Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Kaveh reached for his water bottle, taking a long sip as he clicked Start Streaming in the recording program and quickly set the scene to his starting soon screen, the five minute timer automatically starting itself. Making sure he’d gone live but was still muted, he set down his bottle and pushed his chair out a bit, letting out a little groan as he stretched his legs out underneath his desk.

“Haitham,” Kaveh called out, leaning his head against the back of his chair and turning towards the door at the end of his desk. When he received no response, he huffed, standing up and taking a few steps towards the closed door. Pulling it open, he peeked out into the living room of the apartment, one hand on the doorknob and the other on the door frame. “Haitham?”

It took a moment, but Alhaitham eventually emerged from the kitchen, a steaming mug in hand. He pulled one earbud out and raised his eyebrows in question. “Did you call?”

“I’m going live now,” Kaveh said, narrowing his eyes in judgment when he noticed it was his mug in Alhaitham’s hand. He made a small noise in the back of his throat when Alhaitham took a long sip from it, not breaking eye contact with him. Clearing his throat, Kaveh straightened up and let go of the door frame to hold up three fingers. “Three hours.”

“All right,” Alhaitham replied, turning away and returning to the kitchen without another word.

Kaveh huffed. “You—!”

He craned his neck to peer at his monitor, catching the countdown at 2:11. He didn’t have time to chastise Alhaitham for being so rude, so he simply huffed again and closed the door. He returned to his seat and inhaled deeply, hands pushing down on an imaginary weight in front of him as he exhaled a moment later. After a couple repetitions of the breathing exercise, his countdown finally reached zero.

And once it hit zero, it was like a switch was flipped.

Kaveh smiled bright and wide as he switched the scene on his monitor for his stream. He looked at his second monitor where all his tools were, including his chat and notifications. He saw what everyone else saw—a closeup of his face, the blurred background of his neat office, the donation bar at the top of the screen, and the floating chat to the left of his face.

“Good afternoon, everyone,” he said, moving around a few of the windows on the second monitor to make it easier to navigate. “Let me just adjust some things here real quick and we can get started”—he flashed another smile at his main monitor, eyes briefly flicking up to his camera—“so while I do that, how has everyone’s day been so far?”

“Woah, you should focus on work, Neko!” Kaveh laughed, shaking his head. He finished adjusting his second monitor and then clicked on the icon for the game he was going to play. As he waited for it to open, he resumed reading the chat, welcoming in new people and getting to the messages he missed. “Awesome, Cuilein! Was it the Pomodoro technique? I remember… I used to do something like that too when I was in school.”

He went through a few more messages, sharing a few tidbits from his own day. It hadn’t been extremely busy. He had gone out to the grocery store to buy a few things they needed for around the apartment and then spent some time tidying up the kitchen while listening to some music. He’d made lunch for him and Alhaitham as well, and they’d eaten together with some light discussion about the book Alhaitham had been reading at breakfast.

“My roommate”—Kaveh cleared his throat—“Well, he’s not extremely tidy, so he leaves stuff laying around all the time. But today! Today, I managed to get him to pick up his mess. He has a large book collection that’s collecting dust on top of the shelves instead of in them, so he worked on that this morning.”

“Hmph, I’m sure he’s listening so don’t worry about that,” Kaveh huffed under his breath, looking away from the chat and turning to his main monitor as his game had finally opened up. He clapped his hands together before grabbing his mouse to move the cursor over the Resume Game button in the sidebar. “We’re going to be finishing building the Fontainian chateau we started yesterday.”

Kaveh ignored the messages that were coming in asking him to share more about his roommate. He hadn’t known that his microphone would pick up his passing comment—he was sure he hadn’t spoken that loud. But he just couldn’t help it.

It had to be said.

The other day, when Kaveh had momentarily left office during his stream to fill his water bottle up, he caught Alhaitham watching it on his phone. It was absolutely horrifying to look over Alhaitham’s shoulder as he was walking back to his office and see his own BRB screen staring back at him. Thinking about it was enough to send shivers down his spine once again.

And the thing that got to Kaveh the most was that Alhaitham hadn’t said a word to him. He hadn’t commented on when Kaveh left his office or when he returned to it that day, and he didn’t bring it up after the stream was over either. Kaveh wasn’t going to bring it up himself—the thought itself was mortifying. Still, Kaveh knew they both knew he had caught Alhaitham watching!

Kaveh felt his face begin to grow warm at the idea of Alhaitham watching right now. Just outside, probably leaning on one of the kitchen counters as he finished his second coffee of the day—from Kaveh’s mug, mind you—, watching Kaveh play his game…

“Ah,” Kaveh let out as he misplaced the item on his screen. “Sorry, I’m—uh…”

He glanced at his second monitor, catching sight of himself. His facecam was contained in a small rectangle to the right side of the screen overtop of his game capture, but it was clear he was blushing—if he could see that much, it meant everyone else could too. Damn, the expensive camera and ring lights really did their jobs of showing everything, he thought. Turning back to his game, he opened up the menu and hit Save. With a push of a button on the control panel by his keyboard, he changed the scene on the stream, a trio of small, animated foxes running around the letters BRB taking up the center of the screen.

“I’ll be right back,” he said.

He muted himself and let himself fall back into his chair, letting out a deep breath.

Kaveh was thankful he had people in his Switch chat he could trust enough to make judgment calls for those in his chat. The jokes and teasing were usually funny and he entertained it most of the time, but the subject at the heart of the jokes today was not something… not someone he was particularly fond of joking about right now.

It was bad enough that Alhaitham knew he did this. Even though Alhaitham had a similar job, the contents of their works couldn’t be further from the same thing. Kaveh, while not active in the community Alhaitham was in, knew well enough how things worked there and that was more than enough to ensure they never spoke about their jobs to each other openly. They were on two different sides of the streamer spectrum.

And again, Kaveh arrived at the same conclusion he had before, at the question that had been lingering in the back of his mind for the last few days: why had Alhaitham been watching his stream in the first place?

It made no sense for him to watch Kaveh’s stream. Unless his goal was to tease Kaveh…

A ping from his computer caught his attention. It was a private message from Tighnari, Kaveh’s most trusted moderator and friend.

Kaveh replied positively despite the sigh that left him as he sent the message. Straightening up, he tried his best to smile calmly and switched the scene back to the game. A quick once over of how his facecam looked reassured him that he was no longer blushing.

“Sorry about that,” he said, exiting out of the menu and clicking back on the object he’d misplaced before. “Anyway, I think adding statues and sculptures here will really make this look like a proper art gallery. Where is this one from? Ah, it’s not DLC. It’s a CC item by… Ayaka, but I can’t remember which pack of hers. Does anyone know?”

“Ah, yes! We’re on day six of eight of trying to raise funds for Children of Sumeru,” Kaveh said, quickly finishing up his task of placing the object. He looked at his second monitor as he tried to motion at something above his head with his index finger. “If you look at the top of the screen here, we have a goal of six million, and we’re about a third of the way there.”

A few messages came in encouraging donations and Kaveh smiled.

“There’s a little red bar up there as well! If you notice, it says I’ll be matching donations up to eighty thousand mora. And this will stay active until the end of stream.”

There were a few alerts for donations that popped up on screen, and Kaveh read them out, thanking the donors for their contribution to the fund. He spent some more time chatting with those typing messages and provided a short tour of what he’d done in game so far, clicking on an object here and there to show it off and share where it’d come from.

Then, just as he was about to resume his actual task of building in game, he received another alert.

“Hmm?” Kaveh looked back to the activity feed on the second monitor, only seeing a sudden influx of small donations come in.

On his stream preview, he only saw a quick flash of the initial alert before it disappeared and was replaced with the next.

Scrolling down his feed, Kaveh found the initial donation alert. “Thank you to… Caution! For the”—he squinted at the number before gasping, eyes going wide—“two million mora donation! Oh.”

He placed a hand over his heart as he watched his chat continue to celebrate with the emotes, a few more people sending in their own smaller donations as well. It felt like he could cry as he watched the alerts come in.

“Thank you again, Caution, for the very generous donation.” Kaveh’s laugh was a little watery and he had to dab at his eyes a few times. “Unfortunately, I cannot match that donation, but it is so, so appreciated. This is all going to something I believe in and it will help a lot of people who need it. That is easily a third of our goal already met! Give them VIP? Oh! I will do that now and then thank the rest of you guys once the alerts catch up.”

Humming along to the instrumental he was playing in the background of his stream, Kaveh navigated to the role manager and typed in the username, ticking the VIP box once it popped up.

“Please,” Kaveh said, laughing a little at the sudden teasing of the donor. “Don’t tease our new VIP too much, Number Three. Thank you, Caution, again. Let’s get back to building, shall we?”

⁂

After two hours, Kaveh was beginning to feel a little tired.

He’d finished the Fontaine chateau with little trouble and he’d started another build after they’d held a poll for what he should do next. Thankfully, he’d been able to finish that build rather quickly since it was something small. He’d been able to record it as well, so he had something to edit later on in the evening and post over the weekend. All in all, it was a successful stream. And if this were a normal stream, he would’ve declared it a day.

But he couldn’t end it now.

“Usually, I’d be wrapping up, but we have something big happening!” he exclaimed. He leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands underneath his chin as he watched the messages come in. “Anyone know what it is?”

Kaveh hummed. “I’m not sure how long, Captain, but definitely at least half an hour!” He straightened up in his chair and looked at the time in the bottom corner of his monitor to check the time. “I think I have a couple minutes, so I’m going to go refill my water real quick. In case I don’t make it back before we go, I’ll play some videos from Children of Sumeru.”

He quickly muted himself and switched the scene to the one he’d set up to play the videos he’d been given by the charity, hitting play before getting up.

Quietly, he left his office with his water bottle in hand. He wasn’t sure if Alhaitham was still out in the living room or if he’d retired to his bedroom already. Given the time, Kaveh was guessing he wasn’t live yet, but in the case he was doing an extra early stream, he tried to move as carefully as possible to the kitchen. The walls of the apartment weren’t exactly thin, but they also didn’t really provide any sort of soundproofing. At the very least, Kaveh could find some comfort in the fact that Alhaitham’s room was on the opposite side of his office so if there were any loud sounds from either side, it’d still be somewhat quiet for the other.

“Ah, right,” Kaveh gasped just as he was about to return to his office.

He needed his phone in case he received a message from the charity as they’d said someone would be watching him during his time on the front page. He patted his pockets and then turned towards where his and Alhaitham’s rooms were situated. Had he left it in his room then?

Crossing the main room, Kaveh opened the door to his bedroom. He spotted his phone on his dresser and immediately reached for it, fingers curling around it tightly. And just as he was about to rush back to his office, well aware that he was running out of time before the playlist of videos for Children of Sumeru ended, he heard Alhaitham’s laugh, muffled from behind his bedroom door.

It stopped him in his tracks.

Huh.

Taking a cautious step towards Alhaitham’s door, Kaveh heard him speaking. It was all unintelligible, but he was certainly speaking as if someone were with him and Kaveh knew fully well no one was in there.

Was he live? Already?

Kaveh placed an ear to the door to listen in.

“What’s that?” Alhaitham was asking, his voice devoid of any indication of emotion. “A Sims streamer? I see…”—a pause—“So, it seems they let just about anyone on the front page of this site.”

There was a long moment of silence. Kaveh thought about the comment he’d just heard. They let just about anyone on the front page? The nerve of him!

If Kaveh could, he would open the door and unleash the barrage of insults already forming in his mind, because what did Alhaitham mean they let anyone? As if Kaveh was somehow below him for playing a different kind of game and being in a different community than him—ha, he was just as respected and liked by those within his community, if not more, than Alhaitham probably was in his, regardless of how many people watched!

After all, one of them was on the front page today, and it certainly wasn’t Alhaitham. How satisfying it would be to rub that in right now.

But it’d only give them away.

Alhaitham’s setup was not as secure as Kaveh’s, even standing in the doorway would be enough to let everyone watching see him in his entirety, though with the quality of the camera Alhaitham used, it wouldn’t necessarily capture him in high definition. Still, Kaveh had told him time and time again to let him know when he was going live to avoid such mishaps, especially on nights where he was in charge of dinner and had to ask Alhaitham if he’d like a plate in the case they didn’t get the chance to eat together before he streamed.

Inside his room, Alhaitham hummed unusually loud before sighing. “Then should we watch some Sims while we wait? Queues are going to be rather long today.”

Kaveh froze. His stream!

He pushed himself away from Alhaitham’s door, not caring about the loud thud that gave away he’d been eavesdropping, and rushed across the apartment to his office. Sure enough, as he closed the door behind him, the last few seconds of the final video were playing. He quickly took his seat, set his water bottle aside, put his headphones on, and hastily fixed his hair before turning on his smile and switching the scene to his full facecam as the video ended. He glanced at himself in the second monitor, relieved he didn’t look as flustered as he felt.

“Hello everyone!” he said excitedly, seeing some of the chatters already saying they were on the front page and welcoming in new viewers. “Welcome in, welcome in. If you’re just coming in, thank you for joining us today. We’re doing a charity stream, and it’s for a—”

He heard a ping in his ears and he quickly checked the private message that popped up.

“Oh.”

He hit the button on the control panel to unmute himself, a small laugh escaping him.

“Sorry, sorry. Hi, I’m back.” He tried to bring back the enthusiasm from the first time, but he felt it fell a little short. Not that anyone would know as no one had even heard him. He read a few hello messages from users he didn’t recognize and smiled a little more genuinely. “Welcome in. I’m Kaveh, if you are new here. We’re doing a charity stream today!”

Ah.

Kaveh cleared his throat and turned back to the game, loading onto one of the empty lots. “I think we’re going to be trying Amber’s shell challenge now. Let’s say… Everyone who donates can pick a thing or two for me to add depending on the amount. How does that sound?”

He knew that the auto-moderation system and Tighnari would very efficiently weed through the chatters and remove anyone who was sending inappropriate messages, but he’d still see some of them before they were deleted. Both could only work so quickly with the amount of people in chat now. But he couldn’t let a few people leaving nasty comments make him avoid looking at the chat altogether.

Hesitantly, he turned back to the second monitor, biting down on his bottom lip as he read the messages coming in.

It was almost too much for him to handle, positive or not.

Kaveh, while rather popular in the Sims category on Switch, still only averaged around three to four hundred viewers per stream, and sometimes not even a fraction of that if he was streaming around lunch time when most people who typically watched were still working or in school. And even with that many people, only a small handful were active viewers who sent messages, with the rest being lurkers who came and left over the course of a stream.

Of course, any streamer’s goal was to get more viewers, especially active ones, and as grateful as he was for what he already had, Kaveh was no different. When the opportunity to have his stream on the front page appeared, he took it gladly.

Being on the front page meant being immediately seen by almost everyone who visited the site, and during a fundraising stream, the more exposure he received, the better for the cause he was supporting. However, it also meant he was exposed to people outside the comfort of the community, a community that was already small and often ostracized simply because of the game played. Looking at his dashboard now, he saw that there’d been a significant jump in viewership, almost triple what it was before he left to refill his water bottle.

With nearly one thousand people watching, the number of people sending messages was much, much higher, and it had definitely spread out of the Sims community and into unknown territories.

He’d have to properly thank Tighnari later on for his hard work and effort. Keeping such a rowdy group of chatters, both known and unknown, in place was not for the faint of heart. Had he known things would get so hectic, he would’ve asked a couple more of his moderators to help out during the time he was on the front page.

Deciding not to acknowledge any of the negative comments coming in, he turned back to his game and began explaining the challenge he’d be doing for the next hour or so, reminding people that donations would give them opportunities to tell him what to do and that he’d match them as well.

Thankfully, a majority of the people coming in, while not particularly interested in what he was doing, did seem to support what he was raising money for. He read a few positive messages and answered questions regarding the donation process as he placed down the shell for his build. A steady stream of donations began to come in as he began to outline the rooms for the building and he thanked each person individually, reading the chat to see what they wanted him to do, even if their suggestions were ridiculous.

Kaveh complied with the request of the bright green floor, laughing as he zoomed out to show how it looked with the cheetah print wallpaper someone else had chosen earlier. “That’s certainly… a room. What, a cupcake machine?!” He hummed, typing it into the search bar to find the item. He looked back at the chat. “Where exactly do you want this, Cuilein?”

The smile on Kaveh’s face quickly disappeared.

ScribeOW.

He knew that name.

He knew that name very well.

What was Alhaitham doing on his stream that made it so his chatters were in Kaveh’s stream?

He had to know.

“Alright, we’re going to just, uh, save real quick. It’s going to take a moment.” Kaveh saved his game, trying to keep a small smile on his face as he read some more chat messages. “Oh, really? That’s awesome, Manchai—is that how you pronounce it? Good luck on your performance tonight!”

Carefully, Kaveh leaned back in his chair and moved his cursor to his second monitor, opening up a new browser window and fixing it above his chat so he’d be able to see both things at once. He was thankful his camera really only captured his shoulders and face, so no one watching was able to see he was moving his mouse around. They’d probably hear him typing, but surely no one would comment on him obviously doing something else while his game was saving. Besides, it wasn’t like he’d gone quiet. As a pro multitasker, he was still diligently conversing with the chat as he logged onto Switch.

And, as promised, he was met with his own stream on the front page. Looking at it briefly, it didn’t look like he was secretly doing something on the side. It just looked like he was talking while waiting for his game to save, as he wanted it to appear.

He clicked on the search bar and typed in Alhaitham’s username, clicking on it once it appeared to go to his stream.

Once the page loaded, Kaveh immediately muted it. On the screen was the scoreboard of Alhaitham’s current game as he waited to respawn.

So, Alhaitham was already in an ongoing game? Then…

“Oh, I don’t know,” Kaveh said, scrunching his nose when someone who’d said they were from Scribe’s chat suggested playing the same FPS game Alhaitham did. “Those games are a bit too chaotic for me. My aim is no good either. I can do a variety stream, but how about we play something more laidback? Any suggestions?”

As people began to recommend different games, Kaveh looked back at Alhaitham’s stream. His camera was not as purposefully set up as Kaveh’s camera was, embellished with all the ring lights to brighten him up, and it looked like Alhaitham seemed to prefer to stream without the light on and his curtains closed, so it was rather dark all around him. The only light was the glow of Alhaitham’s screen, a blue color as he looked at the scoreboard and then a little orange as he moved his character back out onto the map, a sunset in the background. He didn’t look upset, keeping the same neutral expression he always had, and he didn’t speak either. He made no effort to look at the second monitor Kaveh knew he had that showed his chat and activity feeds.

To think this guy had triple the amount of followers as Kaveh!

Alhaitham rolled his shoulders as he leaned back into his worn out chair, and it was then Kaveh realized he wasn’t wearing the same thing he had been earlier when he’d called out to him. Instead of the long-sleeved shirt he’d had on before, he was wearing a tight fitting tank top. Since it was dark, Kaveh couldn’t see it too clearly, but in certain moments where the glow of Alhaitham’s screen was bright enough, he caught sight of his tanned bare shoulders.

How… unseemly of him.

He looked at the chat, but found nothing of interest. It seemed that since Alhaitham made no effort to read their messages, they chatted amongst themselves or simply reacted to his gameplay. But…

In the… same place?

Kaveh wondered who that was.

On screen, Alhaitham’s character died again and the scoreboard appeared once more. Again, he didn’t look away from his screen to read his chat, simply tabbing in and out of the scoreboard repeatedly as he waited to respawn. Kaveh exited out of the window.

“I like coffee,” Kaveh said, responding to a message in his own chat. His game had been done saving for a while now, but he could play it off as just wanting to chat a little longer before returning to it. “I have a cup every morning, and I usually have a couple more throughout the day. Especially if I’m editing late… Am I editing after this? Yes!”

Kaveh had to focus.

He had less than an hour left.

Things were going well now. Most of the people who’d been leaving nasty comments had left early on, probably annoyed that he didn’t give them the reaction they wanted, and even though the number of viewers was slowly getting smaller, the donations were still coming in and he was getting a few followers out of it as well.

If he was still really desperate afterwards to know what Alhaitham had said, he’d check the VOD. It was fine.

Surely he’d heard the comment out of context… right?

⁂

“I just can’t believe someone would say that,” Kaveh sighed. “Isn’t that kind of an asshole move?”

He looked at his second monitor.

Kaveh smiled at the messages. “You’re right. Thank you, guys.”

It’d been a few days since Kaveh had done his front page stream and since then, he had gone back and watched Alhaitham’s VOD. It was disheartening, to say the least, to see that the comment had been made just as Kaveh had assumed it had.

In the VOD, Alhaitham had his game open in the back, the queue bar at the top for everyone to see, but he’d been doing something else as he waited for the game to find him a match. He had a separate window open overtop of his game capture with the Switch home page and he’d been clicking through the carousel of streams at the top.

“What’s that?” VOD Alhaitham had asked. He’d been looking at his chat for once and when Kaveh read the chat replay, he figured he’d been replying to someone saying there was a random Sims streamer amongst the FPS and fighting game streamers occupying the front page. And just as he passed over Kaveh’s stream, not even stopping long enough for it to properly load the preview, and onto the next stream was when he’d said the comment: “A Sims streamer? I see… So, it seems they let just about anyone on the front page of this site.”

Kaveh had exited out of the VOD after that, no longer wanting to hear any other comments made by Alhaitham after he supposedly clicked on his stream to watch while he waited for a match. If he made more comments about Kaveh’s stream, he didn’t care to hear them.

The entire thing was weighing on him a bit. Enough that he’d brought it up on his stream today, just to get it out somewhere. Thankfully, since he was streaming much earlier than usual, he was hovering around eighty viewers with only the usual people in chat. With fewer viewers, most of which probably weren’t actively watching and listening, he felt okay to speak on it.

But it wasn’t like he’d called out Alhaitham directly. He’d just vaguely mentioned him, saying something along the lines of a streamer whose chatters were in here last time, and those who knew would know who he was referring to.

“Let’s stop talking about this now, all right?” Kaveh cleared his throat and turned back to his game. “Where were we?”

He hadn’t brought it up to Alhaitham. How could he?

If anything, Alhaitham likely didn’t remember making such a comment, and if he did, the chances of him simply acting nonchalant about it were skyhigh. All it would do was help prove Alhaitham’s long-standing argument that Kaveh was just a little too sensitive to other’s opinions—which he wasn’t, but it was different when it came to his livelihood! Well, Kaveh still wasn’t doing this full-time like Alhaitham was, but the point remained. This was a hobby Kaveh had, yes, but it was also something of a job now.

In a sense, he and Alhaitham were almost like very distant colleagues under the same company. It would make sense for them to have a professional attitude towards each other’s work, right? Kaveh had never once talked down on Alhaitham for the game he played. He wasn’t too sensitive for simply hoping Alhaitham would do the same for him.

In any case, Kaveh had to stop thinking about it. If people caught wind of him, some random Sims streamer, talking down on the almighty ScribeOW’s name, he’d be in for it. Not only would Alhaitham’s “fans” likely come for him, but it’d leave a stain on the image Kaveh was trying to create. And the image a streamer created for themselves was arguably the most important part of their channel when it came to monetization opportunities.

“Is it… Basil? Yeah, let’s put that aside, okay?” Kaveh asked, eyes flitting from monitor to monitor. “I have no ill feelings towards any other creators on this site. People are free to do and say whatever they want, even if it is rude.”

He couldn’t let Tighnari ban the user or else it’d look like Kaveh was trying to alienate him, so he quickly sent a message to him to let him know to leave him be for now. If the messages got out of hand, then they’d ban the person, but for now, it was fine. One person trying to defend Alhaitham was nothing. It’s not like he would know or care if someone was in Kaveh’s chat attempting to clear his name of wrongdoing.

Okay, so Alhaitham had two people in Kaveh’s chat going to bat for him.

Who could’ve guessed his top donor from last time would be a fan of Alhaitham?

“Caution, welcome back,” Kaveh said. He hoped he could steer the conversation elsewhere. “How are you today?”

Kaveh tried his best to smile. “I’m fine as well.” He opened up the build mode in the game. “You missed out last stream. Your donation would have gotten you a whole room to decorate yourself.”

“I’m the one who timed Acer out.” Kaveh looked directly at his camera and wagged his finger admonishingly. “Please do not ask for gifted subs! Caution, please ignore the—”

A soundbite of Kaveh loudly cheering interrupted him and he nearly hurt his neck turning back to his second monitor. He saw the alert overlay on the stream preview, a small animated fox running in circles amongst some falling confetti with the text Thank you cautioninconfidence for the 100 gifted subs! underneath it.

Now, that had to be wrong.

He scrolled through the chat, which had erupted into celebration.

“Caution!” Kaveh exclaimed. “You don’t have to listen to chat.”

In his mind, he quickly did the math. If the lowest tier was 2500 mora, it would be a quarter of a million mora to pay for all those gifted subscriptions—that alone would be enough for Kaveh to make up a quarter of his rent this month! Whoever this person was, was very irresponsible with their money. They had spent more than Kaveh would actually earn from the subscriptions.

However, it wasn’t like Kaveh could cancel it on their behalf. Not even Caution themselves could retract the gifted subscriptions unless they claimed fraud, but they didn’t seem like the type considering how generous they were with their very purposeful donation last time. So, all Kaveh could do was be endlessly thankful.

“Thank you, thank you,” he said, hands weakly clutching at the front of his sweater. He smiled as he remembered what the user had typed in the chat previously. “And for the third time, thank you. I know a lot of people who currently aren’t watching just received notifications for the gifted sub, and I’m sure they’re grateful as well.”

Kaveh bit down on his bottom lip. “Well,” he started carefully, “I supposed it depends on the request.”

“Easy enough!” He switched the scene to his facecam and went to edit his stream category. “Just… chatting… And we can play some Sims later.”

