Chapter 1
Notes:
The amazing LiulfrLokison made some lovely graffiti-style poster art for this fic! You can view it here! A huge thanks for the support! ❤️
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
There are many things a rational man will not do.
He will not, for instance, allow his sunburnt, debt-swamped, emotionally reactive, domestic hurricane of a roommate to move in rent-free. He will not sit across from said roommate every morning and endure the aggressively floral aroma of a homebrew Sumeru spice coffee monstrosity. He will not, after one too many nights of hearing “I’m not crying, it’s the stress of creative vision” from the hallway at 3 a.m., begin cataloguing the patterns of his roommate’s outbursts, the cadence of his arguments, the precise moment when his voice hit that ridiculous octave that meant he was about to start throwing coasters.
But Alhaitham, unfortunately, is not just any rational man.
He is the Acting Grand Sage. He is an academic. A scholar. A man of reason.
And he has just turned in a 37-page, single-spaced, citation-heavy thesis paper to the Akademiya’s internal social philosophy journal titled:
“The Spatial and Emotional Consequences of Sharing Living Quarters With an Architect in Denial: A Case Study.”
Subject: Kaveh al-Saran.
He hasn't named him directly, of course. That would be irresponsible.
(He includes a physical description, a design portfolio, and an appendix with scanned architectural sketches found near the rice cooker. In other words, he has named him completely.)
“It’s a thought experiment,” Alhaitham says dryly when Faruzan nearly chokes on her tea mid-skim. “A personal exercise in observational ethnography. Methodologically sound.”
“You included the bit where he cried in the bathroom because his window treatment ‘wasn’t receiving the proper poetic light.’” Faruzan looks both scandalized and delighted. “You charted his meltdowns, Haitham.”
“They are impressively rhythmic,” he replies, flipping another page. “Almost Pavlovian.”
“You’re in love with him.”
“That’s conjecture,” Alhaitham says blandly, adjusting his headphones. “Unsupported.”
---
When Kaveh finds out, he's holding a spatula and wearing an apron that said “Kiss the Architect (He Deserves It)” in gold embroidery. The apron had been a gag gift from Nilou. The spatula is for his dumb little almond tofu pancakes, which are, admittedly, excellent.
The moment he opens the living room door and sees a giggling Tighnari sprinting down the hall and shrieking “HE REALLY DID IT—ALHAITHAM REALLY WROTE A PAPER ABOUT YOU—THERE’S A FOOTNOTE ABOUT YOUR ANKLE TATTOO,” Kaveh knows something dark and unholy had occurred.
He storms into the study.
“YOU—YOU ABSOLUTE—YOU ACADEMICALLY DERANGED DICK.”
Alhaitham does not look up from his book. “You’ll have to narrow that down. My week has been eventful.”
“You submitted a formal thesis on me?”
“I did not use your name.”
“You drew a diagram of my dramatic posture when I argue!”
“I thought the hands-on-hips, head-thrown-back angle was notable. Very Greco-Romantic.”
Kaveh makes an inhuman sound. “You—you—you made me into a case study!”
“A compelling one. You’re my only prolonged exposure to irrational behavior that hasn’t ended in expulsion, therapy, or incarceration.”
“You called me—oh my Gods, you called me—‘a delicate sociocultural storm system with legs.’”
Alhaitham blinks slowly. “That was poetic license.”
Kaveh turns purple. He clutchs the counter like it might anchor him to the mortal realm. “You’re unbelievable. You're sick. You need—like—a vacation. A kiss. A swift punch to the jaw.”
Alhaitham finally closes his book.
He looks at Kaveh in the way one might regard an approaching weather pattern: inevitable, dramatic, prone to thunder.
“You’re upset.”
“Upset? I’m going to sue. I’m going to write my own paper and publish it in the same damn journal.”
“That would require effort.”
“I will effort your face into the ground.”
“You’ll need a thesis.”
“Oh, I’ve got one,” Kaveh hisses, voice trembling with righteous fury. “‘On the Emotional Repression and Passive-Aggressive Domestic Tendencies of Self-Satisfied Sages: A Case Study in Terminal Hotness and Zero Social Skills.’ Subtitle: ‘Why My Roommate is the Smartest Man Alive and Also a Bastard Who Stole My Heart and My Last Slice of Lava Cake.’”
There's a silence.
A long, stupid, velvet-thick silence.
Alhaitham tilts his head.
Kaveh realizes what he has just said.
“No—NO—not like that, obviously—metaphorically—I meant metaphorical heart theft—you know, like when you deeply loathe someone so much it wraps around into affection like a Möbius strip—”
“Interesting metaphor.”
“I hate you.”
“You said I was hot.”
Kaveh’s soul exits his body.
---
The next day, the academic bulletin board at the Akademiya has a new anonymous paper under the name “K. Saran, Probably” with the title:
“Lust in the Time of Logic: An Exhaustive Critique of Alhaitham’s Personality, Pectorals, and Persecution Complex.”
It has charts. It has footnotes in pink font. It has several poetic interpolations about his “unreasonably veiny forearms” and an embedded photo of Alhaitham doing push-ups at dawn captioned:
“Exhibit A: the physical form of my suffering.”
The paper has eighty downloads in an hour.
---
By the end of the week, the student body takes sides.
Team Haithaveh prints stickers.
Faruzan starts selling “Cognitive Dissonance Is Hot” mugs.
Cyno creates a meme slideshow titled “Ship of Thesis” and presented it during a mandatory ethics seminar.
Nilou weeps in public about “how love blooms in shared spaces of mutual disdain.”
Meanwhile, back in their apartment, Kaveh shrieks, “TAKE DOWN YOUR PAPER,” while Alhaitham changes the thermostat out of spite and brews stronger coffee until their domestic power dynamic spiraled into something resembling postmodern warfare. Or foreplay.
They are probably going to kill each other.
Or kiss.
Possibly both.
---
It's supposed to be a quiet morning.
Which is, of course, a laughable expectation in the same way Kaveh’s budgeting skills are laughable or Alhaitham’s claim that he “isn’t doing this to be petty” is laughable.
The Akademiya is abuzz.
No, not abuzz—frothing.
The architecture students forms a defensive circle around Kaveh and are carrying him on a fainting couch like a war hero. The scholars from Haravatat start a betting pool. The Amurta department is conducting a psychological study on “academic homoeroticism as a natural byproduct of spatial cohabitation.”
Someone graffities “THESIS ME, DADDY” across Alhaitham’s office door.
He doesn't even flinch.
---
Kaveh is, in theory, supposed to be working on a commission.
In reality, he is hunched over a pile of scrolls, surrounded by six highlighters, three empty coffee cups, and one very stressed-out frog figurine that he has named Sir Croak-a-Lot and designates as his “emotional support amphibian.”
He's writing a rebuttal.
A scholarly rebuttal.
A takedown.
A masterpiece.
“You thought you could embarrass me,” Kaveh mutters, deranged curls falling over his eyes as he scribbles. “You thought you could reduce me to a psychological footnote with pretty hair. But I’m the footnote now, bitch. I’m the whole appendix. I’m the postface. I am the epilogue of vengeance—”
“You’re talking to a frog,” says Tighnari from the kitchen.
“I’m talking to my audience.”
Sir Croak-a-Lot says nothing. But even if he does, he will absolutely agree.
---
Meanwhile, Alhaitham is rereading Kaveh’s latest paper.
“On the Interpersonal Impacts of Coexisting with a Muscular Megalomaniac with the Emotional Range of a Fern.”
Alhaitham turns the page.
“Appendix B,” he reads aloud, “Detailed ranking of my roommate’s muscle groups. Triceps: 9/10. Biceps: stupidly large, makes shirts unfairly sexy. Obliques: a war crime. Brain: unused. Dick: alleged.”
He closes the paper with a hum. “Impressive syntax.”
Cyno pops his head in. “You’re blushing.”
“No.”
“You are. You’re pink.”
“It’s warm.”
“It’s 17°C, you hydra of denial.”
“I’m simply intrigued by his rhetorical structuring.”
Cyno gives him a look.
“I find his emotional instability fascinating,” Alhaitham says mildly, returning to his tea. “Like observing weather patterns. Or earthquakes. Or a very hot, very dramatic landslide in a silk robe.”
“You are deeply in love with him.”
Alhaitham takes a sip. “Love is a subjective term often used to explain temporary cognitive lapses in otherwise rational beings.”
“Is that a yes?”
“I do not traffic in binaries.”
“Oh my gods, you’re flirting through peer-reviewed insult.”
Alhaitham says nothing.
(But internally: he knows.)
---
Three days later, Kaveh stands at the center of the Akademiya courtyard, flanked by posters, graphs, and a life-size cardboard cutout of Alhaitham shirtless.
“This is my TED Talk,” he declares, hair windswept, eyes mad with power and espresso. “Today I present: ‘The Alhaitham Delusion: A Study in Egotism, Seduction, and Unresolved Tension.’”
Audience: packed.
Thesis: petty.
Visual aids: explicit.
Kaveh gestures to a chart. “As we can see, incidents of Alhaitham being infuriatingly hot increased exponentially after he started doing shirtless yoga in the living room. Coincidence? I think not.”
There's a slide that simply said:
"LOOK AT HIM."
(with a zoom-in of Alhaitham’s back muscles and a small caption: 'for science')
The next chart was titled:
“How Often I Think About Punching and/or Kissing Him (the Graph is a Circle).”
Another one read:
“My Roommate: A Case Study."
The final slide:
“He Made Me Breakfast Once and I Think I Saw the Face of God.”
Kaveh turns to the crowd, breathless. “I rest my case.”
Everyone applaudes.
Faruzan throws confetti. Cyno dabs.
Alhaitham, leaning in the back with his arms crossed and the most unreadable, slightly amused, definitely fond expression known to man, says absolutely nothing. He doesn't need to. His smirk is already a six-page retort.
---
That night, the house is… silent.
Eerily so.
No dramatics. No slamming doors. No declarations about “emotional labor.” No accusations about dish sponges. Just stillness. And, in that stillness, something almost dangerous.
Tension.
Thick, humid, domestic tension.
Kaveh stands at the window, arms crossed, watching the rain drip off the balcony.
Alhaitham stands in the kitchen, drying a mug.
“…Do you have a response,” Kaveh says finally, low and sharp like the edge of a wineglass.
“I thought your visual aids were a bit unrefined,” Alhaitham says calmly, setting the mug down. “But your use of sarcasm was structurally sound.”
“That’s all you have to say? After I publicly psychoanalyzed your entire existence?”
“I appreciated the attention to detail.”
“You’re impossible.”
“You’re loud.”
Kaveh turns. “You’re insufferable.”
“You’re dramatic.”
Kaveh stalks forward.
Alhaitham doesn't move.
“Are you going to keep intellectualizing this until we both die of repressed attraction?” Kaveh snaps.
Alhaitham blinks. “You think it’s repressed?”
Kaveh sputters.
A beat.
Then another.
“…You what?”
Alhaitham, ever the master of emotional bait-and-switch, calmly adjusts his shirt collar. “I said it’s not repressed.”
“That implies—it’s pressed??”
Alhaitham takes a step forward.
Kaveh steps back. Right into the wall.
