Work Text:
The key in the lock didn’t turn.
Kaveh blinked at the door as if it had personally betrayed him, as if the carved wood had decided, tonight of all nights- to start having principles.
He tried again, slower this time, the metal biting at his fingers. The world tilted in that familiar, syrupy way it always did when he’d had too much. Not spinning, not exactly. More like… untrustworthy. Like every edge of reality had been sanded down until it was impossible to grip.
He pressed his forehead to the door.
“Alhaitham,” he whispered, then louder, because the city never listened unless you insisted. “Alhaitham. Open up.”
From inside, he heard movement. The soft, deliberate sound of bare footsteps on stone. A chair sliding a fraction. A page turning with maddening calm.
Kaveh swallowed. His throat tasted like cheap alcohol and old regret.
“Come on,” he tried again, the words stumbling out in a laugh that didn’t feel like laughter. “You’re awake. I can hear you.”
There was a pause, long enough that Kaveh could hear his own breathing, ragged and damp in the night air. Sumeru’s evenings carried a chill that was sharper near the river, creeping up through the soles of his shoes and into his bones like it wanted to live there.
Then Alhaitham spoke through the door- flat, composed, as if discussing the weather.
“No.”
Kaveh’s hand went still on the key.
For a moment, the word didn’t make sense. It was too small for what it did. Too neat. Kaveh had always thought no was a door you could push on until it opened.
He tried anyway.
“You can’t seriously-” His voice fractured on the last syllable. He cleared his throat, forcing steadiness. “It’s late. Just let me in.”
Silence.
Kaveh’s laugh came out again, thin and sharp. “Are you punishing me? Is that what this is? Some kind of lesson?”
From inside, Alhaitham’s voice was measured. “You’re intoxicated.”
“And you’re insufferable,” Kaveh snapped automatically, but it landed wrong- too weak, too rehearsed. It was a line he’d said so many times he wasn’t even sure it belonged to him anymore.
“You’ve been coming home later,” Alhaitham continued. “You haven’t been responding when I ask where you are.”
Kaveh could picture him exactly: standing just on the other side of the door, arms folded, expression set in that detached look like he was observing a phenomenon in the wild. A problem in need of solving, not a person bleeding quietly in a corner.
Kaveh’s grip tightened on the key until it hurt.
“Yeah,” he said, because admitting anything else would mean looking at it. “So?”
“So you can sleep elsewhere tonight.”
The sentence dropped like a stone.
Kaveh stared at the door, at the seam where lamplight leaked through the crack near the floor. The warm glow was absurdly ordinary, like this was just another evening. Like his chest wasn’t caving in.
“You’re… you’re actually doing this.” His voice wavered. He hated it. He hated that Alhaitham always made him aware of how human he was.
“You’ll be fine,” Alhaitham said.
The words were not cruel on their own. Alhaitham rarely bothered with cruelty for cruelty’s sake. But they were indifferent- and indifference, Kaveh had learnt, could be sharper than a blade when you were already in pieces.
Kaveh opened his mouth, ready to spill fire, ready to demand, to plead, to accuse, anything but silence.
But his tongue felt heavy. His thoughts slid away from him whenever he tried to hold them.
So he did the only thing that required no coordination at all:
He sank down onto the step, back against the door, as if the wood could remember him if Alhaitham wouldn’t.
The stone soaked the cold into him. His knees were drawn to his chest; his arms wrapped around himself, because there was nobody else willing to do it.
Inside, somewhere beyond the barrier, a page turned again.
Kaveh shut his eyes.
He told himself he didn’t care.
He told himself it was fine.
He told himself he deserved it.
And then he sat there, listening to his own heartbeat drag against the night, until the city’s noises thinned and the darkness grew brave enough to lean close.
Morning arrived without forgiveness.
The first light sifted through the leaves, paling the world into something clean and unearned. Birds argued in the branches. Vendors in the distance began to call out their wares like life was simple.