He decided to ignore his chat admonishing him for giving in, only laughing and shaking his head as he got more comfortable in his chair.

⁂

Kaveh decided that since Alhaitham clearly watched his streams, it would only be right if Kaveh tuned in to one of his. And lucky for him, Alhaitham’s streaming schedule didn’t really overlap with Kaveh’s own schedule, unless he decided to start early, which would then have Alhaitham starting right at the tail end of Kaveh’s stream.

Today was like any other, however. Kaveh had ended his stream hours ago and Alhaitham had only started after they’d had dinner.

Typically, Kaveh would just go to bed, and because Alhaitham kept quiet, it wasn’t too much of a nuisance that his streams went on late into the night. It worked perfectly for him, especially when he had to be up early in the morning to work on things for his real job. They hadn’t decided to fix their schedules around each other either; it’d been that way since the beginning, funnily enough. It was just that, being a Sims streamer, Kaveh found that sticking to streaming during the day brought in more people than if he streamed late at night, and he supposed it was the opposite for Alhaitham.

He supposed it that way because when he opened up the site and navigated to Alhaitham’s stream, he had nearly two thousand viewers. Of course, it paled in comparison to more popular streamers in more popular categories who averaged nearly fifty thousand viewers, but considering the category Alhaitham was in currently only had ten thousand viewers total, having a fifth of them watching him was admirable.

Kaveh scowled as he made himself more comfortable on his bed. Again, he wondered how Alhaitham had managed to reach such popularity considering his personality.

Also, now that he was watching properly, he noticed the quality of his stream was rather atrocious. Firstly, it was completely silent—there was no music playing in the background and even though it was clear Alhaitham was typing, he was obviously muted. Besides that, he was sitting in darkness once again, with only the glow of his computer monitors, and he wore a bored expression as he found a video essay of a book to watch on MeTube while the queue bar at the top of his screen read 13:28 and counted up as the seconds passed.

Then out of nowhere, he spoke, his voice a little staticy. “I read this book when I was still in school, so I have a—”

Kaveh slammed shut his laptop. It had been so eerily silent when he opened the stream, he had forgotten it was playing out loud with the volume all the way up.

“What the…” Kaveh placed his hands on his hot cheeks.

How embarrassing! He could only hope that, despite the volume being all the way up, the sound hadn’t reached Alhaitham’s room across the hall.

Once he collected himself, he patted around the bed to find the earphones he’d forgotten about. Plugging them in and tucking the earbuds into his ears, he opened the laptop once more, and this time, Alhaitham’s stream was playing only in his ears and not out loud.

While the MeTube video played and Alhaitham watched diligently, his chat seemed to be talking about something else.

Okay then, he’d been caught by the chat. But Alhaitham wouldn’t even know!

Then, suddenly, Alhaitham looked off to the side. He paused the video essay and straightened up in his chair. “No, I’m not watching myself out loud. The audio capture is set to my microphone, the game, and this window. What exactly did you hear?”

“My roommate is sleeping,” Alhaitham said.

Kaveh’s face grew warm once more and he had to place his palms on his hands again. “You stupid, stupid man,” he muttered under his breath.

“Anyway, as I said before, I read this book when I was still a student. I don’t particularly agree with this analysis so far, but I see the appeal of it. The character of the adventurer—oh, isn’t that convenient?” Alhaitham was interrupted by his game in the background pinging, the words Match Found appearing at the top of the screen as it loaded into the team lineups. He minimized the MeTube window as the character select screen appeared. “We’ll discuss after the game.”

Alhaitham selected his character before returning his attention to somewhere off screen. “Yes, Dehya. If he’s open to it, we can, after I finish this game.”

Dehya… Kaveh took the name in. It wasn’t one he recognized, but it was apparently someone who knew Alhaitham outside of his online persona. He’d never mentioned a Dehya before. When did they ever meet? Alhaitham wasn’t one to leave the apartment too often unless he needed to; Kaveh, as his roommate, had the privilege of always knowing where and when Alhaitham went out.

Kaveh kept a close eye on the chat, watching as they began to talk about other things.

Kaveh knew of Cyno, and oddly enough it was for two different reasons. Alhaitham had mentioned him before and he’d gone out to meet him a few times to Kaveh’s knowledge, but aside from that, Tighnari knew Cyno as well. They were friends, supposedly. But Dehya was a stranger to Kaveh. And it hit him that there were people in Alhaitham’s life he didn’t know or know of.

To Kaveh’s astonishment, Alhaitham smiled, albeit a closed lipped smile. “Thank you, Dehya. It’s very appreciated. I’ll send him a message after.”

Kaveh knew Alhaitham. They hadn’t just been former-schoolmates-turned-roommates for years now with nothing to show for it—they knew each other. So who in Teyvat was this guy? Did Alhaitham regularly smile on his stream? Just what had he been missing out on?

He had to find out.

⁂

Kaveh’s breath caught in his throat. Was that his emote in Alhaitham’s chat?

“It was fun,” Alhaitham said. “Thanks for playing.”

He was queuing up for a solo game now that Cyno had left the group, and once the queue had started, he looked at his chat again. He was quiet for a moment, but then he sat up a little straighter and leaned in to see something on his second monitor.

“Hm? What’s that emote? It’s not one of mine or Cyno’s.”

“No,” Kaveh whispered to himself.

It couldn’t possibly be!

Kaveh recognized the name immediately. To think that Basil was such a chatty person!

Unable to help himself, Kaveh moved the cursor to the chatbox.

Apparently his hands moved faster than his brain could send out the signals to stop him. And apparently he was logged in on his laptop.

“Damn,” Kaveh said.

On screen, Alhaitham said nothing. He was clearly looking at his chat, but he remained silent. His expression was unreadable as he typed something out. Then, he canceled the queue.

“I have to take care of something. Allow me a moment,” he said, bringing up a video of what looked like a gameplay compilation.

As he hit play, he switched off his facecam, but Kaveh didn’t need it to be able to visual what Alhaitham was doing. In his mind, he could see Alhaitham standing up from his worn out chair and making his way to the door.

Kaveh exited out of the window and shut his laptop, all but tearing out the earphones from his ears as he pushed it all aside. He could hear the squeak of Alhaitham’s door opening on the other side of the hall as he scrambled to get into bed, desperately trying to get his legs underneath the blankets and smashing his face into one of his pillows. He pulled the blankets over his head, chest rising and falling heavily as he huffed, out of breath from his rushed movements. He placed a hand over his chest, taking a few deep breaths to calm down, and realized just how hard his heart was beating.

His light was already off so if he just pretended…

But of course, Alhaitham was much smarter than that. There was absolutely no way he would fall for something so foolish.

“Kaveh,” Alhaitham said once he opened Kaveh’s bedroom door. Then in a much firmer tone: “Kaveh, I know you’re awake.”

“I am now,” Kaveh murmured in a pathetic attempt to still try to trick Alhaitham. He held on tighter to his blankets, exhaling quietly before he spoke again. “What, are you done streaming? Why are you—Haitham!”

Alhaitham was at the foot of Kaveh’s bed, tugging at the blankets. And, curse him, he was much stronger than Kaveh was. All it took was a few pulls before Kaveh had to let go, huffing as the blankets were all but pulled off his bed entirely and tossed aside. He refused to look down at him, already knowing what expression he’d be wearing. He was annoyed, obviously. But if he had looked down, he would’ve noticed just what was coming next.

“Haitham, what are you—!” Kaveh exclaimed as he tried to grab onto anything.

Warm fingers had wrapped themselves around his ankles, pulling him towards the foot of the bed. As Kaveh failed to get a hold of anything, he had no choice but to be dragged down. He could feel his shirt riding up his back and all he could do was cover his face with his hands in humiliation.

“Were you watching me?” Alhaitham asked. Unable to see his face, Kaveh could only gauge how he was feeling through the tone of his voice, which meant that he had no idea what he was feeling. He didn’t sound annoyed, but he didn’t sound all too pleased either. “Since when? You know, I should just—”

“Since just today!” Kaveh quickly confessed, not wanting to hear what Alhaitham might do. “Now, can you let go of me?”

His legs were now hanging off the foot of the bed and instead of holding him by the ankles, Alhaitham’s hands were firmly holding Kaveh’s thighs. At least they were for a moment because the next, Alhaitham was grabbing Kaveh’s wrists, pulling him up off the bed, in an attempt to get his hands off his face. At least it was enough to get his shirt to fall back into place.

Kaveh let out a wordless complaint as he fought back, trying to toss and turn to get Alhaitham to unhand him.

“Kaveh,” Alhaitham said, warningly, “If you keep this up, I’m going to—”

Fall. Alhaitham was going to fall.

“Ugh!” Kaveh let his head drop back down onto the bed, eyes closed as he tried to catch his breath now that Alhaitham’s weight had knocked the air out of him.

On top of him, Alhaitham was also breathing hard. “I told you.”

Kaveh opened his eyes at the same time as his mouth, ready to shame Alhaitham to Celestia and back, but he only managed to stutter when he saw how close they truly were. Chest to chest, Kaveh guessed their faces were fifteen, no, ten centimeters apart, which was more than close enough for him to feel Alhaitham’s hot breath fan across his face as he also caught his breath. It smelled like the toothpaste they shared, Kaveh realized.

And then he began to struggle again, thinking they were way too close for comfort. Alhaitham had done similar things before, but never like this. This was too much.

Unfortunately, Kaveh had dropped his guard in the fall and allowed Alhaitham to successfully complete his task of taking his hands away from his face. He had Kaveh’s wrists pinned on either side of his head, giving him no way to hide from his steady, neutral gaze. The only way out was for Kaveh to turn his head to look away, deciding to stare at his own wrist and how Alhaitham’s long, tan thin fingers were wrapped around it.

“What is it?” Kaveh asked.

“You read my chat. So, what that guy said…” Kaveh felt Alhaitham’s hold around his wrists tighten a little. “Were you really bothered by what he said in yours?”

“I’m fine,” Kaveh answered. What did Alhaitham care if someone said something rude to Kaveh? It wouldn’t be right to try to hold him accountable in a chat that wasn’t the one he made the comments in. “Go back to your stream.”

For a moment, Alhaitham stayed still and Kaveh could feel his eyes staring a hole into the side of his face, but he didn’t turn back to see what kind of expression he was wearing. Then, Alhaitham let him go without much of a fight and got off him, letting Kaveh sit up and fix himself up.

“Go to sleep now,” he said as he picked up Kaveh’s blankets and unceremoniously dropped them back on the bed. He made his way back to the door, only looking over his shoulder for a brief moment, eyes squinting at Kaveh. “And don’t watch my streams anymore. I mean that.”

⁂

“So he blocked me or something? Ha! That’s hilarious.”

Kaveh looked away from his main monitor to the second one to see what was being said.

“No, no,” Kaveh murmured, shaking his head. He bit the inside of his cheek in an attempt to not laugh or smile. “Let’s not say that, Number Three.”

It was funny to think Kaveh had people in his chat that would stand up to bat for him, even if they were a bit extreme with it, considering it was all over something stupid Alhaitham had done. But regardless of how amusing it was to him, they had to be discouraged from saying rude remarks to avoid any potential issues. Kaveh was a family friendly guy online and his community should reflect that as well.

He looked back at his main monitor, where Alhaitham’s stream was supposed to be—and he meant “supposed to be” because he was currently met with the words You are not allowed to view this stream, which meant he had been blocked.

The only reason Kaveh had brought up Alhaitham’s stream while he was live in the first place was to check something after one of his less frequent chatters had informed him that he’d been muted by Alhaitham’s mods after simply mentioning the situation with Kaveh in his chat. It seemed like a stretch, especially for Alhaitham.

He wasn’t the kind to be bothered by public online arguments. Several months ago, Kaveh heard Alhaitham was in a one-sided rivalry with another streamer after some comments were made through the in-game communication system, but that was all it’d been: one-sided. All because Alhaitham didn’t care enough to acknowledge such ridiculousness, which had only pissed off the other guy more and led to almost an excessive amount of teasing from viewers for caring so much when Alhaitham obviously cared so little.

It was the same thing now. Kaveh was the only aggravated party here, as embarrassing as it was to admit, all while Alhaitham continued on the same as always. As far as he knew, Alhaitham had not once brought him up on his stream since the initial comment, but here Kaveh was, speaking on the topic yet again.

Kaveh had not expected him to go as far as muting people who mentioned the situation to him—which he still hadn’t apologized for, by the way!—and he was going to prove Alhaitham was actually very much not bothered by showing everyone he could still view his stream and chat without much problem. He had done so the other night! He would even make a joke for his chat to see, he’s said.

But alas, he was blocked, which did make Kaveh’s cheeks burn with a combination of anger and a little embarrassment as his chatters began to tease him, but it was also, just the slightest bit, vindicating.

Because it was proof Kaveh had gotten to him.

“This is easy enough to fix,” Kaveh said, going up to the corner and opening a new window incognito. This one, he kept off stream, only for his eyes to see. “It’s going to take a lot more than that to stop me, you know. I’m persistent, if anything.”

He was able to easily go to Alhaitham’s stream now that he wasn’t logged in. He kept it muted for his stream so only he could hear it, not that it mattered much since the only sounds playing were those coming from the game. Looking at the chat, he spotted someone familiar.

“It looks like Number Three is trying to get herself permanently muted,” Kaveh announced, raising a hand to his mouth to hide his smile as he noticed the message was then deleted by one of the moderators.

There were no written warnings from Alhaitham’s mods and no one mentioned the now-deleted message, focusing on the gameplay on the screen. Alhaitham himself wasn’t looking at his chat, his eyes clearly locked onto his screen as his character zipped around the map while shooting.

Just as he thought.

“He’s clearly unbothered,” Kaveh said, looking back at his chat and seeing their agreement. “Hai—ahem, I mean, I doubt he even knows. That’s just the kind of jerk he is. Hah, how typical.”

Kaveh would never admit how upset that actually made him. Of course, having anyone not recognize their mistakes was annoying, but it was just worse when it was Alhaitham who did it. It was like, for some reason he couldn’t understand, Alhaitham’s lack of acknowledgement for the issues he caused him poked at a certain nerve that drove him insane. He’d known Alhaitham for years now, so one would think he’d be used to all his quirks and faults, whether Alhaitham considered them that or not.

Their friendship also hadn’t always been so strained—for Archons’ sake, they used to bond over what Kaveh thought were common interests in school!—but it had become tense somewhere along the way, and Kaveh couldn’t fix it, at least not without Alhaitham’s cooperation.

What made it even worse was Kaveh would get offline and he’d still have to face Alhaitham outside the safety of his office. As much as he wished he could, it wasn’t like he could simply leave these feelings aside when he ended his stream and shut down his computer. And how awful was that?

“Anyway”—he cleared his throat, exiting out of all the excess windows—“it was a fun stream today! I know I stayed on longer than usual, so thank you for sticking around tonight, everyone. I’m going to go make dinner for my roommate and I, so I’ll see you all two days from now. Let’s see who’s live right now… mm, how about we raid Ayaka? Looks like she’s in CAS right now, showing off some of her new CC.”

Kaveh began the raid and as he waited for the timer to reach its end, he said his final well wishes, a smile on his face. He ended his stream once everyone was transferred to Ayaka’s channel and went there himself. He typed a couple of messages for her to read after she welcomed everybody in and then bid his farewells there, exiting out of the window and beginning his clean up process, starting with turning off his system.

He sighed, feeling his shoulders sag as the invisible weight of reality settled across him.

Well, there wasn’t much he could do now. At least he could find some comfort in the fact he wouldn’t have to face Alhaitham for more than a moment tonight. Since he decided to stream early, he’d probably be locked away in his room for the remainder of the night.

He cleaned up his desk a little and collected his belongings before making his way to the door. He only briefly looked back into the room as he stood in the threshold, wishing he’d just stayed on a little longer. Contrary to the popular opinion regarding internet safety, the online space Kaveh had created for himself was where he felt safest, but that in and of itself was an issue as well.

“Ugh,” he let out, finally stepping into the hall and closing the door behind him.

He had to focus on what was in front of him.

And what was in front of him now was making dinner. Thankfully, Alhaitham had been gracious enough to buy the groceries today and prep a few of the ingredients when Kaveh started streaming so he had everything he needed. He simply needed to cook it. And it was easy to throw himself into the task and forget his worries as he carefully cut the meat and minced up fresh herbs while waiting for things to heat up on the stove.

In the end, with the small amount of time he had to cook something, he had a rather simplified version of a stew that’d normally take a handful of hours to make. As he dished some out into a bowl, he smelled the floral scent of one of the dried herbs he’d added, and his stomach growled.

He was sure the scent would reach Alhaitham soon, so once Kaveh had his dish prepared, he grabbed another bowl, but didn’t put anything in it yet.

Since he was already streaming, Alhaitham would have to eat in his room, which was not usual, but sometimes it worked out that way. Most of those nights, he still ate whatever Kaveh made, but on the occasion he actually had something before starting, he sometimes decided to forgo dinner. To be sure, Kaveh made his way to his door, knocking a few times.

“Yes?” he heared.

Kaveh opened the door just enough to be able to speak. “Do you want me to bring your dinner?”

“Yes, please,” Alhaitham answered. As Kaveh shut the door, he heard a heavy sigh and a muffled comment not directed towards him.

He returned to the kitchen, prepared the bowl, and carefully made his way back, knocking once more. It was better to have Alhaitham come grab the food himself rather than have him walk in to set it on his desk for all to see. He waited, eyes locked onto the pieces of flatbread he had added, slowly shifting his weight from one foot to the other. The most he’d stood outside of Alhaitham’s room had been six minutes; the least had been only a couple of seconds. He hoped it’d be the latter tonight.

After about a minute, Alhaitham opened the door and Kaveh raised his head to look at him.

“The round just ended,” he said, taking the dish, the tips of his fingers brushing along the back of Kaveh’s hands. He looked down at it briefly before meeting Kaveh’s eyes once more. “Thank you.”

Kaveh only hummed, eyes moving to look at the food and then back at Alhaitham. “No complaints?” he asked, raising his eyebrows and crossing his arms over his chest.

He knew stew of any kind was not the most preferable dish when trying to play a game at the same time. Alhaitham had made that clear more than once.

Alhaitham nearly cracked a smile. But he cleared his throat instead. “I can let it go this once.”

“Lucky me,” Kaveh murmured. “I’ve been spared another night.”

“Only because there’s less than a minute before the next round begins,” Alhaitham replied. He leaned in a little, which had Kaveh taking a clumsy step back. Much quieter, he said, “Sleep well, Kaveh.”

There was no time to respond as Alhaitham quickly stepped back into his room and closed his door with the toe of his slipper. He heard him say something followed by the slight click of the ceramic dish as it was placed on his desk.

Staring at the door, Kaveh huffed. His cheeks were on fire as the memory of the other night flashed in his mind, the ghost of Alhaitham’s minty breath across his face. “Hah, you—!”

He returned back to the kitchen, indignant, and began to eat right there at the counter, a million thoughts running through his head at the same speed as his pounding heart. But his annoyance easily faded at the first bite.

He chewed the tender meat, the floral scent from earlier embracing his senses once again. He hummed in delight, realizing the snacks he’d had during his stream earlier had not been enough to curve his hunger.

As he calmly enjoyed his food, he spotted his laptop not too far away. He’d been using it in the morning to reply to some emails while making breakfast. Since he was already eating while standing at the counter, he would allow himself to watch a video or two to keep him entertained. It was infinitely better than going to sit at the table in silence all alone.

In between bites of his dinner, he logged onto his laptop and opened up the browser, but before he could open MeTube, he remembered what was happening just in the other room. Quickly, he went onto Switch. This time, he was definitely logged out and Alhaitham’s stream loaded without issue. He reached for the earbuds of his earphones, double checking they were plugged in before turning up the volume.

And there Alhaitham was, playing his game, as his chat was doing their own thing.

Kaveh found the chat far more entertaining than Alhaitham’s gameplay. He laughed a little as they continued to tease Cyno before moving on to sharing their thoughts on different dishes they liked. And as all this happened, Alhaitham kept on playing. Kaveh watched a little, but he understood very little of it, not knowing who was an ally or an enemy, or what the objective of the game was. It was more interesting to see what the chat had to say, and every once in a while, see the slight shift in Alhaitham’s expressions.

No one seemed to comment on it, but there were definitely changes in Alhaitham’s face as the match progressed. Though the neutral face he tried hard to keep might be enough to fool his viewers into thinking he was always calm while playing, it wasn’t enough to get Kaveh. He had seen nearly every possible expression and heard most sounds Alhaitham could make, and knew most of the associated emotions.

From the slight twitch of Alhaitham’s lips when got a kill that hinted he was pleased to the light click of his teeth to show his annoyance when he died in an exceptionally frustrating way—Kaveh knew it all.

It was almost after nearly twelve minutes that his match ended, the words Victory displayed across the screen before fading out to show the winning team lineup. Alhaitham finally looked away to his second monitor.

“Hm? Dinner check?” He reached for something to the side and what he brought back to show his camera was his food. Although the food looked very appetizing in Kaveh’s bowl, with his less than ideal lighting and the lower quality of his camera, it looked less so in Alhaitham’s. “Let me explain what I have.”

Kaveh proceeded to watch Alhaitham spend two minutes describing the food to his viewers—and unknowingly, to him, the very person who’d made it—, from him pointing out the type of legume it had to the tenderness of the meat. He even mentioned the specific dried herb Kaveh had added, saying it added something nice to the dish. Overall, he’d said, it was another—another?!—delicious dinner. As he finished his explanation, he set the dish aside and presumably took a bite off camera since when he was back in frame, he was chewing.

It was the first time Kaveh heard such praise for his cooking from Alhaitham, and it made him wonder: was this something he did on the nights Kaveh had to bring him his dinner?

Ha! Like any woman in their right mind would date Alhaitham with his personality!

Alhaitham was chewing some more of his food, but as he finished, he licked his lips and looked back at his chat.

“Girlfriend? No, Dehya’s right. I could never have a girlfriend.” He took a sip from his water bottle as some more messages were sent, telling him not to be discouraged and he’d eventually find a nice woman who would date him. At this, Alhaitham snorted, clearly amused. “It’s not that I have trouble having women find me attractive or anything. No, it’s simply that I myself am not interested in women. I prefer dating men.”

Kaveh nearly choked on the partially chewed piece of meat in his mouth. He picked up a napkin to spit it out on and tossed it aside to grip onto the edge of the countertop with both of his hands, coughing a couple of times.

Unfortunately, his coughs were heard loud and clear in the back of Alhaitham’s stream. They echoed in his own ears.

“I’m sure he’s fine,” Alhaitham said nonchalantly. He squinted a little. “What, you’d think he’s… my hus—”

Kaveh shut his laptop.

⁂

Alhaitham liked men, which was fine.

Kaveh himself had, once or twice or thrice, gone out with men in his first years of adulthood. Though he’d never been in a real relationship with any of those men, he’d never really hidden the fact that he was going out with them either. Just like anyone else around his age at the time, he was trying out things he hadn’t been able to do before, especially when it came to dating.

And he was sure he and one of those guys appeared in the background of at least one or two photos taken at events held in bars and clubs around the city, engaging in very public displays of affections while absolutely sloshed out of their minds. He hadn’t been wild per se but he had been a tad adventurous in his little rendezvous with such partners.

Those same years he’d gone out with different guys, he’d also been with women, just once or twice or thrice, and he was sure there was also evidence of that in the background of some old classmates’ social media posts about their birthday at such-and-such bar.

But being with a man was… certainly different than being with a woman.

It’d been a handful of years since the days where Kaveh went around turning his already empty pockets inside out to buy drinks for someone just to get mind drunk on the taste of their tongue later on, so the faces of those men escaped him, but he did remember some general things about them.

For example, all of those guys were taller than him, at least by a couple of centimeters. Yes, taller… probably around Alhaitham’s height, if he had to say. They’d also been bigger in frame with wide shoulders, but their firm bodies had all tapered down to slimmer waists. Like Alhaitham, his mind provided. Yes, he agreed, like Alhaitham. And their voices—light, smooth, and just…

“Kaveh, are you even listening?”

“What?” Kaveh blinked a few times and then turned to look beside him.

Alhaitham was at his side, holding up two jars of jam. When Kaveh only blinked at him in response, he placed both of them in the bag Kaveh was holding, weighing him down. His arm just barely grazed Kaveh’s side as he began to look over the selection on the tables in front of them.

“I take it you’re not finding this shopping trip interesting despite insisting you come along.” Alhaitham stopped in front of some jars of different butters and sauces, a look of careful consideration on his face. “Perhaps this heat is too strong for you. You get especially absentminded when you’re hot.”

Kaveh sputtered, his face growing warmer than it already was from the heat. “Hey! I am completely… the heat is not—listen, I’m fine,” he said, rushing to Alhaitham’s side.

“Good to hear,” Alhaitham said, picking up one of the tahini jars to inspect. “I don’t want to and I won’t babysit you if you get delirious. Drink some water, please.”

Despite his annoyance, Kaveh complied, taking a sip from the bottle they’d brought with them. Admittedly, it helped a little.

It wasn’t overwhelmingly warm today. It was nearly perfect to be walking around, especially here in the bazaar. It was a little stuffy with there being more hustle and bustle than usual, but they were at least well protected from the sun. It wasn’t often Kaveh was able to make the trip out since they lived closer to the center of the city and away from what was now considered Old Sumeru City, so even if it was stuffy, he would not complain.

But suddenly, he was aware of the sweat running down his back as he followed Alhaitham to pay for the few jars he’d picked out.

