Blackmail? No—Dehya and Candace would never support a plan like that. What if—Could it be… his mother…?

Alhaitham chokes back a sound and teleports as far as he can get. And then he runs and does it again.

He ends up on a forest path while the sun is setting, guided by nothing but a profound, empty gaping in his chest. There are a hundred ways he saw the future unfolding, none of which could have at all prepared him for this.

He doesn’t have any claim over Kaveh’s life, though the past few years might have convinced him otherwise, with the elaborate ruse of their playing house. But no matter how real that had been—the morning coffee, the handmade dinners, the lunches Kaveh would sometimes pack when he was feeling especially clement—Alhaitham hadn’t even known that Kaveh was getting married. Kaveh hadn’t even deigned to tell him.

There is a bottomless pit digging itself into his empty stomach. Alhaitham has a not-right feeling about this, which is about the least dramatic way he can afford to describe it without saying he simply doesn’t want Kaveh to get married, least of all to a stranger, least of all someone that isn’t…

“Alhaitham?” calls a voice, and he feels the earth beneath his feet, and he realizes the distance that he’s walked.

Tighnari stands before him, his brow knitted in concern. Even his tail is twitching uneasily as if preemptively reacting to Alhaitham’s bad mood.

“What is—Oh! Alhaitham!” Cyno is there too, with a wide-eyed Collei, looking between himself and her master.

Right. Cyno. Perhaps… if his gut feeling is right, and Kaveh is somehow being taken advantage of (and it’s not just heartache infecting the rest of his body)—perhaps it would do well to tell them. A small part of him supplies it will be useless. He’s clinging to life like a mouse trapped by a predator, giving its all in a futile effort to live another day.

“Cyno, do you know about Kaveh?” he asks, vague at first, feeling the words like cotton on his tongue.

Cyno and Tighnari exchange a look, almost as if something has come over them.

“What are you referring to?” He asks, in a slightly conspiratorial tone,

“He’s—is he truly—getting married?”

Tighnari turns to Cyno, eyes wide with alarm, but not alarmed enough to suggest he didn’t know. Just when Alhaitham wants to bark out the most pathetic, broken laugh of the century, Tighnari grips him by the arm and pulls him in.

“You know about it?”

“I—overhead.”

Collei has sprung to her feet as well, and soon they’re surrounding him, ushering him into the tent and seating him down on the mattress.

Alhaitham forces the words out like sand. “Somebody he doesn’t even know. Why?”

Tighnari chews his lip, his telltale mark of concern. “As far as we know, his mother set it up, and he doesn’t want to disappoint her.”

Ha.

So he wasn’t even being forced. As usual, it’s his own conviction, his own bone-crushing, heartstopping guilt that’s pushing him to—

“B-But I don’t think its right, either,” Collei says, rushing to his side, signing in awkward shapes as best she can. She must be trying to be considerate. “Cyno and I were thinking of staging some kind of intervention, to talk to him.”

Alhaitham glances up at them, his eyes rimmed red and throbbing. Tighnari doesn’t look pleased with the announcement. “How many times do I have to tell you two? It’s not that simple.”

“But Master Tighnari—”

“Collei, listen. Kaveh’s bride is wealthy woman, and her family is well connected around Sumeru. If he calls it off so close to the wedding, who knows how they might retaliate? What if he ends up indebted to them like he was to Dori?”

Alhaitham’s eyes widen, stricken. He tries not to be stung at how little he’s been told. “Just how close is the wedding date?”

Collei looks to Cyno, who glances down gravely. “Just a few more weeks away.”

Alhaitham grips the edge of the mattress.

“…Alhaitham, are you alright?”

“It’s difficult to imagine he would keep something like that from me.”

The room fills with an oppressive silence.

Collei touches his shoulder, trying to be comforting. “Perhaps he knew he wouldn’t be able to see it through if you opposed him.”

Alhaitham considers her. “What do you mean, exactly?” Collei looks back at Tighnari, who steps in next to him and sits down.

“What we all know is that Kaveh’s interest does not lie with his bride, but someone else.” Tighnari looks at him firmly, his eyes heavy with meaning. “If they were to find out, or speak out against him…”

Alhaitham swallows down the implication. “You’d be surprised how little Kaveh listens to me.”

“You’d be surprised how much he does.”

Alhaitham is still stunned by the way Collei and Cyno treat his words like absolute truth. Kaveh’s interest lies with someone else. How could they all be so sure? It is not as if they live with him. Alhaitham has wished for that to be true for at least half his life, but Kaveh—even if he did feel that way, it would be tangled in a bramble of guilt and shame and every other negative feeling that being around Alhaitham elicits from him.

