Chapter Text
Alhaitham first notices something’s wrong the day after Kaveh’s birthday.
Logically, one would assume that Kaveh has a simple hangover. Many people indulge in a glass of wine on special occasions; considering Kaveh already indulges in multiple glasses of wine on ordinary occasions, no one would be shocked to hear Kaveh ended the night so wasted that Alhaitham had to carry him all the way home. Piggyback style, no less.
(At the birthday boy’s request, of course.)
So, when Kaveh spends most of the following day in bed, Alhaitham hardly pays it any mind. He hears Kaveh coughing violently in the bathroom around noon, but that doesn’t surprise him.
What surprises him is how much worse the cough sounds by evening.
Come to think of it, Kaveh has been coughing quite a bit these days. A few months ago, he was hacking up a lung or four into a napkin at Lambad’s, and Alhaitham chided him for such poor-self care, which earned him a low mumble about allergies. A month later, Kaveh canceled a slew of client appointments due to an unrelenting cold.
Alhaitham supposes Kaveh has been looking a bit thinner, too.
So, the day after Kaveh’s birthday is not necessarily the first time Alhaitham’s notices Kaveh is sick—rather, it’s the first time that it worries him. Could this illness explain why lately, Kaveh has been so much less… confrontational? Why they’ve been arguing as if it’s more of a casual hobby than a paid career?
That night, when Kaveh retreats to bed after discarding a barely-eaten peach, Alhaitham decides that closer observation is warranted. As much as he relishes confronting Kaveh just to watch the flustered pink creep across his face, Alhaitham recognizes that here, perhaps, a few more data points are needed before he says anything. He is a man of science, after all. The most rationality-obsessed scholar Haravat has ever seen. It’d be a disservice to his own character, truly, to allow such a concern go unresearched.
So the following day, he watches. He watches as Kaveh brings a handkerchief to his lips the moment he senses a cough, then inspects the cloth afterwards for whatever his lungs produced. He watches the way Kaveh absentmindedly rubs at his sternum, soothing a broad discomfort, as he inspects a blueprint. Alhaitham notices no runny nose, no sniffling; his nostrils are not dry, though his lips are, as if the illness is purely in the throat or lungs.
After a full day of observation, Alhaitham reclines on the divan opposite Kaveh, propping open a book he has no interest in reading.
“You’re sick,” he declares, pretending to scan the page.
Through the corner of his eye, he watches Kaveh stiffen, grip tightening slightly at the edges of his blueprint.
“Maybe a little,” Kaveh says after a moment. His tone is too lighthearted to match the tension in his posture. “Just a lingering cold, I think.”
He’s got something to hide, Alhaitham realizes. To seek the truth—and, per usual, to enjoy the lovely sight of Kaveh squirming—Alhaitham calls his bluff.
“You're not sniffling. You haven’t blown your nose once today.”
“I—you—what?” Kaveh stammers. “Since when do you pay attention to whether or not I’m blowing my nose?”
“Since yesterday, when you were coughing loud enough to be heard all the way in Fontaine.”
“It wasn’t that bad.” Kaveh rubs at his chest again, despite himself—Alhaitham wonders if he even realizes he’s doing it. “It’s just… drainage, you know. From an old virus. I feel fine.”
“How long has this virus been in your system? Two, three months?”
“It’s mostly better now.” Kaveh pinches the bridge of his nose. “What does it matter to you?”
Alhaitham drags his eyes back to his book, once again feigning interest in the page. The real root of Alhaitham’s concern isn’t one he’s quite ready to admit (even to himself), so he offers the most logical alternative.
“If it’s contagious, I’d like to know so I can keep an appropriate distance.”
“Archons. It’s not contagious,” Kaveh responds—almost too quickly. “I mean, I—the worst of it is over. It’d be gone by now if I was getting enough sleep.”
“So, go to sleep, then,” Alhaitham challenges. “That blueprint won’t magically redraft itself before tomorrow morning.”
Kaveh scoffs, offended. “It’s hardly nine o’clock!”
“After your late night yesterday, perhaps an early bedtime would quicken your recovery.”
Kaveh slaps his prints on the coffee table—he always prefers his hands to be free when they verbally spar, after all.
“I’m not a child, Alhaitham.”
“Groundbreaking observation.”
“You—for Celestia’s sake! You know what I mean. I am fully capable of taking care of myself!”
“Are you, really?” Alhaitham asks. “Your months-long cold suggests otherwise.”
Abruptly, Kaveh rises, snatching up the blueprint in one hand and a stray pen in the other. “I’m in no mood to bicker with you tonight. If you need me, I’ll be working in my room.”
Hmm. A quick win for Alhaitham. Yet, not as satisfying as he’d hoped.
Kaveh stomps off to his bedroom, and only now does Alhaitham drag his eyes from the page to watch him go. If he weren’t so perplexed by Kaveh’s quick deference, Alhaitham would smirk at the way his roommate’s flush has spread all the way down his neck and midway to his back.
Before bed, Alhaitham puts the kettle on to boil. He doesn’t know whether he’s doing this as an apology, or as a means of obtaining more data points. Perhaps it’s both.
Regardless, once the water squeals with steam and the tea leaves have steeped, Alhaitham dissolves a spoonful of honey in the mug he brings to Kaveh.
He knocks once on the bedroom door. From the other side, Kaveh mumbles, “If you’re here to bully me, you oaf, just go to bed.”
“I’m here to bring you tea.”
A long pause. The squeak of a chair. Four soft footsteps.
Kaveh opens the door, undereyes tinted with a sleepless purple. “If it’s not kalpalata, I’m not sure I’m in the mood.”
“Of course it’s kalpalata.” That’s all Kaveh has been drinking for the past three weeks. Alhaitham’s not an idiot. “I mixed in some honey, too.”