He listened as Alhaitham spoke with the woman running the stand for a couple of moments, internally cringing when he calmly called her out when she tried to overcharge him for what he’d picked out. It was hard to get things like fresh and homemade foods, so when there was an opportunity to, Alhaitham certainly took it, but he would be made no fool by some vendor. Was it embarrassing? Yes, very much, but at least they never spent more than necessary with Alhaitham in charge. He was always respectful about it though, so while he could be a bit curt, he was never outright rude.

After a moment, he carefully handed an agreed amount of mora to the woman, who was clearly upset she’d failed to upsell them, and then turned to look at Kaveh.

“Hm.”

Suddenly, the back of Alhaitham’s hand was pressed against Kaveh’s forehead. It was warm, almost overly so. And when Alhaitham pulled back, Kaveh saw the thin layer of sweat he’d left on the back of his hand. Hurriedly, Kaveh wiped his forehead, feeling his hair sticking to his temples.

“We only have a few things left,” was all Alhaitham said. “Everything else we can get at the store closer to home later on.”

He made no motion to wipe Kaveh’s gross sweat from his hand when it dropped back down to his side. Instead, he moved to stand behind Kaveh and placed a hand on his lower back, carefully leading him through the busy bazaar.

He brought them to a stop by tugging the back of Kaveh’s shirt in front of some homemade candy stall a few moments later, the gentleman running it immediately jumping to sell them on whatever sweets he had to offer. Alhaitham perused the options before getting some candied ajilenakh nuts and nougat candy. Thankfully, he was able to pay much quicker and with no fuss from the vendor, who wished them a nice day as Alhaitham placed the two small bags into the one Kaveh was carrying.

“How are you feeling now?” Alhaitham asked, returning his hand to Kaveh’s lower back as he resumed leading the way through the bazaar again.

“I told you already. I’m all right.”

“If this is how you look when you’re all right, I’m rather concerned about what you’d look like otherwise,” Alhaitham commented.

Kaveh huffed, side-eyeing him. “You’re very mean, you know.”

Alhaitham said nothing in response, but when Kaveh looked at him, he caught a glimpse of a smile tugging on his lips. Only he would get a kick out of this.

It reminded Kaveh of last night, when he was watching his stream. He’d made a comment to a teammate who’d been causing issues for everyone else and just that one comment from Alhaitham had them in a frenzy the remainder of the round all while he remained calm and collected, a pleased smile on his face. His chat had especially loved it.

“At least your honesty and wit remains intact even in your online persona,” Kaveh added after a moment. “So annoying.”

“What’s that, have you been watching me again?” Alhaitham didn’t look at him, keeping his eyes ahead and carefully maneuvering Kaveh out of the way of a stranger’s way. His hand rested on Kaveh’s waist now, the two of them a little closer. “If you’d like to watch me stream, you’re free to sit in my room. I’ll provide you with your very own personal show.”

“Ha, like I’d ever watch you!” Kaveh exclaimed. Not to mention just how dirty that sounded coming out of Alhaitham’s mouth. His very own personal show? What kind of joke was that? Kaveh cleared his throat, ignoring the dirty looks he received from a couple walking past them after his outburst. “No thank you!”

Alhaitham pinched his side and Kaveh tried to squirm away, only for the hold on his waist to tighten and pull him back even closer than before. “You’re going to hurt someone if you keep flailing around mindlessly,” he said, nodding his head in apology to a young man when Kaveh’s shoulder bumped into him as he tried to step away again. “And I suppose I should thank you for the compliment. At least one of us has an online persona who is a genuine depiction of their real life counterpart.”

“So you admit you’ve been watching me?” Kaveh asked.

He hadn’t meant to lay out a trap, but he was glad it had suddenly worked out that way. If Alhaitham didn’t watch him, how would he know what kind of persona Kaveh had created for his stream? For now, he’d brush past the idea that Alhaitham thought he was being disingenuous to his viewers—he would address that later—and he’d get him to admit he was a secret lurker.

It was perfect, really. He wouldn’t be able to get away with it and Kaveh could no longer be shamed for watching Alhaitham if he could bring up the fact that Alhaitham had watched him first.

“Yes,” Alhaitham replied easily.

Kaveh stopped and looked over his shoulder at Alhaitham. “Are you supposed to give in so easily?”

Alhaitham’s expression gave nothing away. “Is there a specific reaction you were expecting from me?”

“Of course not.” Kaveh would never admit he expected Alhaitham to be even a little bit flustered at being caught. Why wasn’t he? Kaveh’s cheeks grew warm, the heat of the sudden embarrassment reaching the tips of his ears and even crawling down to his neck and chest. “I, I mean, is there an appropriate reaction to have? So what, you watch my—what?”

“It’s nothing.” Clearly, it was something. The way Alhaitham was staring at Kaveh was far too intense to be written off as nothing—his lips pinched into a line, his eyebrows subtly pulled together, and a distracted look in his eyes as he looked over Kaveh’s face. The hold on his waist tightened. “Forget the rest of the list. We should go home.”

“W-what? But you said—”

“Forget what I said.”

Kaveh grabbed Alhaitham’s wrist and tried to pull his hand off his waist as Alhaitham began to guide them through the bazaar again, and he was half-successful, with Alhaitham settling to keep his hand on Kaveh’s lower back once again. They remained quiet, passing by the vendors trying to sell them this and that, and just as they were nearly at the doors of the bazaar, a woman called out to them from one of the stands.

“You two there!” she called out, nodding and waving excitedly when they happened to briefly look over at her. “Hurry, come and see. I have just the thing for a lovely couple such as yourselves!”

It was enough to get Kaveh to stop in his tracks. And apparently enough for Alhaitham as well, who curiously turned to the vendor. His hand returned to Kaveh’s waist, pulling him along to approach the stand.

“Haitham!” Kaveh whispered, trying to peel Alhaitham’s hand off him once more. When that didn’t work, he pinched the back of Alhaitham’s hand. “What are you doing?”

“Good afternoon, young man. What a lovely lady you’re with,” the vendor said, looking from Alhaitham to Kaveh with a friendly smile. “What a lovely couple you two make.”

“Sorry?” Kaveh said, his voice louder than he wanted it to be. “Oh, I mean, we’re just—”

It caught the woman off guard and she immediately jumped to apologize. “My apologies! These old eyes aren’t what they used to be,” she said, a hand on her chest. “You are a very pretty man, I hope you don’t take that the wrong way.”

“Oh, no!” Kaveh laughed, waving his free hand in front of him. “Please, I don’t mind! I’ve heard it before. Thank you.”

“It’s fate that someone as pretty as yourself would find someone as handsome as this gentleman, isn’t it? You two really do look lovely together.”

“He’s not—”

“Thank you,” Alhaitham interrupted. He motioned at the items being displayed. It was an assortment of jewelry, from rings to hair accessories, simple to intricate in design, with varying degrees of gemstones and crystals inlaid in the metalwork. “Do you make these yourself?”

“My wife and I!” she said. She was already reaching for something out of their sight and what she brought out from behind one of the displays was a small tray covered with cloth. Several pairs of matching jewelry sets were revealed as she pulled the cloth away. “As I said, I have just the thing for you two, and I’ll even give you a discount since you’re both so charming.”

Kaveh laughed with her, but it was more in disbelief than at her comment. A couple, him and Alhaitham? There was no way! Alhaitham, he…

He liked men.

“How long is the process to make something so ornate?” Alhaitham asked, seeming genuinely interested in the rings she was showing him.

Kaveh tuned out the woman’s voice as she began to explain her process, one she said was passed down from generation to generation.

How had Alhaitham come to discover that part of himself? There had been a lapse in their friendship, just a couple of years from when Kaveh left school to when they met again after Alhaitham graduated, where they lost contact—had it been then? It was hard to imagine Alhaitham experimenting the same way Kaveh had at that age. He considered it for a long moment.

Had he been set up with a friend of a friend of a friend for casual meetings between classes at the campus café, meetings that turned into kissing and sleeping together after bitter coffees became sweet cocktails, something not really romantic and certainly not platonic, not serious but serious enough to last weeks and weeks only to end with a silent ghosting that left no pain or ill feelings? No way, Kaveh thought. Alhaitham would never!

So, then how? What had aided Alhaitham in realizing his attraction? Or, better yet, who?

“The color of this one is extraordinary,” Alhaitham commented, pointing out one specific bracelet. “Are these jasper or carnelian stones?”

The woman snapped, a wide grin on her face. Kaveh attempted to smile back when she looked over at him.

“You’ve got a good eye, young man! Indeed, these are beautiful carnelian stones inlaid here.” She carefully picked up the bracelet for Alhaitham to inspect, a pleased look on her face. “I can only assume why such a brilliant red caught your eye! Here, come closer. We have a contact in Natlan who ensures all…”

It was nearly impossible to imagine the kind of man Alhaitham might like. He’d never paid attention to popular celebrities so Kaveh didn’t even have a foundation to start building his type of man. Considering how selective he was with his acquaintances and close friends in the first place, it was difficult to conjure up an image of anyone who would be tolerable enough for romance.

While Alhaitham was always polite to strangers, he wasn’t exactly an example of someone who was welcoming of more personal relationships. Because of this, Kaveh could safely assume most people in Alhaitham’s life only knew of him and not really who he was as a person.

Archons, he had heard some people say they’d never seen Alhaitham laugh or smile around them before, which sure was a damn shame considering how pleasant it actually was when he did. It wasn’t often that it happened, but Kaveh had seen it plenty in the years he’d known Alhaitham. And he obviously smiled on stream! But if Alhaitham was around someone he liked, he’d probably do so much more often, right?

“... along with the matching one. Might I suggest this beautiful green…”

It was a little unsettling imagining how Alhaitham might act around someone he was attracted to. Surely, he wasn’t the kind to persistently cling to a lover, right? It just wouldn’t be right. He could be a bit touchy at times, but otherwise, he kept to himself rather well.

“... such an exquisite pair! It takes someone truly special to…”

Right, only someone truly special would be able to make Alhaitham do foolish things like that. Alhaitham never did anything ridiculous or unnecessary. So, perhaps he preferred someone just as reliable or even more so than himself? Someone taller and bigger than he was? No, Kaveh thought, that would only work if Alhaitham preferred to be embraced.

Unless Alhaitham did prefer to be embraced?

That would be unexpected. To think of Alhaitham, for once, small as someone strong with dark eyes and a gruff voice loomed over him—it nearly made Kaveh shiver. There was absolutely no way he preferred that!

“Kaveh?”

“Hm?” Kaveh looked at Alhaitham, who was looking at him with a hard expression, and he got warm all over once more. He quickly looked away, pretending to look over the jewelry on the tray the woman he brought out earlier. “Sorry, I’m… I, I think the heat is getting to me.”

“Ho, ho, as you said! You do know him well!” She laughed, covering her mouth with her hand. “Very well. It was nice meeting you two. Enjoy the rest of your day!”

Alhaitham thanked her before leading Kaveh away from the stand and towards their initial destination. Alhaitham certainly preferred to embrace someone, Kaveh decided as he observed the situation he was in. Like in many of their trips out, Alhaitham seemed to naturally take the lead and he almost always guided them through wherever they were.

Kaveh had long since gotten used to Alhaitham’s habit of touching him, either by grabbing his wrist or his waist or simply keeping a hand on his back, to keep them from separating in crowded places. It would be easy for him to do all that and more to someone he felt was special in a more romantic sense.

The hand on Kaveh’s waist disappeared as Alhaitham stepped ahead. Kaveh watched as he reached the doors first, pulling one of them open and stepping back out onto the street. He turned back to look at Kaveh, waiting for him to reach the door himself.

“Thanks,” Kaveh said once he was outside.

Alhaitham only nodded in reply and they started their walk to the bus stop with no conversation.

If Alhaitham had a lover, would such walks be filled with lively discussion, accompanied by laughs and smiles? Kaveh wondered this, peeking over at him as they slowed to wait alongside others at the stop. It would be at least a few more minutes before the bus came.

Looking around, Kaveh saw a couple young women, a small group of adolescents dressed in their school uniforms, and a couple of men. Both of them were tall, probably around Kaveh and Alhaitham’s height respectively, but they were both certainly smaller in frame than Alhaitham was.

They were engaged in conversation with each other, but one of them was clearly a bit more lively than the other. Golden blond hair, gorgeous green eyes, a very sweet voice, and an even sweeter laugh—Alhaitham had to like someone like that. Unless he preferred the quiet, more demure type, then the other seemed to be fitting, with his gentle hums of agreement and a pleasant smile, accentuated by the small mole under the corner of his lips.

Either way, Kaveh could imagine what it would be like: Alhaitham, his strong arm around the slender waist of a charming stranger, smiling as they conversed about who knew what on their way home. A certain warmth spread across Kaveh’s face once more. How incredible it would be, he thought, to see such a sight.

As Alhaitham’s friend and roommate, he was bound to see it happen someday. It was actually a little weird to think about though. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to see Alhaitham be happy, but it was odd to think of him happy with a stranger. A complete stranger who would come to feel Alhaitham better than Kaveh had over the last ten years, seeing parts of him he never thought to explore and knowing things about him he never thought to learn.

Suddenly, Alhaitham raised an arm and held his hand up above Kaveh’s head, just enough to block the sun from his eyes. As Kaveh’s eyes adjusted to the change in lighting, Alhaitham leaned in, humming as he looked over Kaveh’s face. He was especially close, enough to catch the attention of some of the people waiting nearby.

“Huh? What is it?” Kaveh took a step back, nearly stepping off the sidewalk.

Before he could actually stumble back onto the street, Alhaitham grabbed him by his bicep with his other hand to keep him steady. Their faces were at a respectable distance now.

“The sun,” he said, nodding up slightly. “Your face was all red. I hope you’re not losing your senses already. I already said I didn’t want to babysit you.”

“Oh,” Kaveh let out. He placed a hand on his hot cheek. “No, I’m fine.”

There was no room underneath the awning of the stop shelter so they had no choice but to linger to the side of it as they waited. Of course, Kaveh was sweating a bit more, feeling it slowly trickle down the back of his neck and along his temples, but it wasn’t overly bothersome. He was able to tolerate this much at least, as someone born and raised in Sumeru. He was sure Alhaitham knew that as well. There was no need to do something unnecessary and ridiculous, especially in front of strangers.

“You’re going to get a cramp if you keep your arm up like that,” Kaveh said, reaching for Alhaitham’s forearm.

His skin was hot to the touch and it nearly made Kaveh let go, but he didn’t. He tightened his hold around Alhaitham’s forearm and tried to pull down his arm, but he was much more stubborn than Kaveh expected him to be, his arm only moving a centimeter or two before returning to its original position. And not once in all of the attempts to get him to bring his arm down did the shade that Alhaitham’s hand provided Kaveh’s eyes disappear.

“At the very least, do it for yourself as well,” Kaveh huffed, giving up and raising his own arm to shield Alhaitham’s face from the shade.

In the shade of his palm, Alhaitham did seem to be a little relieved, blinking a few times to adjust his vision to the change. Ha, it was so obvious the sun was bothering him as well. The side of Kaveh’s hand was nearly pressed to Alhaitham’s forehead, some of his hair tickling the side of his pinky finger. If Kaveh were any meaner, he would’ve taken the opportunity to flick Alhaitham’s forehead.

Already, he could feel his arm getting tired. His right hand was already aching a bit from carrying their bag full of purchases all day and now he’d have his left arm sore.

“Now we both won’t be able to stream this way.”

“You don’t stream until two days from now,” Alhaitham pointed out. “You’ll recover quickly.”

“Then what about you?”

Alhaitham looked at him, expression indecipherable, then: “If you’d like to, you can come see for yourself later tonight.”

“Haitham, you—!”

Before he was able to finish, Alhaitham finally moved his arm and the sun shined down on Kaveh’s face full-force, momentarily blinding him. He quickly brought the hand he’d offered to shade Alhaitham’s face down to cover himself now, recovering his vision. Down the street, he heard the approaching bus and there was movement under the bus shelter as everyone prepared to board. In front of him, Alhaitham was already looking away, already checked out and moved on from their conversation.

But that had been an invitation, right?

⁂

Kaveh watched the chat scroll past quickly as everyone greeted each other and began their discussions, old and new. On screen, Alhaitham was on the starting screen of the game, waiting for it to open to the main menu, and he didn’t seem particularly interested in reading his chat either, as he looked back and forth from his monitors, probably making sure things were good to go.

“Good evening, everyone,” he said after a moment. His attention was off to the side, his eyes reflecting the quick moving chat he was following in the glow of his computer monitors. “How are the games so far? Well, if you looked at the stream run time, you’d see I just started. Duo with Cerberus? Well, if Cyno isn’t available and he’s on, I don’t see why not. First, I’ll play solo.”

Once Alhaitham queued up, he did nothing else in the game and focused on answering a question here or there as he opened up a new window over top of his game to find something else to do. After a few nights of watching him, Kaveh had seen he did in fact acknowledge his chat, but only during the downtime. If he was in a match, there was no hope he’d read anything and only a few times had he said something in between the rounds of longer matches, but no one seemed to mind much. If anything, it was probably part of his charm as a streamer.

Just like in real life.

Kaveh, still blocked on his official account, had no choice but to create an entirely new one to be able to watch Alhaitham stream and leave chat messages the other week. Of course, he’d taken the time to ensure he left no connection to himself by making his profile look rather plain, but still like it belonged to someone real. He hadn’t followed Alhaitham right away either, having gone through other streamers in the category over the first couple of nights and following them first to have some previous history on his account.

One of the streamers Kaveh had visited had been Cyno, and the night Kaveh had watched him, he’d lucked out with him choosing to raid Alhaitham at the end. It was the perfect reason to follow Alhaitham’s account and even send a couple of messages that would be lost amongst the rest of Cyno’s viewers spamming emotes and messages in Alhaitham’s chat.

Since then, he had really only gone on to watch Alhaitham a few times and started to build rapport with those who seemed to be frequent chatters. He didn’t message too often, but it was enough to be welcomed by the talkative ones while not catching Alhaitham’s attention.

The only problem was Kaveh was still a bit unfamiliar with how this worked.

After watching other streamers and reading chat messages, he’d come a long way from his first time watching and he’d somewhat picked up on the basics of the game. He’d learn how to tell who was an enemy, what different terms meant, and even what a handful of the characters did, but that was not what mattered. What mattered, at least to Kaveh, was how Alhaitham ran his stream. He had seen a couple people warm up in a practice range and spend some time just chatting before going directly into matches; others started with shorter matches in a different mode before going into the competitive queue.

Alhaitham seemed to do things differently, disregarding all of that and going straight into what he came to do.

Was it normal to boot up the game and immediately queue without doing anything else within minutes of the stream starting? There had been little Alhaitham said for an introduction as well. While he had spent a couple minutes answering questions, he offered nothing personal himself.

“A bird of paradise,” Alhaitham said. He huffed out a short laugh, bringing his hand up to cover his mouth, where a small smile was threatening to form. “Family Paradisaeidae, genus Paradisaea, correct? Any specific species you like, hm… what did chat call you… Birdy, was it? I haven’t welcomed you yet, so take this as a personal warm welcome from me. You’re invited any time. And to answer your question about why I don’t spend time warming up—does it make sense to spend time on something I don’t need? My in-game performance is perfectly fine without it.”

“Damn,” Kaveh said to himself.

After having gone nearly a week without getting his attention, he’d been caught just like that.

It wasn’t like Alhaitham didn’t know Kaveh was watching—they had established that when Alhaitham came to his room a couple weeks ago and told him not to watch him stream, and yesterday when they were coming back from the bazaar had been confirmation that Kaveh hadn’t listened—but, at the very least, the name Kaveh had been using was a secret. Of course, anyone who knew him would likely be able to connect the dots, but it took a certain line of thinking to even consider such a possible connection.

It was one only Alhaitham would be able to make.

Behind the MeTube window, Alhaitham’s game pinged and he closed the window once the character select screen appeared.

“Kaveh,” Alhaitham said, momentarily looking directly at the camera after he had selected his character.

Kaveh nearly jumped, hearing his name being spoken on camera. He knew Alhaitham was just in the other room and something about that fact made him feel a little nervous about it. It was as though Alhaitham was directly addressing him despite not really being in front of him, and it was all unbeknownst to the near three thousand people who had Alhaitham’s stream open.

Unfortunately—or actually, rather fortunately—Alhaitham was unable to say more as his teammates began talking through the in-game communication system, asking him if he was the “real Scribe” or some sort of fraud using his username to fool people.

“Well, we can talk about it after this match.” His attention returned to the game. “Of course I’m real. My profile isn’t private, so feel free to confirm yourself.”

What in Teyvat had he started?

Kaveh was unsure if he should even send another message.

Looking away from the chat box, he saw Alhaitham was focused on his game, the same character as always zipping around as he shot at enemies around the objective. Considering the match type, he wouldn’t look at chat until the entire game was finished, and they were still nearly eight minutes away from that happening. For now, it did seem like Alhaitham’s moderators had things under control. With such a large community, Alhaitham was obviously well-equipped with a small team of trusted people who were able to have many eyes on the chat when his attention was elsewhere, which it often was, though the one Alhaitham had called Dehya stood out the most.

She was the one sending out the warnings to those saying inappropriate things. For that, Kaveh was grateful. Even if Alhaitham had indirectly insulted Kaveh, he clearly didn’t allow his chat to do the same. It made sense, of course, that Alhaitham wouldn’t stand for such foolery. He hated such things in the first place. And rightfully so.

As upset as his initial comment had made Kaveh, he was willing to let it go eventually because they knew each other, and when it came to it, they could directly confront each other if worse came to worse, but these other people were complete strangers to the both of them. Who were they to call Kaveh names or speak about his appearance?

But there was much more discussion about him that had occurred in Alhaitham’s streams than he was aware of, it seemed, with what some people were sending. Alhaitham had definitely mentioned him more than the few times he knew of in the last month since Kaveh had been invited to have his stream on the front page. However, the only way to know what else had been said about him would be if he took the time to painstakingly scrub through hours and hours of VODs of every stream Alhaitham had done since then. Simply speaking, it was an impossible task.

For now, all Kaveh could do is apologize. Instead of trying to sneak around, he would speak to Alhaitham directly and they’d solve this once and for all. He’d found Kaveh out after all.

“Hm.”

Kaveh tapped his fingers on his desk a few times. He wasn’t easily offended by the comments about the content he streamed as something like that was easy to change if he wanted, not that he ever would. He also didn’t care what people who didn’t watch him thought about how he streamed as he could always improve. It was only his third year doing this after all and considering how he’d started, he’d come a long way already.

Just as he was typing something into the chat, Alhaitham’s game finished and he left the match as his team was displayed on the screen. He immediately queued up again, much to the dismay of his chatters who were waiting to see his earlier play be highlighted, before he turned his attention to his second monitor. He didn’t immediately say anything, typing out something silently before clearing his throat.

“I have some unban requests here from several users,” he finally said. He clicked around for a moment before huffing, clearly amused by whatever it was he was seeing. “This one says, ‘I didn’t even say anything bad, bro.’ Well, let’s see what you said.”

He pulled up a separate window displaying the stream manager, where all his stream activity, incoming chat messages, and other actions were displayed. He pulled up a specific user’s account and scrolled through their previous chat history, reading some of the messages as he went.

“‘L bomb, bro’, ‘diffed’, ‘that guy is so bad’, and–oh, well, look at that. Now everyone knows why you got banned. Consider your request denied, and there really is no point in trying to appeal in six months since I don’t do those.”

It was only on screen for a brief moment before Alhaitham closed the window, but Kaveh had still seen it, just as he was sure the near three thousand other viewers had as well. It was something about Kaveh, inappropriate of course, and he was sure Alhaitham never would’ve shown the chat history on screen if he had known the final message sent by the user regarding him was that vulgar. Looking at his face, it was clear he wasn’t pleased, his lips pinched in a tight line and his eyebrows pulled together, similar to the expression he’d had the other day at the bazaar. He didn’t acknowledge anything else, his attention elsewhere.

Even though people in the chat were making fun of the person who was banned, no one seemed to care about the content of the message itself. Kaveh knew he was unfamiliar with how things worked in other communities, but was there truly no consequence for saying something so disgusting about someone else?

And was Alhaitham truly going to let it go so easily?

“There’s no need to give attention to someone who’s undeserving of it,” Alhaitham finally said. “Why waste time and energy on something useless?”

So that was how it was.

“And I want to make something clear about Kaveh. He is someone I—”

Kaveh closed the window, his heart pounding hard in his chest.

⁂

“Consider it an early birthday present,” Alhaitham said. “Since I won’t be here.”

“This was entirely unnecessary,” Kaveh said, turning back to the box he’d been handed and carefully pulling at the bow Alhaitham had used.

It wasn’t one of those pre-made bows either, meaning Alhaitham had taken the time and had the patience to find the ribbon, wrap it around the box, and tie the bow, which was perfect, of course. The mental image of Alhaitham carefully tying a little ribbon almost made Kaveh laugh with how ridiculous it was—it was too unlike him. He set aside the ribbon and pulled the top of the box off.

The box itself was small and square, probably falling just a little short of the length of Kaveh’s hand, and it had been light when Alhaitham had handed it over.

“What is it?” Kaveh asked, holding the lid over the box to stop himself from seeing it. He looked up at Alhaitham first, a bit curious as to why he seemed so pleased. Was it that good of a gift? “I don’t like that look on your face one bit, you know.”

“You were there when I bought it,” was all Alhaitham said.

Kaveh gasped. “Ah, that’s right!”

He knew immediately what it was: the purchase Alhaitham had made at the bazaar.

At the time, Kaveh had been a bit too distracted to pay attention, but he knew Alhaitham had ended up purchasing a couple pieces of jewelry from the woman who’d called them over. When they had gotten home, Alhaitham hadn’t shown Kaveh what he’d ended up purchasing, so he figured he was going to keep everything for himself, but it made sense now.