“You’ve been cataloguing my behavior like some—some emotionally constipated anthropologist—”
“You catalogued my forearms.”
“That was for—for aesthetic rigor—”
“You wrote poetry about my hands.”
“Metaphorically!!”
“You footnoted my sighs.”
“They were notable!!”
Alhaitham is close now.
Too close.
Dangerously, heartstoppingly, press-your-back-against-the-wall-and-hope-he’s-not-smirking close.
(He is definitely smirking.)
“…You’re not serious,” Kaveh breathes.
“I submitted a 37-page paper about you,” Alhaitham says, voice low, dry, and deadly sincere. “That’s more commitment than most marriages.”
Kaveh’s brain melts.
His knees visibly considers collapsing.
“But you’re—you’re—!”
“Yes.”
“And I’m—!”
“I know.”
“You’re impossible.”
“You’ve said that.”
Kaveh’s voice cracks like lightning. “If you kiss me I will destroy you.”
Alhaitham leans in.
“Try it.”
---
There are kisses that happen like rain.
Soft, accidental. A drizzle of realization, a stumble into sweetness, a wet surprise that leaves both parties blinking and damp and awkwardly human.
This is not one of those kisses.
This is war.
This is thunderclap.
This is an earthquake disguising as a moment, masquerading as a conversation, swaddling in the silk robes of idiocy.
Kaveh kisses Alhaitham like the man has written something unforgivable about him (he has). Like he is personally offended by the existence of Alhaitham’s jawline (he is). Like he has waited too long, argued too hard, dreamed too vividly, and now the only logical next step is violence via lips.
It is all teeth and fury and chest and maybe a moan so feral Kaveh hopes to every god above that it isn't his.
(Unfortunately, it absolutely is.)
And Alhaitham—Alhaitham kisses back like he has written a thesis on this moment.
Because he probably has.
“Kinetic Expressions of Repressed Homoerotic Rivalry: A Case Study in Mouths, Hands, and Stolen Oxygen.”
He angles Kaveh’s chin like a sculpture he's correcting. He touches his waist like he is adjusting a theorem. He kisses him slow but firm, a controlled variable in a wildly chaotic experiment, and somewhere in the distance Kaveh can hear the sound of his dignity curling up like a dead scroll.
He pulls back.
He pants.
He says the first thing that came to mind.
“…I’m going to kill you.”
“I doubt that,” Alhaitham says, brushing a curl from Kaveh’s forehead with such ungodly tenderness it made Kaveh viscerally ill. “You’d miss me too much.”
Kaveh makes a strangled sound.
It sounds like love.
Which is horrifying.
---
The next morning, they don't talk about it.
Obviously.
What are they, functional?
Ha.
No.
Instead, they wage war in subtlety.
Alhaitham adjusts the coffee ratio to the perfect bitterness level Kaveh likes, and then claims it's coincidence.
Kaveh cleans the bookshelf, rearranges Alhaitham’s journals in thematic order, and labels it “aesthetic necessity.”
They are clearly fine.
Perfectly platonic.
Totally normal behavior for two grown men who spent the previous evening making out against the fridge like hormonal undergrads.
(It had knocked the ice tray loose. Kaveh almost slipped and died. Alhaitham called it “natural selection.”)
---
Then comes the monthly seminar.
And with it: disaster.
Because someone—and by someone, we mean Faruzan, that gremlin of mischief and intellect—has the brilliant idea to invite both of them to speak.
“Joint panel,” she says innocently. “About the implications of personal bias in field research.”
“You mean, like how Alhaitham emotionally manipulated his roommate into a breakdown and called it data?” Kaveh asks sweetly.
“You mean, like how Kaveh violated half the Akademiya’s ethics codes by publishing romantic limericks about my collarbones?” Alhaitham replies calmly.
Faruzan grins. “Exactly.”
Kaveh almost bites her.
---
The seminar is packed.
Someone is selling popcorn.
Someone else brings a sign that says “KISS OR DIE (ACADEMICALLY)”
Kaveh adjusts his lapel with the flair of a condemned prince. Alhaitham adjusts his headphones like a man about to lecture God Himself.
And then it begins.
“Good morning,” Alhaitham says. “Today we will be discussing bias.”
Kaveh smiles. It is violent.
“Yes,” he says. “Specifically, what happens when your research subject is also your emotionally stunted, passive-aggressive, pointy-faced roommate.”
A collective gasp.
Alhaitham doesn't blink. “Bias,” he explains, “occurs when one’s ability to separate analysis from emotion is compromised. For example, when an architect allows his hurt feelings to infiltrate his academic voice.”
“Oh,” Kaveh coos, dangerously soft. “You want to talk about hurt feelings? How about the time you gaslit me into thinking your deadpan commentary was affection?”
“I wasn’t gaslighting. I was using observational logic.”
“You were flirting, you sand-brained taxonomist!”
“Then it worked.”
Silence.
Dead silence.
Someone in the front row faints.
Kaveh’s mouth opens. Closes. Opens again.
“…You—you just ADMITTED—”
“I said it worked. I never denied intention.”
“You emotionally constipated slab of marble—”
“Are we still pretending this isn’t mutual?”
The crowd looses it.
Cyno throws a shoe.
Tighnari yells “GET A ROOM—preferably not the one we’ve all heard you screaming in.”
Nilou sobs into a tissue embroidered with their ship name.
Kaveh, red-faced and tremble-lipped, points a shaking hand at the ceiling. “I am going to compose an ENTIRE SYMPHONY OF SPITE just for YOU—”
“You’re welcome to dedicate it to me,” Alhaitham says with all the smugness of a cat who knocked over an entire library and called it art. “Put it in your next thesis. Footnote my name.”
Kaveh screams.
---
That night, they end up kissing again.
Harder.
Meaner.
Sloppier.
Because what else do you do with that much tension?
What do you do with someone who drives you insane, intellectually matches you at every step, and has a jawline sculpted by the gods and a personality forged in the ninth circle of argumentative hell?
You kiss them.
You drag them into your room and you argue about shelving order while he unbuttons your robe. You curse his name while you memorize the shape of his spine. You throw a pillow at his head and then crawl into his lap and pretend it's not because you like the sound of his laugh when you’re angry.
You fall in love and deny it.
Aggressively.
---
They are still disasters.
Still idiots.
Still pretending they are having a long-term domestic academic debate and not, in fact, dating.
Kaveh: “He’s not my boyfriend, he’s just a deeply aggravating presence in my life who happens to sleep in my bed and make me tea and understand my dreams and kiss me like the world is ending.”
Alhaitham: “Boyfriend is a reductive term. We share space. And fluids. And psychological phenomena of mutual infatuation. It’s clearly more complex.”
Everyone else: suffering.
---
A week has passed by now.
Seven days. One hundred sixty-eight hours. Roughly 603,720 seconds. (Kaveh knows this because he has counted, with a pen between his teeth and the precise emotional fervor of someone who refuses to acknowledge he's spiraling.)
They haven't kissed again.
They also haven't not kissed again.
They have built a fortress of avoidance so elaborate it deserves architectural awards. Kaveh calls it “Strategic Domestic Partitioning.” Alhaitham calls it “an unfortunate byproduct of our differing approaches to shared spatial engagement.”
Everyone else calls it “the weirdest, most sexually tense Cold War in Sumeru.”
---
Observed Symptoms of Mutual Denial: A Field Log by Tighnari
Day 4 – Kaveh drops a book on Alhaitham’s foot. Stares too long at his ankle. Pretends it didn’t happen.
Day 5 – Alhaitham makes two cups of tea. Pretends the second one is for “symmetry.”
Day 6 – Kaveh burns his toast, blames “the patriarchy,” and refuses to explain.
Day 7 – Alhaitham mutters “you’re beautiful” while half-asleep on the couch. Kaveh dies. Silently. For twenty minutes.
Conclusion: These two are one thesis proposal away from a public breakdown.
---
The tension is unbearable.
Like walking on cracked eggshells made of literature and longing. Every sentence between them is a double entendre in disguise. Every brush of fingertips, every exchanged glance, every shared sigh—
Charged.
Static-heavy.
Alhaitham accidentally touchs Kaveh’s back during breakfast and Kaveh drops a fork like he’s been shot.
He says that it's a muscle spasm.
Alhaitham doesn't believe him.
(Spoiler: it isn't a muscle spasm. It is a thirst spasm.)
---
And then there's the Pillow Incident.
It begins, innocently, with Kaveh reorganizing the living room throw pillows in a way that's aesthetically harmonious and spiritually necessary and, also, perfectly correct.
Naturally, Alhaitham ruins it.
He sits down.
On the pillows.
On the wrong ones.
Kaveh stares.
“You’re sitting on the accent set.”
“I’m sitting on the couch.”
“The couch is fine. The pillows were intentional. That set is curated.”
Alhaitham blinks slowly. “They’re soft objects, not sovereign states.”
“They had a hierarchy!”
Alhaitham crosses his arms. “Are you implying the mustard yellow pillow had a tax bracket?”
“I’m implying you have no taste and the emotional capacity of a wet rag.”
“The mustard one is itchy.”
“It’s textured, you brute.”
The next words are fateful.
“Well,” Alhaitham says, deadly calm, “if it bothers you that much—”
He flops backward. Full weight. Directly onto all six curated pillows.
Kaveh blacks out from rage.
And then hurls another pillow directly at his stupid, gorgeous, criminally comfortable face.
Alhaitham catches it.
“I could sue,” Kaveh hisses, storming closer. “I could have you exiled for crimes against interior design.”
“Go ahead,” Alhaitham says, lying supine like the smuggest casualty of a taste war. “Then you won’t have anyone to argue with.”
Kaveh halts.
Because that's… unfair.
True.
Viciously vulnerable in the way Alhaitham never is. A little hint, a note in a margin, a whisper of—
Don’t go.
And Kaveh—fool, fool, bleeding heart in silk—just stares down at him and says, “I hate you.”
“You’re holding a pillow,” Alhaitham replies, eyes half-lidded. “You could smother me right now.”
“I’m thinking about it.”
“You won’t.”
“…Why not?”
“Because you like having me around.”
And the worst part?
Kaveh does.
Likes it. Wants it. Needs it. Craves it.
Alhaitham is chaos and calm at once, unbearable and irreplaceable, every contradiction Kaveh has ever tried to design his way out of. He is home and hell in one man-shaped problem set.
And so Kaveh, instead of saying any of that like a sane person, just shoves another pillow under Alhaitham’s head and walks away muttering about “bastards with too many abs and too few emotional coping skills.”
---
Later that night, Alhaitham stands in the kitchen, sipping water and rereading Kaveh’s architectural blueprint for a proposed exhibit space titled “The Room of Theoretically Unsaid Things.”
It is shaped like a heart.
Kaveh insists it was metaphorical.
Alhaitham traces the lines with his finger.
“…Coward,” he murmurs.
Then closes the scroll.
And leaves a sticky note that said: “Page 7 has a symmetry flaw. Also, you’re projecting.”
Meanwhile, Kaveh is writing a new paper.
It's titled: “Re: That Time My Roommate Emotionally Ambushed Me Via Academia – A Memoir in Seven Acts and One Nervous Breakdown.”
Act I: “Why Does He Breathe Like That?”