Kaveh’s brows lift. “Oh?”
“For your throat,” Alhaitham explains. “Since you’ve been coughing so much.”
A silence stretches between them for a moment—perhaps Kaveh expects more questions or reprimands, but truthfully, Alhaitham is just waiting for Kaveh to take the damn mug. He could use a few more data points before confronting Kaveh again about the Mystery Illness—now doesn’t seem like the time.
Eventually, Kaveh reaches for the handle, but hesitates inches away.
“If I were to thank you,” he says slowly, “would you make me say it three times?”
Alhaitham hums in consideration. “Twice should be enough.”
Kaveh rolls his eyes, but Alhaitham doesn’t miss the slight smirk on Kaveh’s lips as he takes the proffered mug.
“Well, then, thank you for the tea, O Feeble Scholar.” Kaveh bows for flourish. “And thank you, O Cursed Roommate, for taking a step back so I can slam the door in your face.”
Alhaitham chuckles, then steps backward, just to see what Kaveh will do.
“A miracle,” Kaveh muses. “Never fancied you as capable of following directions.”
“You directed me to give you a piggy-back home from Lambad’s last night. Did I not comply?”
Red shimmers along the apples of Kaveh’s cheeks. “I—I would not ask you for something as childish as that—”
“Ah, my mistake. I must’ve given you the ride home for my own pleasure.” He rolls his eyes ceremoniously, though the irony is not lost on him—though he’d never carry a wine-sloppy Kaveh home of his own volition, he did take pleasure in the way Kaveh’s whispers and giggles had felt warm against his neck.
(Not that he’d ever admit that aloud.)
“You’re such an ass,” Kaveh hisses. “Leave me alone. I’m tired of your heckling.”
“You really do give up so easily, don’t you?”
“You—” With the hand that isn’t holding the mug, Kaveh raises a fist to shake cartoonishly at Alhaitham. And then he’s opening the fist, shoving his palm against the door, and forcing it closed.
The sound is, somehow, much more gentle than Kaveh’s threats or tone had indicated. Alhaitham smiles to himself as he heads to bed.
In the following days, Alhaitham comes to realize Kaveh’s illness is far more obvious than originally predicted. In fact, he’s disappointed in himself for not picking up on the signs sooner.
First sign: Kaveh is no longer taking new clients. In fact, he hasn’t scheduled a single meeting in a week, perhaps longer.
Second sign: Alhaitham picks up on a strange scent when Kaveh comes home one afternoon—something sharp, sterile, as if Kaveh had waltzed into Bimarstan and rolled around half-naked in a supply closet. He mentions it to Kaveh, whose cheekbones redden and eyelashes flutter wildly. I, uh, went to the market, and got a little too close to the perfume stall.
The craftsperson behind that stall must be truly incompetent, Alhaitham responds, if they believe someone would want to smell like a hospital waiting room.
The flush in Kaveh’s cheeks dissipates into a gaunt, terrified white. He locks himself in his room before Alhaitham can probe further.
The third sign—which, perhaps, fuels most of Alhaitham’s embarrassment for not recognizing all this earlier—is also connected to Kaveh’s scent.
Kaveh presented as an omega before meeting Alhaitham, yet it wasn’t until Alhaitham presented as an alpha at seventeen that he truly knew his senior. In retrospect, it was as if the entire world had previously been cloaked in a gray film, dampened and hazy and flat. Then the film shredded into scraps at his first rut, and Alhaitham saw just how iridescent the red of Kaveh’s eyes were, heard how melodic his laugh was, and—most significantly—understood how communicative his scent could be.
Before, Kaveh had smelled like nothing to Alhaitham beyond his henna berry shampoo. Then Alhaitham presented as an alpha, and Kaveh’s breathtaking swirl of mourning flower petals and citrus was everywhere, and it told Alhaitham everything. Citrus would thin into bitter rind when Kaveh was angry, sour with decomposition when he was stressed or dismayed. On the flipside, the floral notes would blossom with sweetness when he was excited, would soften when he was calm, would shimmer when he laughed. Kaveh had never been hard to read, but once Alhaitham befriended his scent, it was as if he’d learned his twenty-first language. Naturally, other omegas’ (and even alphas’) unique perfumes were plenty informative, but Kaveh’s was the only one that Alhaitham ever truly wanted to know.
Kaveh was the only person Alhaitham truly wanted to know. Even after their devastating rift sent him into years of quiet solitude, Alhaitham never saw the value in studying someone else the same way he’d studied Kaveh.
So it’d be myopic and, quite frankly, negligent to assume that Alhaitham hasn’t noticed Kaveh’s scent has been… different lately. All notes of mourning flower and citrus remain the same, yet a new spice began to emerge weeks ago—marcotte, perhaps? Alhaitham had initially dismissed it as a change in Kaveh’s body wash, or perhaps a new perfume, but now, he can’t do anything but balk at how ignorant he’s been.
Were it soap or cologne, it wouldn’t be stronger in the morning, when Kaveh still hasn’t showered. It wouldn’t spike when he coughs; it wouldn’t gradually swell and fill their living room as he reclines on the divan. So, it isn’t artificial. It isn’t an additive. It’s organic, it’s Kaveh, and it’s the purest, clearest indication Alhaitham has that right now, right here, something is wrong.
Omegas’ scents don’t just… change. Not unless they become mated, but Kaveh’s neck remains unmarked as ever.
“You’re sick,” Alhaitham says again in the evening, brooding in the doorway of the bathroom as Kaveh expertly slides his red pins into his hair.
Kaveh, one clasp held between his teeth, eyes Alhaitham through the mirror with a furrowed brow. “Yes. We’ve been through this,” he utters around the hairpin. “I’ve been feeling much better, though, so you don’t have to—”
“You smell different.”