When the door finally opened, Kaveh didn’t look up at first. He couldn’t. He’d spent the night wrestling sleep like it was an enemy, dozing in jagged fragments, waking each time the cold crept deeper into his joints.
The warmth spilling from inside hit his face, and his eyes stung.
Alhaitham stood there, shadowed by the doorway.
Kaveh didn’t move.
“If you’re going to come inside,” Alhaitham said, “do it now. People are starting to walk past.”
There it was. Not concern~ logistics.
Kaveh forced himself up as if his body belonged to someone else. His limbs protested. His head pounded with every pulse, a drumbeat behind his eyes.
He stepped over the threshold.
Alhaitham’s gaze scanned him with that clinical efficiency, taking inventory: rumpled clothes, bloodshot eyes, trembling hands he tried to hide by shoving them into his sleeves.
“You look awful,” Alhaitham said, because he always stated observations like reality was obliged to match his tone.
Kaveh’s mouth curved in something that might have been a smile if it hadn’t tasted like bitterness. “Thanks,” he muttered. “Very helpful.”
“You smell like alcohol.”
“You have a gift for repetition.”
Alhaitham’s expression tightened a fraction, the closest he came to irritation. “You’re going to work like that?”
Kaveh turned his head, searching for the strength to throw something back. A brilliant retort. A defence. Anything with teeth.
But when he shifted, his elbow caught the edge of the small table near the entryway, the one Alhaitham insisted had “a practical purpose” even though it mostly collected Kaveh’s clutter.
The vase toppled.
Time slowed in a way that felt cruel.
Kaveh saw it falling, saw the curve of ceramic catching lamplight, saw the painted pattern- faded blues and warm golds, a design his mother had once traced with her fingertip and called beautiful.
The sound it made when it hit the floor was not loud.
It was worse.
A sharp crack. Then the scatter of fragments skittering across stone like startled insects.
Kaveh’s breath froze in his chest.
Alhaitham looked down at the shards, then up at him. “That’s unfortunate.”
Kaveh didn’t answer.
“It was out of place there anyway,” Alhaitham added, tone still matter-of-fact. “You’ve been leaving things-”
Something inside Kaveh stepped forward, silent and cold.
He stared at the broken pieces, at the tiny flecks of paint that used to be a home, used to be hands and laughter and a time before he learnt what it felt like to be left.
Alhaitham’s voice continued, distant, like it was coming from the other side of water. “Are you listening?”
Kaveh’s fingers loosened.
His bag slipped from his shoulder, hit the floor with a dull thud.
His keys followed.
He didn’t remember deciding to let go. He just… did.
Alhaitham paused. “Kaveh.”
Kaveh stood there, empty-eyed, watching his own life scatter in pieces at his feet.
Alhaitham’s brow furrowed- confusion more than worry. “What is wrong with you?”
Everything, Kaveh thought, but the word didn’t reach his mouth.
Instead, he turned.
He walked out.
Not storming, not slamming the door, not throwing another argument into the space between them.
Just walking, as if he’d been given an instruction and his body obeyed.
Behind him, Alhaitham said his name again, sharper this time.
Kaveh didn’t stop.
The morning air hit him like a slap. The city looked bright and ordinary and unbearable.
He started moving faster.
Because if he slowed down, he might feel.
And he didn’t have time for that.
He had work.
He always had work.
The calendar had been on the wall for months.
Kaveh had marked deadlines and payments and things he was meant to remember. He’d circled client meetings in red. He’d drawn tiny neat stars on days he thought might be good- days that rarely were.
He’d also marked one date with a heavier line than the others, a ring of ink so aggressive it looked like a bruise.
He hadn’t looked at it in weeks.
Not directly.
But this morning, before he’d left, he’d seen it in the corner of his eye- the red mark sitting on today like an accusation.
Today.
The day his mother had disappeared.
The day she had left, quietly, like someone slipping out of a room when the conversation had turned dull.
He’d been young enough to stand in the doorway and think she’d come back if he waited long enough.