Act II: “We’re Just Two Guys Sharing A Lease”
Act III: “I Am Not In Love, I Am In Rage”
Act IV: “He Touched My Hand. I Dropped A Mug. It's a Coincidence”
Act V: “We Kissed. It Was Fine. I’m Fine. It’s All Fine.”
Act VI: “Why Is He So Pretty When He Reads”
Act VII: “I’m Going to Die Hugeless and He Will Step Over My Corpse Like It’s a Rug”
He ends it with a footnote.
Footnote: I think I’m in love with him. Don’t tell him.
He prints it. Folds it. Stares at it.
And then buries it under a pile of receipts and absolutely does not cry.
(Not even a little.)
(Maybe just one single noble tear.)
---
They are both waiting.
Each thinking the other might say something first.
Each thinking, maybe if I just stay quiet, they’ll confess.
Each one yearning. Stubborn. Terrified.
Refusing to admit they are already halfway in love and ten years behind schedule.
---
Tighnari has seen many things in his time.
Rogue fungi infestations. Students who forgot to breathe during exams. Cyno’s jokes.
But never—not once—has he seen a case of intellectual codependency quite like Alhaitham and Kaveh.
It's like watching a tragic opera composed entirely of unfinished sentences, misdirected longing, and sexual tension so thick it is probably a Class IV environmental hazard.
They are in denial so dense, you can mine it for ores.
So Tighnari, being both a man of science and vengeance, does what any concerned friend would do.
He schedules an intervention.
Cyno, naturally, agrees. Loudly. Too quickly.
“I already have a spreadsheet,” he says ominously.
---
The Intervention: Operation Homoerotic Thesis
Date: Thursday, 5:00 PM sharp
Location: Tighnari's House (neutral ground)
Guests of Honor: Two emotionally repressed academics
Snacks: Yes.
Backup: Nilou (emotional support), Faruzan (for chaos), and one reluctant Collei (who brought juice boxes).
---
It begins, as all disasters do, with a lie.
Kaveh has been promised wine, gossip, and “an exclusive preview of the latest architectural philosophy symposium.”
Alhaitham has been told there would be a debate about “rhetorical frameworks in ethical praxis,” which—Tighnari admits—he did kind of make that one up on the spot.
They arrive at the same time.
(Obviously. They're on the same psychic calendar of shared delusion.)
Both pause at the door.
“You?” Kaveh sneers, coat perfectly flared, hair wind-kissed, rage barely restrained.
“You,” Alhaitham says flatly, sipping his coffee like it has personally betrayed him.
They step inside.
The room is too quiet. Too well-lit.
Nilou smiles gently. “Hi, you two.”
Faruzan waves from the couch. “Take a seat. Anywhere. Except near each other.”
Kaveh blinks. “What—?”
“Please sit,” Cyno says, gesturing to a diagram titled ‘Trajectory of Your Mutual Emotional Avoidance.’
It features graphs. And red strings.
Alhaitham narrows his eyes. “This is… an ambush.”
“It’s an intervention,” Tighnari corrects. “We’re staging it because none of us can live like this anymore.”
“You’ve become a public health concern,” Cyno says, deadpan.
Kaveh gawks. “What does that even mean—?”
“It means your mutual pining is affecting the atmosphere,” Tighnari snaps. “Last week, Collei said she felt a pressure system shift when you two stood next to each other.”
Collei waves shyly from the snack table. “I got a headache.”
Cyno holds up a large laminated flowchart. “Here is a breakdown of every known interaction you’ve had this month, categorized by emotional volatility.”
It includes:
“Kaveh slams a door and whispers ‘he’s so smug I want to eat drywall’”
“Alhaitham drinks from Kaveh’s mug and calls it ‘resource efficiency’”
“Nine (9) instances of shirtless accidental encounters in the hallway”
“Sixteen (16) tension-filled silences exceeding thirty seconds”
“One (1) kiss (documented), followed by catastrophic avoidance behaviors”
Kaveh turns the color of repressed longing.
Alhaitham sets down his coffee very carefully, as if resisting the urge to throw it.
Nilou clasps her hands. “We think you’re in love.”
“We’re not,” they say. In unison.
Faruzan throws a pillow at them.
“Let me be clear,” Tighnari says, pacing like a professor confronting academic fraud. “You live together. You argue like rivals, care like husbands, and kissed in front of the fridge. You wrote an entire academic paper about each other’s emotional habits.”
“That was a thought experiment,” Alhaitham replies, coolly.
“It had three footnotes about Kaveh’s eyelashes,” Cyno deadpans.
“They’re very symmetrical,” Alhaitham mutters.
“I’m leaving,” Kaveh says, rising like an angry sun.
“No, you’re not,” Faruzan says, shoving him back into his seat. “Sit your lovelorn ass down and face your trauma.”
Kaveh crosses his arms. “We’re fine.”
“You screamed his name in your sleep last week,” Cyno says.
“That's not proof!”
“You were dreaming about IKEA,” Tighnari adds. “You said, and I quote, ‘Alhaitham, put the Malm together with me, for the love of the Dendro Archon.’”
“I am going to set myself on fire.”
“Good,” Cyno says. “Maybe the heat will burn off some of the denial fog.”
---
They keep trying.
They ask questions like:
“Do you miss him when he’s gone?”
“Do you fantasize about kissing him or committing murder, or both?”
“Do you like his voice?”
“Does your heart do weird shit when he touches your shoulder?”
Alhaitham: “My heart doesn’t do ‘weird shit.’ It does blood circulation.”
Kaveh: “No comment.”
Everyone else: SCREAMING.
After two hours, Alhaitham finally cracks. Slightly.
“He’s… emotionally chaotic,” he says, pinching the bridge of his nose. “But it’s… tolerable. Preferable, even. Sometimes.”
Tighnari blinks. “Was that a confession?”
“No,” Alhaitham says, instantly defensive. “It was an observation.”
Kaveh stands up. “This is ridiculous. I’m leaving.”
Nilou: “Kaveh, do you love him?”
Kaveh: “I—he’s—he doesn’t even fold laundry correctly—”
“That’s not an answer,” Cyno says, holding a hand out. It buzzed softly.
Kaveh stares at the hand.
Then at Alhaitham.
Then at the floor.
“I don’t know what this is, okay?” he explodes. “I don’t know if it’s love or trauma bonding or some elaborate slow-burn hostage situation, but—he’s always there, and I don’t know what to do with myself when he isn’t.”
Silence.
A very long silence.
Alhaitham blinks.
Faruzan whispers, “Oh my gods.”
Alhaitham opens his mouth.
Closes it.
Opens it again.
“I don’t do things halfway,” he says, voice low. “If I wanted to leave, I would’ve. If I’m here—it’s because I choose to be.”
“Then say what it is,” Kaveh snaps, suddenly shaking. “Say it. Define it. Use your stupid words.”
More silence.
Alhaitham swallows.
“It’s…”
He looks at the room.
Everyone leans in.
“…unquantifiable.”
Kaveh screames.
Tighnari actually collapses.
---
The intervention fails.
Of course it does.
They leave together. Still not holding hands. Still not kissing. Still not defining the thing.
But as they walk home—shoulders brushing, breaths synced, fingers twitching with restrained affection—Tighnari sighs.
“Well,” he says, biting into a stress muffin. “We tried.”
Cyno opens his spreadsheet and marked the outcome as: "HELLISH STALEMATE."
Nilou cries softly into her scarf. “They’re so close.”
Faruzan is already taking bets. “Another two weeks. Maximum. Or I’m faking a wedding invitation and locking them in a dressing room together.”
Collei raises her juice box. “To emotional repression!”
Meanwhile, Alhaitham and Kaveh arrive home.
Silence.
Tension.
Alhaitham says, “Do you want tea?”
Kaveh says, “Yeah.”
Alhaitham makes tea.
Kaveh stands in the kitchen doorway, watching him like he's trying to memorize the shape of safety.
Neither says anything.
Their fingertips touch when the mug passes between them.
And nothing else happens.
---
There is nothing—nothing—more dangerous to a man in denial than a formal banquet.
Nothing with the same lethal ratio of tight clothing, atmospheric lighting, live strings, and seating charts designed by someone who clearly wants to watch the world burn.
And so it is that Alhaitham finds himself in a very tight, very tailored black suit, sitting at a long obsidian banquet table with gold trim, staring across it at a man who once told him architecture is like sex: best when structurally unsound.
Kaveh.
Draped in wine-red robes embroidered with flame motifs and hubris. Hair loosely tied back like he is starring in a state-funded tragedy. One earring. Too much lip gloss. The kind of smirk that can trigger a man’s fight-or-flight instincts. Or worse—his feelings.
Alhaitham takes a slow sip of his wine and tries very hard not to imagine licking the gloss off Kaveh’s—
“Alhaitham,” Cyno whispers from beside him. “You’re vibrating.”
“I’m not.”
“You just stabbed your asparagus.”
“It was soft.”
Tighnari, two seats down, stares at his bread roll like it has personally wronged him. “You’re both unbearable.”
Faruzan clinks her wine glass. “I give them an hour before one of them makes a scene. Five mora.”
“Ten says they make it through dessert, but only because Kaveh trips and falls into Alhaitham’s lap.”
“I never trip,” Kaveh says sweetly from across the table, somehow hearing them. “Unlike certain people who lack core stability and emotional range.”
Alhaitham’s jaw tenses. “You’re referring to that one time I fell off a stepladder retrieving your hair serum.”
“It was a crime of physics. Your center of gravity betrayed you, not me.”
“That doesn’t even make sense.”
“Neither do your bibliographies.”
Everyone goes silent.
Alhaitham’s eye twitches.
He takes a slow, deep breath and recites pi under his breath like a spell to banish lust and rage.
3.1415926535—
---
By the second course, the sexual tension has gotten so thick someone could slice it and serve it with garnish.
The room is warm with candlelight. A string quartet plays something romantic and stupid. Kaveh is laughing too loudly at something Nilou said, neck tilted just so, and Alhaitham—
Alhaitham stops breathing again.
He doesn't notice until Cyno elbows him.
“Drowning in your own repression?” Cyno mutters.
Alhaitham blinks. “He’s being loud.”
“He’s being charming.”
“It’s manipulative.”
“You’re in love with him.”
“I am in a long-term cohabitation arrangement.”
“With your soulmate,” Cyno deadpans.
“I will kill you,” Alhaitham says, still staring at Kaveh’s clavicle.
Cyno sips his wine.
---
By the third course, Kaveh is fully playing with fire.
He leans over the table to reach the bread basket (unnecessary), letting his sleeves fall just enough to expose wrist and forearm and sins. His voice is lower. He laughs more. He is glowing. Bastard.
“You’re doing it on purpose,” Alhaitham mutters.
Kaveh tilts his head. “Doing what?”
“Glowing.”
“I moisturized.”
Alhaitham stares at his water glass as if it might offer divine intervention.
“You wrote an entire thesis comparing me to a crumbling ruin,” Kaveh adds lightly. “You think I’m not allowed to be moisturized?”
“You were metaphorically unstable,” Alhaitham mutters. “Not physically—”
“Oh, no, say it louder. Tell the whole banquet how much you think about my foundation cracks.”
Alhaitham stares him down.
Kaveh stares back.
Tighnari stares into his wine and whispers, “Someone end me.”