Kaveh’s hands still, fingers interrupted in a half-gathered section of hair.
“What?”
“I noticed it a while ago.”
For a fleeting moment, Kaveh’s jaw twitches, eyes frightened and blinking like a desert fox caught in a snare. And then it’s gone. Kaveh returns to his preening, a mask of unbothered calm confronting Alhaitham in the mirror.
“So, you’re saying I stink,” Kaveh says eventually.
“My observation involved no negative connotations, so I’m not sure how you’ve arrived at that particular wording.”
“I can shower before I head out to Lambad’s tonight,” Kaveh continues. “If it bothers you that much.”
“It—” Alhaitham rubs his temples. “You’re not listening to me. I’m not bothered. It isn’t bad.”
“Then what is it?”
Alhaitham’s knuckles grow tight in his fists. He doesn’t like the way his tongue and teeth feel when he doesn’t have the perfect words, but he’s not quite sure how to convey to Kaveh exactly how he feels unless he says—
“It’s just not you.”
Kaveh blinks at him, lips parting slightly. The combative set of his shoulders softens, the frustrated evenness of his tone slipping as he sighs, “Don’t worry about me, Haitham. I’m fine.”
But the underlying scent that is Kaveh—the familiar citrus and mourning petals—wilts a bit, poisoned by traces of dishonesty and guilt.
Alhaitham doesn’t know what to do. Doesn’t know what to say to get Kaveh to just tell him what’s going on, what’s wrong with him, how he can help, how—
He blinks out of his thought spiral to find Kaveh coiffing his now-finished hair, moving to step past Alhaitham.
“I won’t be out too late,” Kaveh says, pausing just as their shoulders brush. “And I’m not planning to have more than one drink. You won’t need to come to Lambad’s and drag me home.”
“I doubt you’ve ever planned on needing me to drag you home from Lambad’s.”
Kaveh smiles, eyes twinkling conspiratorially. “Perhaps once or twice. It’s kind of fun to be draped over your shoulder.”
And then he slips past, and all Alhaitham can do is stand frozen in the doorway, the skin of his shoulder buzzing where Kaveh had brushed by.
Kaveh, as expected, is out too late.
Also as expected, Kaveh has clearly had more than one drink.
Alhaitham flips through the book in his lap as Kaveh stumbles through the door, fingers fumbling helplessly at the clasps on his flats.
“When you said one drink, I’m now gathering that you meant one full bottle.”
Kaveh scoffs. “It was not a full bottle.”
Alhaitham prepares a quip in return, but before he can deliver it, Kaveh’s scent drifts over to him, slithering under his nose.
Alhaitham stiffens.
It’s no longer just marcotte. No longer just mourning flower, or citrus, or even the tannin of the wine.
No, there’s something far sharper. Something that stings his nose.
“Who were you with tonight?” Alhaitham asks.
He is rarely one to pry into the specifics of Kaveh’s social life, particularly since there isn’t truly enough variance these days to be worth asking after. When they were younger, Kaveh would prance off to Lambad’s and come home the next day with smeared lip tint on his cheek and hickies laced down his neck, but his… compulsions have clearly mellowed as of late. While he’s kind to everyone (more so than Alhaitham believes necessary), Kaveh won’t verbally claim anyone as his friends besides Tighnari, Cyno, or sometimes Nilou, and apart from them and clients, he hasn’t invested noticeably in forming additional relationships.
Yet, Kaveh clearly had a great time tonight, and he reeks of someone new.
A new alpha, to be precise.
Fresh Romaritime and dark roast coffee.
Something in Alhaitham’s tone stills Kaveh’s motions, and he pauses, one shoe off, to squint at Alhaitham from across the room. “Why does it matter who I was with?”
“I’m curious.” He tries to keep his tone even.
(His tone is far from even.)
“You’re never curious,” Kaveh challenges. “I don’t think you’ve asked me that since we were in the Akademiya.”
“Fine.” Alhaitham closes his book. “I’m asking because—unlike before, mind you—I can now positively say that you stink.”
Kaveh’s jaw drops. “Excuse you! I absolutely do not stink! Not when—”
And then he stands.
His open mouth quirks up at the corners.
“Oh my god,” Kaveh gasps, words shaping into an almost-laugh. “Is it because I was with an alpha?” He cackles then, slapping a hand against his sternum. “Oh, it is. Seriously, Alhaitham?”
Alhaitham has never been one to care much for secondary gender and associated social or behavioral designations. So he doesn’t understand why this dark feeling twists in his gut, why this innate territorial instinct scrapes its talons in his chest.
It’s just because he’s… you know, worried about Kaveh. Since Kaveh’s ill. That’s all it is.
Right.
Before Alhaitham can orchestrate a rebuttal, Kaveh is chuckling to himself, second shoe still on and clearly forgotten as he moseys toward his bedroom. “Well, I’ve got work to do—inspiration strikes at the oddest times, you know, so if you have more to say about—”
Kaveh closes his bedroom door behind himself mid-sentence, rendering the end of his thought muffled and intelligible.
Alhaitham rubs his eyes and returns to his book, but he can’t force his fingers to open the cover.
What is going on with Kaveh?
What is going on with him ?
It’s far easier to pretend that Kaveh’s cacophonous tinkering is what keeps Alhaitham awake, and not that strange, dark feeling in his stomach. So after an hour of trying (or, pretending to try) to sleep, Alhaitham shoves his duvet to the side, yanks back his bedroom door, and stalks to Kaveh’s bedroom.
He doesn’t knock this time.
Kaveh yelps at the sudden intrusion, throwing his upper body against his desk to hide what he’s working on. He’s not nearly coordinated enough to keep any actual secret at the moment, however—Alhaitham notes the half-empty bottle of wine beside Kaveh’s desk lamp—so he easily identifies Kaveh’s project as…
Mehrak?