After all, Alhaitham wasn’t really one for accessories, but Kaveh certainly was.

And sure enough, when he finally set aside the lid to the box, a rather delicate bracelet was sitting in the center of a dark velvet cushion. He picked it up carefully, bringing it closer for him to see. It was a thin, yellow gold chain and, unlike the first bracelet he knew Alhaitham had been looking at with the red gems, it only had a single green gemstone pendant. Kaveh held the pendant part in his palm, a little amazed at the light marbling effect the stone had.

“This is gorgeous,” he murmured, looking up at Alhaitham again and smiling. “Thank you, Haitham.”

As indifferent as Alhaitham could be, he was incredibly thoughtful when it mattered.

Kaveh had always received gifts from him on such occasions, and even if they were sometimes a bit simple or even cheap, it was clear that much thought had gotten into selecting the gift. The other year Alhaitham had carefully picked out replacements for some of Kaveh’s work supplies for his birthday, all of which had been rather easy to obtain and cheap to purchase, but it’d been exactly what Kaveh needed and, more importantly, what he wanted. Before that, Alhaitham had gifted Kaveh the camera he used for streaming now, which was clearly a more expensive gift, and while it had taken some convincing to get him to keep it, it was a clear upgrade to the quality of his work he was glad he had now.

Regardless of whatever it was, Kaveh was appreciative of it all. However, just like with the camera, the possible price of such a gift lingered on his mind.

“How much did you end up paying that day?” Kaveh asked. He carefully draped the gold chain over his right wrist, making sure the pendant was sitting on top, and began to fiddle with the clasp on the other side. “Hopefully not too much.”

Alhaitham, who had been keeping a bit of space between them by standing behind the divan, quickly came around and kneeled in front of Kaveh, gently grabbing his hand to stop him.

“Here, let me,” he murmured, letting go of Kaveh to grab the bracelet. His thin fingers pinched the ends and he fumbled with the clasp for a moment, trying to get it to hook onto one of the rings on the other end. His eyebrows were drawn together in concentration as he leaned in a bit closer to see better. When he was done, he pulled back and let Kaveh admire how the bracelet looked on his wrist. “Just as I thought—it suits you.”

Kaveh froze, his gaze moving from the bracelet to Alhaitham’s face. He was smiling, just a little, as he too admired the bracelet on Kaveh’s wrist. The thought from before popped into Kaveh’s mind. The thought of just how nice it was when Alhaitham actually smiled, and how it softened his usually stoic features and showed how youthful he was. Alhaitham was attractive, Kaveh would admit that much, but smiling like this, he was awfully… pretty.

He noticed Kaveh staring almost immediately after the thought popped into his head, and his attention turned to him, his eyes curiously meeting Kaveh’s. “Is something wrong?” he asked.

“No, no. That’s not it.” Kaveh felt his breath catch in his throat when he noticed how close they were. “It’s just—”

Alhaitham was still kneeling in front of him, nearly filling up the open space between Kaveh’s legs, sitting back on his heels with his hands resting on his thick thighs. Like this, he had no choice but to look up at Kaveh, who sat comfortably on the divan, and it provided an image Kaveh had never considered. Maybe Alhaitham wasn’t small, but like this, he almost seemed so. Not enough that Kaveh would want to embrace him, but enough to want to…

Suddenly, he was hyper aware of the beating of his heart. It was loud and clear, and in the silence, it would be no surprise if Alhaitham heard it as well. Kaveh almost convinced himself he had when he tilted his head in confusion, his lips parting to ask a question. There was no way!

Kaveh cleared his throat. “Shouldn’t you finish packing up for your trip?”

“I should,” Alhaitham said. He placed his hands on Kaveh’s knees to help himself up. “I leave at noon, so if you’re making lunch before you stream today, there’s no need to make enough for two.”

“Hey!” Kaveh said, using his foot to tap Alhaitham’s ankle. “Don’t use me to help yourself up.”

“What else would I use if not what’s in front of me?”

The situation had changed with just one action.

With Alhaitham now standing, still in front of Kaveh, he was almost towering over him, and it was Kaveh had to look up to meet his eyes now. Alhaitham had a different kind of smile on his face as well, something more akin to a teasing smirk, and Kaveh grew flustered, the heat rising up to his face as he looked down at his lap. He was crazy to think Alhaitham was pretty for even one second. It was clear a more mature adjective would be fitting for someone like him, all tall and broad and strong.

Forgetting embracing Alhaitham. If anything, the one who’d be embraced here was clearly going to be…

“Kaveh.” The tip of a finger was placed under his chin, gently coaxing him to look back up. “Happy birthday.”

Alhaitham let him go and stepped away, sighing as he ran a hand through his hair. He stepped into his room without another word and closed the door, a thud sounding out from the hall into the living room.

Immediately, Kaveh curled in on himself, his hands on his head, grabbing at his hair, as he brought his forehead down to his knees. On his wrist, the cold metal of the gold chain pressed against his skin.

No fucking way he’d just considered something so vulgar. Like, him with Alhaitham? What an incredulous thought!

In no world would Kaveh ever consider doing anything so intimate with Alhaitham. The thought of ever having Alhaitham hold him, their bodies pressing together, getting closer and closer and closer until their breaths mixed and their lips met, was actually a bit unpleasant. It was uncomfortable to imagine such a scenario, seeing as even the thought was enough to have Kaveh hot all over with embarrassment and something else he didn’t dare put a name to.

“This is so sick,” he muttered to himself, hearing the disbelief in his own voice. He tugged at his hair again. “What the fuck?”

Kaveh remained curled in on himself for a couple more minutes in an attempt to calm his body down with some deep breaths.

As disturbed as he was at the inappropriate thoughts of Alhaitham, his body had no qualms about reacting to them and it was safe to say, it had very easily betrayed the better judgment of his mind. There was a certain tightness in his pants he knew he couldn’t reveal, even if no one else was in the room with him, and he was sure he was as red as a tomato, from the tips of his ears down to his chest.

How could he even react this way to such thoughts? For Archons’ sake, he had met Alhaitham when he was still considered nothing more than an overgrown kid in the eyes of Teyvat, all scrawny like the rest of his class at the Akademiya, and he had practically taken care of him as an older brother would for a good portion of their time together. So what if Alhaitham had grown into himself since then, filling into broad shoulders and a strong chest and thick thighs? He was still Kaveh’s junior!

More than that, they were friends and roommates. If Kaveh had such thoughts about Alhaitham, how was he supposed to face him on a day-to-day basis? There would be no escaping if such thinking invaded Kaveh’s mind when they were relaxing on the divan or, even worse, while peacefully eating dinner at the table. It’d be impossible to look across the table at Alhaitham if all Kaveh could think about was how it’d be to have Alhaitham delight over him instead of whatever meal he had prepared for the night.

Before Kaveh could imagine that particular scenario any further, his phone began to ring. He jumped in surprise and hurriedly reached for the device on the coffee table, turning off the alarm.

It was time to get ready for his stream.

He needed to calm down. He wouldn’t be able to go live if he was in this state.

Carefully, he stood up from the divan, collected the now-empty present box, and made his way to his office on slightly shaky legs. The situation in his pants wasn’t entirely gone, but it was bearable and he knew it’d go away on its own eventually if he just relaxed. Once he focused, his body would return to its normal state and his blood would begin to circulate elsewhere, perhaps in the places it was actually needed to be instead of down there.

Setting aside the box, he turned on his PC and took a seat at his desk, the system coming to life with a light hum. As he waited, he stared at his disheveled reflection in his monitor. His hair was a mess and, though he couldn’t see it very well in the dark reflection, he knew he had some lingering red and pink splotches on his cheeks. His image disappeared as he was prompted to log in. After running his fingers through his hair a few times, Kaveh took a deep breath and settled down.

There was absolutely no way Alhaitham would get to him. Not this way. Not in any way.

At least he was going to be alone for the next few days. Alhaitham, being a rather notable streamer in the community, had been invited to attend some sort of special event related to the game in Liyue with some other popular streamers and content creators. In the past, Alhaitham had declined invitations to such events, having claimed to find them exhausting, but the people in charge had insisted he attend this time around, saying they’d be having some sort of major reveal for the game at the event. So he’d be gone for three days.

And three days was more than enough to shake off the thoughts and feelings Kaveh was having. As they said: out of sight meant out of mind.

Finding some relief in the promise of the upcoming days of solitude, Kaveh was able to start his stream with a genuine smile on his face.

“Hey, everyone. How are we today?” Kaveh asked after he made sure everything was in place. He rested his elbow on his desk and tucked his chin into the palm of his hand as he read the chat. “Good to see! And congratulations on the result, Cuilein! That sounds wonderful.”

So much for out of sight, out of mind then.

Kaveh tried his best to smile. “Thank you! I’ve just received this as a gift today.” He raised his wrist to the camera and waited for it to come into focus before he carefully turned his wrist this way and that to show it off. “My roommate gave it to me for my birthday—oh no, no, my birthday isn’t today! He’s just going away for a few days so he gave it to me in advance.”

“Close?” Kaveh laughed, and he hoped it didn’t come across as nervous as it sounded in his ears. The memory of the night Alhaitham came into his room flashed in his mind and he remembered just how close their faces had been. “I suppose we are as close as you’d expect roommates to be. Well, we’ve been together for a while now, so something like this is very—right! It’s almost familial, yes.”

He decided to ignore Tighnari’s comment. He knew he didn’t mean it like that, as it was simply meant to be a jab at his boyfriend. If Tighnari knew Alhaitham was his roommate, he was sure he would take his comment back.

Regardless, was the gift really something to be considered “romantic”? Jewelry was a very common gift to give and it was a relatively safe option for special occasions. Kaveh had given jewelry to his friends and his mother before; he’d received plenty as well. Perhaps it would be a bit more suggestive of romance if it were a ring, but even then, rings were given with very clear intentions between people in explicitly romantic relationships.

And that wasn’t what this was.

It was just a bracelet.

“I’m still going to stream as usual, but we will be doing something a little special!” Kaveh smiled. “You’ll see what I mean in a few days. Anyway, let’s get to building. I think the Inazuman hot springs won the poll last stream, so that’s what I’ll be working on today. How does that sound?”

“Wow, Caution, thank you for the tier three sub! Welcome, welcome.” Kaveh hummed, counting back the months in his head.

He didn’t have a clear memory of his early days anymore with how much he’d grown, so he unfortunately couldn’t remember when specific users followed or subscribed to him unless they were one of the very active ones, but it was strange he hadn’t seen this user until recently. However, it wasn’t uncommon to have long-time viewers who kept to themselves. If anything, he was glad one had decided to come out of their shell. And this person had certainly picked a way to make an instant impression on everyone after a long period of lurking, having started off with a sizable donation and then a ridiculous amount of gifted subs.

“Wow, you’ve been here from the beginning, if my math is correct. I’m very grateful. Thank you for the support! It’s nice to see you send messages in chat these days, but please don’t feel obligated. Lurkers are always welcome as well.”

Kaveh began to work slowly, switching between placing down the walls of the build and responding to his chat, trying to keep up with the changes in subject as best as he could. Like any other stream, it was fun and things were going smoothly. He set up some polls for people to vote on color palettes and décor items, using the downtime as everyone voted to answer any questions that came through about the build so far.

In one of these lulls, there was a light knock on his door. Kaveh quickly smiled at his camera before silently switching to his BRB screen and muting himself, sending a message in his chat that he had something to do and he’d be back momentarily. He took off his headphones as another knock sounded through the office.

“Come in,” he said.

Alhaitham opened the door but didn’t step inside, choosing to linger in the doorframe. “I’m leaving now,” he said quietly, leaning against the frame as he crossed his arms over his chest. “My driver is almost here.”

Kaveh stood up, smoothing down the front of his shirt. “All right, I’ll see you out real quick.”

He followed Alhaitham out and to the front door, where he already had his suitcase and a smaller backpack sitting on the floor. Alhaitham took a moment to put on his shoes and Kaveh hoisted the backpack up and set it across the top of the suitcase for him. When Alhaitham was done, Kaveh offered the handle of the suitcase.

For a brief moment, Alhaitham had his hand over Kaveh’s, his palm warm against his skin. Kaveh inhaled sharply and pulled back, letting Alhaitham grab hold of the handle himself. Alhaitham’s other hand was already on the door handle, pulling it open. He straightened up and looked at Kaveh.

“I should be back by midday,” he said. “Since you’ll be streaming by then, I’ll buy us dinner.”

“You better! It’s the least you should do for me,” Kaveh huffed, crossing his arms over his chest and turning his head away in a show of faux displeasure. “It will be my birthday after all.”

Alhaitham let out a small laugh, which had Kaveh turning back, and it was just in time to see the small smile leaving Alhaitham’s face as he shook his head. Even without the smile, there was a happy look about him—his eyes slightly crinkling at the corners and the corners of his lips threatening to turn up, giving away how amused he was with Kaveh’s fake annoyance.

“The least I should do? Then is there something more I can do for you that day?”

Kaveh quickly dropped his arms from his chest, his hands immediately balling into fists at his sides. “Huh?! Haitham, you—!” Realizing there was no time to indulge Alhaitham’s antics, he sighed and as a result, his entire body relaxed. He raised his hands and quickly shooed Alhaitham out, taking his spot by the door when he was out in the hall. “Never mind that! You should get going, and I should too.”

“I’ll see you then,” Alhaitham said, simply offering a nod before he began to make his way to the elevators, rolling his suitcase alongside him.

“Be careful,” Kaveh called out to his retreating figure.

He only allowed himself to stand in the threshold of the front door for another moment, long enough to see Alhaitham step into the elevator. Of course, he didn’t look back once or acknowledge Kaveh’s last words to him, though it was obvious he’d heard them given how loud Kaveh’s voice had echoed in the hall. It left a weird feeling in Kaveh’s chest.

It wasn’t the first time he was seeing Alhaitham off to one of these things. There had been plenty of times he had left to attend events, some of which had him stay longer than three days, so Kaveh was used to it. So what was so different this time around?

“Ugh, whatever,” he muttered to himself, closing the door and locking it.

He quickly made his way back to his office, taking his seat and putting on his headphones. Before switching the scene, he looked at the mod action panel in his stream manager, noticing an alarming amount of bans by Tighnari from just a moment ago. Instead of jumping right back into the stream, he took a moment to look at everything before him. With some clicking around, Kaveh saw that bans were imposed on people who didn’t follow him and, from looking through the profiles and reading the mod comments Tighnari left on them, he gathered that there’d been a sudden influx of users that came in and sent derogatory remarks.

Tighnari was right.

Kaveh could see what was caught by the auto-moderation feature and there were a handful of messages that’d been blocked from going through, all of them more obvious in their disrespect. He winced as he read one of the same words over and over in some of the messages. There was an odd feeling in his body as he submitted a batch of reports for all the people that had been banned. It was heavy and hard, the feeling that settled across him, as if someone had set a boulder on his shoulders, and it was suddenly hard to breathe.

Now, all he wanted to do was go lay down in his bed in hopes that he could relieve himself of the uncomfortable weight placed upon him.

But he couldn’t just abruptly end the stream either.

Clearing his throat, he tried his best to smile and switched the scene to one of his facecam. He unmuted himself but found he couldn’t open his mouth to speak. It took a couple of attempts, foolishly opening and closing his mouth, for the knot that had been forming in his throat to go away. He coughed and with that, a few tears pricked at the outer corners of his eyes.

In his best attempts to avoid looking directly at the camera, he saved his progress in the game and closed it. “I’m going to be ending the stream for today,” he said, voice lower than usual, but he knew if he spoke any louder, it’d be clear that he was extremely upset. “Thank you all for joining me today.”

“‘Scribe honestly has the worst fans’,” Kaveh read out carefully.

He inhaled and then let it all out in a heavy sigh. As he had come to know some of Alhaitham’s fans through his secret account, he found most of them were in fact pleasant people, but there were also a handful of individuals who spewed negativity without so much as a thought. Alhaitham probably didn’t want fans like that, but there was little he could do when such behavior was normal, albeit not welcomed or accepted by many, in that kind of community. It was disappointing and hurtful, but there was nothing Kaveh could really do with what he had at his disposal.

“Well, what is there to do? Those kinds of people are everywhere.”

Kaveh quickly reassured those watching he would take it easy the rest of the day and he would still stream in a couple days. After his farewells and finding someone to send his viewers to, he was able to end his stream without much trouble. When it was all said and done, he fell back against his chair and let out another heavy sigh.

It was finally just him, alone, in the silence.

After a few minutes, he collected himself and logged onto his Tipper account, his fingers already moving across his keyboard to send out a post confirming he’d be live again in a couple of days for his birthday. A couple replies came in, with the same people from his chat telling him to take it easy, but there was nothing more than that. As he was about to exit out of the window, he spotted a post from a certain account pop up on his recommended feed and he stopped, his cursor hovering over the X in the corner.

Well, leave it to Alhaitham to keep things short and sweet.

Kaveh hummed as he read some of the replies.

At least, he thought, they were idiotic enough to comment such things directly under Alhaitham’s post.

Unfortunately, Alhaitham wouldn’t see it for a while. Kaveh wasn’t sure of his social media habits, but he certainly didn’t seem like the type to be constantly monitoring his pages or sending out updates. And if he secretly was, he still wouldn’t see it seeing as he was probably still en route to Liyue and he wouldn’t be arriving for another couple hours if Kaveh had to guess.

He wondered if he should ask Alhaitham about it. He’d be meaning to.

After the situation in Alhaitham’s chat a while ago, Kaveh had been waiting for it to come up in one of their many conversations since then. It was futile, of course, to think Alhaitham would bring up the issue himself, but it had happened in his chat—shouldn’t he feel at least a little apologetic about what was said about Kaveh? Hmph, not everyone could be as nonchalant as Alhaitham when it came to being insulted.

Kaveh sighed yet again and, unsurprisingly, it did nothing to ease the weight on his shoulders. In fact, his shoulders seemed to sag even more.

There was no point in digging himself into this hole, especially considering the fact he was alone in the apartment. There would be no one around to pull him out of the overthinking and insecurity. Such a daunting task had been added to Alhaitham’s responsibilities when they started living together; there truly was no one better suited for the job either. Alhaitham knew Kaveh well enough to know the right things to say and the appropriate reactions to have when his shame reared its ugly head and revealed the cruel thoughts that echoed in the darkest parts of his mind.

“Breathe in, Kaveh,” Alhaitham always said.

Kaveh closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. He could feel the ghost of Alhaitham’s warm hand on his back and hear his low voice in his ears as he counted to ten.

“Now, breathe out,” the Alhaitham in his memory whispered.

He exhaled.

He had to remember.

He was a good person and he was extremely good at what he did. Though it was currently being pushed to the recesses of his mind in his anxiety, he knew that most of the time and he also believed it. He knew he was a welcomed presence in the lives of many people as well, not a nuisance to be shrugged off. He was genuine and kind-hearted, and yes, perhaps a bit sensitive, but these were not faults—they were strengths and evidence of his beliefs. He was tough and he knew better than to let narrow minded people and their opinions get under his skin.

He was, after all, the only and only Kaveh, appearing rather delicate on the surface but absolutely unshakable at his core, even if it didn’t feel that way sometimes.

Alhaitham, however hard-headed he could be, was the one who had reminded Kaveh he was all these things.

Though the actual words Alhaitham had used were a bit more factual than the meaningful ones being repeated in Kaveh’s mind, Kaveh knew him well enough to be able to parse the intentions behind them and know they were the same thing. What Kaveh was thinking of himself now was exactly what Alhaitham thought, and really, that was all that mattered in this situation.

Kaveh finally opened his eyes, feeling some relief.

Slowly, he stood up from his chair, collecting his phone from his desk, and left his office. It was nearing dinnertime, but he felt too tired to make something, so he quickly called the small restaurant down the street to place an order for pick-up. Standing in the kitchen, leaning back against the counter as his order was repeated to him, he was able to relax.

He reminded himself of where he was as he looked around.

Alhaitham’s mug from earlier was still in the sink, right beside the one Kaveh had used at breakfast. The decorative towels Kaveh had insisted on purchasing were hanging on the handle of the oven, wrinkled and crooked the way they always were since Alhaitham didn’t see the point of the towels remaining decorative. The fruit bowl filled with apples and squishy zaytun peaches Kaveh had to throw out soon remained untouched on the island counter, and beside it, a stack of Alhaitham’s books he was certain he’d told him to put away the other day. All of it was proof of Kaveh’s existence, simple as it was.

That’s right—he was here, at home, in their apartment, where he was welcomed and where he belonged.

“Thank you,” Kaveh said after he was told the total and when his food would be ready. “I’ll be there soon.”

When he walked to the front door a short while later, the weight across his shoulders was lighter and his stride more steady. Collecting his wallet and his keys, slipping on his shoes, and turning off the light as he stepped out of the front door all brought Kaveh a little closer to reality. But it was when he was finally out on the sidewalk that he felt secure once more, the warm summer air kissing his face the same way Alhaitham’s warm breath did, reminding him he was never really alone.

It was a short walk to the restaurant and Kaveh arrived just in time to be handed the bag with his food, handing over the payment as he thanked the young girl at the register. The smell of his favorite dish and the heat that radiated from the bag at his side were a great comfort as he returned home, the insecure thoughts melting away as the hunger he realized he’d been feeling made his stomach churn.

He quietly entered the apartment, flicking all the lights back on as he returned to the kitchen to set down the bag of food. As he untied the knot on the bag, his phone began to ring in his pocket. Pulling it out, he saw Alhaitham’s name at the top of his screen, a picture of when he was younger displayed in the background.

“Hello?” Kaveh said, putting the phone to his ear. With one hand, he resumed his task of getting his food out of the bag. “Haitham?”

“Are you all right?” were Alhaitham’s first words.

Kaveh hummed absentmindedly, his focus on getting the takeout boxes out of the bag and neatly setting them on the counter. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Kaveh,” Alhaitham said. “I know you ended your stream right after I left. I was watching.”

It caught Kaveh’s attention. He stopped short of opening the first box, sighing as he shifted his weight to one leg and dropped his hand onto the counter. “I’m fine now.”

“I should’ve stayed home.”

That was ridiculous. Kaveh snorted. “And what would that have changed?” he asked, unable to keep the sarcastic tone subtle. “It wouldn’t have stopped those people from coming into my chat to leave those comments.”

At this point, Kaveh had let it go, for the most part. He’d banned them, reported them, and he’d leave the consequences to whoever was in charge of that—that was all he could do. It’d been hurtful and it had filled him with dread to read such comments about himself, but he’d spent the better part of the last couple hours bringing himself back down to a neutral headspace. He was fine.

“They’re undeserving of your attention,” Alhaitham said matter-of-factly. “So I hope you’re not wasting your time on thinking useless things again. You know it does you no good.”

Kaveh had to take a few seconds to process the words, finding them familiar but unable to place where he’d heard something similar before. And once he remembered, he could only chuckle, because where had he heard that before? Oh, right, he’d heard it in reference to himself during Alhaitham’s stream the other night.

“Of course I’m not,” he said.

Alhaitham sighed, the sound staticy through the phone.

In the brief moment of silence meant for Alhaitham’s unspoken disappointment to sink in, a different realization hit Kaveh, hot and hard like a slap to his cheek. What did Alhaitham mean by he had been watching? Had he seen everything? That could only mean that once he was in the car that’d take him to the airport, he had decided to watch Kaveh’s stream.

“Who are you?” Kaveh asked suddenly. “You don’t use your actual account, so who are you? Acer? Number Three? Captain?”

“If I were Number Three, how could I possibly chat and stream simultaneously? I know you’re much smarter than that, Birdy.”

Kaveh jumped a little at the name but quickly collected himself and scowled. “Hey, answer the question—who are you?”

Alhaitham hummed and Kaveh could hear the teasing smile he had to be wearing as he seemingly took his time in coming up with an answer. “What makes you so confident you’d even recognize who I am if I told you? And after I’ve taken all these precautions to ensure you wouldn’t find me in the first place, why would I give up my identity so easily? You know I’m not the type.”

There was definitely a teasing tone to his questions and it made Kaveh huff sharply, the heat immediately rising to his face. “Haitham, you—hmph, fine! Keep your identity, Mr. Darknight Hero. But I will say it isn’t fair you know who I am in your chat.”

“Am I not allowed to have a Darknight Hero persona? It’s not my fault you simply didn’t put in the same amount of effort to hide yourself,” Alhaitham replied, all nonchalant. “Or did you want to be caught? You can be honest.”

“Of course I didn’t want to be caught! I was absolutely humiliated!” Kaveh exclaimed. His gaze returned to his boxes of food and he remembered he was actually very hungry. He opened one of the boxes, reaching for the utensils he’d gotten from the drawer when he’d started unpacking the box. If it was dinnertime in Sumeru, it was nearly well past it in Liyue. “Never mind that for now. Have you had dinner?”

“Yes, a dinner was prepared for everyone invited. I’m in my room now.” There was a pause. “You’d like it.”

Kaveh hummed, bringing a spoonful of rice to his mouth. “I’m sure I would. I’ve heard Liyue is very beautiful, especially its older architecture,” he said, slowly chewing on his food. “Take a picture or two, yeah? I’ll take that over whatever souvenir you’re thinking of bringing back—you always pick the tackiest, most touristy things when you travel for work, you know? It’s disrespectful, frankly, both to me and the place you’ve visited.”

“I’ll think about it,” Alhaitham said, clearly amused.

“Thanks.”

There was a long stretch of silence, only filled with Kaveh’s chewing and Alhaitham’s steady breathing on the other side of the phone. It wasn’t awkward or uncomfortable. If anything, it was a comfort to the both of them. Kaveh could close his eyes and imagine he was eating dinner with Alhaitham like most given nights. And while he was sure listening to the sound of chewing through the phone wasn’t pleasing, Kaveh knew Alhaitham didn’t like being away from home and being like this probably gave him something a little familiar to listen to in the background as he arranged his belongings in an unfamiliar room.