---
Then comes dessert.
A lavender soufflé, allegedly. It could be a bomb. Alhaitham doesn't care. He can't taste anything. His sense of taste has been obliterated by Kaveh, who just leans in and licks a bit of cream off his spoon like a sinful fairytale prince.
Cyno makes a noise. “He’s doing it again.”
“I know,” Alhaitham whispers hoarsely.
“He’s trying to destroy you.”
“Yes.”
“Are you going to stop him?”
“No.”
---
Eventually, after wine and shame and several near-accidental touches beneath the table (each of which lasted a moment too long), the formal program begins.
A speech. Long. Boring. Words about Sumeru’s academic future. Alhaitham is supposed to pay attention. He does not.
Because Kaveh is now doing something even more dangerous than existing attractively.
He is taking notes.
On a napkin.
With one of Alhaitham’s pens. (He can tell. It has bite marks.)
And Alhaitham, helpless, watches the shape of his wrist curl around the page, the way his brow furrows in focus, the small almost-smile he has when he understood something—
You’re in love with him, whispers a voice in his head. It’s embarrassing.
“Shut up,” Alhaitham whispers to no one.
Kaveh glances up. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“Are you having an episode?”
“Yes. You.”
---
After the speech, people mill around, glasses clinking, violins singing something soft and ridiculous.
Alhaitham stands alone by the pillar, sipping water like it might keep him from grabbing Kaveh by the waist and dragging him into a supply closet.
Then—
Kaveh appears at his side.
Of course.
He looks unfair. Too bright. Too near. His voice soft.
“Did you hear any of that speech?”
“No.”
“Same.”
A pause. Long enough to be dangerous.
“You look good in black,” Kaveh says, not looking at him.
Alhaitham’s brain short-circuits.
“Statistically,” Kaveh adds, voice loftier, “black is slimming. Even on emotionally constipated rationalists.”
Alhaitham’s mouth opens. Closes. “That was almost a compliment.”
“You’re almost dateable.”
“Are you flirting with me?”
Kaveh raises a brow. “Do you want me to be?”
A long silence.
Neither moves.
“Define flirting,” Alhaitham finally says, voice slightly too low.
Kaveh licks his lips. “I’d rather demonstrate it.”
They do not kiss.
Of course they don't.
That could've been progress.
Instead, someone drops a tray. The moment breaks. Kaveh turns away.
“I’m getting more wine,” he says, and leaves.
Alhaitham watches him go.
Curses him.
Wants him.
Later, he finds the napkin.
Folded. Left on the table.
In Kaveh’s handwriting.
The note said:
If I were writing about you again,
I’d footnote everything with ‘I love you.’
…But I’m not writing. I’m living it.
No signature.
Alhaitham reads it five times.
Then carefully folds it back up and places it in his coat pocket like it might explode.
He does not go after Kaveh.
He goes home.
Stares at the ceiling.
Tries to sleep.
Fails.
Again.
---
It begins, as all disasters do, with laundry.
More specifically: Kaveh’s.
More specifically: Kaveh’s underthings, which Alhaitham did not mean to see but now can’t seem to forget. And which are currently dangling off the balcony railing like satin flags of war.
“You washed lace with my research linens,” Alhaitham says from the doorway, holding one of his now-lightly-pink towels like it’s evidence in a criminal trial.
Kaveh, completely unrepentant, is lounging in a bathrobe like a Roman emperor. “I separated the delicates.”
“This was a delicate.”
“You bought that on clearance and it has bloodstains.”
“Those were from a papercut.”
“You are the most dramatic man alive.”
Alhaitham opens his mouth to reply but is interrupted by a low roll of thunder from outside, ominous and full of metaphor.
Kaveh looks up. “Oh. Rain.”
“It’s the monsoon season. Of course it’s rain.”
“I left my umbrella at Nilou’s place.”
“Why would you—”
“She needed it.”
“You’re going to get soaked.”
“And die beautifully,” Kaveh says with a sigh, standing to retrieve his laundry.
And that’s when it happens.
The world pauses.
Because the robe slips.
Just enough.
Just barely.
And Alhaitham—scholar, sage, sufferer—gets a full, glorious view of Kaveh’s lower back. A stretch of golden skin. The dip of his spine. A single mole.
Sensuality weaponized. Sartorial terrorism.
Alhaitham turns violently away. “For Archons’ sake, cover yourself.”
“You have seen me naked.”
“That was an accident!”
“You stared for ten seconds.”
“I was in shock.”
“You touched my hip.”
“I was trying to get out of the shower stall.”
“You lingered.”
“I slipped.”
“Then why did you moan?”
“THAT WAS A SIGH.”
The thunder cracks again, louder this time. The kind that rattles windows. The sky opens like a bad breakup and starts weeping.
Kaveh stares mournfully at the downpour. “Guess I’m stuck.”
Alhaitham, bone-dry and clinging to rationality, mutters, “Tragic.”
“…I could die here.”
“You live here.”
“Emotionally.”
Alhaitham doesn’t respond. He’s busy not looking at the way Kaveh’s robe has slipped again. Or at the way Kaveh’s damp hair curls slightly at the ends. Or at the way his collarbone looks under warm lamplight, like the site of a religious epiphany.
Focus.
“Do not—” Alhaitham begins, too late.
Because Kaveh is already reaching for a wine glass.
“It’s noon.”
“It’s raining. Therefore, it is art.”
“That is not logic.”
“That is living.”
Alhaitham glares. Kaveh drinks.
Thunder crashes.
The cat—Alhaitham's cat, tragically named “Footnote” thanks to a long story and a bet Kaveh won—yowls and runs into the room like the house is on fire.
It leaps onto the couch.
Onto Kaveh.
Settles in his lap like it’s paying rent there.
Alhaitham watches, helpless, as Footnote purrs like she’s never loved anyone more.
“You traitor,” he mutters.
“She senses beauty,” Kaveh says smugly, sipping again.
Footnote licks his wrist.
Alhaitham considers walking into the storm voluntarily.
An hour later, the storm is full apocalypse.
Rain slashes sideways. Wind howls like a B-tier opera. The walls tremble. So does Alhaitham.
Not from fear.
From the realization that Kaveh is not leaving.
Worse: Kaveh has declared the living room “too gloomy” and migrated to Alhaitham’s bed. With a book. With his book.
“You’re getting the pages wet,” Alhaitham says from the doorway.
“I’m drying.”
“You’re soaking the sheets.”
“It’s ambience.”
“You’re on my side.”
“There are no sides in a bed.”
“There are. That’s why it has two.”
“It’s just a concept,” Kaveh says, lounging diagonally across it like a crime scene chalk outline of lust.
“You’re a concept,” Alhaitham mutters.
“…Explain?”
“I’m not giving you the satisfaction.”
---
Later, much later, Kaveh falls asleep.
Half-curled. One arm thrown dramatically across the pillow. Lips parted like he’s dreaming about making Alhaitham cry.
Alhaitham stands at the door for thirteen entire minutes.
Just…watching.
Processing.
Suffering.
He should leave. Go sleep on the couch. He’s done it before.
But the couch has a spring problem. And Footnote has claimed it.
And the bed is—
Warm.
Smelling faintly of bergamot and rosewater.
Of Kaveh.
“Objectively,” Alhaitham mutters, to himself, like an idiot, “this is the most logical choice.”
He climbs in.
Does not look at Kaveh.
Definitely doesn’t look when Kaveh sighs and turns over, flinging one leg across him like they’re in a tragic romance novel written by someone who hates plot.
Alhaitham freezes.
Heart hammering like a criminal at a border checkpoint.
Kaveh’s hand finds his hip.
Even asleep, the bastard has range.
“Don’t,” Alhaitham whispers.
Kaveh murmurs something in his sleep. It sounds like “Haitham.”
Alhaitham dies. Quietly.
---
In the morning, Kaveh wakes up spooning Alhaitham.
Alhaitham wakes up pretending not to be enjoying it.
Footnote stares at them both from the foot of the bed with the judgment of a thousand grandmothers.
No one speaks.
The silence grows.
Finally, Kaveh says, “So. This is happening.”
Alhaitham, eyes closed, replies, “It’s raining again.”
Kaveh leans in, breath warm against his ear.
“Should we pretend that’s a metaphor?”
Alhaitham doesn’t move.
“Statistically,” he says, very quietly, “this is still denial.”
“Statistically,” Kaveh replies, “you like it.”
They don’t kiss.
Not again.
But they breathe the same air.
And the tension, the storm, the want—it builds like something ancient and aching and slow.
They’re still idiots.
But now they’re idiots in the same bed.
Progress.
Notes:
Hope you enjoyed! Our two favorite intellectual dumbasses are back again! Now featuring a cat! Let it be known that I live for cats. I would die for cats!
Side note: one of our cats just had her litter! Five of them — they're all so, so cute! Mama cat is happier than ever, having them out of her belly, haha. We have three other pregnant queens (by the fault of a stray, black tomcat who came and left in a span of a couple of weeks 💀), so there'll be more soon!
Edit: Another one of our cats had her litter! Guess what? Five beautiful kittens... again! Damn, we're up to ten kittens already and there's two more pregnant queens to go!
The second part of this twoshot will be posted next week—if you want to keep up, please consider bookmarking or subscribing to this.
Next chapter —
Haikaveh is swimming in De Nile. Alhaitham is yearning, is jealous, is pining. Kaveh is a mess.
You can find me on Bluesky ( @the_wild_poet25 ) and on my new Twitter account (the_tamed_poet) if you want to connect. I'm also on Discord too!
The comment section also works—feel free to leave a comment! :)
Chapter 2
Notes:
LiulfrLokison made some more lovely line art for this fic! You can view it here! It's beautiful, thank you so much! ❤️
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
It begins, of course, with Tighnari.
Who corners them in the House of Daena with the energy of a man who has made peace with murder.
“I’m not saying you need to kiss,” he says calmly, setting down his satchel of research scrolls. “I’m saying if you don’t, I will personally call Nahida and tell her two of her finest minds are being outperformed in emotional maturity by Scaramouche.”
Kaveh nearly drops the book he’s fake-reading. “That’s a war crime.”
“Exactly,” Tighnari says with a deadly smile. “Now kiss. Or at least do something about the—” he gestures vaguely in their direction, “—erotic tension radiating off you like sunstroke.”
“I don’t radiate anything,” Alhaitham mutters.
“You radiate brooding repression,” Cyno chimes in from a chair he had not previously occupied.
“Where did you—”
“I’m always here. Waiting.”
Kaveh, predictably, is flushed and fidgeting, trying to tuck his hair behind his ear, failing, and then glaring at Alhaitham like it’s his fault that his ears are red.
“We’re roommates,” he says with deeply forced casualness. “Tension is inevitable.”
“You spooned him,” Tighnari replies, flipping open his notebook. “In bed. For six hours.”
“It was raining!”
“That is not an argument.”
“There was a cat involved!”
“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that,” Cyno mutters.
Tighnari sighs. “You know what? Fine. Maybe you’re not emotionally ready. Maybe you need to get out of the house and remember what normal interpersonal behavior looks like.”
“Define normal,” Alhaitham says, deadpan.
“Shopping trip,” Tighnari says, decisive and terrifying. “Grand Bazaar. Now.”