“What are you doing?” Kaveh quickly slams Mehrak shut and hugs her to his chest. “You—you should really knock!”
“And you,” Alhaitham grits, snatching the bottle of wine off Kaveh’s desk, “should really watch your drinking habits.”
“For Celestia’s sake,” Kaveh groans. “You are not my mother.”
“And yet, I’m still subjected to an eternity of sleepless nights like I’m trying to wean a newborn.”
This comment draws Kaveh’s brows together, drags his eyes to Mehrak cradled protectively in his arms. “Oh. I didn’t realize I was being that loud.”
“Well, you were.” Then, Alhaitham tilts the bottle toward him. “And this isn’t helping.”
“Okay, okay. I’ll try to be quieter—”
“I suggest you try going to sleep.”
Kaveh shakes his head, bangs falling loosely over his eyes. “No, not yet. I haven’t been this productive in ages—”
“Kaveh.”
The air turns heavy.
Clearly, Alhaitham isn’t the only one taken aback by the dark authority of his voice—he’s not usually in the business of ordering people around, nor does he usually want to be, but the way Kaveh’s lips snap shut suggest that maybe, this one time, it’s the most effective tactic he has.
“Go to bed,” he says.
Kaveh blinks slowly for a moment, sanguine eyes flickering between Alhaitham’s gaze, his mouth, the stiffness of his shoulders.
“Soon,” he manages to rasp after a few seconds.
Not good enough.
“Now,” Alhaitham bites back. “You’re exhausted. You’ve had circles under your eyes for weeks. You’re sick, and all this drinking and sleep deprivation will only aggravate whatever you have going on.”
Kaveh slumps in his chair. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Of course it matters, Kaveh. You need to take care of yourself.”
“Why?”
There’s something strangely small and hopeless in the shape of his question, but Alhaitham doesn’t pick up on it until it’s too late.
“Is setting yourself up for failure not enough of a deterrent? You’ve always chased success, Kaveh, yet you’re keeping yourself from taking on new clients, running your body into the ground… and for what?”
Alhaitham steps closer. He barely registers Kaveh’s scent is rotting from the inside out.
“I can’t claim to know the source or extent of your illness, since it’s clear you intend to hide it from me. But I do know that you’re not going to get better unless you quit this self-sabotage.”
“Well, I’m not,” Kaveh says, jaw set.
“Quitting the self-sabotage? Kaveh, you can’t be serious—”
“No.” His voice is no longer small and frightened, instead far more hollow. Far more detached.
It’s now, all too late, that Alhaitham realizes he fucked up.
Badly.
It’s almost as if his brain strings together the words before Kaveh spits them out. Yet Alhaitham flinches at the sound of them nonetheless.
“I’m not going to get better.”
Kaveh lifts his chin, red wine eyes growing cold.
“Don’t you get it, Alhaitham?” he hisses. “I’m dying.”
Dying.
Dying.
The syllables turn over in Alhaitham’s ears, begin their wicked creep through his brain, sour the taste of his own spit.
“Don’t joke about that,” he says quietly. “Kaveh, you’re not dying.”
On his tongue, the word grows blades. His mouth stings. His chest tightens.
It’s as if his body accepts Kaveh’s admission before his brain does. His brain begs him to tell Kaveh to stop being dramatic, to get over himself, to sleep off whatever angst his tortured, wine-drunk conscience has subjected him to.
But his body knows better. It won’t let him speak.
“So, you can quit the high-and-mighty act,” Kaveh sighs in the void of Alhaitham’s silence, burying his face in his hands. “No amount of bossing me around is going to change a thing.”
What forces Alhaitham’s brain to catch up is a twofold observation:
For one, his voice lacks any anger or spite. Instead, Kaveh just sounds… exhausted.
And two: when Kaveh rubs at his neck, fingers working soothing circles over his own scent gland, Alhaitham nearly chokes himself on the overwhelming smell of defeat.
He’s only scented it once on Kaveh before. At the tavern, encountering Kaveh’s slumped form at one of the tables, their years-long avoidance of each other coming to a sudden end—when Kaveh was equal parts broke and heartbroken and would’ve probably moved in with a foul-smelling treasure hoarder had one offered him a place to stay.
(Deep down, Alhaitham knows that’s not true. Knows that it had to be him, had to be them, because somehow, some way, Celestia would always nudge them each other’s way.)
(Except for now.)
(Except…)
“What is it?” Alhaitham hears himself ask.
“Mm?”
“Your condition. How are you certain of this outcome?”
Kaveh sleepily pushes his hair out of his face. “You were right—I should go to bed.”
“Kaveh.” Alhaitham winces at how desperate he sounds. “You can’t just tell me you’re—you’re—” A shiver trickles down his spine. “You can’t say what you did and then walk away.”
“I believe I’m still sitting.”
“Don’t do that—”
“Forget I said anything, okay?” It’s now that Kaveh stands, gently squaring Mehrak on his desk before flicking off the lamp.
“What? Kaveh, be serious. You have to tell me what’s wrong with you.”
“I’m exhausted, and you’re right—I stink.” Alhaitham’s never heard him speak quite like this, his voice so thin and emotionless that he hardly sounds human. “I’m going to take a shower, then head straight to bed.”
“Kaveh—”
“Sorry for keeping you up with my noise. Won’t happen again.”
Kaveh shuffles past him, and a jolt of desperate energy flickers through Alhaitham’s neurons, from his spine all the way out to his fingers and toes. He almost moves to grab Kaveh by the elbow, almost, but it’s his brain that overpowers his body now, reminding Alhaitham: You two don’t touch anymore.
