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“I’m home.”
At this, Kaveh does not look up from The Folio of Foliage. He’s not exactly reading, no — more so drifting in that half-lucid space where one understands every word but never the full sentence.
“Dinner’s on the stove. One of the merchants at the Bazaar was advertising a new poetry anthology from Liyue so I picked it up for you,” he calls, stretching his legs out.
Alhaitham’s voice carries well enough from their foyer, flat as ever. “You barely have enough mora to pay for your meals at the tavern. It’s hardly advisable for you to concern yourself with my hobbies.”
“First of all, that’s a gross exaggeration of the state of my finances,” he starts, huffing as he begins working the pins out of his hair. Now that he’s made sure his roommate hasn’t been ambushed on the perilous seven minute walk home, Kaveh’s day is officially over. “Secondly, did you think I’d miss the new set of drafting pens in my satchel? You’re not subtle.”
Alhaitham frowns from where’s migrated to stand at the foot of their divan, plucking the feather from behind Kaveh’s ear and setting it down on their coffee table. “Your old ones were blotting constantly.”
He picks up When We Meet Again Beneath the Nanke where it lays next to their fruit bowls and hums. “What would you do if I’d bought this already?”
“Well you haven’t, clearly.” Kaveh would know, seeing as he spent all of last week filing papers and dusting behind shelves in a fit of project-development-induced stress. Also, Alhaitham’s face is giving him away. The edge of his lip is twitching— he might as well say thank you like a normal person.
“I could have kept a copy at the Akademiya.”
Kaveh groans and kicks at his roommate’s ankles none too lightly. Alhaitham’s managed to slip out of his boots and into a different pair of closed-toed shoes (which are ridiculous to parade indoors), but means he’s free to exert more force without concern.
“Kusanali’s sake— the day anyone actually finds you using your office, I’ll quit my job and spend the rest of my savings on lottery tickets.”
Sumpter beasts will fly and Rishboland tigers will nip at traveler’s hands instead of pouncing on them before the Akademiya’s Scribe confines his reign of terror to his assigned quarters.
For a man who claims to do only that which is required of his job, he spends an awful lot of time as a pseudo-academic advisor for freshman students in the House of Daena. He’s heard all about it from poor Collei, whose classmates have all caught onto the fact that she’s got a direct line to one of Haravatat's most decorated graduates. (Mostly, the first years are prone to asking why he would ever give up the title of Grand Sage; and the conversation is naturally redirected towards what exactly it is they personally want to achieve.)
Alhaitham twists his face into something dismissive. On anyone else, Kaveh would describe it as a pout.
“If you prefer I make it easier for your… admirers to harass me for contact details, perhaps I’ll simply hand them over next time.”
“You wouldn’t dare.” Admirers is a generous term for the small pool of blacklisted clients he’s had the displeasure of working with over the years. “Or has it escaped you that we share an address?”
Alhaitham turns away. He slips When We Meet Again Beneath the Nanke into his coat where it hangs across the hall to their rooms and begins to change into something less constricting. “Who’s to say I won’t be coerced into it one day?”
Kaveh averts his eyes, tactfully, because he actually possesses some sense of propriety. “As if you could ever be bullied into anything.” People had tried when they were students; but none of that ever lasted for very long. Even then, it was hard for anyone to stand in the face of the purely rational.
He returns to untangling his hair before catching sight of the raised brow Alhaitham’s poised in his direction. He notices, belatedly, his own smile, but by now it’s too late to hide it.
Instead, Kaveh allows himself to laugh at the unvoiced accusation.
“Oh, don’t you look at me like that. It was your turn to make dinner last night— simply reminding you of your obligations isn’t bullying.”
“And I suppose demanding I bake fresh bread wasn’t excessive at all.”
“Look, I turned Sabz meat stew into a solid today, so we’re even, alright?”
Alhaitham, now stripped of his outerwear, rudely nudges Kaveh’s legs off the divan to make room for him to sit. “You put too much effort into everything. When was the last time you slept at length?”
“Hmm…” Cyno called in a favor involving the Temple of Silence’s collaboration with the Akademiya, so. Kaveh spent the last three days at Puspa Café pouring over documents with Sethos and Kasacchi, then drafting plans at night to burn off the caffeine.
“…Two nights ago, maybe?”
“Tsk.”
Kaveh shoves at his roommate to little avail. “Don’t click your tongue at me when you’ve been going on about unpaid debts for the last week or so.”
Alhaitham sighs. Up close, the skin below his eyes is a shade darker than normal. “Surely the concept of subtext isn’t so foreign in Kshahrewar for you to misinterpret my words.”
“Enlighten me as to what else you could have possibly meant by ‘at this rate, you might as well forgo the month’s rent.’”
He’s well aware that his payments can sometimes come a week or two late, but he thought they were past the point of squabbling over mora.