He’d waited for years.
Now he didn’t wait. He just… carried the weight. Day after day, like a stone in his gut.
As Kaveh stumbled through Sumeru’s streets, the city pressed in around him, students laughing, merchants bargaining, scholars arguing about theories that mattered to them the way grief mattered to him.
He passed by people who recognised him, who greeted him- “Master Kaveh!” and he lifted a hand vaguely, a smile painted on in the familiar way.
He made it to his worksite with minutes to spare.
His hands shook as he unrolled his papers.
The lines of his designs blurred.
He stared at them anyway, forcing his eyes to focus, because he was an architect and this was what he did: he built structures that stood even when everything inside him was collapsing.
The foreman asked a question.
Kaveh answered with precise words he didn’t feel.
Someone pointed out an inconsistency.
Kaveh corrected it without thinking.
Hours moved like thick mud.
By midday, his headache had sharpened into something pointed. His stomach churned. Sweat clung to his spine despite the breeze. He drank water that tasted like nothing.
No matter how he positioned himself, the world kept tilting.
His mother’s voice surfaced unbidden- soft, affectionate, distant.
He’d forgotten the exact sound of it, but his mind was cruel enough to mimic it when it wanted to hurt him.
You’re so talented, it whispered, and then the memory shifted into the silence of her absence.
By late afternoon, Kaveh couldn’t stand the noise anymore.
He told the foreman he’d be back.
He walked away.
He didn’t know where he was going.
His feet took him towards the river, towards the edge where the city’s chatter thinned and water moved with the kind of purpose he no longer had.
He found a spot under a tree, half-hidden by roots and shadow.
He sat.
And the world, at last, stopped demanding anything of him.
Alhaitham noticed the vase shards first because they were a disruption in a pattern, and disruptions always caught his attention.
He’d stared at them after Kaveh left, frowning as if the broken ceramic was an unsolved equation.
He hadn’t followed.
He’d told himself Kaveh was being irrational.
He’d told himself Kaveh would cool down, return, complain loudly about Alhaitham’s “cold-heartedness”, then proceed to make tea as if domestic normalcy could bandage over everything.
He’d told himself this because it was the path of least resistance. Because it was predictable. Because he didn’t want to deal with whatever raw thing he’d glimpsed in Kaveh’s eyes when the vase shattered.
Alhaitham cleaned the pieces up in silence.
He placed them carefully into a cloth, because even if sentimentality was inefficient, sharp shards were a hazard.
He went about his day. He read. He worked. He attended to tasks. He existed in his steady, controlled way.
But the house felt… wrong.
It wasn’t that it was quiet—Alhaitham valued silence. It was that it was hollow.
When evening arrived and Kaveh still hadn’t returned, Alhaitham’s irritation prickled, familiar and easy. He checked the time. He considered the most likely locations: the worksite, the tavern, perhaps some client.
He exhaled through his nose, annoyed at himself for allowing this to occupy his mental space at all.
Still, he put on his cloak.
He walked to the tavern first, because history suggested that was the simplest answer.
Lambad glanced up when he entered, eyes flicking briefly over Alhaitham’s expression like he was already bracing for trouble. “Evening.”
“Has Kaveh been here?” Alhaitham asked.
Lambad’s gaze shifted, thoughtful. “Not today.”
Alhaitham waited.
Lambad shook his head. “Haven’t seen him at all.”
That was… unusual.
Alhaitham’s mind moved through possibilities with swift efficiency. If not here, then-
He left without ordering anything.
The streets had grown darker, lanterns casting pooled light on stone. The air was colder now, and the river carried a damp bite.
When he stepped back into the house, a sense of unease followed him through the threshold.
He froze in the entryway.
The calendar.
His eyes went to it with sudden clarity, like a thread pulled tight.
There it was: the red circle on today’s date. The aggressive ink, the way it looked like it had been pressed into the paper with too much force.
Alhaitham’s chest tightened.