Alhaitham opens his mouth.
Tighnari raises a hand. “No. You’re going. Both of you. As penance. And if you don’t, I’m telling Nilou that you made fun of her choreography again.”
“That was one time—”
“Bazaar. Now.”
---
The Grand Bazaar is aggressively alive.
There are children singing. Dancers spinning. Merchants shouting the benefits of their hand-woven rugs and cursed jewelry. Someone is playing a lute with a suspiciously modern backbeat. And the scent of roasting dates, cardamom tea, and emotional catastrophe hangs in the air.
Kaveh is in his element.
Alhaitham is two seconds from spontaneous combustion.
“He’s smiling,” a teenage vendor whispers, pointing at Kaveh. “He’s literally smiling. Do you think he’s in love?”
“Tragically,” her friend murmurs. “You can tell by the way he holds the eggplant.”
“He picked it up like it was precious.”
Kaveh, oblivious, is arguing about the price of pomegranates with the air of a man defending his doctoral thesis.
“Four thousand mora? For a fruit that stains? Do you think I’m made of disposable income and bad decisions?”
“You are literally that,” Alhaitham mutters beside him.
“You picked the ugly ones.”
“They’re all the same inside.”
“That’s exactly what someone would say if they were projecting!”
“You licked a mango last week and called it philosophical.”
“It was succulent. It had layers.”
“It gave you a rash.”
“That was passion.”
A silence.
A long one.
Then Alhaitham says, very quietly: “You’re insufferable.”
Kaveh turns.
And smiles. Not his usual dazzling court-diplomat grin, but something smaller. Lopsided. Honest.
And something in Alhaitham’s chest goes oh.
Oh no.
Things go downhill fast after that.
Because the fruit stand explodes.
Well—metaphorically. But also physically, because Kaveh grabs a mango to make a point about taste and moral character, and then manages to drop it, slip on it, and crash directly into Alhaitham’s chest.
And then—somehow—they both fall.
Into the fruit cart.
Onto each other.
Surrounded by smashed mangoes, sticky dates, and what feels dangerously like foreshadowing.
“Get off,” Alhaitham says, strained.
“You broke my fall!”
“You broke my hip.”
“There’s mango in my—oh my god, is that your hand or a papaya?”
“It’s my hand.”
“Oh. That’s fine, then.”
Someone gasps. A vendor screams.
“Oh no,” Kaveh whispers.
Because they are, in fact, in public.
Lying tangled together in a heap of fruit gore and domestic symbolism.
And a child is pointing at them yelling “THEY’RE IN LOVE!!”
Cyno appears.
Takes a photo.
Leaves.
---
They make it back home soaked, sticky, and traumatized.
Footnote judges them both from the top of the bookshelf.
Neither speaks.
Kaveh showers first, muttering darkly about mango-induced tragedy and emotional manipulation through grocery accidents.
Alhaitham stares at the wall for ten minutes and then makes tea he forgets to drink.
Kaveh emerges in a towel and says, “Don’t read into this.”
Alhaitham says, “I wasn’t.”
Kaveh says, “Good.”
A pause.
A moment.
They look at each other.
Then Kaveh blurts: “I’m going to Tighnari's!”
“But—”
“See you in three to five business days!” he yells, and flees. Out the door. Into the dusk. Gone.
Leaving behind:
One wet towel.
A suspiciously affectionate cat.
And Alhaitham, in the middle of the living room, staring into the abyss of his own emotional constipation.
---
Hours pass.
The tea is cold.
Footnote stares at him like he’s the dumbest man alive.
Alhaitham finally mutters, “I know.”
Footnote meows.
“I know I’m in love with him.”
Footnote meows again.
“But he’s not ready.”
Footnote jumps on the table and knocks over a notebook.
It’s Kaveh’s. Doodles of architectural structures. Small hearts. Scribbled names.
Haitham.
Underlined.
Twice.
Alhaitham, finally, rests his forehead on the table and groans like a man who’s just realized he’s the idiot in the love story.
And Footnote purrs.
Because she’s always known.
---
The rain returns like a grudge.
Sheets of it, hammering down on Sumeru City as if the gods themselves have grown tired of watching these two scholars pine like badly written protagonists in a forbidden romance novel.
Alhaitham is making soup.
He has no idea why.
He doesn’t even like soup.
But he is chopping vegetables with the precision of a man avoiding a breakdown and listening to the storm like it’s taunting him.
Footnote sits on the counter and watches with judgment that could strip paint off walls.
“I am coping,” Alhaitham informs her.
Footnote blinks once, slowly. Her tail swishes.
He adds a suspicious amount of chili to the pot. “This is what people do when they’re... feeling things.”
Footnote stretches, yawns, and knocks a wooden spoon to the floor.
Outside, the thunder rolls again.
And just as he turns to stir the pot—the door slams open.
Kaveh stands there.
Drenched.
Soaked.
Shimmering in the stormlight like the love interest in a tragic opera.
Holding the umbrella upside down.
“Your soup smells like emotional avoidance,” he says without preamble.
Alhaitham blinks.
“You’re wet,” he says, because his brain has been replaced by white noise and rain.
“You’re emotionally unavailable,” Kaveh replies, stepping inside like he owns the floor.
“Why are you here?”
“Because I’m an idiot!” Kaveh yells, flinging the umbrella to the floor like a gauntlet.
The soup boils in the background.
They stare at each other.
The lightning cracks outside, illuminating Kaveh’s face—his flushed cheeks, rain-slicked hair, and eyes that are glowing with a dangerous mixture of hope and existential crisis.
“I left Tignari's,” he says. “Because I realized that everything smelled like dirt and regret and I hate how his pillows don’t smell like you.”
Pause.
Beat.
Alhaitham.exe has stopped responding.
“You could have messaged me,” Alhaitham says finally.
“I DID. SIX TIMES.”
“I don’t check my messages.”
“Then WHY do you have a communicator?”
“For emergencies.”
“I SENT THE EMERGENCY CODE.”
“You sent me a cactus.”
“It was a metaphor.”
“For what?”
“My unrequited longing!”
The soup boils over.
Neither notices.
They are too busy arguing like they’re on trial for war crimes and the sentence is kissing.
---
Alhaitham takes a breath. “You left Tighnari's. In the rain. With an inverted umbrella. To come here and tell me... what?”
Kaveh stares at him.
His lip trembles.
It’s almost heartbreaking. Almost cinematic. Almost sincere.
But then he says:
“That your soup smells like emotional constipation and I think I’m in love with your spice rack.”
Alhaitham says nothing.
Because what he wants to say is:
“You’re an idiot.”
What he means to say is:
“You’re the love of my life.”
What he accidentally says is:
“…I alphabetized the jars.”
Kaveh goes very still.
“Did you just confess to emotionally organizing your seasoning because you can’t tell me you love me?”
Alhaitham picks up the ladle.
And very slowly ladles soup into a bowl.
“This is extremely healthy coping,” he mutters.
Kaveh walks closer.
Thunder crashes again.
They are three inches apart.
“I missed you,” Kaveh says, voice soft and wrecked and real.
The soup steams.
“You slept here for two nights.”
“I missed your existential glare.”
“I don’t glare. I’m perceptive.”
“You looked at a lemon yesterday like it insulted your thesis.”
“It was a metaphor.”
“For what?”
“You.”
Pause.
A long one.
Outside, the storm reaches its peak. Lightning lights up the sky like a warning. Footnote meows from the hallway like she can’t believe this is still happening.
“I’m just gonna say it,” Kaveh says, stepping forward. “If you don’t stop me, I’m going to—”
BOOM.
The lightning strikes somewhere nearby. The lights flicker. The power dies.
Alhaitham drops the ladle.
Kaveh yelps.
The soup hits the floor.
“MY SOCKS!” Kaveh screams. “THEY’RE SOUPED!”
“We lost power,” Alhaitham says, blinking in the dark.
“We lost dignity!”
“You never had any.”
“We were having a MOMENT!”
“It was interrupted by weather!”
“You sabotaged it!”
“I can’t control the atmosphere!”
“You’re a hydroponic gaslight!”
“That’s not even a thing!”
“I’m emotionally fragile and soup-footed!”
Alhaitham lights a candle.
They both freeze.
In the soft glow, Kaveh looks radiant.
Rain on his eyelashes. Cheeks flushed. Socks dripping in ginger-carrot catastrophe.
“I think,” Alhaitham says slowly, “you should take a bath.”
“I think,” Kaveh says, “I want to tell you something. But you’re going to make it complicated.”
Alhaitham’s hands curl at his sides.
“I never know what you mean,” he replies, quiet.
Kaveh exhales.
It’s the sound of defeat.
“No one ever does,” he whispers, and walks past him toward the bathroom.
The door shuts.
The rain rages on.
And Alhaitham stands in the middle of a dark kitchen, in soup, wondering how he manages to be the smartest man in the Akademiya and the dumbest man in love at the same time.
---
Later, Kaveh comes out in his pajamas.
They’re too short at the ankles.
His hair is fluffy from the towel. He looks like the aftermath of a romantic comedy no one had the budget to finish.
They sit on the couch.
Don’t speak.
Don’t touch.
Footnote sits in between them like a cat-shaped barrier of repressed yearning.
“I forgive you for the soup,” Kaveh says finally.
“I forgive you for the metaphor,” Alhaitham replies.
“I was going to say it.”
“I know.”
“I will. Eventually.”
Alhaitham nods.
“Just not tonight.”
Alhaitham sips cold tea and says, “The power’s still out.”
Kaveh sighs. “That’s very symbolic.”
“I hate symbolism.”
“You’re made of it.”
They don’t touch.
They don’t kiss.
But they’re so close.
And the thunder rolls again, as if the world is trying to shake the truth out of them.
---
It begins, like all great disasters, with Collei suggesting a party.
“I just think,” she says innocently, “that you two need to relax.”
“Define ‘relax,’” Alhaitham says without looking up from his book.
“Define ‘you two,’” Kaveh adds, peeling an orange with the drama of a widow recounting her tragic backstory.
“‘You two’ as in you, and your live-in walking repression disaster,” Cyno supplies helpfully. “And relax, as in: stop weaponizing silence and soup as emotional foreplay.”
“WE DO NOT FOREPLAY VIA SOUP.” Kaveh shrieks.
“I dunno,” Tighnari mutters. “That broth had longing.”
---
The party begins in the House of Daena’s garden, under the pretense of being “small” and “intimate.” It is, of course, neither.
Kaveh has redecorated the garden for “atmosphere,” which apparently means silk-draped lighting, rose petals in the fountain, and an unreasonable amount of scented candles that Alhaitham keeps subtly blowing out.
Collei brings snacks. Cyno brings games. Tighnari brings his patented You Two Need Therapy look.
Nilou shows up with wine.
“Is this allowed?” Kaveh asks, suspiciously holding the bottle.
“I won it in a dance battle,” she replies.
“Perfect.”
---
They eat. They laugh. They pretend everything is normal.
Alhaitham does not glower at Kaveh’s bare ankles.
Kaveh does not stare at the way Alhaitham drinks from his glass like he’s a thirsty metaphor.
And then Cyno says the words that change the trajectory of history:
“Let’s play Truth or Dare.”
There is silence.