“Chew carefully,” Alhaitham said, his voice firm, after a while. “If you choke on your food, who’s going to save you?”

Kaveh swallowed what he had in his mouth. “Well, I’d hope you’d at least have the decency to hang up and dial the emergency number for me if you heard me choking to death. You wouldn’t want to have someone die in your apartment, right?”

“No one is going to die in our apartment as long as you chew your food properly,” Alhaitham stated calmly.

“Not even my mother nags me this way,” Kaveh teased, pushing aside the now-empty container. “I’m finished, so I suppose I live another day.”

“Good,” Alhaitham said.

Slowly, Kaveh began to collect his empty containers and dispose of them. He turned the faucet on to wash his hands, moving to hold the phone between his cheek and shoulder.

“You probably have an early morning, so you should be getting to bed now,” he said as he dried his hands off with a towel—one which was not decorative. He grabbed the phone again and leaned back against the counter. “What time does the event start?”

“Midday,” was the reply. “I’m going to be busy after that. I have a signing, apparently.”

“That’s a given.” Kaveh carefully wiped down the counter. “It’s not often the great Scribe appears at these events. Of course everyone is going to want to take advantage of it.”

“I’d rather be left alone,” Alhaitham quipped.

Kaveh laughed, shaking his head. “I know you would, but they don’t. They’re your fans, Haitham, so indulge them. Take a picture, sign a print, shake a hand—you’re capable of that, at the very least. It’s not like they’re going to be asking for you to kiss them or telling you—”

“I’m not going to kiss anyone.”

“I didn’t say that.” Kaveh brought a hand to his face. “No one is going to ask you to kiss them, and if they do, say no. You’ve always had boundaries, so just keep those with your fans. I shouldn’t have to remind you. Just… be nicer than you normally are about it, all right?”

Alhaitham huffed. “You don’t want me to kiss anyone?”

Kaveh’s hand quickly moved to the top of his head, fingers curling around his hair as a sudden wave of irritation ran through him. “Ugh, you’re just hearing what you want to, aren’t you? Kiss whoever you want, or don’t—I don’t care! I’m just telling you to be pleasant.”

“Understood,” Alhaitham said.

“You really get on my nerves,” Kaveh said, dropping his hand from his head.

His heart was pounding in his chest. What the fuck was Alhaitham saying? Was he planning on kissing someone while he was away?

Thinking about it, it actually made a lot of sense. Being roommates, there was little they could hide from each other. If Alhaitham wanted to go around kissing people and potentially bring them back to his hotel room to do other things, now would be the time since Kaveh wouldn’t be around to hear it. He would be none the wiser upon his return home.

He was certain it had to be an occurrence at such events. While all the announcements and panels were the main attraction of the event, there were probably afterparties, officially sponsored or not, that attendees were invited to join once the night came and it was there where everyone was able to truly let go. Confident in his knowledge about Alhaitham, Kaveh knew afterparties weren’t somewhere he would go willingly, but given that he was surrounded by people he was somewhat friendly with, it was extremely likely he’d be dragged along anyway. And in such cases, drinks flowed freely, conversation came easy, and strangers became ten times more attractive.

Okay, so what if Alhaitham had a one-night stand? It’d be good for him, Kaveh thought. That was all he would say. If anything, he should look into capitalizing on the opportunity as well.

“What?” Alhaitham asked, his voice loud and his tone surprised.

It was unusual to hear such emotion in his voice when he was normally cool and collected, and it caught Kaveh off guard. He blinked a few times. “What?”

“No, I just… I just”—he cleared his throat—“I thought I heard, uh, someone knock. Just now, at my door.”

Strange, Kaveh thought. Alhaitham was being strange. Stammering and stuttering was not typical Alhaitham behavior. Never in Kaveh’s years of knowing him had he ever seen or heard him be unnerved to the point of losing his way with words.

“Oh, well, go see who it is. I should go now, too,” Kaveh said.

“Are you going straight to sleep?” Alhaitham asked. He sounded almost winded—strange indeed. “Or are you going to work on something?”

“I’ll probably watch a movie in bed and see if I pass out at some point.” Kaveh definitely needed to wind down after today, so something lighthearted would be nice. Maybe he’d be able to find that Fontanian comedy that’d been released a couple months ago. He heard it was good. “Just something I don’t have to give much thought to.”

And suddenly, it was like Alhaitham was back to normal. “I’m sorry I’m not there to stream and provide you with the mindless entertainment you’ve been passing out to.”

Kaveh laughed. “Ha! It’s hardly entertaining when you don’t even speak half the time. And I’d rather not have to read more comments attacking me simply for existing on the same site as you, so no thank you. I’ll gladly pass.”

“I am sorry about that,” Alhaitham said, the teasing tone suddenly gone. “If you give me the list of those who left comments today, I’ll have them dealt with on my end—I mean, since I saw someone say they were people who watched me. I can’t allow that.”

An apology… from Alhaitham? Absolutely remarkable.

“Of course,” Kaveh said, deciding not to comment on how he couldn’t believe he was actually capable of apologizing. It wouldn’t be right to look down on Alhaitham’s apology, however rare it was, and take away from its sincerity. “But you saying you’ll deal with them is making me a little nervous. What, are you planning to kill them or something? You’re not supposed to really be the Darknight Hero.”

“Kaveh,” Alhaitham said seriously.

“Fine, fine.” Kaveh smiled a little. “I’m okay, Haitham.”

“I know.” There was a small sigh. How odd. “Go now.”

“Good night,” Kaveh said. “And don’t be so cold to your fans tomorrow. Otherwise you might lose them all by the time you come back.”

“Good night, Kaveh,” was all Alhaitham said.

After ending the call and finishing tidying up the kitchen, Kaveh retreated to his room, settling into his bed and pulling his laptop over his thighs. He took a moment to scroll through the options of what to watch. Then, upon spotting one title, he smiled to himself and knew he found what he’d watch. The film began, directly jumping into the action, and after a drawn out opening sequence, when the title briefly appeared on screen accompanied by dramatic orchestral music, Kaveh laughed, hard enough his shoulders were shaking.

“The Darknight Hero, huh?” he said to himself, shaking his head. “How ridiculous.”

⁂

Kaveh found that he hoped Alhaitham was getting some action in Liyue. Because if he was, then at least one of them was doing good for himself.

He had considered it yesterday, seeing as it was his first entire day without Alhaitham around, but he had been swamped with work, having to get up early to attend a virtual meeting. Then he spent the rest of his morning going over the plans the company that hired him had been working on through calls and even more virtual meetings.

The stress of it all had given him the worst headache he’d ever had and by the time dinner came around, he just wanted to rest. It was unfortunate he had to cancel his plans of going out on the town, especially since he managed to convince Tighnari to come out as well, but going somewhere when he was this exhausted would make for a miserable time. So he’d called it an early night and gone straight to sleep.

Today was no better.

Kaveh was once again caught in a loop of emails and virtual meetings over the tasks he’d been assigned, working on revisions only to be asked to change something else shortly after. It was frustrating, but there was little he could do as someone who really wasn’t part of any party involved in the project. So, he sucked it up and adjusted the plans he was working on based on the requests from the client.

By the time lunch time came around, he had another pulsing headache, but he pushed on until he was done with the revisions and was able to say goodbye to his colleagues an hour earlier than he expected.

At least he didn’t have a stream today, he thought as he ate an early dinner at his desk.

“Ugh,” he let out, pushing his half-eaten food aside. “This is the worst.”

He needed to get out. How long had it been since he’d been able to? Between his actual work and streaming, Kaveh realized he had little reason to leave the apartment. He went out but only when he had to, and most times, Alhaitham accompanied him. And it wasn’t like they ever went anywhere for fun. The only places they visited in recents weeks had been the store or the bazaar, and that was only out of necessity.

Speaking of Alhaitham, he must’ve enjoyed the first day of the event, right? He hadn’t called Kaveh last night to let him know how it went—not that he was obligated to, of course—and he didn’t send any sort of message all day today either. It was only a two-day affair so he’d be back tomorrow afternoon, but didn’t he miss the apartment and sleeping in his own bed the last two nights? Had Kaveh and his well-being not crossed his mind either? Some friend he was…

Unless Kaveh had been right in thinking Alhaitham would go out with his fellow streamers for a night of fun and he’d managed to find someone to bring back to his room there. That had to be it! But there was no way to find out for sure. He certainly wasn’t going to ask either.

Then it hit him: Alhaitham was rather popular, so there would definitely be more than one post about him in regards to the event on any social media site. If he wouldn’t tell Kaveh himself, he’d just have to find out secondhand, and if he assumed the worst, well, he’d blame that on Alhaitham.

Grateful he was already at his desk, he brought his hands to the keyboard, opening up Tipper and typing Alhaitham’s username into the search bar. Sure enough, a handful of posts popped up with him tagged, varying from thanking him for signing something to tipping off where they’d spotted him as if he were some sort of local legend. Then there were a couple of posts with photos, most of which captured Alhaitham from a distance, but one of them was a photo with him.

It was bizarre yet awfully amusing to see such a sight: a young woman with a cute smile, holding up a hand sign as she posed, while Alhaitham seemed a bit awkward at her side, clearly keeping some space between them. His hands were clenched into fists at his side, wearing a neutral, if not disinterested, expression. At least her caption was nice, something along the lines of how lovely it was to meet him and how sweet he was to her in the moments before and after the photo was taken. Kaveh wasn’t sure sweet was a word he’d use for describing Alhaitham’s personality, but it was proof that he’d taken Kaveh’s words a little seriously at least.

Scrolling some more, Kaveh found something more interesting.

The photo Cyno had attached was taken somewhere dark, as there was a bluish, almost purple, glow behind the three men in the shot, but they were all illuminated by the flash of the camera. The three were seated on a loveseat of sorts and Cyno was in the middle, with an arm around the other two—Alhaitham to his right, Cerberus to his left, and both of them had a drink in hand.

Kaveh paid little mind to Cyno and Cerberus, focusing his attention on Alhaitham.

Compared to the photo from earlier with the young woman, he was wearing something else here. In the earlier photo, he had worn something simple and comfortable. But in this one, he was donning a neat black shirt with the top buttons undone and it seemed to be tucked into whatever fitted black pants he was wearing. Now that wasn’t something Alhaitham usually wore, even when they went out to some place like this at home.

He had to be looking to sleep with someone. Kaveh knew it.

Upon another inspection of the image, Kaveh realized there was a flush to Alhaitham’s face as well, meaning that Cyno had the photo taken after a handful of drinks. It usually took a while to get Alhaitham tipsy enough to point of it showing on his face, so this had to be from when they were well into the night.

Alhaitham’s eyes were also captured in an almost half-blinking state, but Kaveh knew it probably wasn’t the case. After some drinks, he tended to get this expression on his face, almost as if he were tired and his eyelids were drooping, but it really leaned more to the side of being sultry than sleepy.

The combination of Alhaitham’s flushed face, drunken expression, and fitting clothes made for something dangerous. Reading more replies to the post, Kaveh found he wasn’t the only one who thought so. People were so bold to be publishing their thirsty delusions under a post made by one of Alhaitham’s friends, but he supposed that if threat of the subject of such thoughts seeing their replies had never stopped anyone before, it wouldn’t stop them now either, especially when Alhaitham seemed to use his social media very infrequently.

He found another interesting post, made a few hours before Cyno had posted his but hours after anything sent out during the event.

He scoffed a little as he went back to the search result, Cyno’s post popping up again.

It was impossible for whoever it was to be Alhaitham’s roommate because Alhaitham’s roommate was him, and he certainly wasn’t in Liyue. If whoever that was had been acting all buddy buddy with Alhaitham, there had to be more to it. Not just anybody could act that close to him.

Well, good for him, Kaveh thought.

It was rare to have Alhaitham let loose, so Kaveh was glad he had done so. Good for him, his mind repeated. And good for whoever that guy was because Alhaitham wouldn’t sleep with just anyone, would he? Kaveh might not have been able to figure out his type the other time, but he was sure he had to have some high standards, even for his one-night stands. They definitely had to be pretty and well-spoken for Alhaitham to be interested. Not that they would remain so if they were sleeping with Alhaitham though.

The thought of Alhaitham making someone lose their words and kissing them messy left an image in Kaveh’s mind he could’ve gone without.

Being tipsy, Alhaitham would be a bit clumsy, he imagined, with wandering hot hands and messy top lip kisses; his chest rising and falling as he panted heavily, unable to catch his breath yet refusing to part from his lover’s lips. Kaveh could already hear the sigh of delight Alhaitham would let out as his lover palmed at his front, putting pressure on his half-hard cock in his tight pants.

Would he be the type to want more of such teasing, pushing his hips forward to feel more friction in his pants, mouth falling open in a silent moan? It would be unexpected, but Kaveh wouldn’t be surprised if he indulged in such torment. Knowing him, he’d return the favor himself, his warm hand reaching down to palm at his lover’s front.

Kaveh reached down, his own hand pressing down near his pelvis, and he couldn’t help but let out a fluttery sigh, closing his eyes at the sensation. Yes, just like that, he thought as he pressed the heel of his palm down a bit harder and a bit closer to his center, adding a circular rubbing motion and curling his fingers around his own forming erection in his pants. Alhaitham would do it just like that.

And his other hand—oh, his other hand would be busy as well, Kaveh thought, his own free hand slipping under the hem of his shirt to touch his chest, the pad of his thumb brushing over one of his nipples and his body immediately reacting with his nipple perking up into a small nub. The gasp that left his mouth as he pinched his nipple and rubbed himself through his pants was swallowed by the sudden heavy air in his office.

Teasing his chest and palming at his bulge, Kaveh was unable to close his mouth, his head falling back against the headrest of his desk chair as he squirmed to the side. Not that Alhaitham would allow something like that anyway. He would ensure he kept Kaveh’s mouth busy, his hot tongue swirling around Kaveh’s, their combined spit dripping from the corner of his lips.

Kaveh moved on from his chest, snaking his hand up through the hole of his shirt, the chilly air hitting his bare abdomen and chest as the movement made the fabric of his top hitch all the way up, and he stuck two fingers in his mouth. He swirled his tongue around his fingertips and then sucked on them as if it were something else in his mouth, something like Alhaitham’s tongue, and he could almost trick himself into tasting the alcohol Alhaitham had drunk this way.

“Don’t have much to say now, do you, Kaveh?” Alhaitham would ask right before kissing Kaveh again, desperately, the wet sound filling the air.

Kaveh whined, fingers still in his mouth, as he pressed down a bit harder on his confined cock. He needed more than this. He wanted—

“Haitham,” Kaveh mumbled around his fingers. He moved his hand faster, harder against himself. “Mmng, ah.”

Finally, Kaveh came, his back arching a little and his thighs tensing up as he did. There was a soft pop! as his mouth opened in a loud gasp, his fingers finally free, and his hand massaged his bulge to chase the last of the feeling.

He opened his eyes slowly as he caught his breath and then a sudden wetness against the warmth of his palm through the fabric of his pants brought him back to reality. Quickly, he raised his hand from where it was on his bulge and then pulled the other out from under his shirt, letting it fall back into place. Holding his hands up and looking down at the mess in his pants, a horrific feeling filled his body.

What the fuck had he just done? Had he really just come in his pants thinking of Alhaitham?

“This is so sick,” he whispered, hearing how horrified he was, as he finally wiped his dirty hands on his thighs. Again, he turned his palms up to stare at them. “What… is wrong with me?”

Why had he even imagined something like that? He was only thinking of what Alhaitham might’ve done last night! The lover in question wasn’t supposed to be him.

Archons, this was only further proof that Kaveh needed to get out. How embarrassing it was to be his age and coming in his pants with just some touching to the thought of his friend like some mindless, horny teenager. Not even as a teenager had he been so easy!

More than that, this was also evidence he spent far too much time with Alhaitham. If Kaveh wanted to masturbate to the thought of someone, surely there was someone better to do it to that wasn’t his roommate. But his mind drew a blank—he hadn’t slept with anyone in far too long so the image of his last partner was nothing but a blank canvas in his brain. Not even a celebrity came to mind.

Just Alhaitham.

Alhaitham in his neat black shirt and tight black pants, staring right back at Kaveh, face flushed while wearing a flirty expression. Kaveh inhaled deeply as he examined the image on his monitor again, taking note of Alhaitham’s relaxed posture. He was leaning against the back of the loveseat with his legs spread open, one arm draped across the back of the loveseat, disappearing behind Cyno, while the other was laid across the arm of the loveseat, resting his half-empty drink on it.

The other day, Kaveh had been sitting on the divan with Alhaitham kneeling on the floor in front of him, making him smaller than he seemed, but it was a little more appealing if he switched the positions in his mind. Kneeling in front of Alhaitham sitting on that loveseat, Kaveh would be able grab his knees and pull his legs apart even more, giving him more space to settle between. Smoothing the palms of his hands up along Alhaitham’s strong thighs, Kaveh would have easy access to the front of Alhaitham’s pants. It wouldn’t be hard to scoot in there and rest his cheek against the muscle of his inner thigh as he carefully undid the belt around Alhaitham’s waist.

Anyone would be able to do something like that to Alhaitham, he thought. It didn’t necessarily have to be him.

Kaveh stared hard at Alhaitham in the photo. Had he no self-respect, posing like this in a photograph meant to be posted publicly? If Kaveh had so easily been able to imagine sucking him off there, he couldn’t even begin to imagine what the freaks in Cyno’s replies could come up with.

“Ugh, no,” he said, rolling and turning his chair away from the desk before his mind could conjure up another image of Alhaitham in any state of undress.

Kaveh needed to get a grip.

He had to stop with these strange thoughts—he would be no better than those aforementioned freaks if he continued this. And it would be embarrassing if he couldn’t look his roommate in the eye when he returned tomorrow afternoon. Alhaitham would definitely call him out if he was acting strange and he would press on until Kaveh revealed the real reason for his avoidance. And how was he supposed to tell him he had gotten off with him in mind? It would make for a terribly uncomfortable situation.

He imagined how Alhaitham might react to that kind of confession. He’d definitely frown, disgusted with Kaveh, but a deep blush on his face would easily give him away. Would he be curious, would he want to try? No, Kaveh thought, he wouldn’t.

He would never admit he wanted to reenact Kaveh’s dirty delusions and make them reality, being as aloof as he was, but he was the type to store and keep such information for future use. Then… would he get himself off at the thought of Kaveh doing the same?

Kaveh hummed, displeased, as he realized he was getting hard again. Well, it wasn’t the first time he’d gotten hard thinking of Alhaitham and it wasn’t the second, so what was a third time? But this time Kaveh wouldn’t just ignore it and he definitely wasn’t coming in his pants with just some groping again. If he just got these urges out, he was sure he’d be fine later on. He’d just get it all out of his system right now.

One and done, he thought.

It was as easy as that.

He undid the button of his pants and pushed the fabric aside, feeling how wet and sticky his underwear was from a moment ago. Without the confines of his pants, his cock was a little freer, but it wasn’t enough. He tugged down the front of his underwear and as he gently wrapped his fingers around his shaft, the thick, almost slime-like, come coated his fingers. It made it easier to jerk off, giving just enough lubrication for his hand to go from the base of his cock to the tip. Kaveh brought his other hand to his mouth, biting down on the knuckle of his index finger, to suppress his moans.

Kaveh imagined Alhaitham in his bedroom, sitting at his desk, doing the same thing, his labored breaths making his chest rise and fall rapidly. What kind of sounds would Alhaitham make when getting himself off? Would he whine, moan, or would he try his best to hold back, biting down on his bottom lip, the stifled sounds getting caught in his throat?

“Kaveh,” Alhaitham in his mind panted, his voice a little hoarse. “Is this what you wanted?”

“Nng, yes,” Kaveh whined. He ran the pad of his thumb over the head of his cock, smearing over what was beginning to leak from the slit and combining it with the rest of the mess he’d made. “Ah, mmng.”

He came a moment later, the cloudy and almost watery release dripping down the side of his hand.

Wordlessly, he took a couple of minutes to clean himself up, grateful he kept a box of tissues on his desk, and stood up. Buttoning his pants was a painful reminder of what he’d just done and he carefully stepped out of his office, the wetness in his pants seeming to spread further and further the more steps he took. At least he was alone, he thought. There was no need to worry about being caught as he made his way to the bathroom.

Once he was stripped bare and under the hot spray of the shower, he placed a palm on the tiled wall and dropped his head in shame. The water ran over his ears, but it wasn’t loud enough to drown out his thoughts.

There was absolutely no way he would be able to face Alhaitham now. He was stupid for thinking something like this would work. Of course these thoughts wouldn’t just leave his mind after getting off once. If anything, it’d only made the situation worse!

“What have I done?” he asked himself.

⁂

“We’re actually playing the game today,” Kaveh said, smiling as he read the incoming messages. “We’re doing something special today. Can anybody guess?”

He waited, just taking in all the messages wishing him a happy birthday, the smile on his face slowly getting bigger.

“Thank you for all the well wishes,” Kaveh said after a moment of reading everything. He placed a hand over his chest. “Even though I’ve been doing this for a few years, it’s my first time streaming for my birthday. It means a lot that people would come and spend time watching me.”

It was strange to read such messages, but not in a bad way. He felt touched. These people were strangers hidden behind usernames, and yet, they cared for someone like him and in turn, Kaveh cared for them.

He cleared his throat. “Well, since today is my birthday, we’re going to have a party—virtually, of course. We are making a self-sim today, and then, using the multiplayer mod, we’re going to celebrate. Let’s see… Ayaka, Captain, Vulpes, and a few others are going to be here. Where will I be hosting the party? Hm, of course I should build our apartment, right?”

Things were going as planned for his birthday stream so far.

More people than usual were chatting, if only to wish him a happy birthday, and there was much celebration in forms of gifted subscriptions and small donations, which he was incredibly grateful for. As a result, he met some of the birthday stream goals he’d set up after having chosen them with careful consideration, and that meant his viewers would be able to get some perks like voting on the theme for a future project or see him do silly things.

Kaveh spent quite a while creating himself in the game, picking clothes that most suited his personal style and physical attributes that best matched his own with some minor adjustments. It didn’t exactly look like him, but it was close enough for everyone, including himself, to be pleased with the result.

Then it came time to build his apartment. He promised everyone he would make it quick, but he knew he’d nitpick at his own work and spend more time on it than necessary, especially when people asked questions about the layout or decorations.

“Vulpes and I have met in person before, but he hasn’t visited me!” Kaveh explained, pausing his building to talk a bit. “We’ve videocalled a lot, and I gave him a tour when we officially finished decorating our apartment. Oh, what does my roommate do? He plays a lot of games. No, not Sims, but more… FPS games?”

He knew he was getting red in the face. Alhaitham, huh…

Kaveh had purposely never revealed too much about Alhaitham on his stream, only having mentioned him as his “roommate” when he recounted anecdotes, signed off saying he needed to make them dinner, or had to excuse himself on the odd occasion he knocked on his door to ask something while he was live. All his followers knew about his roommate was that he was just that: his roommate—not even his name was known as he’d made sure to never say it on stream.

It wasn’t that Alhaitham had said to not reveal who he was, but Kaveh felt it was better they kept themselves separated. When he had brought this up, Alhaitham had simply shrugged, saying he’d do whatever Kaveh decided on. And he had decided on keeping their living situation secret. The content of their work didn’t overlap, so there wasn’t a need to let the entire world know they lived together as they’d never cross paths online, at least not deliberately.

Looking at the small situation they were in now, revealing they were roommates might clear things up. After all, revealing something like that would completely change the tone of the situation as people would simply look at Alhaitham’s comment as banter and Kaveh’s reaction as a quip back to him. But that was something Kaveh wasn’t comfortable with.

He could see the situation growing into something beyond their control and eventually, all Kaveh would be was “Scribe’s roommate”. There was little pride in gaining a following through that. When Kaveh moved out, what then? Of course he knew what would happen. He’d suddenly be less interesting to everyone who followed him just to get another glimpse of Alhaitham outside of the ScribeOW channel.

Kaveh laughed. “Oh, no. FPS games are too much for me. As I said before, my aim isn’t too good.”

He continued building, adding some decorations to the room he was currently working on, which was Alhaitham’s. After adding his desk and trying to copy his set up with what items he had available in the game, he moved on to picking a bed that best matched the one Alhaitham had and a few decorations that could pass for what he had in his room.

As he set things out, he continued talking: “Also, aren’t people a little mean on those kinds of games sometimes? I can’t stream things like that—I’m supposed to be family friendly.”

After having watching Alhaitham’s streams, he knew how some teammates could be and it made him cringe to think such things were captured on recording. When it came to disrespectful comments on Alhaitham’s stream said by his teammates, he often muted the player and then reported them for inappropriate communication without any other acknowledgement, but it didn’t change that it’d all still been streamed live for others to hear. With the image Kaveh was trying to curate, he couldn’t have that happening in the first place.

“Familiar?” Kaveh cleared his throat. Of course the person who pointed it out was someone who watched both of them. But there was no way they’d recognized Alhaitham’s room, right? It was barely visible in his streams! “I’ve probably made similar rooms since the swatches are so limited. I use this item all the time. Since I’m pretty much done with my roommate’s room, let’s move onto mine.”

He hummed along the music playing in the background as he picked out the items that best matched what he had in his room. As someone had said before, the proportions of the game differed from real life so he had to maneuver the items to fit in the space he’d given himself, letting out a few complaints when things didn’t fit as he imagined. He received encouraging messages and others teasing him, which only made him shake his head and laugh.