He remembered, sharply, small fragments of the past that he’d filed away under “irrelevant emotional data” because Kaveh rarely spoke of it directly:
A day each year where Kaveh’s energy turned brittle. Where his jokes sounded forced, where he worked harder than necessary, where he drank more and smiled less.
A day where Kaveh became… thin, somehow. Like a person stretched too tight over a wound.
Alhaitham stood very still.
He thought of the way Kaveh had walked out earlier, not angry- just blank.
He thought of Kaveh on the doorstep at dawn, curled like something abandoned, and the fact that Alhaitham had stepped over him as if that were reasonable.
His throat felt dry.
He left the house again, this time without even shutting the door properly.
He searched efficiently at first.
He moved through the routes Kaveh often took. He questioned people with brisk politeness. He listened.
No one had seen him.
As the sky deepened into true night, Alhaitham’s efficiency began to fray at the edges.
A thought kept repeating, simple and relentless:
This is not normal.
He found himself walking faster. His steps ate up the stone path along the river, cloak tugging at his shoulders. He didn’t like running. It was inefficient.
But his pulse had begun to climb into his throat, and the air felt too thin.
He considered going to Tighnari- if anyone could track someone down, it would be him. He turned in that direction, mind already assembling the shortest explanation, the most logical request-
And then he saw something by the river.
A figure seated low near the water, half-obscured by the shadow of a tree.
Still.
Too still.
Alhaitham’s breath caught.
He moved towards it, heart thudding louder with each step.
“Kaveh.”
The figure didn’t react.
Alhaitham stopped close enough to see him properly.
Kaveh sat with his knees drawn up, arms loosely wrapped around them, head tilted as if listening to the river.
His hair was dishevelled. His face looked pale under the lantern glow. His eyes- his eyes were open, staring at nothing.
Alhaitham felt a jolt of anger, sharp and automatic. “Get up,” he said, voice tight. “It’s cold. You can’t sit here.”
Nothing.
Alhaitham crouched slightly to catch Kaveh’s gaze. “Kaveh.”
Kaveh’s lips moved.
Alhaitham stilled, listening.
The words that came out were soft, almost delicate, too calm, too poetic, threaded with something dark that made the hairs on Alhaitham’s arms rise.
“You ever notice,” Kaveh murmured, “how water never apologises for what it takes? It just… wears things down. Stone, time, people.”
Alhaitham frowned. “What are you talking about?”
Kaveh’s mouth twitched. Not quite a smile. “It’s funny. I build things to last. I build things so people can stand inside them and feel safe. And I can’t build anything inside myself. It all collapses anyway.”
Alhaitham’s irritation faltered, replaced by confusion, and then a creeping, unfamiliar fear.
“Kaveh,” he said, slower.
“Look at me.”
Kaveh didn’t.
He kept talking, voice drifting like the river’s surface. “My mother used to say I was brilliant, you know. She said it like it was a promise. I tried to hold onto it so she’d… so she’d stay.”
Alhaitham’s throat tightened.
Kaveh’s eyes, when they finally shifted, were swollen at the edges, raw, as if he’d cried until the act itself had become pointless.
There were no tears left. Just the aftermath.
He looked at Alhaitham and smiled.
It was the worst part.
Because it wasn’t Kaveh’s usual dramatic grin or his sharp, defensive smirk.
It was… empty.
Gentle.
Resigned.
“Don’t worry,” Kaveh said softly. “It’ll all be over soon.”
Alhaitham froze.
His gaze snapped downward, searching without knowing what for.
Near Kaveh’s hand, half-hidden in the grass, was a small crushed bundle of leaves, dark, glossy, unpleasantly familiar. Alhaitham recognised the warning signs not by expertise, but by the way Tighnari and the forest rangers spoke of certain plants: do not touch, do not ingest, do not underestimate.
His stomach dropped.
Alhaitham’s voice came out sharper than he intended. “What did you do?”