Then:
“I refuse,” Alhaitham says instantly.
“Oh?” Kaveh purrs, drunk on citrus wine and dangerous confidence. “You afraid of a little truth, Haitham?”
“I am afraid,” Alhaitham replies slowly, “of what you might consider a dare.”
“Too bad,” says Nilou cheerfully. “It’s already started.”
---
The game begins innocently enough.
Tighnari admits he once accidentally got high on pollen.
Cyno dares Collei to wear two left shoes.
Nilou reveals her ultimate dream is to open a flower shop where all the arrangements are themed after historical betrayals. “This one’s called Judas’s Bouquet. It’s got snapdragons and scorn.”
And then.
It’s Alhaitham’s turn.
And Kaveh leans forward like he’s about to commit a felony.
“Truth or dare?”
Alhaitham narrows his eyes. “Truth.”
Kaveh smiles. “What’s the most inappropriate thing you’ve ever thought about me?”
There is a choking noise. Tighnari starts coughing on his drink.
Cyno says, “Finally.”
Collei yells, “I’M A MINOR, I’M LEAVING,” and bolts.
Alhaitham does not blink. Does not breathe. Does not look away.
He says, with terrifying calm:
“Your hands. Covered in chalk dust. Arching over a drafting table. Your back arched. Shirt riding up. Legs shaking.”
A pause.
Nilou lets out a high-pitched oh. Tighnari drops his glass. Cyno says, “I’m emotionally compromised.”
Kaveh—blush blooming, lips parted—stares at him like he just saw God in a crop top.
“You are… so vulgar,” he whispers, breathless.
“You asked.”
“You fantasized about my work process?”
“You were making a scale model of the Sanctuary of Surasthana. It was aesthetically pleasing.”
“It’s a temple, Alhaitham.”
“And yet I was the one praying.”
The silence is so charged it could be used to power all of Port Ormos.
Kaveh stands up.
Kaveh paces.
Kaveh takes a swig directly from the wine bottle.
“I’m fine,” he announces, voice warbling. “Everything is under control.”
“You look like you’re about to commit arson,” Alhaitham mutters.
“I’m an architect! Arson is my natural predator!”
---
An hour later, the game is technically over, but the tension is not.
Kaveh has retreated to the rooftop.
Alhaitham follows. Of course he does. He says it’s for safety reasons. He says it’s to check if the wine has made him irrational.
It’s not.
It’s because he can’t not.
He finds Kaveh sitting on the edge, swinging his legs, shirt unbuttoned to the third clasp, hair wild from wind and ego.
“It’s a beautiful night,” Kaveh says without looking.
“The stars are out,” Alhaitham says.
“You didn’t deny the fantasy.”
“You didn’t deny enjoying it.”
A pause.
Then Kaveh says, quietly: “Do you ever wish things were simpler?”
Alhaitham sits beside him. Close. Not touching.
“Yes,” he says.
They don’t move. Don’t breathe.
Then Kaveh turns and looks at him. Really looks.
His eyes are molten. His lips pink from wine. He opens his mouth and says:
“I had a dream about you.”
Alhaitham looks at him.
“Not a sexual one,” Kaveh rushes, though his blush says otherwise. “Well—not just. I mean—it started with us arguing about wallpaper, and then it ended with me kissing you in a library and crying for some reason, and I think maybe I love you, and I don’t know if I’m allowed to say that, but if I don’t, I’m going to self-combust like one of those mushrooms you warned me about in the rainforest—”
He’s cut off.
Not by a kiss.
By lightning.
Again.
Because the universe is a sadist.
They scramble inside just as the skies open up, again.
Rain pouring, thunder roaring.
The rest of the party is gone. The candles are out. The tea is cold.
Kaveh stands in the doorway, dripping.
Alhaitham stands behind him.
Neither speaks.
Then Kaveh turns, and says, raw and low and wrecked:
“Why won’t you kiss me?”
Alhaitham stares at him. Heart pounding. Hands shaking.
And he says, voice like a knife: “Because if I do, I won’t stop.”
Silence.
A beat.
Then Kaveh says:
“Coward.”
And walks away.
---
Alhaitham spends the night alone.
In the kitchen.
Staring at his soup pot.
Footnote climbs onto the counter and meows once.
It sounds like “You blew it.”
He says nothing.
Because he knows.
---
Three days after the party, Kaveh does something unthinkable.
Something petty. Ridiculous. Monstrous.
He publishes a response.
Yes. A full academic paper, printed, bound, and footnoted, titled:
“On the Supposed Objectivity of Co-Habitual Observation: A Critique of Domestic Thesis As Performance Art.”
Subtitle:
“Also: I Know What You Said About My Ankles and You’re Not Getting Away With It.”
Dedication:
To Footnote, who deserves better.
Alhaitham wakes up to the sound of a delivery pigeon thudding into his window, tied with a stack of glossy thesis pages and a smug pink envelope sealed with wax that smells like sandalwood and vengeance.
He opens the document.
The abstract alone is 600 words of pure vitriol dressed in ten-dollar vocabulary.
“This paper seeks to dismantle the unethical, narcissistic, and frankly unhinged assertions of one Acting Grand Sage and his delusions of romantic detachment. Utilizing over 47 instances of observational data (read: emotional damage), it argues for the reconsideration of all conclusions previously published in his scandalous, peer-devoid documentation of my personhood.”
Alhaitham sits.
He reads.
He trembles.
Kaveh has footnoted his own tears. He's cited a poem he wrote at seventeen. There is an entire appendix titled “The Illusion of Platonic Soup.”
The page numbers are shaped like tiny middle fingers.
At one point Kaveh writes:
“The notion that architecture is ‘less intellectually rigorous than linguistics’ is demonstrably false, and anyone claiming otherwise is compensating for a lack of emotional intelligence, a tendency toward erotic suppression, and a tragic misunderstanding of hardwood.”
There is a diagram of his ass.
Labeled: “Counterpoint: Structural Integrity.”
---
Alhaitham does what any emotionally unavailable man would do in this situation.
He prepares a counter-rebuttal.
PowerPoint. Seventy-two slides. Color-coded. MLA and APA formats both included, because he is thorough and unwell.
First Slide:
“Refutation of Malicious Architectural Fiction: A Defense of Linguistic Clarity, Emotional Restraint, and the Legitimacy of Fantasizing About One’s Roommate’s Back.”
Second Slide:
“What Is Love, If Not Logical Fascination Persevering?”
Third Slide:
A picture of Kaveh smiling.
Caption: “Exhibit A: Unfortunately Perfect.”
He doesn’t sleep that night. He doesn’t eat. He may or may not cry during the transition animation between slides 43 and 44, which plays the sound of Footnote meowing.
By dawn, he’s shaking.
Not from anger.
From affection.
It’s terrifying.
---
He’s in the middle of rehearsing the PowerPoint aloud to a very confused Footnote when the knock comes.
Sharp. Cold. Familiar.
He opens the door to find:
Suhail.
Tall. Elegant. Eyebrows arched like they’re judging you from the past.
That bastard.
Alhaitham blinks. “You’re—”
“Yes,” Suhail says. “Back. Temporarily. And yes, I heard Kaveh published something. Naturally, I had to see if the bastard’s still codependent and ridiculous.”
He strides in without invitation. Footnote hisses.
“Is that the cat?” Suhail asks. “I see you’ve upgraded from houseplants.”
Alhaitham says nothing. Just watches as Suhail glances around, takes in the familiar architectural chaos of Kaveh’s still-untouched half of the living room, and hums.
“So,” Suhail says, arms folded. “Still in love with him?”
Alhaitham nearly chokes on his own breath.
“I’m not—”
“Oh, you are.” Suhail's smile is not kind. “Gods, it’s worse than when we were dating. At least then he pretended he wasn’t obsessed with you.”
“He’s not—”
“Oh, he is. He wrote a thesis about your soup.”
Silence.
Then Suhail says, sharply:
“Do you even realize how miserable he is? He hasn’t published a design in months. He stays up all night writing love essays disguised as arguments. He watches you make tea and then writes sonnets about your posture. And you—!”
He points at Alhaitham like he’s about to exorcise him.
“You sit here pretending your pulse doesn’t spike every time he calls you ‘Haitham’ with that voice—don’t look at me like that, I hear things—and instead of kissing him like a sane person, you write a fifty-slide rebuttal?”
“Seventy-two,” Alhaitham mutters.
“Sweet merciful Dendro Archon,” Suhail says, pinching his nose. “I’m going to scream.”
---
Kaveh comes home to find Suhail on the couch and Alhaitham standing like a tragic statue of Conflicted Logic.
“Oh no,” Kaveh says immediately. “Why are you here?”
“Nice to see you too, darling,” Suhail purrs. “You look tense. Have you been fighting with your—” he waves at Alhaitham— “situation?”
“I am not a situation,” Alhaitham hisses.
“You’re everything,” Kaveh snaps back, and then pauses. “Wait—no—”
Silence.
Suhail, looking deeply entertained, gets up.
“I’ll leave you two to your emotional breakdown,” he says, already pulling on his gloves. “Try not to kill each other. Or do. I’m not responsible.”
The door slams.
Alhaitham and Kaveh stare at each other.
Silence again.
Then—
“Seventy-two slides,” Alhaitham says quietly. “I made seventy-two slides. To tell you I was wrong.”
“You—?”
“I read your paper,” he continues. “All of it. Even the part where you accused me of erotic fascism.”
“You deserved it.”
“I know.” A pause. “You were right about the soup.”
Kaveh blinks.
“And the chalk. And the ankles. And—I cannot believe I am saying this out loud—the emotional implications of wallpaper.”
Kaveh’s voice comes out very small.
“So… what now?”
Alhaitham steps forward.
Just one step.
“I don’t know,” he says honestly. “But I have a final slide.”
“What is it?”
Alhaitham reaches into his pocket.
Pulls out a printed photo.
It’s a screenshot of Kaveh sleeping on the couch, Footnote curled into his chest, mouth slightly open, the edges of his thesis pages stuck to his forehead.
Underneath, in tiny font:
“Exhibit B: The Only Architecture That’s Ever Meant Anything.”
Kaveh doesn’t cry.
Not exactly.
But he makes a sound like the beginning of a prayer and a breakdown all at once.
And he whispers:
“I hate you.”
Alhaitham smiles.
“No, you don’t.”
Silence.
Then, suddenly, impossibly, finally—
Footnote meows.
And the world turns.
And nothing—nothing—breaks.
Not yet.
---
They go to their respective rooms after that exchange, because emotional intimacy is exhausting, and Kaveh claims he needs a shower and Alhaitham claims he needs to alphabetize his sock drawer.
Neither of them sleep.
Kaveh stares at the ceiling. Alhaitham stares at his PowerPoint slides.
Footnote attempts diplomacy. Is ignored.
At exactly 3:47 a.m., they both exit their rooms at the same time. Kaveh for water. Alhaitham for—something. It doesn't matter.
They meet in the hallway.
They stare.
Kaveh opens his mouth.
Alhaitham opens his mouth.
Words begin to form. Words like “listen,” and “earlier,” and “I wasn’t—”
And then Alhaitham says, with the grace and subtlety of a trebuchet:
“Do you remember the morning after the thesis deadline, when you fell asleep on the couch with soup stains on your wrist? I watched you breathe for twenty-three minutes.”