Halfway through creating his room, there was a knock on the door and Kaveh looked away from his monitor to see Alhaitham had opened the door already, just enough to pop his head in. Clumsily, Kaveh tapped at the buttons on the control panel to mute himself and took off his headphones.

“What is it?” he asked, already feeling his palms begin to get sweaty.

Alhaitham had arrived right before Kaveh had started his stream, which had given him a reason to be avoidant and not warmly welcome him home. He hadn’t seemed to mind much, letting Kaveh lock himself away in his office after his initial greeting, and he’d probably been busy unpacking his belongings as he was the type to do so right away instead of letting his things sit in his suitcase in an abandoned corner of his room. With that, they hadn’t seen each other for more than those few seconds.

But now, facing Alhaitham, Kaveh realized he was in a much more serious predicament.

“How much longer are you going to be?” Alhaitham asked, his voice quieter than usual. Kaveh was looking at his lips and he had to remind himself to focus, turning his gaze up to meet Alhaitham’s eyes. The eye contact only lasted a couple of seconds as Kaveh had to look away. Alhaitham didn’t seem to care or notice. “I need to know so I know when I can call and place our order for dinner. Or would you rather spend your birthday watching your character eat pixel food?”

Kaveh huffed a little, moving his chair back and scooting to the edge to lean closer to the door. “Only a couple more hours,” he said, just as quiet, his eyes flitting between Alhaitham’s face and a little trinket he had on his desk. Alhaitham nodded and was about to close the door when Kaveh raised a hand to stop him. “Wait, if you’re going to pick something up, could you get something to drink on the way back?”

“Kaveh,” Alhaitham said, sounding almost disapproving.

“Please?” Kaveh placed his hands together in a pleading motion. He definitely needed a drink if he had to sit through dinner with Alhaitham. There was no way he was doing this sober. “Haitham?”

Alhaitham sighed. “Fine.”

He stepped back out, closing the door as quietly as possible.

Relieved that Alhaitham would grant him his request and that he hadn’t made a complete fool of himself, Kaveh picked up his headphones and turned his attention back to his stream as he put them back on. He pushed the button that would unmute him and adjusted his mic, clearing his throat. “Sorry, my roommate came to ask—huh?” He looked at his settings, realizing he was still muted. Instead of trying the button on the control panel again, he manually unmuted himself in the streaming program. “That’s strange. My control panel didn’t work. Anyway, where were we?”

He looked at his chat and immediately stopped. Carefully, he scrolled up to read the messages he’d missed, and he found he had missed plenty from the pixelated peanut gallery.

“I’m so sorry,” Kaveh blurted out, feeling the heat rising to his face. “I thought I muted myself. I don’t know what happened. Ugh, this thing”—he messed with his control panel, pushing a couple of buttons to see if it was still working properly, and he realized it wasn’t—“I guess it broke or disconnected, I’m not sure.”

Everyone had heard his entire exchange with Alhaitham. How absolutely horrifying.

He could only cover his face with his hands to hide his embarrassment. After a moment, he placed his hands on his cheeks, still hot to the touch but looking at his stream preview, he wasn’t as red in the face as he was a moment ago.

“I’m sorry, everyone. Yes, that was my roommate. Please don’t make any inappropriate comments regarding, uh, his voice or anything.”

Kaveh didn’t need to add any more fuel to the fire that had started yesterday.

Everyone seemed to let the subject go fairly quickly, moving back to topics related to the game, which Kaveh gladly welcomed and began to speak about, answering the questions that came in and explaining how he’d go about celebrating his birthday with his friends in the game.

However, that one person—basileosethos—was making Kaveh a bit anxious. They had seemed to recognize Alhaitham’s room even with the inaccurate construction of it in the game and now they were mentioning how Alhaitham’s voice itself was familiar. At least no one seemed to pay them any mind and the comment was lost in the countless others, buried along with any other comment on Alhaitham’s voice or requests asking him to bring Alhaitham on camera.

“Anyway, since we’re done building my apartment, let’s invite some friends over for a party,” Kaveh said.

As he typed out a message to the group he’d created with his friends for the occasion, an alert played and he returned his attention to his stream activity.

“Caution!” Kaveh exclaimed, clapping his hands together. “Thank you, thank you, thank you. Don’t worry about not watching in a while—people get busy! I’m glad you could be around for this stream. Next time, we’ll invite you to the party as well.”

And like that, the topic of his roommate was swept under the rug.

Kaveh watched the replies to the message come flooding in. All he could do was laugh as his face got hot.

“Everyone, please,” he said, eyes moving back and forth from the stream preview to his chat. For the second time in the last ten minutes, he covered his cheeks with his hands in an attempt to hide his blushing. “Don’t… don’t say inappropriate things in chat.”

But the thing was, there really was nothing inappropriate about the jokes being made. It wasn’t like they were teasing Kaveh as a person or putting down what he did either. At most, it was poking fun at the idea of someone having watched hours of content they didn’t find particularly interesting all for a glimpse of someone they liked.

And something so ridiculous… could never happen… to someone like Kaveh. Not even if he wanted it to.

“Don’t misconstrue Caution’s intentions, please,” Kaveh said, finally taking his hands off his face.

It was a little embarrassing to consider, but of course, a stranger couldn’t possibly like Kaveh as more than a streamer. He was, to put it simply, another type of entertainer and it was his job to act a certain way. It wasn’t like he was completely disingenuous—he was still the same person on and offline for the most part—but there certainly were parts of himself he presented to his viewers that were more polished to make people a little more comfortable. It was that polished version he presented that they liked, not necessarily him.

And even if it was true and this particular viewer cared for Kaveh as more than just that, he couldn’t be in any sort of relationship at the moment. Besides the fact they were a stranger to him, Kaveh already had…

Well, living with Alhaitham was a commitment in and of itself; he needn’t bring any other sort of serious commitment to his life.

He cleared his throat. “A gentle reminder we both are real people. I’m sure they have someone they care about in their life as I do. It’d be disrespectful to make jokes like that, right?”

“Wait!” Kaveh raised his hands from his mouse and keyboard to wave frantically. “No, wait! Do not misunderstand!”

Yes, Alhaitham was someone Kaveh cared about, but it certainly wasn’t like that.

He was his roommate, his junior, a close friend—of course Kaveh would care about him! Even though his thoughts last night had gotten out of hand, Kaveh’s feelings about Alhaitham were definitely and strictly platonic. For a moment, the word romantic did flash in Kaveh’s mind, the memory of the other when he’d gotten his gift from him coming to the forefront of his mind, his small smile as he’d complimented Kaveh. Well, they were close, and extremely close at that! It could be easy to confuse a gesture like that as romantic.

Besides, anyone’s heart would beat like crazy in such close proximity to someone as handsome as Alhaitham. He wouldn’t deny that, but he also didn’t need to reveal it to everyone.

“I am not dating my roommate,” he breathed out, hearing the exasperation in his own ears. “‘You don’t like your roommate?’ Of course I do, just not that way. My roommate would agree. He would never date me, never someone like me. I’m the last person someone would ever choose to date, haha!”

Kaveh blinked as he re-read the messages sent by Caution. What the fuck?

“Is psychoanalyzing streamers a hobby of yours?” Kaveh tried to joke, knowing the smile on his face looked as forced as it felt.

He knew they were just words on the screen, but he couldn’t help but hear a specific voice in his head as he read over them yet again. He’d heard similar things from Alhaitham in the past. It was straight to the point, hitting where it hurt the most even though it was clear that wasn’t the intention, and if it were Alhaitham, he would be mostly uninterested in how it affected Kaveh. Seeing as there was no follow up message to lessen the blow, he could now say the same for Caution.

“You are just like him,” he huffed, knowing he must be red all over in embarrassment.

“It’s fine, everyone,” Kaveh sighed. He waved his hand. “Let’s forget that. No more talk about my roommate. We’re supposed to be celebrating, remember?”

Kaveh wasn’t going to let a stranger on the internet make him feel bad. More than that, he wasn’t going to let a stranger tell him what he felt for Alhaitham. There was no reason for Alhaitham to reject Kaveh. It wasn’t like he was planning on telling him—because there was nothing to tell! Again, Kaveh’s feelings were friendly and nothing more. Affection was not the word he would use to describe the way he felt towards Alhaitham.

Perhaps he’d had a lapse in judgment yesterday, but it wasn’t a reflection on what he wanted.

Kaveh laughed, his shoulders shaking. A wave of relief surged through his body as more teasing comments were made. “No, no. I’m sorry. Things got a bit out of hand,” he said. “We’re all just friends here, yes? Let’s keep it that way. Now, onto what we were supposed to be doing.”

Thankfully, things ran much smoother from there.

He was able to talk with his friends and have his in-game celebration without much trouble. Even as the viewer count began to dwindle, he carried on with the same energy, thanking everyone who sent a message congratulating him. For the most part, the incident with Alhaitham was quickly forgotten, especially as early viewers left and newer ones came in, and there was no more psychoanalyzing him from anyone. He was able to immerse himself in the celebration, even though he was all alone in his office in reality, going as far as putting on a party hat and popping confetti poppers as his friends sang to him through the voice call for everyone to see while their characters in-game did the same.

He was tired out now as he sent off his viewers to watch someone else’s stream.

“I’ll be taking a break until next week, so I will see everyone then,” he said, waving his hand at the camera and moving his attention between that and his second monitor.

Unfortunately for everyone waiting on Kaveh’s reaction, the timer ran out, redirecting everyone to the person he’d chosen to raid. He followed as well after ending his stream. He didn’t acknowledge the message in the chat of said person, only sending a couple messages before excusing himself, seeing his viewers copy-pasting the message he always used when he raided someone.

He looked around his desk, seeing the mess of the confetti poppers. It’d been a bit overboard, but it had definitely been worth doing with everyone at the moment, so he didn’t mind. As he stood up and began to collect stray confetti from all over, the door to his office opened.

“Kaveh,” Alhaitham said.

The best part about streaming today had definitely been the fact that he’d gotten to celebrate with his followers. But something notable had been that his anxiety about Alhaitham had been eased and, for a moment, forgotten. However, it came right back at the sound of his voice.

“I’m cleaning,” Kaveh murmured, keeping his focus on the growing pile of multicolored paper in his palm.

“You can do that later.”

Kaveh didn’t realize Alhaitham was in the office until a hand grabbed his wrist, making him jerk in surprise. He watched as all the confetti he’d collected fell from his palm, some of it landing on his desk but most of it fluttering down to the floor. Kaveh opened his mouth in disbelief, turning his head up to stare at Alhaitham.

“Haitham! Why would you do that?! It’s all over the floor now.” Kaveh curled his fingers into a fist and Alhaitham’s hold on his wrist tightened.

He had an unreadable expression on his face. “You wouldn’t look at me,” he said as if it was obvious.

“I acknowledged you.” Kaveh cleared his throat. Admittedly, he did have to turn his gaze away once more, focusing on the bookshelf behind Alhaitham instead. “Since when do I need to look at you for you to know I’m acknowledging you?”

“Don’t you want to?” Alhaitham asked, taking a step closer. Kaveh couldn’t help but look back, inhaling deeply as the space between them lessened. “Look at me?”

“Why would I want to look at your face?” he asked, huffing. He wasn’t sure if it was out of annoyance or his body trying to get rid of the heat building inside him.

“Are you saying I’m ugly?” Kaveh didn’t dignify that with a response, but it only seemed to urge Alhaitham on. He moved his face closer, tilting and moving his head to the side to get in his line of sight when Kaveh tried to look away again. When he spoke, his warm breath fanned across Kaveh’s pursed lips. “I’ll have you know plenty of people find this face rather attractive.”

“Ha!” Kaveh exclaimed. He was unsuccessful in his attempt to jerk his hand out of Alhaitham’s hold, but it didn’t stop him from trying again. “Like who, those pretty boys you probably sleep with? Tell me, is that face of yours the reason why you got someone to go back to your hotel room while you were in Liyue then?”

Alhaitham exhaled. “Hah?”

“Don’t act stupid.” Finally, Kaveh managed to tug himself out of Alhaitham’s grasp. He massaged the irritated skin at his wrist with his other hand, glaring at him. “It doesn’t suit someone like you.”

At this, Alhaitham chuckled, his head dropping down to look at the floor. He brought the hand that had been holding Kaveh’s wrist up to his face to hide his mouth, but the sound was barely concealed. “Where did you get that idea?” he asked, looking back up at Kaveh. From the glint in his eyes, he could tell he wasn’t angry. If anything, Alhaitham seemed… delighted. “Why are you saying something so ridiculous? I went to Liyue for work, not for fun.”

“As if! I saw—”

The hand over Alhaitham’s mouth moved faster than Kaveh could react and before he knew it, Alhaitham was holding his face, his thumb and index finger on either side of his lips, squishing his cheeks. His other fingers were pressed against his jawline. It drew out a strangled complaint from Kaveh, and the sound died in his throat as he was unable to open his mouth to let it out.

“Kaveh,” Alhaitham said slowly, his breath hitting Kaveh’s face.

His face was close again, too close. Any closer and their lips would brush against each other. Kaveh couldn’t help the shaky breath he let out, its warmth mingling with Alhaitham’s heated breath. So warm, so hot. He suddenly felt lightheaded and his knees weakened, making his stance falter, only for Alhaitham’s other arm to come up and wrap around his waist to hold him up. He nearly had their bodies pressed together, the only thing keeping their chests from touching being Kaveh’s arms, his fingers curled into fists to avoid touching any more of Alhaitham than he needed to. The heat he felt around them seemed to increase tenfold.

“I’m telling you, I didn’t kiss anyone. Is that not what you wanted to hear after making such a bold accusation?”

Still holding his face and squishing his cheeks, Alhaitham closed his eyes and leaned in, his lips petal soft against Kaveh’s. The action made Kaveh close his own eyes reflexively.

It started with a small, tentative peck, just pressing their mouths together, but the lack of rejection from Kaveh must’ve come across as an invitation because Alhaitham came right back, more confident. The arm around Kaveh’s waist tightened as he was pulled closer, his arms still caught between their bodies, and the hand firmly holding his face shifted to his jawline, gently holding him in place.

Their lips locked momentarily, Kaveh’s top lip caught between both of Alhaitham’s, and their noses bumped against each other as they moved their heads to get a better angle.

All the blood in Kaveh’s body rushed up to his head and he could feel it across his cheeks and the tips of his ears. Finally, he let his final guard down, uncurling his fingers to grasp at the front of Alhaitham’s crewneck, tugging and tugging, mindlessly hoping to close all the space between them. He was positive his skin was hot under Alhaitham’s warm touch, but it didn’t seem to deter him. His mouth kept moving, almost too quick for Kaveh to keep up, and after a moment, Kaveh realized the soft, whiny moans echoing in the office were from Alhaitham, desperate and urgent, getting caught in his throat.

Surely, Kaveh was dreaming right now. He had to be because there was no way he was kissing Alhaitham right now. Somehow, he was stuck in his dirty fantasies from last night—that had to be it. Because this couldn’t be real.

The light smacking of their lips as they kissed filled the room, punctuated by the breathy moans Alhaitham couldn’t seem to hold back. The sound of surprise Kaveh wanted to let out got caught in his throat as Alhaitham attempted to lick his tongue into his mouth. He tried again, his wet tongue swiping over Kaveh’s bottom lip, and Kaveh opened his mouth, finally gasping. It was enough for Alhaitham, whose tongue brushed over his bottom lip once more before moving into his mouth, against Kaveh’s tongue.

It was infinitely better, Kaveh thought as their tongues messily swirled around each other, to have this than his fingers in his mouth. Their combined spit did begin to spill from the corner of Kaveh’s mouth, just as it had in his imagination, but Alhaitham didn’t stop sucking on Kaveh’s tongue, the same needy moans being breathed into Kaveh’s mouth now.

Kaveh was lightheaded. He wasn’t sure if it was from the kissing or not, but he needed to breathe.

He let go of the front of Alhaitham’s top, patting his chest. “Ha-haitham,” he managed to gasp, finally opening his eyes. “Mm, wait.”

Thankfully, Alhaitham did stop. He pulled back, but he didn’t let go, his arm still firm around Kaveh’s waist and his hand still holding his face. Kaveh took him in: flushed and panting with swollen lips and wearing the most needy expression Kaveh had ever seen. It was nothing like the Alhaitham in his mind he’d jerked off to yesterday. He had to admit it was much better than that.

He hummed, raising his hand to grab Alhaitham’s face the way he had done to him earlier. Alhaitham made no noise, allowing Kaveh to turn and inspect his face as he pleased. His cheeks weren’t plump, but his skin was still soft; it was warm where the pads of Kaveh’s fingers were pressed. He was usually handsome, yes, but like this, Kaveh could only think of him as pretty.

So, this was the streamer everyone lost their minds for?

Ha, if only Alhaitham’s fans could see how pathetic he really was, whining like a dog after some kissing. Not that Kaveh was any better—he was certain his own sounds had mixed in there with Alhaitham’s without his knowing—but one probably would expect a certain level of patheticness from someone who looked as feeble as he did. Given his personality, he was sure people thought of Alhaitham as someone well-put together, even in moments of passion; it was almost refreshing to see the opposite was true.

“With a face like this”—Kaveh breathed out slowly, looking over Alhaitham again—“it’s no wonder you haven’t.”

Because Alhaitham had to know how outrageous he looked when he was this way. The Alhaitham that Kaveh knew would never show this kind of expression to anyone. He supposed he was one of the few lucky ones who got the chance. Not that he’d be able to brag about it though.

He let go of Alhaitham’s face and pushed the arm around his body away. He had to otherwise he might do something unnecessary, like kiss Alhaitham again. And he realized now this was very much real life and not his fantasies where he could get away with something like that. At least, that’s what he suspected. Alhaitham didn’t fight Kaveh, letting his arm fall back to his side and the hand on his face fell away as well, his fingers flexing awkwardly before that too returned to his side.

Looking down, Kaveh found something surprising. Alhaitham was hard, the bulge in his pants obvious, and Kaveh was curious as to how he hadn’t felt it before with their bodies pressed together, then he realized he was in a similar situation. Well then.

Dinner was on the table, probably still in the bags and takeout boxes given to Alhaitham when he went to pick them up, and it was probably getting cold. It was dinner for Kaveh’s birthday. His birthday… right. He thought back to a moment ago, the sound of his friends’ voices ringing in his head, the mess of confetti underneath his desk, and the well wishes given to him by strangers online who cared about him for some reason.

A year older, a year wiser, someone had said.

Kaveh was wise, at least enough to know that what he and Alhaitham had done was not right. This was his friend, his roommate. There was a difference to imagining lewd situations and actually acting them out with Alhaitham. The sudden guilt of what’d he’d done easily ruled over his arousal. In a couple of minutes, his boner hopefully would go away on its own, thanks to his shame. And if it didn’t, he’d deal with it on his own in the privacy of his room while thinking about something other than this moment and someone other than Alhaitham.

Alhaitham had just gotten home and he’d even been nice enough to buy dinner for Kaveh’s birthday, and what did he do? He kissed him. No, it was definitely more than a kiss with the way they’d been sucking at each other’s face. Why, why, why?

“Ah,” he let out. “Excuse me.”

He stepped around Alhaitham and out into the main room. Looking to the table, he spotted the takeout bags and a bottle of his favorite cheap wine.

“Kaveh,” Alhaitham said from somewhere behind him.

“We should eat,” was all Kaveh said. “Before the food gets cold.”

A long moment of silence swallowed Kaveh’s words before the response rang out: “All right.”

There was nothing he could do but act like he hadn’t heard the dejection in Alhaitham’s voice.

⁂

Kaveh was mostly uninterested in the stream today.

As always, Alhaitham was too engrossed in the game to pay attention to his chat and there wasn’t really anything interesting being discussed, so he had put the window with the stream playing on his second monitor as he worked on some editing for a video he’d be posting later in the week on his main one. It made for great background noise as he scrubbed through the recording he’d taken earlier and after some time, it was nothing but a small hum in the back of his mind as he began to cut up the recording and discard what he didn’t want.

He wasn’t sure how much time Alhaitham’s match took, but his voice pulled Kaveh’s attention back to the second monitor only after he had cleaned up most of his recording.

“I actually do think this counts as him throwing my games,” Alhaitham said, a small teasing smile forming on his lips. He navigated to the roster of the match he’d just finished, clicking on one of the usernames, his cursor hovering over one of the options. “Should I avoid him?”

“I’d be open to it.”

A moment later, something popped up on Alhaitham’s screen and reading it, Kaveh saw it was an invitation. Alhaitham accepted and once they were queued up, he returned his attention back to his chat.

Alhaitham hummed thoughtfully. “Well, there are no stories to share about it. As for if I met Tartaglia…” He joined the in-game voice chat, where Tartaglia already was, his icon and name popping up in the corner as he spoke about something Kaveh didn’t understand. “Hey, did we meet at Stormcon?”

Tartaglia stopped speaking, his name and icon disappearing momentarily. He’d been caught by surprise and if Kaveh joined his stream, he was sure he’d be able to know what kind of expression he was making. “We did!” Tartaglia exclaimed suddenly, his voice cutting out a little. “Scribe is pretty cute in real life! He seems super serious, but he’s just a bit shy. We had lunch together on the second day with a few others but he was so quiet! Hm… oh yeah, I’m definitely taller than him. He’s so s—”

“All right, that’s enough of that,” Alhaitham said, cutting him off. He left the voice chat before Tartaglia could finish his sentence and then gave a quick pointed look at the camera. “Does that answer the questions?”

Alhaitham’s chat was right.

Shy and cute were not words he would use to describe Alhaitham. Especially not after the other night.

Kaveh got embarrassed thinking about it, bringing his hands to his hot face.

After the awkward birthday dinner, Kaveh had not entertained any unnecessary thoughts about Alhaitham and it was easy not to with the amount of work that was piling up on his plate. He had no time to think about Alhaitham and the way he’d looked after some rough kissing, too busy trying to catch a break between all his responsibilities, and slowly but surely, the memory was pushed to the back of his mind, on its way to being forgotten. And he was glad for that. It was better if they both forgot what happened that night.

Alhaitham didn’t mention it either so he took that as a sign that he regretted it as much as Kaveh did. That itself filled him with relief.

After a few days, Kaveh relaxed enough to stop tiptoeing around him, avoiding his eyes in conversation, jumping when Alhaitham placed a hand on his lower back, or flinching away when he leaned in to say something into Kaveh’s ear. Of course these things meant nothing to Alhaitham—they never had in all these years—so Kaveh just had to calm down and act like he used to.

He had to be cool and collected, like Alhaitham.

And he had been.

At least until a few nights ago. It’d been nearly two weeks and even with the slight hiccup in the days following the incident, their dynamic had remained the same: Kaveh complained, Alhaitham rebutted, and they left it at that. He was sure they were back to normal after the initial awkwardness, which admittedly had mostly been on Kaveh’s part, so why… why did Alhaitham have to ruin it?

Kaveh had been doing some light research on his tablet for a collaboration he’d be working on during his stream, sitting comfortably on the divan with a glass of wine and a plate of sliced fruit to accompany it on the table. Alhaitham was in his room, already a handful of hours into streaming, so he had kept quiet as he worked, listening to some music on some old headphones Alhaitham had given him earlier in the year.

Then, Alhaitham had called out his name.

“Kaveh,” his muffled voice called out a second time.

He stood from his spot on the divan, setting his tablet on the table and pulling off the headphones. He walked to Alhaitham’s door and pulled it open a little, just to peek. He found Alhaitham standing at the foot of his bed and when he looked at the desk, he saw the monitors and the PC turned off.

“Do you need something?” Kaveh asked.

It wasn’t uncommon Alhaitham asked for something when he finished streaming. If he hadn’t eaten before or during his stream, he’d politely ask what was for dinner and if Kaveh was feeling particularly agreeable, he’d warm it up and bring it to him, saving Alhaitham the trouble of doing it himself. Sometimes he just asked if he had already washed up so he could go into the bathroom. On the very rare occasion, he requested a light snack or a refill of his water bottle.

“No, just—”

He waved Kaveh over. He had no choice but to step into the room, tiptoeing across towards Alhaitham. He kept an arm’s distance between them and held his hands behind his back, shifting his weight from one foot to the other anxiously as he waited. Alhaitham seemed apprehensive, looking down at his bedspread and biting down on his bottom lip.

He was being strange again. And it set off a million alarm bells in Kaveh’s mind.

“Kaveh, can I kiss you again?”

The question came just as Kaveh opened his mouth to complain, the excuse that he was taking too long to ask what it was he wanted on the tip of his tongue, so when Alhaitham finally looked at him, his mouth was agape. “W-what?” was all that could come out.

The thumping of his heart got quicker and he could hear the blood rushing in his ears. Thankfully, Alhaitham didn’t seem to be all cool and collected either. There was a faint blush across his cheeks and his hands were balled into fists at his sides. Still, his gaze didn’t falter. “Answer the question, please.”

Kaveh sputtered some more. “N-no! What is wrong with you?”

“No, you won’t answer the question or no, I can’t kiss you?”

“No to both.”

Alhaitham clicked his teeth. “Now, that is rather contradictory, Kaveh.” He took a step closer and Kaveh took one back in response. “By saying no, I can’t kiss you, you’re answering the question. So, tell me again: no, you won’t answer the question or no, I can’t kiss you?”

Kaveh didn’t want to answer the question because he knew what his answer would be. He was sure Alhaitham knew the answer to it as well. “No, I won’t answer the question,” he said carefully. “But… Now, you tell me honestly: have you been thinking about kissing me the last two weeks?”

There was no immediate answer but Kaveh noticed how Alhaitham’s fists tightened and how he shifted his weight back onto his heels, clearly caught off guard at being called out. If Kaveh were not so tense himself, he’d laugh. Did Alhaitham get so little action that he had to make do with the memory of kissing Kaveh to satisfy himself? Something about that seemed ridiculous, especially considering Alhaitham’s appeal. It would be fairly simple for him to find a partner if he kept his standards realistic for a quick night of fun. Another part of it fueled Kaveh’s ego, a surge of confidence rising in him.