Kaveh disappears into the bathroom, and Alhaitham stands still beside the drafting desk, fingerprints trying to recall the way Kaveh’s skin had felt, once upon a time.
He gives his bed another chance. Closes his eyes. Begs sleep to come. But instead of the drunken clamor of midnight tinkering, Alhaitham is now kept awake by three things:
The echo of Kaveh coughing across the house.
That terrible, wicked knotting in his gut.
The phantom feel of forgotten touch, tingling just beyond the tips of his fingers.
When dawn nestles at the seams of Alhaitham’s window curtains, he decides it’s time to get up. He can’t remember sleeping, but he realizes soon that he must’ve lost consciousness at one point, because when he makes his way to the living room, he finds that Kaveh—without detection—has already left for the day.
Kaveh has never been an early riser. Especially not after a night of drinking. He’s always made it clear he’d rather amputate his right hand than willingly endure more hours of a hangover than absolutely necessary, which tells Alhaitham that Kaveh leaving their home was a non-negotiable. Bimarstan does not schedule appointments for this early in the morning, and neither would any remaining clients, which tells Alhaitham exactly what his roommate is up to:
Kaveh is avoiding him.
But Alhaitham doesn’t intend to make that easy for his roommate, especially not when he has a whole catalog of questions adding pressure to his temples. Gods, he can barely think.
A cup of coffee, at least, gives him enough mental precision to pen a quick note.
To: Office of the Akademiya
I will not be in today. If there is an essential task to be completed, send paperwork to my residence.
Frankly, in his work as Scribe, there have never been any tasks so essential and time-sensitive that working from home felt like a necessary concession, but after the worst sleep of his life, Alhaitham can’t quite find the words or the snark to deliver that addendum in a concise manner. So he simply signs his name to the bottom of the note and sits on his doorstep until a passing carrier comes to collect it.
Then, he goes inside, and he waits.
He pulls out a tome he’s been interested in for weeks, yet he can’t get his eyes to digest more than a sentence or two. So, he brews himself another coffee and tries again with a different text, only for the attention issues to quickly intervene again. He attempts a lighter novel, one that takes little mindfulness to digest, and yet…
He can’t do it.
He considers taking a nap. But what if Kaveh were to come home while he slept? He would, no doubt, exploit that opportunity for all its worth, delaying their confrontation even longer, and Alhaitham simply can’t bear to give him the satisfaction.
He also, quite frankly, just can’t wait. He needs answers. He needs action steps.
He needs… peace.
What disease could Kaveh have possibly contracted that’d inflict little more than a cough, yet still be terminal? How could this disease be terminal when despite the cough and the shift in scent, Kaveh has been behaving otherwise normally? Is it possible that in his sleepy, drunken state, Kaveh had miscommunicated the gravity of his condition? Could he have meant that he would die with this illness, but not from it, far in the future?
Alhaitham shakes his head. No, if that were the case, Kaveh wouldn’t avoid him.
Kaveh, despite all his self-sabotaging idealism, is a good person. Alhaitham knows this. He wouldn’t allow Kaveh to wreak such havoc on his life and routines were he to believe anything different. So, Kaveh must know that he’s worried Alhaitham, must foresee the mental gymnastics he’s inflicted on his roommate, and yet…
He’s still not here.
Meaning whatever he’s going through isn’t something he has the courage or capacity to confront.
Alhaitham circles though countless logic steps in his head—if x, then y; if a is b, and b is c, then a is equal to c; Kaveh is sick, and Kaveh is avoiding Alhaitham; Kaveh avoids what brings him fear or anxiety; so Kaveh is avoiding Alhaitham to avoid the truth of which he’s afraid.
So, Kaveh is dying.
No vector of rational thinking can direct Alhaitham to any other conclusion.
When Kaveh finally does return, it’s just before noon, and Alhaitham has long since given up on attempting anything. He sits on the divan, noise-cancelling headphones resting by the bowl of fruits.
Likely because Alhaitham is never home at this hour on a work day, Kaveh startles when he slinks through the front door and sees his roommate perched on the couch in wait.
“Gods—what—don’t you have work?
He stumbles against the door, grasping for the handle as if he’s about to flee again. But then Kaveh’s eyes trail to the table, something pained tightening his features.
“You’re not wearing your headphones.”
“I didn’t want to miss you if you came in quietly.”
The uncharacteristic gesture has Kaveh faltering in the foyer, fingers slipping from the doorknob.
“You—I thought you’d be at the Akademiya.”
“I was due for a day off.” Alhaitham sits taller, motioning to the divan across from him. “And you’re due for some explanations.”
It’s nothing short of a miracle that Kaveh, for whatever reason, decides that Alhaitham has a point. He removes his shoes with far more ease than the previous night, then takes a seat facing Alhaitham. His shoulders, knees and toes all point to Alhaitham, indicating his engagement, even if his eyes look everywhere—anywhere—else.
Alhaitham waits. He waits, and waits, and waits, as Kaveh fiddles with his knuckles, chews mercilessly on his bottom lip, cycles his way through about six different shades of pink on his cheeks.
And then he takes a deep breath.
“You’ve heard of Hanahaki.”
It’s a statement, not a question, because Kaveh seems to assume that Alhaitham has heard of everything. Which is not true—Alhaitham is but a feeble scholar, after all—yet Kaveh does happen to be correct in this circumstance.
“I have,” Alhaitham says. “I know little about it, though, other than that it’s inadequately documented and even less adequately studied.” Then, Alhaitham frowns. “I don’t recall hearing of cases in Sumeru.”
“Until now, my doctor hasn’t encountered one in her thirty years of practice. She’s in communication with a retired colleague in Monstadt who had a single patient with Hanahaki, but that was decades ago.”
“And you… have an official diagnosis?”