He knows because he thinks about it often. For as long as Alhaitham can remember, perhaps even since the day he met Kaveh, he has been nursing a longing too heavy for his chest. It was a mirage, the way it appeared, there and then not, flickering between pages of books and candlelit studying. It had grown astonishingly quickly. One day, having woken up on a sun-filled patch of grass, still reluctant to open his eyes, he had felt Kaveh’s fingers in his hair, signing letters against his ear. H-T-H-M. H-T-H-M. The unadulterated tenderness that had filled his heart then reminded him of being swaddled in blankets, curled up in his grandmother’s arms. A lingering safety, a warmth Kaveh could inspire in him like no other.

Which is why it tore at him all the more when Kaveh left. He had implied to Nahida that he didn’t truly relate to Nabu Malikata’s longing, to the dew-drop tears she shed that bloomed into padisarahs. But she, too, had a home in Celestia once. Even if she were doomed to lose it either way, through her own fault or another’s, of course she would mourn it. Of course she would miss it.

Alhaitham spoke out back then thinking he was doing Kaveh a favour. He couldn’t make the same miscalculation again. But the alternative—sitting by while Kaveh wedded someone he didn’t love—felt like a bone deep betrayal, not even of himself, but the jewel-eyed senior from his childhood.

“You’re saying Kaveh can’t stop the wedding because they’ll make him responsible for the fallout,” Alhaitham posits, looking to Tighnari for assent.

“Then—I will. Let me. Let it be my fault that the wedding doesn’t go through.”

∘₊—✧༓ ⾕ ༓✧—₊∘

Once, when he was still a little boy, Kaveh’s mother told him he had the kindest eyes she’d ever seen. He asked her what she meant, when their eyes were both the same colour, and hers were so bright and pretty.

“Faces tell stories, ya asal. I can see that you will grow up to be a handsome, accomplished boy one day, with just one look at your face.”

Surely it's only the affection of a mother to her son, not something realistic or repeatable. But he can’t help thinking of it now at the foot of Pardis Mahal, the name he’d chosen to give the enclosed garden he built on the Pardis Dhyai soil. In line with its namesake, it is more grand and ornate than the research greenhouses at its feet, a miniature mansion packed with hand-carved scripts and glittering cupolas.

Yet, after millions of mora and months of work, he has yet to put a face to the name of the client that made it possible. Parisa.

“Everyone in the bridal party, please line up along the left side, groomsmen…” Even more ironic is that he’s taken a role not unlike a wedding planner himself, despite not having met the girl even once.

A few days from the rainy season, the plants are in their lushest blooms, showing vibrant pinks and violets, reds and indigos, painting the Sofreh Aghd with more beauty than anything he could have conjured with glass spires alone. The water veil of the rose window has been meticulously tested and set up, and now it peers over the wedding table in waiting.

Neither the bride or groom is here yet, though. When he arrives, the groom will pass over the fifty-metre aquatic aisle, stepping over emerald lily pads to the Sofreh Aghd. When Parisa follows, she will step on the lotuses, and make them bloom.

“Kaveh, is everyone set and ready for the final rehearsal?” Nilou asks, and he quickly takes stock of all the people he can see.

“Yes, it looks like it,” he replies.

“Perfect. Then, can you test the lily pads, and check that everything is set at the table when you get there? I’ll call you when we’re about to start.”

He doesn’t want to give the guests the wrong impression. He’s the architect, not the groom, though he is dressed rather extravagantly (thankfully, so is everybody else.) But they don’t have time to waste, so he takes the steps, slow and measured, and finds that the delicate leaf-pads bear his weight remarkably well despite their appearance.

In no time he’s at the Sofreh Aghd, counting the confections laid out on the table. Crystallized sugar, powdered incense and bowls of fruit. The asal—the honey for the rings—and the intricate candelabras, lit and dancing at their wicks.

His father’s ayeneh bakht sits in the centre—the mirror of fate. He stands a little away from its reflection, still not quite sure what he might see. It is not prohibited for someone other than the bride and groom to look, but why add a ripple to a pond perfectly still?

Then, the wedding march music begins. He looks to the side, waiting for Nilou’s signal to get off the platform, but she signs at him to stay. Practice.

Is it, though? Kaveh's heart starts thudding in his chest, reacting to the excitement of the crowd as—Oh, gods, the bride is coming.

Kaveh can’t see her face through the thick layers of her gossamer veil, which seems to bloom from the crown of her head, but she is certainly very tall, and…ah, she decided to wear a choga with a sherwani after all. He can only see wisps of it, but the suit is embroidered in a sea of gold, so much so the only other colour peeking through is through strips of forest green.