Poor, little Alhaitham was so desperate to kiss him again! Oh, how the mighty have fallen, he thought to himself.

“What?” he asked, now being the one to take a step towards Alhaitham. “Cat got your tongue all of a sudden?”

With Alhaitham so clearly on his back foot, Kaveh felt nearly invincible. It wasn’t often he had the upper hand in conversations with him, so he would make the best of it. After all, he had managed to push the memory to the back of his mind while it seemed to remain at the forefront of Alhaitham’s. He wasn’t going to let that go very easily, at least not for a while.

Kaveh took another step forward, leaning in a bit to inspect Alhaitham’s face. He looked serious with his eyes dark and his lips pinched in a tight light, and Kaveh might’ve thought him upset if it weren’t for the way the color flushed over his face, disappearing underneath his gray hair as it crawled up his ears. The sound of Alhaitham swallowing, hard, was clear in Kaveh’s ears and his eyes flicked down to observe the way his throat bobbed.

“Nervous?” he whispered, bringing his gaze back up to Alhaitham’s. “Haitham?”

He had to regret asking the question now. Of course Alhaitham would be confident enough to ask, but perhaps he hadn’t taken into consideration the possibility of being rejected—he hardly ever did, seeing as he was hardly ever rejected. Well, unfortunately for him, Kaveh wasn’t that easy and he wouldn’t fold so quickly, even if it was what he wanted. One would think Alhaitham knew better after all these years.

The only positive for him was that Kaveh wasn’t going to drag this out any further. He couldn’t deny it—he wanted it, now that the opportunity had presented itself.

He hooked an arm around Alhaitham’s shoulder, his fingers combing through the hair at his nape, and brought him close, but he didn’t kiss him. Alhaitham’s arms remained at his side stiffly, a small grunt sounding from the back of his throat. Kaveh placed his other hand on Alhaitham’s firm bicep as he closed the space between them, pressing their mouths together once, twice, three times. He pulled back, his eyes crossing in an attempt to look at Alhaitham’s rosy face.

“Am I kissing you or are you kissing me?” he asked, hearing the disapproval in his voice. “It’s like I’m kissing a sta—”

Alhaitham finally moved, his warm mouth catching Kaveh’s top lip and his strong hands grabbing Kaveh by the waist. They fell over onto Alhaitham’s bed with how quick it happened, their grunts swallowed by the other. Kaveh opened his legs to let one of Alhaitham’s knees settle there and after a moment, he raised them up and wrapped them around Alhaitham’s hips, locking his ankles behind him.

It was rushed, the way Alhaitham’s lips moved against Kaveh’s, and bold, the way his tongue licked into the warmth of his mouth the same way it had the first time. Kaveh could hear the muffled sounds in his throat, sounding as desperate as the way Alhaitham was kissing him, and he closed his hand around the fabric of Alhaitham’s shirt, tugging and tugging.

The hand at Alhaitham’s nape also tugged, weakly grasping the hair and pulling, in silent encouragement. Alhaitham let himself be briefly pulled back, breathing hard, and he looked Kaveh over for a moment, his eyes moving quickly between Kaveh’s eyes, his mouth, and his neck. Kaveh must’ve imagined the way Alhaitham subtly nodded before he leaned back in, this time moving towards his neck.

Kaveh dropped his head back against Alhaitham’s mattress as contact was made, giving him free reign of his neck. “Mmng, Haith—ah!” He felt the wetness of Alhaitham’s tongue against the base of his neck and then a pinch of pain as he began to suck at the skin there, the edge of his teeth biting down on him simultaneously making him feel dizzy. He tried pinching Alhaitham but it wasn’t enough to stop him. “S-stop, Hai-haitham.”

Alhaitham moved to the other side of Kaveh’s neck, licking a stripe over his collarbone before kissing a few spots, repeating the same sucking and biting as before. Kaveh’s hand moved higher up on Alhaitham’s head and he grabbed a fistful of his hair, pulling hard to get him off.

“What are you?” he asked breathlessly. He sounded annoyed in his own ears, which meant he probably sounded pissed in Alhaitham’s. “A leech?”

The only response he got was a silly smile from Alhaitham and a light chuckle. How absolutely bizarre, Kaveh thought in a moment of clarity, to see him smile like that. “You’re right,” Alhaitham whispered, moving back to Kaveh’s mouth. “My apologies.”

My apologies, my ass!

While he and Alhaitham had kissed for a while after that, he always seemed to return to all that biting and sucking and kissing at Kaveh’s neck. As a result, Kaveh looked like he’d been attacked, the bruises having turned into an awful deep, purplish shade by the next morning. They were still there, barely yellowing around the edges, and it had made his stream earlier a living nightmare. Wearing the highest turtleneck he had available in the middle of summer had basically been an advertisement that he’d been up to something naughty and even though he was family friendly, a small part of his chat was not interested in being so as well.

Kaveh huffed.

He had to endure all the comments of “Kaveh really is dating his roommate!” and “he must be soooo rough!” during his stream while Alhaitham was getting called cute and shy. If only they knew!

Kaveh almost scoffed.

Innocent was even further down the list of adjectives he’d ever use for Alhaitham. Again, just look at what he’d done to him the other night! He couldn’t possibly let his poor chat continue to say something like that, even as a joke. It’d be easy for this gag to become a well-accepted fact, especially for casual or new viewers in the future, and that would be an injustice to real innocent people.

Kaveh found he didn’t care today that he wasn’t logged into the other account, though he was surprised to see his real username—hadn’t he been blocked? When had Alhaitham unblocked him? He should’ve realized it when he was able to watch without issue despite not remembering if he’d logged into the other account—because how could Alhaitham sit there and accept these types of comments? He was a dirty, dirty man with dirty, dirty tricks. And he clearly made no effort to hide it. Kaveh immediately noticed the way his eyes lit up, even through his shitty camera, as he spotted the messages.

He clicked his tongue, a smirk forming on his face. “Funny seeing you here, Kaveh,” he said, his tone a combination of light sarcasm and teasing. “What, are you having trouble sleeping?”

“I’m annoying?” Alhaitham huffed out a chuckle, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms over his chest. “That is very rich coming from someone like you. If you want me to shut up, then come and make me.”

Kaveh slammed his hands down on the keyboard as he let out a huff. The blood rushed to his face as he watched the chat begin to move ten times quicker than it had been a moment ago.

“Oh, I’ll be waiting.” Alhaitham grinned again. “So make sure you come.”

There was a ping and the queue bar at the top of Alhaitham’s screen changed to Match Found. Even though his attention turned away, his chat kept commenting on it and Kaveh’s notifications was going crazy with the number of mentions he was getting. Most of them were jokes and some were random messages, but some of them were much worse than that, with words he’d rather never see again.

But one message stood out the most. Kaveh noticed Alhaitham typing it out as well, his attention shifting away from his monitor and off to the side for only a moment as he waited for his character to respawn.

Kaveh was going to get Alhaitham back. There was no way he was getting away with this.

He just had to bide his time and while patience wasn’t usually something he had in high supply for Alhaitham, he’d gladly make the exception tonight. It was already past midnight and the stream run time was well-past the five hour mark now, which meant Alhaitham would end his stream within the next hour or so. He’d probably just come out for a late night snack as they’d already eaten dinner together earlier.

It had been a bit tense, Kaveh had to admit, when he was so obviously hiding the marks on his neck right in front of the person who’d made them. Alhaitham hadn’t said anything as they ate, but Kaveh couldn’t ignore the looks he received when Alhaitham thought he wasn’t looking. His gaze seemed to pierce a hole through the fabric of his turtleneck, lingering on the spots the bruises were as if he had memorized just where he’d put handiwork; as if staring hard enough at Kaveh’s neck would make them last longer. It had sent a horrifying chill down Kaveh’s back. There was no way Alhaitham was thinking of doing something like that again. Kaveh’s poor neck would never recover from another assault.

Kaveh had kept quiet, deciding not to poke the animal, and kept his focus on breaking the delicate meat of the fish he’d prepared for them. It was near impossible to bring it to his lips, however, seeing as Alhaitham’s eyes would trail up to stare every time he did. Every time Kaveh closed his lips around a bite of food, Alhaitham was looking intently, brilliant green eyes capturing every twitch of Kaveh’s lips as he chewed. It was annoying and uncomfortable, and it made Kaveh want to squirm all through dinner.

“Not hungry or not to your liking?” Kaveh had asked when he was finished and had started collecting the dishes from the table.

Alhaitham had only eaten half of what he’d been served, which wasn’t unusual but given the dish, Kaveh had expected a clean plate.

“It was fine,” was the response he received. His eyes followed the quick movement of Alhaitham’s tongue, flicking out from his mouth to lick his top lip, and he nearly jumped when he realized Alhaitham had been watching, had noticed his staring. One of the corners of his mouth twitched up, a flash of amusement glinting in his eyes for just a second. “I might indulge in something sweet after I stream. We’ll see how it works out.”

Like Kaveh would let him have any dessert in peace!

He muted Alhaitham’s stream and hid the chat to avoid reading any more comments made about or to him, and returned his attention to his editing, beginning to piece together the recordings and speed them up appropriately. By the time he was finishing up, Alhaitham was waving at his camera and then the stream cut, meaning he had ended it. A glance at the clock in the corner of his monitor told him it was a little past one in the morning.

Since he was just about done with his work, Kaveh hurried to save and shut everything down, remembering Alhaitham’s stupid smile and his teasing tone to reignite the fire in him. He left his office, turning off the lights before closing the door firmly, and crossed the main room to the hall with steady strides. But a sudden nervousness sprouted in his chest, moving down to his stomach, as he lingered in front of Alhaitham’s bedroom door.

He’d made it this far already. There was nothing to do but swallow down the knot in his throat and grab the doorknob, twisting it and pushing the door open a little. He was sure he’d been ten times more confident on his way over.

“Haitham,” he said, unable to stop his voice from wavering, stepping inside the room.

Alhaitham wasn’t at his desk and he wasn’t at his bed. Instead, he was in front of his closet, in the middle of pulling his shirt off, the muscles on his back flexed. He began to turn around, shirt half-off.

Kaveh let out a wordless exclamation and stepped back out into the hall, pulling the door shut. There was no denying his heart was beating loud and hard in his chest, the warmth of his blood pumping up to his face—he could feel it when he pressed a hand against his chest, the quick thump, thump, thump against his suddenly sweaty palm.

“Kaveh?” Alhaitham’s muffled voice called out. The doorknob, with Kaveh’s hand still weakly holding it, began to turn and there was a sliver of light that slashed a thin line across the hall floor as it began to open. Kaveh pulled on the doorknob so it remained closed and tightened his grip when Alhaitham began to jiggle it from inside his room, quietly repeating Kaveh’s name once, twice with a heavy sigh. “Can you let me open the door?”

If Alhaitham wanted the door open, he’d force it open. He was stronger than Kaveh after all. So, why give him the illusion of choice? Kaveh finally let go of the doorknob and the door opened, revealing Alhaitham’s silhouette. Tall and broad, backlit from the light coming from inside his room, he leaned against the doorframe, his arms coming up to cross over his chest. Kaveh held his breath. He was still shirtless, the fat of his pecs plush against where his arms were pressed across them.

“Is there a reason you’re here?” he asked.

Kaveh began to stammer. “I, just—you… I—”

Fortunately, Alhaitham interrupted and saved him from further embarrassment. However, his solution came in the form of a kiss, his hot breath fanning across Kaveh’s mouth right before their lips locked. Kaveh tried to move back, a whine in the back of his throat and his face scrunched up, but Alhaitham followed, his hands uncrossing and reaching for his hips to hold him in place.

After a moment, Alhaitham pulled away just enough to lick across Kaveh’s mouth. Kaveh opened his eyes, feeling dizzy, and he stared once again at how Alhaitham licked his lips, slightly amazed by the teasing smile that followed.

“Tastes like peaches.”

Kaveh’s breath hitched and his heart skipped a beat in his chest. Yes, he wanted to say, he’d cut up a zaytun peach for a snack while he’d been working earlier. But he was frozen in place.

Alhaitham leaned back in, laughing softly against Kaveh’s mouth. Right before he kissed him again, he spoke in that same teasing tone he’d used during his stream earlier: “I told you I might have something sweet after I streamed.”

⁂

The last thing Kaveh expected was to enter some sort of silent agreement with his roommate that involved more intimate acts.

The first time, which had been on the day of Alhaitham’s return from Liyue, had mostly been an accident between the both of them, fueled by Kaveh’s fantasies but fanned by Alhaitham’s teasing. The second time had mostly been spurred on by accident on Kaveh’s part but entirely purposeful on Alhaitham’s, driven by his seeming inability to erase the first time from his mind. And the third time had yet again been purposeful on Alhaitham’s part, aided by his know-how on how to get Kaveh riled up enough to have him knocking on his door.

Looking back on it, Kaveh should have known. Alhaitham never did anything by accident.

Well, he was partly to blame as well.

He made no move to deny Alhaitham when he came around the fourth time, his large hands holding Kaveh’s hips in place and his warm mouth kissing the base of Kaveh’s neck as he stood behind him in the kitchen. Kaveh had been caught by surprise, nearly dropping the plate he’d been washing, but he was quick to recover and tilt his head to the side to give Alhaitham free range.

“Just not where it’s visible. I still have to stream later,” Kaveh had said, and that alone was enough confirmation to cement his approval of the sudden arrangement.

After that, when Alhaitham had gone away and he was finished washing the dishes, he considered the possibility of having made things awkward between them by purposefully allowing something like that. But to his surprise, Alhaitham treated Kaveh no differently the rest of the day. Kaveh had felt weird, just as he had the previous times, but then he realized… he was fine. Sitting at the table with Alhaitham for dinner, he didn’t imagine them doing anything unseemly like he had before. It was just as he thought before: physically getting everything out got rid of the weird thoughts he had.

Since then, Alhaitham had come to Kaveh, sometimes asking and other times not, looking for kisses. Sometimes, Kaveh gave him a hard time, leading him on until Alhaitham had enough and just took what he wanted, kissing him until his lips were bitten and swollen; other times, he gave in relatively easily, allowing Alhaitham to quickly press a couple kisses to his lips before shooing him away only to have him come back moments later for something more, something deeper. There were moments it got really heated and maybe once or twice had Kaveh gotten Alhaitham to come in his pants with some methodical touching, but mostly, it was just kissing. That was all!

And there really was no rhyme or reason for when and why he showed up, which led Kaveh to believe Alhaitham really was just looking to relieve himself, even if it was through something as simple as kisses and touching. It was kind of pathetic, seeing as he could easily leave the apartment and find someone to sleep with, but Kaveh supposed he was grateful he was spared of the awkwardness of running into different strangers trying to quietly escape their apartment in the morning. Alhaitham also didn’t seem like the man who needed complete release every time, so it was fitting that he was satisfied enough with what he got from Kaveh.

Besides, Kaveh secretly needed the same kind of release. He hated to admit it but he hadn’t received any kind of affection in a very long time, and while Alhaitham was not the most ideal partner given their relationship, it sure was nice to kiss him. It made Kaveh wonder even more why he didn’t just go out and find someone to help him out. He certainly wasn’t inexperienced when it came to it. His talent was definitely being wasted on something so ridiculous as this.

Someone more special to Alhaitham might be able to sort him out in the long-term since their little arrangement was definitely not sustainable. At some point, Alhaitham—and Kaveh, especially Kaveh—would want more, and it was better for him to receive that from someone he was in a real romantic relationship with.

“Again, I’m not dating my roommate,” Kaveh said, hearing the annoyance in his voice.

“Scribe, that jerk!” Kaveh exclaimed. He knew he was getting red in the face, but whether it was out of embarrassment or annoyance he didn’t know. “He’s doing it to make fun of me, I just know it. What an ass.”

Of course he knew this was happening.

Most times he was there to witness it himself on his alt account. Alhaitham never said anything when he did it, simply typing it in his own chat and letting people go crazy with it while he turned his attention back to his game, and Kaveh was half-convinced it was a bit he’d come up with to tease him. He knew he was watching, and that’s why he did it! The people in chat joked about Alhaitham’s dedication every time, also convinced it was a gag meant to make fun of Kaveh, and some even lamented when the number was any lower than ninety.

It drove Kaveh crazy, but he couldn’t say anything on his alt account to defend himself without causing suspicion and he certainly wasn’t going to use his verified account to berate Alhaitham again.

He had brought it up the other day to Alhaitham, in between a series of slow kisses he was stealing after lunch, but all he’d received in response was a shrug and a half-hearted “I don’t know what you’re talking about” when it was so obvious he did. The nerve!

Kaveh shook his head, biting down on his bottom lip to contain his laugh. “All right, that’s enough,” he said when he felt well enough to speak. “Thank you, thank you, thank you for the one hundred gifted subs, and welcome back, Caution.”

“We’re building a library today! Specifically, one you might find in Mondstadt.”

Kaveh moved the camera around in game and began to give a tour of what he had so far. It was a larger build, meaning he wouldn’t finish it today, but he’d made a decent amount of progress. The compliments came in heavy, even from those who had been watching the entire time, which made him smile in gratitude.

There was a light knock on Kaveh’s door and he quickly muted himself, simply holding up a finger to the camera to excuse himself before looking towards the door. “Come in,” he said.

Alhaitham opened the door and stepped inside quietly. He stood still, blinking down at Kaveh, the hand behind his back now holding the doorknob on the inside of the door.

“To what do I owe the visit?” Kaveh asked, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms over his chest.

“How much longer are you going to be streaming?”

Kaveh shrugged. “Eh, not much longer. I know we have to leave at six, but I’ll be done long before that.” He squinted his eyes as he looked at Alhaitham again. This time he really looked at him—the way his eyes were flitting around, the way his free hand was at his side, fingers curling and uncurling into a weak fist. “Could it be you’re here for something else?”

When he received no response, he raised his eyebrows.

“Really?” Kaveh asked.

Alhaitham must be insanely pent up. How incredibly bold of him to come to him in the middle of a stream.

He looked back at his game and then at his chat on the second monitor. They were waiting, watching… and yet, Kaveh couldn’t deny Alhaitham. He unfolded his arms with a heavy sigh and beckoned Alhaitham over, stopping him when he was a couple steps away. He slid his chair away from his desk and turned it a little so he wasn’t as visible to the camera. He reached up to grab the front of Alhaitham’s shirt and pulled him down, placing a light, chaste kiss on his lips. Alhaitham chased after him when he pulled away, his hand coming up to cradle Kaveh’s cheek.

“One more,” he muttered against Kaveh’s mouth before capturing Kaveh’s bottom lip in his mouth in a quick, messy kiss. It definitely wasn’t one more kiss he received. When Alhaitham finally pulled away, he breathlessly whispered, “Good job.”

“Ha!” Kaveh exclaimed, flattening the palm he had on his chest and pushing him away. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. If Alhaitham was going to insist on kissing him while he was working, he could at least have the decency to keep it clean! “Like I need you to praise me—I’m not the dog here, you know. Now, leave.”

Alhaitham left without much fight and Kaveh turned back to his stream.

Immediately, he regretted indulging Alhaitham’s stupid, stupid whims.

“No!” Kaveh just about shouted when he unmuted himself. “You guys are taking things out of context.”

“Buff? Trust me, he is not,” Kaveh said. Hmph, Alhaitham was simply larger than him. He couldn’t help his genetics gave him such a lean build compared to Alhaitham’s bulkier one. Anyone that saw them side by side would think he trained regularly, but he did not—Kaveh would know! “It’s the angle, you know, of the camera and such. How much did you guys see anyway, huh? Did you actually clip it?”

Someone had.

Multiple people got timed out for sending the link, which was amusing, but he thanked them for their sacrifice and opened it up off to the side. He watched the ten second clip silently. In it, he could see himself and the way he’d grabbed Alhaitham’s shirt, pulling him a little into view. Thankfully, his face was not in view and neither was much of Kaveh’s, with their initial kiss happening just barely off-screen, only a little bit of their chins visible. There was no denying they had kissed, unfortunately.

Then, Alhaitham’s hand appeared, holding him softly. It was strange to see how close they were—there was no way they looked so intimate every time they did this, right?—and Kaveh nearly squirmed as he realized how uncomfortable it must’ve been for everyone to watch something like this happen.

Kaveh hadn’t realized it in the moment, but he had moved slightly back when Alhaitham had held his face, forcing him to move more into view of the camera. About half of his forearm was visible when he did and he could see why Basil had thought him buff through that, but more importantly, his face was still out of frame and what was in frame was mostly covered by Kaveh’s long hair. There was no telling it was Alhaitham at all!

It was even harder to tell because Kaveh’s facecam was only a small rectangle in his overlay setup. That much was a relief.

“Well, the evidence is damning,” Kaveh finally admitted with a sigh, pretending to slouch in his chair. He immediately perked up, holding a finger up to his camera and trying not to react to the sudden celebration that came in from chat. “But… but we are not dating!”

After that, he managed to get back on task and spent the next half hour finishing up a few more things for his library. He was grateful the jokes stopped after it was made clear he was over talking about the elusive roommate he wasn’t dating, though it didn’t stop the jokes about Scribe or Caution. The ones about Scribe did irritate him, so those stopped after some time as well, but the others didn’t. It didn’t help that Caution played into it as well.

Just who was this guy?! Kaveh had enough people bothering him between Alhaitham and Scribe, who was also Alhaitham!

“Stop now,” Kaveh chided. He propped his elbow on the edge of his desk and placed his chin in his palm. “Is it that funny? Also, no, the command is not rigged, Number Three. I’ll show you. It’s completely random.”

“It is not rigged,” Kaveh said, exasperated.

There was a weird feeling fluttering in Kaveh’s stomach as he read Caution’s new percentage, which still beat out everyone else who had attempted before. It was strange that the command gave out such consistently high numbers to one user and not with anyone else. Perhaps… it was rigged? But there was no way to do that!

“Anyway!” He clapped his hands together. “We were building the outdoor area, so let’s get back to it. What kind of trees would look good here? If you look around the area we’re building it in, there are some large ones I can get from hidden objects.”

It was enough to redirect his stream once again, even though there was a new !love attempt every few minutes. Kaveh ignored it for the most part, but it was weighing on his mind a bit. It had started as a joke, yes, but wasn’t there a limit to how far they were supposed to take it? He hadn’t minded when the teasing about Caution having a crush on him started, though it had been a little weird to think about, but now, it seemed like it was getting serious. And there was no way Kaveh would ever actually consider it!

Also, if his chat believed he was dating Alhaitham, why were they pushing this Caution guy onto him as well? What if he and Alhaitham were really dating? That would be disrespectful to their relationship! Alhaitham would definitely be bothered if he knew there was someone like this in his chat.

Well, it was good Alhaitham didn’t know anything about this then! Unless… he did. He definitely watched Kaveh more than Kaveh watched him, but there was no telling how often or if he really listened. Then again, they never spoke about how they watched each other, and the only attention they gave it came through indirectly speaking to each other through the teasing and the insults while they were live.

Anyway, it wasn’t a problem Alhaitham should have in the first place, seeing as they weren’t dating.

Kaveh hummed.

That’s right. They weren’t dating. They simply… kissed every so often, and sometimes they did a little something over their clothes.

That was all.

“Yes! I am having dinner with Vulpes and his boyfriend tonight. Since I have to get ready now, I’ll ending the stream in a moment. We got far in the build, but we’ll finish up next time,” Kaveh said. He looked at who was live in his feed, humming to himself as his chat excitedly began to ask Tighnari how this had come about. Of course, Tighnari didn’t answer, and Kaveh swept in at the rescue, bringing the attention back to himself. “I’ll be raiding Lynette, who is building… a cat café! I’ll stream again on Tuesday, so I will see everyone then. Thank you—we will have fun tonight! See you, everyone!”

After sending all the goodbye messages and telling his chat to behave, he turned off his PC and stood up from his desk, stretching his arms and neck.

There was a couple hours until they had to go, so he could take it easy. Tighnari had also said not to worry much as well. It was something casual, according to him. Still, he had to be somewhat nervous. Though Kaveh and Tighnari had met in person plenty of times since meeting online a few years ago, they hadn’t met anybody else that had a close relation to them. They knew the basics of those relationships however, with Kaveh being aware there was a boyfriend and Tighnari knowing about his roommate, but nothing more than that was necessary when their conversations focused on other things.

Kaveh had to admit he was curious though.

Tighnari only mentioned his boyfriend here and there in their talks, sometimes complaining and other times being weirdly sweet about him, but he never went into detail and he had never once said what his name was. When they videocalled, Tighnari always made sure he never made a surprise appearance, always hushing and shooing him away off camera. His social media pages didn’t have much information on who he was dating either, already sparse enough with only a few simple photos of trees and a couple pics capturing programs of theatre performances he had attended over the last few years. Curious as Kaveh was, there was no need to try and dig for more because there simply wasn’t anything to dig into.

If he remembered the information that had been given to him correctly, Tighnari had been with his boyfriend for quite some time now. Kaveh had asked once if they were thinking of getting married, but Tighnari hadn’t really answered, only telling him they were waiting. Waiting for what, Kaveh didn’t know. But seeing as he was finally meeting the man, he was wondering if whatever they were waiting for had arrived.

It had been weird getting the invitation from Tighnari. It came as a real text instead of a Discourse message, and it had been a little bit too wordy yet rather empty of actual meaning, which was so unlike him. Kaveh had stared at it on his phone for a long moment when he received the text, his face scrunched up as he tried to extract the important parts.