“I do.”
“It’s…” Alhaitham’s frown deepens as he cards through the file folders in his mind, scavenging for any information he’d stored away once. “It involves obscure growths in the respiratory system, yes?”
“Flowers,” Kaveh specifies, wringing his fingers a raw red. “They take root in the lungs and eventually make breathing impossible, among other complications.”
For all the observations and data points Alhaitham has registered this past week, difficulty aspirating was not one of them.
“Beyond the coughing, your breathing has seemed relatively typical.”
Kaveh nods. His eyes still won’t meet Alhaitham’s. “Dr. Zaidi has communicated that it’s progressing far more slowly than the other cases she’s read on.” He rubs gently at his sternum. “At this rate, she says I might be able to make it to the winter, but not much longer.”
Six months.
Alhaitham’s own lungs contract angrily, as if they, too, are considering disease.
“That’s not much time.” His voice is unexpectedly raspy.
“It’s not,” Kaveh concedes after a moment. “But the original prognosis had me on bedrest by the end of the summer. Yet, I haven’t needed to alter my lifestyle substantially thus far, and I’m—well, I’m not taking that for granted.”
Somewhere in a cobwebbed corner of Alhaitham’s mind, an almost-forgotten text shivers open.
He hesitates for a moment before he says, “I believe… I might recall references to this disease as medical—” His tongue rolls around the word that bubbles up, rejecting its shape and taste, yet he has no choice but to say it: “—lovesickness.”
Kaveh’s head tilts downward, bangs obscuring the vast red of his eyes.
“That description is… mostly accurate,” he concedes.
A swirl of confusion renders Alhaitham momentarily speechless. He’s not sure how to jigsaw together what he knows of Hanahaki and what he knows of Kaveh. Since the day Alhaitham met him, Kaveh has been overflowing with affection and wonder and passion, all of which he invests in his projects and his friendships, but Alhaitham’s never known Kaveh to… to love someone, at least not in the way that’s implicated here.
It’s one of the few inches of common ground they’ve always shared. Unmated Alpha and Omega, neither of them have sought the bond that society demands from people like them. There was a time, long ago, where Kaveh expressed his interest in having a mate someday. But that reality had always seemed so far down the line.
And despite that... Kaveh is… “Lovesick?”
Kaveh’s hands move to cover his face, palms muffling his words as he mutters, “It’s—not quite like that.”
“Well, the ‘sick’ aspect is accurate, at least.”
“No shit,” Kaveh snorts. “The ‘love’ component, though—it’s, uh—”
“You’re not in love?”
He coughs. “The greenhouse in my lungs begs to differ. I—it’s more that my body is mourning a love it knows can’t ever be requited.”
For all the negative feelings Alhaitham’s encountered over the past twelve hours, the sensation that creeps through him now is…
Unfamiliar.
Unknowable.
Despite all the languages he’s fluent in, Alhaitham is unable to conjure a word or phrase with which he can immediately label it. He just knows that whatever this feeling is, it’s unbelievably unpleasant. Like his body is stationary, yet his internal organs are plummeting into the Abyss.
“You love someone who doesn’t love you back?” he asks after a moment.
“Yes.”
“And because of this, flowers are growing in your lungs.”
“Yes.” Kaveh groans, then. “I know how ridiculous this sounds—I don’t expect it to make sense to you. It still doesn’t make sense to me, but logic is irrelevant when it comes to Hanahaki. I have it, I can’t get rid of it, and it’s going to kill me.”
Logic is never irrelevant, Alhaitham thinks to himself, and despite the urge to tangent into that familiar (and consequently comforting) argument, all this confusion and hurt has somehow given his mouth a mind of its own.
“Who?” Alhaitham asks, despite himself.
It’s now that Kaveh finally, finally looks up.
“What?”
“Who is this person?”
Kaveh’s jaw strains, throat bobbing. “That doesn’t matter.”
“Of course it matters,” Alhaitham challenges. “This person is the reason you’re dying.”
“It’s not their fault,” Kaveh spits back, and this has Alhaitham flinching. “People love who they love, and them not loving me isn’t a choice they made. It’s just… who they are.”
Alhaitham’s curiosity only broils hotter. The first sign of Kaveh’s fire all day is in defense of this person who can’t be bothered to love him back, who’s the source of his disease, who—
“Do I know them?”
“Archons, can you pl—” A heavy, wet cough interrupts Kaveh, spurring him to pull a handkerchief from his pocket and clutch it desperately against his mouth. Anxiety shocks through Alhaitham. He stands abruptly—what can he do? How can he help?
As Kaveh hacks away, Alhaitham rushes to the kitchen.
He returns with a glass of water just as Kaveh is regaining his breath. When Alhaitham hands him the cup, Kaveh gapes at it with both confusion and awe, as if Alhaitham’s just handed him an ancient, legendary artifact.
“It’s just water,” Alhaitham deadpans.
“Mm—yes. Thank you.” Kaveh’s voice is raspy. As he brings the glass to his mouth with trembling hands, Alhaitham peeks at the handkerchief in his roommate’s lap, scanning for signs of blood or petals, but Kaveh has intentionally bunched it closed.
Alhaitham gives him a few moments to recover. Not that he has much of a choice: There’s something crawling under his skin that demands his attention, something that should feel like curiosity but instead scratches and claws as it moves through his body, much like distress or despair would. Alhaitham needs that sensation gone, like, yesterday. So, in the stretching silence, he crafts a menu of questions to ask Kaveh, and soon he finds himself quite proud of their scope, certain they’ll yield the answers he craves, the balm he itches for, the resolution he demands. He opens his mouth to ask them, when—
“Don’t you dare,” Kaveh hisses.
“Dare do what?”
“Interrogate me.”