Kaveh blinked slowly, as if the question was unreasonable. “I got tired.”
Alhaitham’s breath turned shallow.
“Kaveh. Answer me.”
Kaveh’s smile didn’t change.
“It’s alright. I’m alright. I’m always alright.”
The words were slurred, not in the drunken way Kaveh usually slurred, but in a sluggish, wrong way, like his mouth wasn’t obeying him properly.
Alhaitham didn’t think.
That was the terrifying part: his mind, usually so controlled, so precise, simply stopped offering options.
His body moved on instinct.
He grabbed Kaveh beneath the arms and hauled him up.
Kaveh swayed, too light, too compliant, his head lolling slightly. He didn’t resist. He didn’t protest. He just let Alhaitham lift him as if he’d already given up ownership of his own limbs.
“Kaveh,” Alhaitham said, voice low and urgent. “Stay awake.”
Kaveh’s eyelids fluttered. “You’re so loud.”
Alhaitham’s jaw clenched. He adjusted his grip, hauling Kaveh against his chest, and started running.
The world narrowed into harsh details: the slap of his boots on stone, the cold air burning his lungs, the weight of Kaveh limp against him, the way Kaveh’s breath sounded thin and uneven.
Alhaitham didn’t run often.
He ran now like he could outrun consequence.
The Bimarstan’s lights glowed ahead.
He shoved through the doors with a force that startled the attendants, voice cutting through the calm of the medical hall. “He’s been poisoned. He needs help.”
The healers moved quickly, efficiently, taking Kaveh from his arms.
Alhaitham stood there a fraction too long, hands half-raised as if the act of letting go might break something.
Then he followed, feet dragging him with relentless focus.
A healer asked questions, what, when, how much, and Alhaitham answered what he could, voice clipped, mind racing.
Too many unknowns.
Too much time wasted.
His gaze kept snapping to Kaveh’s face as they laid him down, as they worked, as his eyelids drooped, as his mouth moved in fragments of half-sentences that sounded like confession and fever blended together.
Alhaitham stayed.
He didn’t leave.
Hours passed in a blur of murmured instructions and bitter-smelling remedies. Kaveh retched at one point, body jolting with the effort, and Alhaitham flinched as if the pain had struck him instead.
When the healer finally straightened and exhaled, wiping their hands, they spoke with careful steadiness.
“He’ll recover,” they said. “You brought him in before it could do irreversible harm.”
Alhaitham’s knees almost buckled.
He caught himself on the edge of the bed, breathing hard, eyes fixed on Kaveh’s slack face, the faint tremor at the corner of his mouth.
He didn’t realise his hands were shaking until he tried to still them.
Kaveh’s eyelids fluttered, half-opening. He stared up at the ceiling as if it was a sky he didn’t recognise.
Alhaitham leaned closer without thinking.
Kaveh’s voice was a whisper. “You came.”
Alhaitham’s throat burned.
“Of course I came.”
Kaveh’s mouth twitched again, that same soft, empty expression. “You didn’t last night.”
The words struck with quiet precision.
Alhaitham couldn’t answer. There was nothing logical to say that would rinse the guilt out of his mouth.
When they finally returned home, the city had long since fallen silent.
Alhaitham half-carried Kaveh over the threshold. Kaveh’s body was warmer now, but weak, his movements sluggish. His stomach still churned; he pressed a hand to his mouth as if the nausea lived there permanently.
Alhaitham guided him to the couch, easing him down.
Kaveh lay back, staring at the ceiling again, as if he wasn’t quite sure the house was real.
Alhaitham stood over him, cloak still on, hair damp with sweat from running, his mind still catching up to the fact that Kaveh was alive.
He should have taken the cloak off.
He should have fetched water.
He should have done a hundred sensible things.
Instead, the question punched its way out of him, raw and unfiltered.
“Why?”
Kaveh didn’t blink.
Alhaitham’s voice tightened. “Why would you do that?”