He clasps his hands together and looks toward Nilou again. She says again, stay.

Right. Right. The wedding still isn’t officially starting for another two hours. It is only practice.

And yet, as the bride steps over the shimmering path of lotuses, and he sees the dendro vision bringing the flowers to life, he can’t help but feel entranced.

Why did he get so involved in this wedding? He could have fulfilled his job as an architect and left it at that. He could have. But he supposes some part of him has been aching to truly experience something like this. To see a union without any bitter feeling, to see an unblemished glimpse of love.

The bride dismounts the final lotus, and with careful steps, scales her way to the Sofreh Aghd. She watches Kaveh, not taking a seat nor moving closer.

“I’ve been waiting to meet you all this time,” he says, low and soft beneath his breath.

He can see why the wedding couple would feel comfortable here. Upon the platform where they are, it feels like their own little private world.

She turns to him, and beckons him closer, pointing to her ear.

Fondly, he understands.

He leans in a little closer and signs at her, watching his fingers move in the reflection of the mirror. It’s not as terrifying as he had thought it would be to see inside it.

“Excited to meet you.”

Just for emphasis, he signs it wide, and leans in as he points towards her. You.

She does the same, and he finds that she really is quite tall when she’s leaning over him, gesturing him closer to the mirror.

But as he turns to the reflection, she does the unthinkable—and lifts her veil.

They say the mirror of destiny is the first true look a husband should get of his bride; that it ties them together, revealing, like a window, the life they are about to live together.

But what Kaveh sees his not a bride at all. Emerging from the beaded lace is a head of fine, plume-grey hair in shocks of silver and aquamarine, and the striking visage of a face so familiar he could paint it in his dreams.

At that same moment the water fall rains down from the fountain canopy, enshrouding them from the audience, from the world.

Deep, pensive eyes meet Kaveh’s own through the reflection, more hard and luminous than nagadus emeralds. Kohl-brushed, long feathery lashes frame their shape, down to the taper of a perfect, aquiline nose, curved over rosebud lips of painted pink. He looks—divine. Utterly seraphic.

And then Kaveh comes to his senses.

“—Alhaitham!?” He shouts and stumbles back, nearly tripping into the downpour behind him. “W-What are you—in that—!”

“I could ask you the same thing,” Alhaitham steps closer, the wreath of laurels under his head glinting as he moves.

“What’s a man so well-versed in romance doing trying to marry someone he’s never met?”

“Marry!? What are you—Alhaitham, this isn’t my wedding! You’re the one dressed as the bride!”

Alhaitham gesticulates beside them, making the gems on his sherwani tinkle. “It’s not your wedding? Who else’s wedding could it possibly be, when you are dressed as a groom and waiting at the wedding table?”

Alhaitham is hurt, that much is clear, but he’s also fucking beautiful, and Kaveh is a weak man against his desire. Not wanting to be away from him even subconsciously, he grasps Alhaitham by the arms and holds him tight. Alhaitham may be taller and wider then him, and his skin may be flush with fury, but Kaveh—Kaveh is desperate.

“I’m not waiting for a bride, I’m waiting for my client! The client who commissioned this entire palace, and this table, and these sweets! Do you honestly think that I would—"

Kaveh trails off as all at once the months unravel around him. The creative liberty in his every decision, the mysterious benefactress funding the project, his friends’ emphasis on groomswear when he’s meant to be attending another’s matrimony.

“Do I think that you would sacrifice any chance of a happy future to avoid disappointing someone you love? Yes, Kaveh, as a matter of fact, I do.”

Alhaitham’s chest barely fits between the two of them, its rise and fall heavy against his ribs.

“So you came here to stop me.” Kaveh all but chokes.

Alhaitham’s breath is at his neck, and his eyes have never seemed so alight before. Kaveh gets the sense that he should pull away, like the kiss of warmth before touching red-hot, incandescent gold, but he cannot.

“I came to give you the option.”

Kaveh breathes out, feeling his heart break in the cradle of his lungs.

“You would go so far, Alhaitham? To stop me from marrying the wrong person on a whim?”

Alhaitham chuffs bitterly and lowers his gaze. “Don’t make it sound so altruistic. I knew that it would be selfish, and yet I chose to come anyway.”

Alhaitham swallows, voice thick with outpouring emotion.

“You make an utter fool of me, Kaveh. All that I am is at your feet. Even if you’d never love me, even if you ran away, I had to tell you at least once, because I—”

Kaveh kisses him.

The veil of rain fades to mist around them, but he doesn’t care. A chorus of cheers and calls resound throughout the mahal, but he ignores it, only focused on Alhaitham, on the softness of his mouth, how he goes still at first and then pliant, kissing back with little pecks entirely malleable and tender and sweet.