“You’re impossible.”
“No more than you.”
Outside, the faint chatter of stragglers from the Akademiya fades into low murmur, and the vendors below heighten their calls to come take a look at wares. After all the chaos of their last crisis, the people of Sumeru City have taken to staying out later in the evenings.
In a few short years, the nation of wisdom has saved itself twice; so suffice to say: vacant days are made full. To an outsider coming to visit, perhaps little evidence of these ordeals remain, but things have changed.
Lambad still keeps his tavern open at all hours; though most of his stores are now bound together in newer hermetically-sealed containers. Besides her usual note-taking, Tamara from the Bimarstan might be found refreshing bandages for desert mercenaries or members of the Corps of Thirty when she had always refused before. Maddah’s stories are now every bit as exciting as gods descending to the battlefield or maid-knights fighting against giant mechanical beasts, yet ironically children and adults alike have rekindled their fondness for his older material.
“Ah- careful.” Lost in thought, he startles at a tug on his scalp from what he assumes is some leftover tangle of hair.
Similarly, he’s found that Alhaitham will spend more time openly gauging his reaction to their quips back and forth. When he isn’t sure about where they stand, he’ll make up one reason or another to poke and prod. Including physically.
“You should turn in earlier.”
Hilarious, Kaveh muses to himself. He’s not really angry; but he could use a nap, and it’s nice to see the effort.
He jabs a finger out towards Alhaitham’s chest and rifles through his options for something benign to say.
“…If you leave your food out overnight, I won’t forgive you.”
“Unlike you, senior, I take great care to maintain a proper routine.”
“Says the brat who used to miss meals any time a novel caught his fancy in the House of Daena.” Kaveh, charmed by the memory, resists the urge to pinch at his roommate’s cheek. There used to be more of it; now the bastard’s gone all chiseled. “You were so much cuter back then.”
“Yet another point where we differ greatly.” Alhaitham sighs, though he doesn’t quite pull away. It’s strange to think of the man as tactile, and yet that’s exactly what he is these days.
Kaveh flushes, smacks him on the shoulder lightly. “Resorting to flattery in the middle of an argument is cheap.”
Alhaitham shrugs. He barely glances at Kaveh as he plucks The Folio of Foliage out of his lap to set on the table. “I was under the impression it was ending soon, anyway.”
Throwing a softball like that, he should know it’s already over.
“Wake me up when you finish eating. I still have to brush my teeth.“ Kaveh yawns, assuming full custody of their divan will be surrendered back to him shortly.
In response to this, however, Alhaitham grunts, doesn’t miss a beat before hooking one arm behind Kaveh’s torso and the other beneath his legs.
“You— Hey!” he doesn’t quite yelp at being lifted, but it’s a near thing. “Put me down,” Kaveh tries, “Come on. You’re exhausted, you shouldn’t be straining yourself any more. I can walk.”
It’s also a little mortifying to be lifted by someone younger than you, but knowing his roommate, saying this would only embolden the man further.
Alhaitham, predictably, ignores the request as he adjusts his grip ever so slightly. “My job is sedentary. You remind me of this regularly.”
To Kaveh’s dismay, he is not released onto the awaiting fluff of his comforter. Instead, the cold tile of the bathroom floor collides with his bare feet as Alhaitham deposits him in front of their sink.
“Wash up, then go to bed. If you fall asleep now you won’t be up again until well after sunrise, and you know it.”
Kaveh groans, trundles over to splash his face with water and grab his toothbrush from its shelf. “I’m starting to suspect you take joy in making my life miserable.”
“Perhaps.”
Alhaitham leans against the low wooden doorframe that gives way to green tiling and shuts his eyes, as if asleep. Kaveh steals a glance through the mirror as it reflects the absurdity of his build, and sighs. There’s no other way to put this— it’s obscene. What business does a scribe have being so fit?
“Well? Are you just going to stand there sentry as if I’m incapable of brushing my teeth? Shoo- Go eat.”
Alhaitham huffs, makes no move to leave. Between the whole couch conversation and impromptu mode of transport, he could just say he’s feeling lonely, but Archon knows he won’t.
A single eyelid flicks open to reveal deep turquoise. “I’ve found you passed out in the tub before.”
“I’m not getting in the tub! And that was one time!”
“That you remember.”
Kaveh sends off a quick prayer for the patience not to commit murder, then turns the tap on to gargle and spit before brushing much more aggressively than his dentist would likely recommend.
“I can’t stawd jou.”
“And yet you find yourself compelled to gift me poetry.”
“You boubt me puns!”
In a rare act of benevolence, Alhaitham waits for him to finish brushing before launching into the next tangent.
“For someone so inclined towards charity, your view of the world can be remarkably transactional.”