Silence.
Utter silence.
Not even Footnote meows. The air goes quiet in the way nature does right before an earthquake or a scandal.
Kaveh looks at him like he just announced he’d published their sextape in the Akademiya newsletter.
“You—watched—me—breathe?”
Alhaitham hesitates. For half a second.
Fatal error.
“…Yes?”
“You are psychotic.”
“I was curious—”
“You are a sick, sick man. What is wrong with you? Who watches someone sleep for twenty-three minutes and then footnotes their breathing cadence?!”
“I didn’t footnote—”
“YOU DREW A LINE GRAPH.”
“That was for internal documentation only!”
“I HOPE YOU TRIP ON A CITATION AND DIE!”
Kaveh lunges.
Alhaitham—startled—catches him.
They crash into the wall with a sound like a bookshelf being morally compromised.
And then.
They kiss.
Messily. Furiously. As if arguing via mouth.
It’s teeth and lips and mutual humiliation. A PhD-level brawl conducted through proximity and desperation.
Kaveh pulls back first.
His hair is a mess. His chest is heaving. His pride is somewhere on the floor, bleeding quietly.
He says, panting:
“I’m going to write a rebuttal about this.”
Alhaitham’s headphones are askew. He looks wrecked.
“I’ll proofread it.”
They stare at each other again.
Kiss again.
Harder.
They kiss like it’s a war crime and they’re both guilty.
---
BREAKFAST.
They do not talk about the kissing.
Of course they don’t.
Because that would imply that they meant something. (They did.)
Instead, they both wake up (after three hours of lying in bed silently replaying it over and over like the emotionally repressed idiots they are) and silently convene in the kitchen like nothing happened.
Kaveh is making pancakes with the savage intensity of a man trying to cook his own feelings into submission.
Alhaitham is brewing coffee so methodically it’s basically a religious rite.
Footnote watches them both like a disappointed god.
“Do you want berries?” Kaveh asks, without looking up.
“Rhetorical?”
“Answer the question, Haitham.”
Alhaitham narrows his eyes. “I refuse to engage with emotional symbolism disguised as fruit.”
“They’re literally just berries.”
“No. They are a metaphor.”
“For what?!”
“For you. Sweet, temperamental, full of tiny seeds of unresolved trauma.”
Kaveh throws a spatula at him. It narrowly misses.
Footnote catches it in their mouth.
---
Later that day—because emotional avoidance only works for so long before someone breaks—they sit at the same desk.
A shared desk.
The once-holy battleground of separate books, divided pencils, and aggressively neutral middle space.
Now… they are drafting.
A joint thesis.
Working Title:
“Heuristic Desire: Observational Methodologies and the Ethics of Loving Your Roommate”
Alternate Title:
“Please Just Kiss Me Again So I Can Finish This Paragraph”
Kaveh starts on the outline.
Alhaitham revises the citations.
They pass notes across the table like middle schoolers with graduate degrees.
Kaveh’s margin comments include things like:
“This metaphor is too phallic even for you.”
“Did you seriously reference your own dream journal?”
“Your handwriting looks like a pretentious curse.”
Alhaitham’s return notes include:
“You are the metaphor.”
“Don’t flatter yourself. That was Footnote’s dream journal.”
“Your face is a pretentious curse.”
Somewhere around the midpoint of the paper—right after the paragraph that reads “Emotional detachment is not the absence of feeling but rather its silent containment, and if Kaveh uses that tone again I may combust from the inside out”—they pause.
Just… pause.
Kaveh’s voice is low.
“You meant what you said, right?”
Alhaitham looks at him. Really looks.
About a million terrible, unhelpful things flash through his mind. Lines of poetry. Phrases like “I have memorized your shadow.” Mathematical theorems that resemble the curve of Kaveh’s smile.
But instead, he says:
“…Yes.”
Kaveh breathes.
Then says, quickly:
“Cool. Good. Normal.”
“We should never talk about it again.”
“Ever.”
They nod in agreement.
They go back to drafting.
They do not talk about the kiss.
They do not talk about the following make out sessions.
They absolutely do not talk about the small, soft almost-kiss that happened at the sink last night when Kaveh’s hand brushed Alhaitham’s and neither of them moved away.
Because that would be admitting something.
And they're not ready.
Yet.
But the thesis?
It’s growing.
It’s mutual.
And Footnote has started sleeping on both their pillows.
Which is, arguably, the first sign of progress.
---
It is Kaveh’s idea.
(Of course it is. Alhaitham would rather eat a textbook than socialize willingly.)
“We’re having a housewarming party,” Kaveh announces one Thursday morning while balancing a plate of pancakes on his knee and not looking Alhaitham in the eye.
Alhaitham blinks slowly over his coffee. “We’ve lived here for years.”
“Yes, but now it’s emotionally warm.”
“Is that a euphemism?”
“It’s an aesthetic.”
Footnote meows judgmentally.
Alhaitham sighs. “Fine. But if anyone vomits on my thesis shelf, I will evict them with a trebuchet.”
“That’s fair. Also, I’ve invited half the Akademiya.”
Alhaitham stares. “Half?”
“Well, I had to get back at Faruzan for calling our living arrangement ‘a slow-burn domestic disaster with academic tension.’”
“…That’s accurate.”
“Shut up.”
---
It is, by all metrics, a catastrophe.
The front door opens at 6:00 sharp.
By 6:07, someone has brought experimental spiced wine, Cyno has declared three separate pun-wars, and Tighnari is hiding under the couch with Footnote.
By 6:15, Kaveh is playing flirt-chicken with his ex, whose hair is suspiciously well-groomed and whose accent is illegal in seven countries.
By 6:16, Alhaitham is staring at them with the full weight of academic betrayal.
“He’s quoting Baudelaire at him,” Alhaitham mutters to himself. “That’s—cheap. That’s emotional plagiarism.”
He retreats to the kitchen.
He does not pout.
He strategically sulks.
---
It happens sometime between the fourth round of wine and the third round of Cyno’s terrifyingly accurate “Is That Sexual Tension or Am I Just Projecting?” party game.
(A game he claims is randomized. It is not.)
Kaveh, flushed and buzzing, staggers into the hallway to cool off.
Alhaitham corners him by the coat closet. It is dark. It is small. It is, as the poets say, cramped with meaning.
“I still don’t like him,” Alhaitham says, low and sharp and too close.
Kaveh blinks, tipsy. “Who?”
“Suhail. The Baudelaire plagiarist. The one who looked at your neckline like it contained the lost texts of King Deshret.”
Kaveh’s breath catches.
It is infuriating.
Alhaitham takes a step closer.
“You invited your ex here.”
“I invite a lot of people.”
“You let him touch your wrist.”
“Oh, that’s what this is about?”
“It’s unsanitary,” Alhaitham says, which is a lie. It is not about hygiene. It is about the simmering, seething realization that maybe he doesn’t want Kaveh to flirt with anyone else.
Because—oh. Oh no.
Kaveh crosses his arms. “Do you have a point?”
Alhaitham steps into the last of the space between them. The air is heady. Warm. Static-laced.
“I don’t want to co-author with anyone else,” Alhaitham says, quietly.
Kaveh’s heart stops.
“Are we talking about the paper or…?”
“Yes,” Alhaitham says. Then, “No.” Then, “I don’t know.”
Kaveh is breathing hard now.
“You kissed me.”
“You kissed me first.”
“You watched me breathe, you emotionally constipated thesis goblin.”
“I would do it again.”
Kaveh opens his mouth.
Then closes it.
They stare at each other.
They are millimeters apart.
Tension crackles like footnotes in a lightning storm.
Kaveh whispers, “This is a very small closet.”
Alhaitham exhales. “It is.”
“We should go back to the party.”
“We should.”
They don’t.
Not for twenty full minutes.
---
They emerge with matching blushes, ruffled clothes, and identical expressions of “we are going to never speak of this again ever.”
Which is a shame, because Cyno has already taken bets.
Kaveh attempts to flee into the academic crowd. Alhaitham follows him like a thesis ghost.
They do not kiss again.
They do not talk about the closet.
But when Kaveh passes him the revised thesis draft later that night—Chapter Eight: The Ethics of Proximity in Emotional Hypothesis Testing—Alhaitham reads it cover to cover.
There’s a footnote.
At the very bottom.
In handwriting even messier than Kaveh’s usual:
I think I want to co-author a life with you. Is that—too much?
He stares at it.
Then, very carefully, he adds a note in reply:
Citation needed. But… I’m open to discussion.
---
It’s 2:03 a.m. in the desert of their shared emotional repression.
Somewhere in the house, a thunderstorm is breaking over Sumeru like punctuation—declarative, furious, and loud.
Kaveh is lying on the couch in his silk pajamas, attempting to finish the final round of edits on their joint paper.
Alhaitham is pacing the floor like a man with two degrees and zero coping mechanisms.
Footnote, curled up beside Kaveh, blinks knowingly.
“You should just tell him,” Footnote meows.
Kaveh throws a pillow at her.
---
They have kissed over thirty times now.
They’ve co-authored 43 pages of thesis paper. Twelve of those pages are filled with thinly veiled metaphors for desire. Three include architectural diagrams that absolutely should not be that suggestive. One chapter is called “Load-Bearing Structures in Unspoken Intimacy.”
Cyno is convinced they’ve already slept together.
Tighnari has taken to feeding Kaveh emotionally supportive fruit.
And yet—
They are still idiots.
Still pretending they don’t want each other.
Still calling every brush of fingers “accidental touch-induced neural misfiring.”
Still framing every longing stare as “academic interest in ocular microexpressions.”
They are, in summary, clowns.
Kaveh is the crown prince of overthinking.
Alhaitham is the entire pantheon of emotional constipation.
And now, it’s raining.
Hard.
And the roof is leaking.
And Kaveh’s bedroom is flooding because of a tragic and thematically convenient design flaw that he refuses to admit is poetic irony.
“Your room is a marsh,” Alhaitham says.
Kaveh shrugs. “Water damage is a political statement.”
“Water damage is mold, Kaveh.”
“Mold is the quiet rebellion of nature against structure.”
Alhaitham exhales through his nose.
“Fine,” he mutters. “You can sleep in my bed.”
—
It’s big enough for two, technically.
Emotionally, it’s a war zone.
They lie side by side, rigid and careful, like corpses in a historical reenactment of academic suffering.
Kaveh is on the left. Alhaitham is on the right. In between them: at least ten thousand unspoken words and one very judgmental cat.
Footnote makes herself at home between their ankles.
“This is weird,” Kaveh mutters.
“No it isn’t,” Alhaitham replies, which is the biggest lie he’s told since he claimed his chapter on intimacy was “purely theoretical.”
Rain drums against the window. The tension is thick enough to footnote.
And then—
Kaveh speaks.
“I read your marginalia.”
Alhaitham goes still. “Which one?”
“All of it.”
“…Ah.”
There is a pause.
“I didn’t know you thought my diagrams were—” Kaveh coughs, “—‘vulnerably erotic.’”
Alhaitham wants to die.
In silence.
With dignity.
“That was a error,” he says. “Auto-correct.”
“Auto-correct doesn’t add emotional nuance, Haitham.”