Kaveh’s eyes shifted minutely, but he didn’t look at Alhaitham. His gaze snagged on the entryway, where the table stood bare now, the broken vase gone.
His lips parted.
For a moment, Alhaitham thought he wouldn’t answer at all.
Then Kaveh’s voice came, hoarse, stripped of its usual theatricality.
“Because I’m tired.”
Alhaitham waited, jaw clenched. “That’s not an answer.”
Kaveh’s laugh was small and broken. “It is to me.”
He swallowed, grimacing. “I work all day. I work all the time. I keep telling myself if I just finish the next project, if I just get the next payment, if I just-” His breath hitched, irritation flashing across his face. “But it never ends. It never ends, Alhaitham.”
Alhaitham’s hands curled into fists at his sides. He forced them open again.
Kaveh’s voice rose slightly, shaking. “And I come home and it’s quiet. It’s always quiet. Even when you’re here, it’s like… like I’m just a noise you tolerate until it stops.”
Alhaitham’s throat tightened. He took a step closer. “That isn’t-”
“Don’t,” Kaveh snapped, and the sharpness in it made Alhaitham halt.
Kaveh’s eyes finally flicked up, and there- there was the fire again, thin but real, burning through the ash.
But it didn’t hold.
It softened into something aching.
Kaveh dragged a hand down his face as if he could wipe the exhaustion away.
“I tried not to bother you. I know you don’t like-mess. I know you don’t like emotions cluttering up your precious space.”
His voice cracked on the last word.
“So I swallowed it. I swallowed everything. I drank so I wouldn’t feel it clawing at my ribs.”
Alhaitham’s ears rang.
Kaveh’s breath came faster, like the dam had broken and the flood didn’t care what it destroyed.
“And today-„ Kaveh’s voice faltered.
He swallowed hard, Adam’s apple bobbing. “Today is the day she left.”
Alhaitham’s chest tightened.
Kaveh laughed again, bitter.
“She didn’t even say goodbye properly. She just… disappeared from my life, like I was something she could put down and forget.” His eyes glistened, but no tears fell-just that wet, aching shine. “And I kept thinking, if I become someone worth staying for, maybe she’ll come back. Maybe she’ll be proud.”
His mouth twisted, contemptuous of himself.
“Look at me. Debt. Hangovers. Pathetic fights. I can’t even keep a vase intact.”
Alhaitham’s jaw clenched.
Kaveh’s gaze dropped, voice quieting into something dangerously calm. “So I thought… maybe the problem is me. Maybe if I stop taking up space, everything gets easier. Quiet. Neat. The way you like it.”
Alhaitham felt something inside him go cold.
He stepped closer until he was standing right in front of the couch.
“Kaveh,” he said, voice low, strained. “Look at me.”
Kaveh’s eyes shifted up slowly, as if meeting Alhaitham’s gaze required effort.
Alhaitham saw too much in that look: the resignation, the hollowness, the way Kaveh had already started to detach from the idea of being here.
Alhaitham’s voice came out rougher than he intended. “You don’t get to decide you’re a problem and remove yourself like an inconvenience.”
Kaveh’s mouth curved in a humourless smile. “That’s rich coming from you.”
Alhaitham inhaled sharply. “I made mistakes.”
Kaveh blinked, and for a moment he looked almost startled, like he hadn’t expected those words.
Alhaitham continued anyway, because now that the restraint had cracked, there was no point maintaining the illusion of control.
“I shouldn’t have left you outside.” His voice tightened. “I shouldn’t have dismissed what was happening. I saw you deteriorating and I treated it like an annoyance.”
Kaveh’s eyes flickered, something pain-sweet moving across his face, like hearing an apology hurt more than the original offence.
Alhaitham’s hands hovered for a second, hesitation, unfamiliar and then one of them settled on the edge of the couch near Kaveh’s shoulder, grounding himself.
“I thought,” Alhaitham said slowly, “that if I didn’t engage, it would pass. That you would recover on your own as you always have. That… you were resilient.”