“Forgive me for wanting to settle my debts.” He spins on his heels and plants both hands at the waist like his mother did when he needed to be admonished as a child. “You could learn a thing or two from me, you know?”
Alhaitham scoffs, and before Kaveh can even think to admonish him— pushes off the wall to press a kiss against his cheek.
“Thank you for constantly keeping me in your thoughts. …And for making dinner.”
Kaveh freezes. The temperature of the room shifts dramatically. He can feel it when Alhaitham exhales, and even that is ice cold in comparison.
“What- What was that just now?!”
Alhaitham shrugs. From this distance there’s nowhere to look but his face, carefully neutral. “Settling my debts, as you suggested. Keeping score like you is exhausting and I would rather not waste the energy.”
“Settling your- You must have left your wits back at the Akademiya!” The man’s all but turned gravity in on itself and his excuse is that he’d rather not waste energy?
“Simply trying something new.” His roommate sounds every bit as disaffected as ever, but Kaveh can tell by the way he shuffles out towards the hall that he’s displeased.
Kaveh doesn’t understand why he says what he says next— mostly, he’s just anxious for Alhaitham to look at him again. “Wait-” he shoots an arm out to keep the scribe in place, “Um- What was it you said before? Earnest thanks should be given thrice, right? …Or something like that.”
Alhaitham pauses. He turns back to stare Kaveh down, suspicious.
“No, I mean-” That was the wrong thing to say. He has yet to find his bearings and it had just come out so naturally. After all, throwing their words back at each other is what they do.
“I didn’t- Are you… Are you alright? Sick, perhaps? You seem… I don’t know. You have to tell me these things. I know we’re… but I- Oh, would you just-”
The end of his sentence is cut off as Alhaitham gently grabs at Kaveh’s chin to pull his face closer, planting a kiss at his temple and another against the curve of his jaw.
Kaveh lets the shock run through him briefly, registers the beet-red glow of his face, and then wrestles with the feeling rapidly budding against his chest to find his footing on its rightful dais of outrage.
Just earlier this morning, the merchant at the book stall had cooed when he said he was picking something out for his roommate. It had felt a bit like Ariz was teasing him. And that’s— that’s exactly what it was, wasn’t it?
“You-! I- How long have you been angling for this?!” he squawks, grabbing the scribe by his shoulders and exercising every last ounce of self-restraint not to jostle an answer out of him.
Alhaitham conveniently decides now’s the time to pick at his fingernails. Kaveh is doubly aggrieved that the man hasn’t found the time to put on a shirt with actual sleeves.
“If I told you, would it make a difference?”
“Would it make- No! You’re deflecting. That means you don’t want to tell me outright, which implies you’re embarrassed, which in turn means…”
“Go on.”
His face is so hot. It’s never felt this flushed. Kaveh briefly considers seeing a doctor before promptly deciding he would much rather leap off the nearest cliff.
“You stop talking for a moment.” If Alhaitham willingly elaborates then something actionable must come from his admissions, or else Kaveh is not simply a fool but also a cowardly one.
A weighty silence descends upon them, which honestly wouldn’t matter save for the fact that the pulse in Kaveh’s ear is just that much more pronounced. He hasn’t thought about this. Really, he hasn’t. Perhaps he should have, but-
“Look, I’m- I am living in your house,” he says, swallowing thickly. “I’ve been living in your home for nearly half a decade.”
“I'm aware. I’ve offered to add your name to the deed countless times now, but you refuse to acknowledge this.”
Kaveh remembers something like that, maybe. He chooses not to think about it, because clearly they weren’t straightforward enough attempts. Or something. The overhead lighting in their bathroom is suddenly unbearable, and it’s difficult to pull things from memory when he’s actively trying not to keel over on the spot.
“Ugh, I can’t believe-” His mind whirs with a carousel of shared routines, patterns, and habits accumulated over the years. “I’ve been… I’ve been packing your luggage anytime you go on an expedition. If you miss dinner out, I order extra for you and pretend they’re leftovers; whenever you make coffee I know to unplug the kettle because you always forget!”
Alhaitham bristles at this, offended. “I don’t forget. The outlet isn’t used for anything els-”
“Alhaitham. Are you listening to me?! I’m saying I don’t even know when you became my first priority!”
His face barely twitches, but Alhaitham’s shoulders go slack. He starts staring at their shower curtain far too intently for it to be anything but a ruse, and Kaveh nearly passes out at the concept of him being shy.
“… As I’ve said before, you might as well forgo the month’s rent. Given the circumstances, it’s only logical.”
“Archons, you’re really-” Sick in the head. Twisted. Too patient. In Kaveh’s corner, always. Always standing in the lowlight of Lambad’s with his headphones off, listening intently to the misfortunes of Kaveh’s life with neither consolation nor pity. Always walking into their foyer with that infuriatingly uninflected tone of voice at the end of the day, saying close the door on your way in, it’s a waste of heat. Always annotating his papers with unnecessary critique, writing notes in languages barely anyone else understands, always and constant and dizzyingly steadfast.