Alhaitham scoffs. “‘Interrogate,’ as a verb, has unnecessarily aggressive connotations that I—”
“For the love of Rukkhadevata—”
“—wholeheartedly reject. I hardly intend to be aggressive with—”
“We’re not doing this right now,” Kaveh declares. “I understand that you can’t fathom balancing your scholarly impulses with concepts as silly as compassion and sensitivity, but I’m in no state to handle whatever assault of questions you’ve loaded up for me.”
Alhaitham straightens to argue, but Kaveh continues before he can get a word in.
“Don’t try to deny it. I know your expressions better than anyone’s. I’d recognize that bloodthirsty spark in your eye anywhere.”
Now, Alhaitham knows better than to admit that Kaveh might be right. He’s not about to surrender his seventy-three day streak of never accepting defeat against his roommate, so instead of confessing that Kaveh might have sniffed out his intentions, he expertly swivels to motive.
“You can’t blame me, Kaveh, for wanting to better understand the situation,” he says.
“I’m not blaming you.”
“And yet, you deflect each one of my attempts to seek answers. You’re sick with a rare disease, one you swear will kill you before next year, yet you gatekeep the important details. Are you so surprised that I’m curious? I’m your roommate, Kaveh.”
“I’m—gods, can you stop that? You know that I wouldn’t fault you for being curious.”
“So why do you act like my questions are a grave affront to your personhood?”
“Don’t be a drama queen, Haitham. It’s just—look. I know empathy is a challenge for you—”
“Now my personhood is under attack—”
“—but surely, you can understand that talking about this is difficult? That I don’t want to die?” His tongue is sharp along the edge of each word. “You’re not stupid, Alhaitham, so it should go without saying that I wish things weren’t as they are, and processing all this hurts.” He leans forward, then, swiping Alhaitham’s headphones from the coffee table. For a moment, he turns them over in his hands, fingers a paradox in how delicately yet confidently they caress the earpieces. “I need you to listen to me, Haitham, when I say that I wish I could tell you everything, but I can’t. There are some pieces of this that I—I—” His knuckles whiten against the golden webbing of the headphones. “Look, there’s so much to this I myself don’t understand, and even more that makes me feel like an absolute fool. You have to trust that I’ll tell you what I can when I’m able.”
Alhaitham stiffens. Kaveh must know this is a tough ask. Ever since he was a boy, Alhaitham has always considered trust to be… uninvited. Trust begets vulnerability, which begets disappointment and betrayal and exploitation. It’s safer and, frankly, simpler to not trust anyone.
But… he would be remiss to pretend that Kaveh, who makes himself an exception to nearly every rule, also bends reality here. Alhaitham allows Kaveh to live with him, adjusts his routine to make space for Kaveh, reveals minute facets around Kaveh he’d never reveal to anyone else, all of which indicates trust on some level.
And if anything can serve as proof, it’s the steady motions with which Kaveh caresses his headphones. Alhaitham never allows anyone but Kaveh to touch them—Kaveh, to be fair, is the craftsman behind their original design and each subsequent modification. But even without that qualifier, he’d still be the only other human in Sumeru with enough expertise and spatial awareness to handle them in alignment with Alhaitham’s standards.
(And, though Alhaitham would never admit it, he doesn’t mind how they always come away from Kaveh’s hands smelling just a bit more like mourning flowers and citrus.)
His eyes follow Kaveh’s movements intently nevertheless. He says nothing, recognizing that if he were to admit he doesn’t trust Kaveh to be honest about his illness, Kaveh would interpret that as a unilateral mistrust of his entire being, and Alhaitham doesn’t have the energy to backpedal his way off that lethal road.
Eventually, Kaveh must realize that the argument, always a stalemate, is now also a dead one. He leans farther forward to deposit the headphones gently in Alhaitham’s lap.
Kaveh’s voice is unbelievably gentle when he says, “You should take a nap.”
“Hmm?”
“Those circles under your eyes are, like, eight different shades of black.”
“Doesn’t black, by nature, have only one shade?”
“You should know better than to challenge an architect on anything regarding aesthetics,” he chuckles. “I know you have questions for me, some of which deserve answers. But they can wait until you’ve rested.”
Alhaitham rubs his eyes. “Will you still be here when I wake up, or will you have run off again?”
The red of Kaveh’s irises deepens with something Alhaitham doesn’t quite understand. “I’m not going anywhere,” he promises. And then he leans forward to tap the headphones still held dumbly between Alhaitham’s palms. “So you can turn up the noise-canceling feature all the way, okay? Wouldn’t want your REM to be interrupted by me coughing.”
Minutes later, after he’s changed into sleep shorts and tucked himself under his duvet, Alhaitham fiddles with the dials on the outside of his earpieces. Kaveh shut himself in his own room just before Alhaitham did the same, and he can’t make out any restless shuffling, so perhaps Kaveh is already asleep.
It’s Alhaitham’s turn to follow suit.
But… what if Kaveh abnegates his promise and does decide to sneak away? Or—even worse—what if a particularly violent cough renders him helpless, and he needs Alhaitham to—to—
Jaw straining, Alhaitham twists the dials until no sound—not even an explosion of Sumeru City in its entirety—could possibly sneak in through his earpieces.
See, Kaveh has never needed him. That’s the wonderful nature of every connection Alhaitham’s ever forged—he doesn’t depend on others, and he doesn’t have to suffer through being depended on in return. Another rare inch of common ground he shares with his roommate: they can exist independently of the other.
So why does Alhaitham’s self-inflicted silence feel so… lonely?
“Hey, Hayi?” Kaveh asks as he leans his head against Alhaitham’s shoulder, cheek pillowing against the fabric.
“Mm?”
“Do you think you’ll ever want a mate?”