Kaveh let out a broken exhale. “I am. That’s the problem. Everyone thinks I can take it. So they hand me more.”
Alhaitham’s throat burned.
He had read countless texts about human behaviour, about cognition, about patterns. He had understood emotions as systems, inputs and outputs. Manageable.
But Kaveh wasn’t an abstract concept. He was a person who had sat on their doorstep all night, cold and unwanted, because Alhaitham had decided discipline mattered more than compassion.
Alhaitham leaned down, closer, until his face was within Kaveh’s field of vision entirely.
“Kaveh,” he said, and his voice trembled, barely, but it did. “When I saw you by the river… when I realised what you’d done… I-„
The sentence stalled.
Alhaitham didn’t have the vocabulary for it. Not in any language he respected.
He swallowed.
Forced it into something simpler.
“I was afraid.”
Kaveh’s eyes widened a fraction.
Alhaitham’s jaw clenched again, frustration at himself flaring, because fear was an admission of vulnerability, and vulnerability felt like standing exposed.
But he kept going.
“I don’t… express concern well,” Alhaitham said. “That isn’t an excuse. It’s a flaw. And it becomes cruelty when I let it dictate my choices.”
Kaveh stared at him, breath shallow, as if he didn’t know what to do with this version of Alhaitham.
Alhaitham’s gaze dropped to Kaveh’s lips, dry, trembling and then back to his eyes.
“Kaveh,” he said again, quieter. “Don’t do that to yourself. Don’t do that to-” His voice caught, and he hated that too. “To me.”
Kaveh’s lip quivered. His brows pulled together, confusion and hurt mixing into something raw.
“You… you don’t get to say that now,” Kaveh whispered. “Not after-”
Alhaitham cut him off, not with words.
He leaned down and kissed him.
It wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t cinematic. It didn’t solve anything.
It was desperate.
A press of lips that said, Stay. Stay. Stay, because Alhaitham couldn’t bear the idea of Kaveh’s mouth speaking those empty, resigned sentences again.
Kaveh went rigid for half a second.
Then his body sagged, hands lifting shakily, fingers clutching at Alhaitham’s collar as if he needed something solid to hold.
The kiss tasted faintly of bitterness and remnants of medicine, but beneath that was Kaveh, warm, living, fragile in a way Alhaitham had refused to acknowledge.
When Alhaitham pulled back, his forehead rested lightly against Kaveh’s.
Kaveh’s breath hitched.
“I hate you,” Kaveh whispered, voice breaking on the words. “I hate you for making me need you.”
Alhaitham’s eyes closed for a brief moment. “I know.”
Kaveh’s grip tightened. “I hate that I miss you when you’re in the same room. I hate that you can ignore me like I’m… background noise.”
Alhaitham opened his eyes, gaze steady. “I’m listening now.”
Kaveh’s laugh cracked into a sob.
The sound tore something open in Alhaitham’s chest. He moved without hesitation this time, sitting beside Kaveh and pulling him in, arms wrapping around him firmly.
Kaveh fought it for a second, pride flaring like a reflex, then he collapsed into it, face pressed to Alhaitham’s shoulder, shaking.
Alhaitham held him.
He held him like an oath.
Kaveh’s voice against his collar was muffled, raw. “She would be so disappointed.”
Alhaitham’s hand slid up, fingers threading into Kaveh’s hair, gentle. “You don’t know that.”
“I do,” Kaveh whispered. “I’m not… I’m not who she thought I’d be.”
Alhaitham’s voice was quiet, close. “She left. That is her failure. Not yours.”
Kaveh flinched as if the words hurt.
Alhaitham tightened his hold slightly. “You’re allowed to be angry about it. You’re allowed to grieve. But you don’t get to punish yourself for someone else’s abandonment.”
Kaveh’s shoulders shook harder. “You make it sound so simple.”
“It isn’t,” Alhaitham admitted. The honesty tasted strange but necessary. “But we can do something other than pretending it will disappear if we ignore it.”