In the days when he was young and alone, Kaveh never imagined there could be somebody in his life so unerringly present.
It takes so much of him just to pin his expression down into something less revealing. He knows for a fact it’s very likely the flush from earlier hasn’t waned enough for his dignity to remain intact, but Alhaitham’s probably no better.
“Look, I’m- We’re exhausted. Can we talk about this tomorrow? Let’s talk about this tomorrow,” he decides. “You haven’t even had dinner yet.”
“I don’t recall being the one to bring up the topic in the first place.”
“No, you just kissed me!” And Kaveh’s face is still tingling. “If you knew all this time then you should have said something sooner. No wonder Sethos is always giving us looks! I kept telling him we weren’t- And… and all the vendors at the Bazaar!”
Kaveh drags both palms across his face. He’s— at this point he is going to have to pretend he never had this revelation, if only so he doesn’t spend their next shopping trip drowning in his own embarrassment.
“Are you dissatisfied like this?”
Kaveh reaches out, now free from the burden of permission, to pinch at some stretch of his junior’s cheek. “You’re delusional and I hate you deeply. Don’t make me say it again.”
“Those are contradictory statements."
“No. No, they really aren’t. You should understand the concept of mutual exclusivity and I’m not going to draw a venn diagram for you to tear apart at this hour.” Suddenly exhausted, he resorts to pleading. “Leave me and eat your dinner, please. I won’t be able to do my routine right if I keep scowling at you through the mirror.”
“I wouldn’t call that a scowl.”
It’s not, but anyone with any sense of common decency would have let him pretend.
“You are seriously- seriously the worst person I know.”
“Is that right?”
“Who else could be such a thorn in my life?”
Alhaitham tilts his head forward, glances up from beneath his stupidly long lashes. The bathroom lights are still blinding. “I thought resorting to flattery in the middle of an argument was cheap?”
“Alhaitham. I’m teetering between two very different impulses regarding your face right now, and I suggest you don’t wait around to find out which one triumphs over the other.”
His roommate does not leave him. It’s the story of their lives. Instead, he steps close enough so their foreheads are just shy of touching, makes an aborted motion with his hands, and wordless, finally signs: “Your call.”
Kaveh considers this and the million other idiosyncrasies that make up the man standing before him. Finds himself incensed beyond belief— and for once, stops thinking altogether.
—
Kaveh, restless, does not manage to fall asleep by the time Alhaitham decides to crawl into his bed, which definitely should have triggered some sort of fight response; but instead does nothing sans annoy him into finding a more comfortable position for them both.
The worst thing is: he isn’t even remotely opposed to the arrangement. In fact, if it weren’t for the circumstances of his last personal project, Kaveh would even go so far as to say he were at peace right now.
He peels Alhaitham’s headphones off and sets them on his bedside table. “You’ve been getting less sleep lately. Care to share why?”
Alhaitham throws an arm over his torso. “No thank you. I don’t see it being an issue going forward.”
“About my gift for mom’s new little one—” he starts, feeling equal parts infuriated and unraveled. Word had come from Fontaine that his mother and her new husband had adopted a seven-year-old orphan named Remi this past year. She’d written to Kaveh once or twice, addressed him as brother, even. He hadn’t known he could feel something so new at his age, but it had filled him with a preciousness beyond words.
“It should’ve taken me at least two months, but I was able to send it off to Fontaine way earlier than I expected.”
He’d heard an old wives’ tale from Inazuma a few months back about how folding a thousand paper stars would supposedly grant one a wish of their choosing. It seemed, well… stories like that are a dime a dozen in every nation, but Rtawahtist scholars mention fate often, so it couldn’t hurt to try.
He hoped the gift would protect her; grant her a family kept safe, healthy, and whole.
Alhaitham exhales into the small of his nape, unbothered. Haravatat students need at least twenty languages under their belts to graduate with honors, and yet their most lauded alumni regularly refuses to use any of the words he’s learnt.
Kaveh turns to face him, because in truth no words are needed.
“You brat,” he scolds, flicking at the space between the scribe’s brows and taking great pleasure at the way his face contorts. “I earnestly believed my stars were doubling in number because Lord Kusanali was giving me her blessing every night.”
Humming, Alhaitham closes a hand around his. “A fairly accurate assumption, as it so happens I am her aide at the moment.”
Kaveh rolls his eyes, fights to find purchase in all this, and fails — too content with the outcome and its conclusion. “You recommended a set of encyclopedias. You said my idea was soppy and impractical.”
“It was.” Alhaitham yawns, pushes his face into the crook of Kaveh’s neck as if no amount of contact will satisfy him. “I’ll take my thanks in threes tomorrow.”