Oh, if only Kaveh had done this from the start. All his blustering about the perfect moment, and he could have been holding Alhaitham like this for all that time.

“I don’t know where you heard such a thing,” Kaveh gasps, cupping the swell of his cheek, “when even I didn’t know I’d be getting married today.” Alhaitham’s dazed expression takes a moment to catch up and Kaveh slides his hand down to the swell of his hips.

“But—I know that I want you to be mine.” His knee buckles under him. Or more accurately, he drops it, looking up at his starry-eyed Alhaitham haloed in morning light. “Please, let this be the first day of our eternity. For my spirit was love-struck from the start, and now that clarity has returned—let this ‘you’ and ‘I’ be no more.”

Alhaitham pulls him up again and kisses him, and the mahal explodes with symphony again. Cheers, screams, and glittering showers of décor stream through the glass courtyard, with the party of their friends overjoyed.

May these vows and this marriage be blessed,

May it be sweet milk and spirituous wine, like halvah,

May it be fruitful and restful, like the shade of the world tree,

May this marriage be full of laughter, every day a day in paradise,

May this marriage be rich in love, a seal of happiness here and hereafter.

“Alhaitham and Kaveh, I pronounce you wedded of hearts and minds. Take your love and nurture it to the height of the full moon in the sky.”

Devi Kusanali, bedecked in gems of dew from head to toe, officiates the wedding. And of course, at last, they kiss again.

Just when Kaveh thinks the day cannot surprise him anymore, and he could not possibly be any happier than he is, the two of them exchange asal rings before the crowd. Kaveh feeds Alhaitham his finger dipped in honey, and Alhaitham does the same—when all of a sudden, the glass of his father’s mirror ripples along the edges, and an indigo sheen overtakes its surface.

Whether it was Layla or Nilou’s magic, he can’t be sure. But he sees a future in that glass—of himself, with hair so long its by his waist, already silvering at the crown—and Alhaitham in his arms, asleep and unshaven and unkempt, holding a half-opened book in his hands.

∘₊—✧༓ ⾕ ༓✧—₊∘

“My gods, Tighnari, you’re a monster. How did you keep up the façade? I would have caved the second I saw him,”

“Well, that’s why you weren’t tasked with tricking your husband, now were you, Kaveh?”

Putting the sly in fox is no understatement, Kaveh knows. Alhaitham is a little less amused, but Collei has apologized to him so many times it might have accounted for four peoples’ sins instead of three.

“And you—! Nilou, I can’t believe you! You concocted all of this?!” Kaveh shouts, pointing in feigned accusation.

Nilou giggles, only swatting at the air demurely. “Really, you should be thanking yourself and Alhaitham. He’s the one who first gave me the idea.”

Kaveh casts a sidelong glance at Alhaitham. “What is she talking about, dear husband of mine?”

Alhaitham shakes his head, his cheeks the slightest hint of red.

“He told me a few months ago, at that dance at Lambad’s. Kaveh doesn’t accept nice things unless he’s tricked into them.”

Kaveh gasps. “Oh, why, you—!”

Nilou doubles over in her glee. “Hey, you’re at fault, yourself, Kaveh. I didn’t give you any details about your client, but you kept it hush-hush on your own. If you had gone against confidentiality and told Alhaitham you were even slightly suspicious, he would have caught onto my scheme like this,” she says, snapping her fingers.

“Hmph. Don’t absolve yourself so easily. Calculating social behavior is a difficult task—you should give yourself more credit, Nilou; you correctly assessed that Kaveh would be too proud to tell me, and I’d be worried enough to intervene. I must commend you, though your skill was at our expense.”

“At your expense? I dunno if I’d put it like that,” Dehya bumps his shoulder. “Kaveh did get a hefty commission for his troubles, after all.”

“Actually, about that. How on earth did you pay for all this? You didn’t seriously pool millions together just for us?”

The worry that colours Kaveh’s voice is hard to hide, and the room holds its breath as if waiting to hear the answer as well.

Tighnari shares a knowing glance with Cyno and Nilou, and then waves his hand absentmindedly. “Oh, about that. Actually, master Naphis approved a generous sum of funding last year, to expand Pardis Dhyai’s research observatories. It was my plan to hire you from the start, but—”

Nilou pipes up. “—I infected Tighnari with my divine ideas before he ever got the chance.”

Oh.

Kaveh, dumbfounded, confounded, befuddled, bewildered, just stares at the lot of them, slack-jawed.

“Then, that means…"

“Yes, the money is real. Have a swell honeymoon, you two, and—Congratulations.”