Alhaitham had been there, trying to get Kaveh’s attention. “What is so important that you’re not paying attention to me?” he asked, the frustration clear in his voice as he dropped his head into the crook of Kaveh’s neck. He pressed a kiss there. “Hm, Kaveh?”

“It’s just Tigh—I mean, one of my mods.” Kaveh swatted Alhaitham’s wandering hand away from his waist. “He… invited us to dinner.”

It had gotten Alhaitham to sit still at least. “Us?”

“Yes. ‘You can bring that annoying”—Kaveh cleared his throat, realizing maybe he shouldn’t be reading it word-for-word—“I mean, ‘bring that roommate of yours if you want.’ That’s what it says.”

“Annoying?”

“Look at where you got me right now and tell me you’re not.”

Alhaitham shifted underneath Kaveh and he swore there was a pout on his face. Impossible, he thought. “Fine. Are we going?”

“Well, of course I am.”

After that, Alhaitham had childishly pestered Kaveh until he agreed on bringing him along.

Tighnari would be in for a major surprise. But he had also mentioned something along the lines of Kaveh never believing who his boyfriend was, meaning it had to be someone Kaveh knew from somewhere or a major celebrity. It was highly unlikely he was a celebrity. There was no way Tighnari would be able to hide something like that so well!

Though it wasn’t a competition, Kaveh was sure he wouldn’t be any more shocked than Tighnari upon realizing the ScribeOW, a celebrity in his own right, was the annoying roommate Kaveh talked about here and there in their personal conversations and during his streams.

He said so in his response. And like that, the stage had been set.

Now that he was getting ready to go, he considered the purpose of the dinner once more. Yes, it was to meet Tighnari’s boyfriend for the first time, but there had to be something else. After all that waiting, it had to be time to get serious on paper. If that was the case, Kaveh was delighted to be included. Though, he was suddenly glad he was bringing Alhaitham along. It would’ve been awkward if he went alone and it came out they were getting married. He’d feel like a third-wheel at their table, like someone invading the privacy of their home.

But perhaps it’d be even more awkward for Alhaitham to be there. After all, he didn’t know Tighnari, much less his boyfriend. He seemed like he’d hardly care if his dearest, closest friend was getting married, so why would he smile and clap for some complete strangers?

“Maybe you shouldn’t come,” Kaveh said when they were standing at the door a couple hours later.

Alhaitham blinked at him owlishly. “What?”

“Don’t you think it’s weird? They could be announcing their engagement to me!”

“And?”

“You—ugh!” Kaveh snatched the gift bag he’d prepared from Alhaitham’s hands and opened the front door. “Fine, come, but please be nice.”

Alhaitham followed, his hand coming to rest on Kaveh’s lower back as he waited for him to lock the door behind them. Kaveh had never really flinched when Alhaitham touched him and he did so even less now, so used to the touching, especially there. He let Alhaitham do as he pleased, too focused checking and double-checking everything as they made their way out, and it resulted in him being led to the car that would take them there. He got in without much hassle and Alhaitham followed.

It would be a lengthy drive seeing as Tighnari lived in the far outskirts of Sumeru rather than the center, but it would allow Kaveh some time to relax and catch Alhaitham up to speed on who Tighnari was. He listened intently, nodding along and diligently answering the Tighnari-related questions Kaveh decided to spring on him. By the time they arrived, Alhaitham was nearly as knowledgeable as Kaveh in what he knew about Tighnari.

And yet—

“Alhaitham?!” Tighnari exclaimed, his eyes wide.

Kaveh blinked. What?

“Tighnari,” Alhaitham greeted with a slight nod of his head. “How are you?”

Tighnari’s mouth opened and closed a few times before any actual words came out. “I, I’m great—we’re great. Um, please, come on in. Make yourself at home. Cyno’s… he’s in the living room.” He stepped aside, letting Alhaitham step past him with a short and nervous laugh, and then returned his attention to Kaveh, suddenly wearing a calm expression. His tone was equally as calm, which only made it more horrifying. “Kaveh, please tell me, why did you bring Alhaitham to my house?”

“Did you just say Alhaitham?” Kaveh asked, incredulous.

He had never mentioned Alhaitham’s name to Tighnari, so why did he know it? More than that, why was there obvious recognition of him when he opened the door? Kaveh supposed Tighnari would know who Alhaitham was given the on-going back and forth between him and Kaveh online, but that was no explanation for the clear familiarity they had with each other!

“Wait, don’t tell me. Is he actually…?”

“My roommate?!” Kaveh laughed, the sound of it forced in his ears. There was nothing else for him to do but laugh. How fucking absurd. Where the fuck had Alhaitham even met Tighnari?! “Of course he is. Why else would I bring Haitham here?”

Tighnari closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, muttering something under his breath. When he was finished, he let go and opened his eyes. The smile that formed on his face looked more like a grimace than anything. “Well, this is off to a wonderful start,” he said, finally ushering Kaveh in. “It couldn’t possibly get any worse from here.”

When Kaveh made it inside, he saw Alhaitham sitting on a divan and beside him was… Cyno.

“You’re dating Cyno,” Kaveh whispered as he handed Tighnari the bag in his hands. “Like the Cyno?”

Of course Alhaitham knew Tighnari if his boyfriend was Cyno.

Kaveh could laugh again, and this time, it would be a real one. He’d been fully aware Tighnari knew Cyno, but he thought they were friends. After all, he had never really called any attention to their connection, and Kaveh hadn’t cared much about knowing who Cyno was outside of what he did for work. If he was friends with Alhaitham and Tighnari, he couldn’t be all that bad. Clearly, he was a fantastic person if he was in a long-term relationship with his friend.

Beside him, Tighnari sighed. “Please don’t laugh.”

“I’m not going to,” Kaveh answered smoothly. He smiled, approaching Cyno and Alhaitham. “Hi, Cyno. It’s nice to finally meet you.”

“Kaveh!” Cyno exclaimed, setting down the cards in his hands and standing up with open arms. “I didn’t know you were this guy’s roommate! He’s never mentioned it!”

Kaveh smiled again, hoping it came across as sweet as he wanted it to. “Well, that is Haitham’s fault,” he replied, looking at Alhaitham, who seemed to be trying to busy himself with the cards on the table. “I didn’t know you were Tighnari’s boyfriend.”

“That’s Tighnari’s fault then.” Cyno came around the table, taking Kaveh by the forearm and pulling him to the divan opposite the one he’d been sharing with Alhaitham. He motioned to the mess on the table between the divans and then picked up one of the few neat stacks he’d likely been preparing. “Fancy some Genius Invokation TCG?”

“I dabble,” Kaveh answered, taking the offered cards. They were neatly placed in plastic sleeves and they moved against each other smoothly as he shuffled through them. It was impressive seeing some cards he’d never seen before and others that were clearly special editions with how they had different effects on them. He played, but certainly not like this. “This is quite the collection you have here.”

“What a fun way to start the night,” Tighnari said dryly from somewhere behind him. “Excuse me, I’m going to get some drinks.”

Tighnari left and with that, Cyno seemed more eager to share more of his collection, taking the cards he’d given Kaveh just to hand him another stack to look through. Across the table, Alhaitham was sorting some cards himself quietly. Kaveh opened his mouth to speak, his gaze lingering on Alhaitham, only to be interrupted by Cyno.

“Y’know, Kaveh,” Cyno started, “Alhaitham here might have never mentioned you by name, but he certainly has—”

“I was sure I told you those things in confidence they’d remain private,” Alhaitham interrupted, looking up from the cards in his hands.

Cyno laughed. “Sure. Sorry, Kaveh.”

“No need,” Kaveh mumbled, returning his attention to the fictional monster drawn on the card he was holding.

He didn’t need to know if Alhaitham complained about him to his friends. He didn’t doubt it for a moment—he did the same after all, so he couldn’t be too upset. There was just no way of knowing what Cyno had been told, but it couldn’t have been too bad, seeing as he’d been extremely pleasant towards Kaveh so far. Or, and Kaveh hoped this wasn’t it, Cyno was just being nice despite whatever harsh comments Alhaitham had made because he was a close friend of Tighnari’s.

“Drinks are here,” Tighnari said as he stepped back into the living room, carefully holding a tray. “The wine you brought is great.”

Kaveh took the offered glass of wine, silently toasting Tighnari before taking a sip. It was sweet on his lips and a little bitter as it went down his throat. Still, he kept a calm expression. “I know my way around a bottle.”

Cyno took his own glass, but didn’t drink from it. He set it aside in order to collect several dice from the center of the table. “Since we’re settled, how about we play a game first?”

“Great,” Tighnari mumbled, taking a seat beside Alhaitham.

“C’mon, loosen up, honey!” Cyno grabbed one of the decks he’d prepared and motioned for Kaveh and Alhaitham to take one of the remaining ones. “Now, watch as the number one Genius Invokation TCG player in Gandharva Ville knocks over his competition.”

⁂

It was easy to say Cyno was a great player of Genius Invokation, but definitely not the best. The first game they’d played had ended with Tighnari winning and for his prize, he requested to stop playing to have the dinner he’d prepared. Over the food and drinks, conversation flowed easily, especially with Cyno’s jokes, much to Tighnari’s dismay. Still, there was a fondness in his eyes when he looked at Cyno beside him that forced Kaveh to look away.

Alhaitham, who he supposed had met with Cyno and Tighnari more than once before, seemed unfazed by their affectionate gazes at each other, keeping mostly quiet as he ate. When they were finishing up, his left hand made its way to Kaveh’s thigh, his long fingers lingering on the inner part. Kaveh had looked at him, surprised by the sudden move, but Alhaitham paid no attention, simply nodding along to something Cyno was saying related to their streams.

Tighnari stood up to excuse himself and he began to collect their empty dishes. Kaveh quickly followed, pushing Alhaitham’s hand off his thigh, and he began to pick up some of the dishes as well. He trailed into the kitchen behind Tighnari and placed the stack he held into the large basin of the sink.

“Well, what do you think?” Tighnari asked as Kaveh was washing his hands.

“About?”

Tighnari shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “About Cyno.”

“He’s great.” Kaveh turned the faucet off and shook the water off his hands before taking the hand towel Tighnari offered him to finish drying off. He hummed as he patted the back of one of his hands. “There’s nothing wrong with him, if that’s what you’re asking. But, does it matter what I think of him?”

Kaveh received a curious stare. “Well, no.” Tighnari took the towel when Kaveh was done and tossed it aside. “I guess it doesn’t.”

“You know yourself,” Kaveh offered.

Surely Tighnari wasn’t getting cold feet after nearly a decade now, was he? Kaveh could understand why he might. Given that they’d gotten together when they were young, they shared a lot of first experiences with each other and if they completely committed now, those would be the only experiences they’d ever know. Still, it was Tighnari—he wouldn’t stick around if he didn’t want to. Besides, it was clear he loved Cyno very much. He didn’t need any approval from anyone else if this was what he wanted.

If it was Kaveh in his shoes, well then there’d be reason to have some doubts and fears that he’d run away. He was unstable to the point none of his relationships had ever flourished beyond the beginning stages. It was always too much, too fast, too early with him. He gave until he had nothing left, but took nothing in return, wearing himself out before anything even started.

He wasn’t made for something sincere and long-lasting.

“Right,” Tighnari said. “Thanks, Kaveh.”

They returned to the living room, where Cyno and Alhaitham were already playing another round.

Tighnari sighed, taking his seat beside Cyno and peering at his hand before looking at the dice and the cards he already had laid out. He clicked his tongue in disapproval and Cyno groaned, mumbling something along the lines of “I know, I know, it’s so bad” as he turned to press his forehead against Tighnari’s shoulder.

Kaveh hesitantly took the spot beside Alhaitham.

Looking at the cards in his hands and then at the dice and the characters he had on the table, he realized the luck had gone in Alhaitham’s favor. Of course it had.

Opposite of Kaveh, who was unsteady and uncertain, was Alhaitham, always stable and never lacking in confidence. It would always be Alhaitham, looking back at Kaveh. They’d never be on the same side, even if he wanted them to be—that was a truth Kaveh had come to learn in the near decade he’d known him.

Like Tighnari, Alhaitham was the most perfect, ideal candidate for lifelong commitment.

Kaveh sighed, reaching for the glass of wine by Alhaitham and taking a long sip. Across the table, Tighnari pointed at a card Cyno had and then at one of his characters, muttering something under his breath.

“That’s cheating,” Kaveh said, setting the glass down and pointing an accusatory finger at his friend. “You can’t help Cyno!”

“Will it be better if we say you can help Alhaitham?”

Underneath the table, Alhaitham’s hand once more snaked over Kaveh’s thigh, but this time, he squeezed. Kaveh bit down on his bottom lip. “No,” Kaveh refused curtly. “He doesn’t need my help.”

“I do,” Alhaitham said suddenly. He squeezed his hand once more and Kaveh had to fight the urge to flinch away. “Let’s start over, yeah?”

Cyno agreed and they reset everything, both players collecting their decks once more and Tighnari shuffling the remaining cards. When it came to the dice, Cyno said a silly chant before he tossed his set. Tighnari pinched Cyno’s side, chiding him for embarrassing him in front of their guests, but Cyno seemed unbothered, cheering at the outcome of his dice instead. For Alhaitham’s turn, he collected the dice in his fist and then brought it up to Kaveh’s mouth.

“What?” Kaveh asked, looking at him. He felt Cyno and Tighnari staring, and the intensity of their gazes had blood rushing up to his face. He grabbed Alhaitham’s wrist as he laughed awkwardly. “Haitham?”

“Blow,” Alhaitham whispered.

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Do it.”

Reluctantly, Kaveh blew on Alhaitham’s fist. He then dropped his dice onto the tabletop, a very favorable result staring up at them.

“Who knew Kaveh would bring such luck?” Cyno asked. He nudged Tighnari’s side. “Maybe I should have you kiss my dice.”

“You!” Tighnari pinched Cyno again. “Focus on the game. If you lose, I won’t be kissing anything.”

Unfortunately, Cyno lost. The first, second, and third time. In his defense, he hadn’t gotten lucky with his dice or his cards while Alhaitham had. Kaveh reluctantly agreed with Cyno that the game was rigged, only for Tighnari to ask him not to play along with his silly tantrums. Alhaitham didn’t seem overly pleased by his victories and he also wasn’t annoyed by Cyno’s complaints, a clear indicator it wasn’t the first time he’d beaten his friend, but he did smile and shake his head when he was asked if he’d somehow cheated.

It was simply skill and a pinch of luck, he claimed.

Kaveh could confirm there was no way Alhaitham was cheating. How could he when he was trying to mess around with Kaveh under the table?

His hand remained on Kaveh’s thigh the entire time, occasionally squeezing and sometimes rubbing, the tips of his fingers getting dangerously close to another part of Kaveh’s body. More than once, Kaveh attempted to swat him away discreetly, afraid Tighnari or Cyno would notice, but he eventually settled on keeping one of his own hands over Alhaitham’s, stopping him each time he tried to pull something funny.

It wasn’t cards for the game that Alhaitham had hidden up his sleeve, but more dirty tricks that he only played on Kaveh.

“You’re very close,” Cyno commented as they were about to leave a while later.

Tighnari was packing some leftover food for them and Alhaitham had gone to help him, leaving Kaveh along with Cyno. Without them, Cyno had free range to show his true self, but he remained kind, a calm expression on his face. So he did like Kaveh after all.

“We’ve known each other a long time,” Kaveh answered.

“Not many people get along well with Alhaitham. You must have the patience of a saint.”

“Oh, no.” Kaveh laughed, waving his hands and shaking his head. “I’m the first to hit him with an insult or a pen, whichever lands first.”

Cyno grinned, clapping Kaveh on the shoulder. “I see why he likes you.”

Kaveh only smiled, unsure of how to answer.

Thankfully, both Tighnari and Alhaitham emerged from the kitchen, a bag in Alhaitham’s hand. Cyno quickly opened the front door, letting them out. Kaveh thanked them for the evening and after some quick farewells, they were on their way. As the door closed behind him, Kaveh was sure he’d be receiving a message from Tighnari about upcoming nuptials sometime soon. While there wasn’t an engagement announcement today, it was clear it was well on its way to happening.

At this point it would be a matter of who got down on their knee first.

“I was unaware you knew Tighnari,” Kaveh said once they were in the car and the driver was turning away from where they’d been picked up.

“I was unaware you knew him as well.” Alhaitham hummed thoughtfully. “I did find it curious when you said his name the other day, but I assumed it was someone else. Who would’ve known it wasn’t?”

Kaveh didn’t answer. Instead, he looked out the window, staring at the blur that was Sumeru passing them by. He could hardly make out the shops and parks they zipped past, and as he stared, he began to think.

Cyno had said something interesting. Something about Alhaitham liking him. So had Alhaitham actually never complained about Kaveh to him? How strange. It was like when Kaveh found out Alhaitham regularly complimented his cooking on stream to his thousands of viewers. It was all very unlike the Alhaitham Kaveh thought he knew. Then again, Kaveh had learned much more about him in the last weeks than he could ever imagine.

With their silent agreement, Kaveh had learned just how clingy Alhaitham really was. He was incredibly needy of Kaveh’s attention sometimes, and he was just as eager to please as well. For someone who presented himself as reserved, he was certainly not modest about his affection. He didn’t hold back with how much he gave or how much he took, which admittedly Kaveh already knew about him, but it felt different when it was about something as intimate as kissing. He remembered thinking about it long ago—how Alhaitham would act if he were to be affectionate with someone—but the reality of it was much more of a surprise than he thought possible.

Like he’d thought earlier: Alhaitham was meant for something long-term and serious and beautiful. His unwavering dedication would always be wasted on forgettable flings and his unexpected gentleness lost in the violence of passionate one-stand stands. And all of that was to say… Kaveh was undeserving of it.

He had to push Alhaitham away before they made any more mistakes, before he made a mess of Alhaitham the same way he had done to himself.

Yet, when Alhaitham kissed him in the entryway of their apartment, Kaveh only pulled him closer, sighing into his mouth.

One last time, he thought to himself. Just one more time. Maybe it wasn’t what he deserved, but it was what he wanted.

Alhaitham nearly stumbled as Kaveh, still kissing him, dragged him into their living room, just barely able to down the bag of food Tighnari had given them on the table as they passed by it. With his hands now free, he grabbed Kaveh’s waist, muttering a short “Jump” against Kaveh’s mouth.

Kaveh did as he was told, feeling Alhaitham’s hands move down to the back of his thighs to support him as Kaveh wrapped his legs around Alhaitham’s hips, locking his ankles across his lower back to hold himself in place. His hands moved up to Alhaitham’s hair, fingers combing through the silky, gray strands. Alhaitham moaned into his mouth in response, his hands squeezing Kaveh’s thighs. There was something pressing against Kaveh’s front already and he was anxious to help Alhaitham out. They just needed to…

“Ah,” Kaveh gasped when his back hit a wall. They were standing in the dimly lit hall now, right beside Alhaitham’s bedroom door. “Hai-haitham.”

“A second,” Alhaitham panted. “Give me a second.”

He removed one of his hands from Kaveh’s body, fumbling with the doorknob to his bedroom. When he got it to turn, he pushed the door open and he didn’t waste a moment in carrying Kaveh into the room. They fell onto Alhaitham’s bed unceremoniously, their teeth clicking together as they attempted to kiss again, the pain easily swallowed by the other. Alhaitham slid one hand up, bringing it to rest on Kaveh’s hip, and the other held his large body over Kaveh, the mattress sinking it to the left of Kaveh’s face.

“Tighnari’s a little mean, you know,” Alhaitham said, looking down at Kaveh. He was breathing hard and his face was flushed. “He warned me to never kiss you on stream again.”

Kaveh smiled. “Oh, yeah?” He played with the hair at Alhaitham’s nape. “You should probably listen to him then.”

“What if I don’t want to?”

There was no time to answer. Alhaitham swooped right back in, preemptively tilting his head before catching Kaveh’s bottom lip in his mouth. Kaveh whined in the back of his throat as Alhaitham began to move down, placing a kiss at his jaw and then by his ear.

“Haitham,” Kaveh breathed out when he began to suck at a spot behind his ear, fingers curling around a fistful of Alhaitham’s hair. His other hand scratched across Alhaitham’s shoulder, grabbing at the fabric of his shirt. He felt the metal of the bracelet Alhaitham had given him scrape against his skin. “Ah!”

“You looked so pretty today, Kaveh,” Alhaitham whispered right into his ear, his mouth ghosting over his skin. “Was that on purpose?”

“A-ah—of course it w-was,” he answered.

It was dinner and one where he’d be meeting someone for the first time, he thought. Of course he’d try to look his best. He had even worn Alhaitham’s gift for the special occasion. But that didn’t seem to appease him.

“Someone as pretty as you,” Alhaitham said breathlessly against the column of his neck. “Someone as pretty as you… should always…”

Kaveh gasped as Alhaitham’s erection pressed against his own. Alhaitham noticed immediately and he thrust against Kaveh again. Kaveh dropped his hand from Alhaitham’s shoulder and brought it to his mouth, biting down on one of his knuckles. The hurried gasps that left him each time Alhaitham rubbed against him sounded pathetic in his ears; it only seemed to spur Alhaitham on.

“Move your hand,” he whispered. When Kaveh didn’t oblige, he took it upon himself to grab Kaveh’s wrist and pin it above his head with himself. “That’s it.”

“Haitham,” Kaveh gasped.

He needed more. He needed Alhaitham to touch him.

And Alhaitham did.

The hand on Kaveh’s hip moved to unbutton his pants before hooking over the waistband of his underwear and tugging down. Kaveh sighed, finding relief in his hard cock being freed from its confines, but he immediately went back to whining, trying to squirm as Alhaitham touched him carefully. He was slow at first, experimentally running the pad of his thumb over the head of his cock and smearing the precome that was already coming out, and he helped Kaveh adjust to the feeling of being touched with some light kisses to his mouth.

It’d been so long since someone else had touched him.

Kaveh was going to lose his mind.

“You’re so good, Kaveh,” Alhaitham said.

Suddenly, he let go of Kaveh, coaxed his legs to unwrap from around him, and disappeared from over him.

Then, Kaveh cried out, his hands moving down to grab Alhaitham by the hair when he felt an exploratory lick along the side of his cock. It wasn’t enough to stop him though. When he raised his head enough to look, he saw how Alhaitham had pushed his legs open, his elbows pressed against his skin to keep them open. His hand was wrapped around the base of his cock after having pulled Kaveh’s pants and underwear nearly to his knees, leaving him exposed.

He licked along the side of his dick again, his confident green eyes meeting Kaveh’s through long wispy lashes, and Kaveh gasped, dropping his head back on the bed. His legs jerked at the same time in an attempt to jostle Alhaitham, and the weight of his clothes slipped off him and hit the floor with a small thud.

One of his hands returned to his mouth, balled into a fist as he gasped some more, his quick exhales hot against his own skin.

It wasn’t Alhaitham’s first time. It couldn’t be. He easily was able to take Kaveh in his hot mouth, his wet tongue swirling around the head, all his spit and Kaveh’s precome combining. When Kaveh attempted to look again, he saw it begin to spill from the corner of Alhaitham’s mouth, making a mess as it dripped down into the coarse, light brown hair Kaveh had at the base of his cock.

It was all that mess that Alhaitham used to start pumping Kaveh’s cock after a moment, the head of it still in his mouth. His other hand massaged his balls, also a little wet from the combination of spit and precome, and then it gently teased his taint.

Kaveh pulled at Alhaitham’s hair, trying to say something, anything, but all that came out were gasps and incoherent requests for more. Alhaitham was also making some sounds but his small grunts and gags were lost in the sea of noises Kaveh was making. But he couldn’t stop himself from making such lewd cries, the words leaving his lips before he could really think about what he was saying.

“More, Haitham, more,” he panted around his fist. “I love it, ah, like t-that. I love—you, hng, so… ‘s so good.”

There was a heat in his navel that was tightening and tightening the more Alhaitham did, his thighs getting tense as he got closer to release.

“H-haitham, stop!” Kaveh exclaimed breathlessly. “I’m, I—”

He instinctively thrust up into Alhaitham’s mouth, feeling the head of his cock push past where Alhaitham had it. Alhaitham made a sound of surprise, but he didn’t try to push Kaveh down. The warmth of Alhaitham’s mouth made the come feel almost thicker than it was and when Kaveh propped himself up on his forearms, finally letting go of Alhaitham’s hair, he saw how Alhaitham pulled off his cock, the cloudy liquid on his tongue.

Just as he was going to offer his palm for him to spit it out, Alhaitham closed his mouth and swallowed.

“Don’t do that!” Kaveh just about shouted. “Spit it out.”

“I can’t,” Alhaitham replied. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “It’s fine.”

“I hope you know you can’t kiss me anymore.”

“All right.” Alhaitham pushed himself up off the bed, smoothing down the front of his shirt. He scratched the back of his neck and looked towards the door. It was strange and awkward. Kaveh looked down at Alhaitham’s center. He was clearly hard. And still, he said: “Well then… I’m going to wash up. Good night.”

Kaveh reached out, grabbing Alhaitham by the wrist. “Wait, Haitham. What about…”

“I can handle it myself,” Alhaitham answered calmly, but his gaze didn’t quite meet Kaveh’s.

“Come here,” Kaveh tried. He patted the spot beside him. If Alhaitham had taken care of Kaveh, it was only right he did the same in return, especially if this was the first, last, and only time he would have the chance to do this. It was a mutually beneficial arrangement after all. “Let me just—”

“No.”

Alhaitham’s tone was so serious, it made Kaveh immediately let him go. “Sorry,” he offered, bringing his hands back to himself.

“Good night, Kaveh.”

With that, Alhaitham left his bedroom, leaving Kaveh on his bed, sitting in a mess of his own making.