Kaveh’s breath stuttered. “We?”
Alhaitham hesitated only long enough to be truthful. “Yes. We.”
Silence fell, strained but softer than before.
Kaveh’s trembling slowed gradually, like a storm easing into rain.
When he finally lifted his head, his eyes were red-rimmed and exhausted, but present.
“About the vase,” Kaveh whispered, voice thick. “I didn’t mean to-”
“I know,” Alhaitham said immediately. “It was an accident.”
Kaveh stared at him, incredulous in the way only someone deeply hurt could be when offered gentleness. “You’re not going to lecture me about clutter?”
Alhaitham’s mouth twitched, faintly. “Not tonight.”
Kaveh’s eyes flicked away, embarrassed by his own tears. “I’m sorry,” he murmured. “For… for everything. For drinking. For being difficult. For-”
Alhaitham tipped Kaveh’s chin up with two fingers, forcing him to meet his gaze. “Stop.”
Kaveh blinked. “What?”
Alhaitham’s voice was firm. “You don’t apologise for surviving badly when you’re drowning.”
Kaveh’s lips parted, but no words came. His throat bobbed with a swallow.
Alhaitham’s hand dropped back to his lap, fingers curling slightly, controlling the impulse to reach again and again as if making up for all the times he hadn’t.
Kaveh looked down at his own hands, fidgeting. “I… don’t know what to do now.”
Alhaitham exhaled, slow. “First, you rest.”
Kaveh gave a weak, disbelieving huff. “I have work.”
Alhaitham’s gaze sharpened. “Your brain was nearly damaged tonight,” he said, blunt because bluntness was safer than trembling. “You are not going to a worksite tomorrow.”
Kaveh’s reflexive protest rose, visible in his expression—then stalled, because the argument required energy he didn’t have.
Alhaitham continued, voice steadier. “Second, we figure out support that isn’t alcohol and avoidance. That includes me being… present.”
Kaveh’s eyes glistened again, softer now. “You don’t do ‘present’.”
“I do,” Alhaitham said, and his voice carried quiet conviction. “I’ve simply been choosing not to.”
Kaveh stared at him for a long moment, as if deciding whether to believe it.
Then, very quietly, he said, “I missed you.”
The words landed with more force than any shout.
Alhaitham’s chest tightened. He didn’t look away.
“I’m here,” he said.
Kaveh’s mouth trembled. “Promise?”
Alhaitham’s answer was immediate. “Yes.”
Kaveh’s shoulders sagged, as if his body had been holding itself upright on sheer stubbornness and had finally been granted permission to let go.
He leaned against Alhaitham again, smaller than he should have been, exhausted in every possible way.
They stayed like that for a while, the house quiet around them, not hollow this time, but still.
Eventually, Kaveh shifted, wincing slightly as nausea rolled through him again. He pressed a hand to his stomach, breathing carefully.
Alhaitham rose without fuss and fetched water, returned, held it for him until Kaveh could sip.
Kaveh’s fingers brushed his. Warm. Real.
Kaveh looked up, eyes still damp, voice rough but steadier.
“Hey,” he murmured.
Alhaitham’s gaze met his. “Yes?”
Kaveh hesitated, as if the words had to squeeze past shame and fear and the memory of the river.
Then he asked, softly, almost shyly, like offering normalcy was the bravest thing he could do.
“Want… dinner?”
Alhaitham stared at him for a fraction of a second.
Then his shoulders eased, a quiet breath leaving him.
“Yes,” he said. “I want dinner.”
Kaveh’s lips curved into something small and real, fragile but alive.
“Okay,” he whispered, and it sounded like the first step back from the edge. “Okay. I’ll… I’ll make something. If you-if you can just… stay in the kitchen with me.”
Alhaitham reached out and took Kaveh’s hand, fully this time, no hovering, no hesitation.
“I’ll stay,” he said.
And for once, the words didn’t feel like a statement.
They felt like a vow.