The question is hardly out of the blue. Since presenting as an alpha two years ago and enduring his first and only rut, Alhaitham hasn’t missed a dose of his suppressants... u ntil today. Their research mission to Deshret’s temple was rudely interrupted by a band of treasure hoarders—nothing Alhaitham, Kaveh, and the six accompanying students couldn’t handle—yet, a few of their group’s belongings were stolen, including Alhaitham’s medical bag.
Hence, the issue: He no longer has access to his rut medication. Suppressants of that nature are hard to come by even in the City; in a sparse desert, access is impossible. After all, most alphas across Teyvat find no value in smothering urges that can be so easily sated by a few days in bed with a willing omega—Alhaitham is one of the rare alphas who find those instincts more trouble than they’re worth. Thus, their research group cannot simply backtrack to Lower Setekh in search of a merchant, because their venture would be undoubtedly fruitless.
They’ll either have to abandon the mission, or Alhaitham will need to just tough it out.
“Are you insinuating that a couple days without suppressants will enslave me to my biology?” he says after a beat.
“Gods, Haitham,” Kaveh laughs, punching him in the bicep. “That is absolutely not where my mind was going.”
“Do enlighten me on the actual path of your mind, then.”
Kaveh pulls away to gaze up at Alhaitham. Impossibly long lashes frame curious red eyes—his gaze is enchanting, undeniably so. (Not that Alhaitham would ever admit to it.) The two of them are alone now, dying campfire crackling orange at their feet. The rest of the students are in their tents, likely asleep, but Kaveh has decided he wants to stargaze a little before bed, and Alhaitham—well, at this point in his life, Alhaitham can never say no to his dearest senior.
Kaveh cocks his head as he says, “I was just thinking about how grouchy you’re going to be over the next few days.”
“You always consider me grouchy,” Alhaitham points out.
“Well, yes—but—” Kaveh scowls. “You know what I mean. I know how terrible the hormones make you feel. Especially if your first rut was anything to go by.”
He lifts his eyebrows at Alhaitham, cheeks flushing. It’s something they don’t talk about—that singular rut, and all the terrible, insidious things Alhaitham had said during it. Alhaitham regrets the words, but not the sentiment. When Kaveh had burst into Alhaitham’s dorm room to find his junior twisting madly against his head sheets, ninety-nine percent of Alhaitham’s rut-addled brain had commanded him to drag Kaveh away from the doorway, wrench his legs apart and fuck him into the next century. The one percent of his brain that’d been sane had, thankfully, prevented that from happening, even if it required hissing out lies that made Kaveh think Alhaitham never wanted to see him again. That he wanted him to get out and never come back. That he hated him.
Alhaitham doesn’t hate him.
He could never hate Kaveh.
“I’d rather not speak about that,” Alhaitham says, growing stiff.
“I know, I know.” Kaveh’s hand covers the back of Alhaitham’s—a comforting, familiar warmth. “That’s not where I’m going with this. I was just thinking about how if you ever want a mate, you might have to—you know—” He gestures wildly, communicating absolutely nothing but amusing Alhaitham nonetheless.
“I’ve never really considered it,” Alhaitham says, which is mostly true. Then, he pivots, “What about you? Do you intend to take a mate?”
Kaveh’s skin glows blue in the starlight, but the flickers of flame illuminate the slight blush on his cheeks.
“I don’t know. Maybe one day.” He’s gazing upwards at the constellations now, tone caught somewhere between wistfulness and wonder. And then his eyes flicker down, meeting Alhaitham’s. “It’d have to be the right person.”
Though he can barely see them in the gloom, Alhaitham motions to the yellowing bruises along Kaveh’s throat. “Any chance your ‘right person’ is the artist behind those?”
Kaveh’s brows knit in confusion, and his fingers fly to his neck. He strokes at the skin lightly for a few moments before his eyes grow wide as moons.
“Hey! That’s—you promised not to bring it up!”
“I promised nothing,” he asserts, which is true. When Kaveh had shown up the morning of their expedition with a crazy collage of hickies all over his neck, Alhaitham had gotten in about half of a word before Kaveh was gripping Alhaitham by the front of his shirt, threatening that if he made one smartass comment about the bruises, Kaveh would shave his head in his sleep. “Now, Kaveh, if you do decide to stick to your word, remember: my hair will grow back.”
“Ugh—I hate you.” (Alhaitham knows he doesn’t.) “You know that’s not—it’s not like that. It was just a one-time thing.”
“First I’m hearing it described that way.”
“And the last time you’ll hear it, too.” Kaveh rubs his face like he’s trying to tug the skin right off. “I’d prefer to never talk about it again.”
“That bad?”
“Haitham!”
Alhaitham chuckles, leaning back to rest on his palms. It’s his turn to gaze up at the constellations now, which are infinitely brighter this far from civilization. Eventually, Kaveh’s cheek returns to his shoulder, and Alhaitham finds himself overwhelmed by the soft scent of calm between them. This, he realizes suddenly, is peace—the kind his grandmother had wished for him.
If she could see Alhaitham now, would she be proud? Would she praise him for finding peace not in the work that he does, but in the company he keeps?
He hopes so. She would’ve loved Kaveh, after all.
After a long while, Alhaitham finds himself saying, “I think I agree with you.”
Kaveh makes no noise to indicate he’s listening; in fact, after a few beats, Alhaitham makes out the slight stirrings of a snore.
He doesn’t know why he continues. There’s no reason to. Yet, the words bubble up anyway, as if they believe Alhaitham will be better off having said them.
“One day, I might consider taking a mate,” he admits. The truth tastes better than it should. “But it would have to be the right person for me, too.”
Though Kaveh is clearly asleep, he nevertheless nestles deeper into the warmth of Alhaitham’s neck.