“It does if you update your internal dictionary.”
Kaveh turns to face him in the dark. His breath is shaky.
“Why didn’t you delete it?”
Alhaitham hesitates.
And then: “Because I meant it.”
Lightning flashes.
Thunder cracks.
Somewhere, Footnote meows in dramatic support.
And then it’s silent again.
Kaveh, voice low: “Do you want me?”
It is not a flirt.
It is a question.
A question that holds their entire relationship in its teeth.
Alhaitham swallows.
“Yes,” he says.
Pause.
Kaveh closes his eyes and rolls away from him, curling under the covers with a bittersweet smile.
“Just don’t make me wait forever.”
The silence after that is almost worse than the storm.
---
They do not speak of it.
They make breakfast like nothing happened.
(Except Kaveh burns the toast and Alhaitham pours his tea with a hand that trembles.)
Their thesis now contains a new chapter:
Chapter Nine: The Emotional Architecture of Delay — A Study in Romantic Deferral.
It is the most honest thing they’ve written.
And neither of them can look the other in the eye.
---
THE TENSION.
Is unbearable.
Everyone feels it.
Cyno starts making “are you dating yet” jokes so fast they start to count as stand-up.
Tighnari begins gifting both of them aphrodisiacal fruits by accident.
Faruzan posts a public review of their thesis titled “How to Confess Using Seventy Pages of Sublimated Longing.”
Kaveh starts rewriting their abstract every night at 3:00 a.m.
Alhaitham starts rewriting Kaveh’s rewritten abstract just to feel close to him.
Neither of them says anything.
They are both—
Still—
In denial.
---
THE CLIFF BEFORE THE FALL.
It’s the final draft.
An advisor has sent a politely desperate message asking if they’re going to include the “personal conclusion” section that was suggested.
(Neither of them knows that “personal” does not technically mean “confess your gay yearning in academic prose,” but it’s too late now.)
Alhaitham finds Kaveh in the kitchen, pen in hand, writing in the margins of the dedication page.
He reads it over his shoulder.
It says:
For the boy I hated before I adored him. For the man I live with like a prayer I haven’t dared say aloud.
He doesn’t speak.
Kaveh looks up.
Says, quietly, “Is that too much?”
And Alhaitham—
He doesn’t say yes.
He doesn’t say no.
He just breathes, shaky, and whispers, “It’s enough.”
---
It is the day of their thesis presentation.
The final unveiling. The public defense. The intellectual striptease.
And they are—by every measure—not emotionally ready.
---
The Auditorium is full.
So full, in fact, that scholars are standing in the aisles. Students are sitting cross-legged in the back. Someone has set up a betting pool in the second row titled “How Gay Will This Be?”
Faruzan is taking notes.
Tighnari has two pairs of binoculars.
Cyno has prepared a PowerPoint called “Proof That They’re In Love: A Tragicomedy in Three Acts.”
Meanwhile, backstage:
Kaveh is in a panic spiral about whether his shirt is too tight or not tight enough.
Alhaitham is re-reading their thesis for the seventeenth time, like it will shield him from the emotional warfare ahead.
“Kaveh,” he says flatly, “you added a new quote to the epigraph page.”
Kaveh, visibly sweating: “...Yes?”
Alhaitham raises an eyebrow. “‘To love is to destroy, and to be loved is to be the one destroyed’? Really?”
“It’s poetic!”
“It’s unhinged.”
“So are we!”
Pause.
Alhaitham closes the document with a sigh. “Fair.”
---
They begin with composure.
Alhaitham leads the theoretical framework.
Kaveh explains the architectural metaphors.
Together, they introduce the core thesis: “Interpersonal Intimacy and Spatial Proximity: A Case Study in Shared Emotional Architecture.”
No one breathes.
Because it’s good. It’s too good.
It is the most well-researched, emotionally repressed, romantically fraught academic paper Sumeru has ever seen.
And then—at the halfway point—it happens.
They reach the Personal Conclusion.
Alhaitham stares at the page.
Kaveh stares at him.
And the audience waits.
“You don’t have to read it,” Kaveh whispers, soft.
Alhaitham hesitates.
Then, slowly, he begins.
“In the course of our research, we discovered that proximity does not merely enable intimacy—it complicates it. That living beside someone—breathing the same air, sleeping down the hall, watching them fold laundry like it’s a sacred ritual—builds not only familiarity but friction. And sometimes…”
“Sometimes it builds something else entirely.”
Kaveh is blinking too hard.
Cyno lets out an audible gasp.
Alhaitham continues.
“To be near someone you admire is painful. To study them and not touch. To document their brilliance and not say their name aloud like a prayer. But we wrote this paper together. We built it together. And if this project is anything, it is…”
“A confession in footnotes.”
The room goes still.
Kaveh swallows.
Steps forward.
And adds, quiet but clear:
“I think I’ve loved you since you corrected my citation formatting in 1242. Since you made me tea at 3:00 a.m. and didn’t ask why I was crying. Since you edited my chapters with such brutal honesty it felt like worship.”
“I know this thesis is about space. But I don’t want any between us anymore.”
A beat.
Alhaitham closes his folder.
Looks at him.
And says, softly:
“Then let’s collapse it.”
There is a pause that lasts exactly two heartbeats.
And then Kaveh—beautiful, ridiculous, brilliant Kaveh—launches across the stage and kisses him.
The auditorium erupts.
Footnote meows from backstage like a tiny oracle.
Faruzan is fanning herself.
Cyno has passed out. Tighnari is weeping.
The betting pool is in disarray.
But Kaveh is in Alhaitham’s arms and Alhaitham is smiling and for once, for the first time, there are no footnotes needed.
Only this—
Only them—
Only—
"I’m still annotating your margins,” Alhaitham whispers. “And I always will.”
---
Later that night, in the quiet of their home, in the golden lull of a confession long delayed, Kaveh crawls into Alhaitham’s lap with the final copy of the thesis.
They read it together, now with the dedication fully written.
For the one who built a home in every paragraph.
For the man I loved before I knew it.
For the idiot who annotated his way into my life—and stayed.
Kaveh sets it down.
And kisses him again.
Not for public eyes.
Not for academic credit.
Just—
Finally—
For them.
---
It’s been three days since the kiss heard round the Akademiya.
Three days since Kaveh leapt into Alhaitham’s arms like a beautifully dramatic swan on fire.
Three days since Faruzan declared them “a landmark case in homoerotic academic reform.”
And now—
Now they’re domestic.
Disgustingly, horrifyingly domestic.
And yet, still completely incapable of coexisting like normal human beings.
---
Kaveh is attempting to make breakfast.
By “make breakfast,” we mean he is aggressively whisking eggs while monologuing about the tragic decline of romantic poetry in modern scholarship.
Alhaitham, still in his robe, holding a cup of tea like it’s a shield, watches him with the exasperated affection of a man who’s made his bed and now must lie in it—with a theatrical, barefoot architect.
“You don’t need to fold the eggs like they’re linen, Kaveh.”
“They’re delicate, Alhaitham. Unlike you.”
“You mean ‘overwrought.’ Like you.”
Kaveh slams the whisk down.
“Excuse me for having aesthetic standards, unlike your monochrome breakfast of ‘I hate myself’ and boiled protein.”
Alhaitham sips his tea.
“I told you, my nutrition is mathematically efficient.”
“And emotionally barren.”
“Which is ironic, considering I’m the one who confessed first.”
“Oh, please. You confessed like it was a tax filing.”
“I used a metaphor.”
“You used footnotes, you cold-blooded cryptid.”
---
Footnote is lounging on a stack of papers like a god of judgment.
The revised thesis—now titled “Architectures of Intimacy: A Mutual Catastrophe”—sits printed and bound on the table, waiting for submission.
Kaveh is rereading it with red pen in hand.
Alhaitham, on the couch, is attempting to get through three pages of a philosophy journal while simultaneously throwing peanuts into his mouth without looking.
“Your sentence on page thirty-six is still a run-on.”
“It’s a stream of consciousness, Kaveh.”
“It’s a run-on.”
“I wrote it while thinking about you.”
“…Damn it, now I can’t fix it.”
“Exactly.”
“You weaponize sincerity like a war crime.”
“And you weaponize italics.”
“Italics are feeling.”
“You italicized ‘window frames.’”
“They were metaphors for longing, you brute.”
---
It’s late. The thesis is submitted. The applause has faded. The grand confession is three days past, and the high of academic romance has settled into something quieter.
Kaveh is under the blanket, legs tangled with Alhaitham’s, holding his wrist to his chest like a stolen artifact.
“I thought it would feel different,” Kaveh murmurs.
“What would?”
“This. Us. I thought the tension would vanish.”
Alhaitham hums. “Maybe we’re just naturally irritating.”
“Speak for yourself.”
Alhaitham smiles.
Kisses Kaveh’s hair.
And then:
“I read your secret chapter, by the way.”
Kaveh tenses.
“You weren’t supposed to—”
“The part where you said I was ‘a carefully constructed paradox of restraint and desire’?”
“…That was meant to be poetic.”
“It was also arousing.”
Kaveh groans and covers his face with a pillow.
“You are the worst.”
“And yet, here we are.”
---
Tighnari and Cyno have created a post-thesis support group for everyone emotionally impacted by the Alhaitham-Kaveh Presentation Incident.
“We were never supposed to see that kind of longing in academic context,” Tighnari says.
“I started questioning my own dissertation,” Cyno admits. “I rewrote my abstract to include the word ‘yearning.’”
Even Faruzan joins in. “I now teach a weekly seminar called ‘Romantic Subtext in Co-Authored Scholarship.’ Enrollment is full.”
Meanwhile, Kaveh and Alhaitham walk past the commons, hand in hand, mid-argument.
“I’m not saying your architectural sketches are pornographic,” Alhaitham is saying. “I’m saying I needed context.”
“You don’t contextualize passion, Alhaitham!”
Tighnari watches them go.
Sighs.
“I give them two weeks before they propose.”
Cyno: “I give them two days before they bicker about it.”
---
At home, Footnote the cat rests on a windowsill, basking in sunlight.
Below her, Kaveh and Alhaitham sit on the floor, back to back, reading two copies of the same book and arguing about the ending.
Their thesis is framed on the wall. A small plaque reads:
"Built on contradiction.
Edited with longing.
Authored by idiots.”
Kaveh laughs at something Alhaitham says.
Alhaitham groans when Kaveh throws a pillow at him.
And for once—
There is no tension.
No denial.
Just the long, slow architecture of something real.
Messy.
Brilliant.
Warm.
Love, footnoted.
Notes:
And that's a wrap! Hope you enjoyed! The romantic repression has finally come to an end! They are still somewhat idiots, though. Our idiots.
Stay tuned for next week's Haikaveh oneshot! I post/update something Haikaveh weekly; if you want to stay updated on this series, please consider subscribing or bookmarking this series.
You can find me on Bluesky ( @the_wild_poet25 ) and on my new Twitter account (the_tamed_poet) if you want to connect. I'm also on Discord too!
The comment section also works—feel free to leave a comment! :)
(A small update on the kittens: We have 13 very small, very cute kittens now. One kitten died and another of our queens had her litter of 4 kittens! We have one pregnant queen to go! She's looking big, so her litter should be here soon!)
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