sine qua non (without which, there is none)

by scionblad

Summary:

Who dared to dream as a man of the Akademiya? That riddle’s very existence bothered him like a stray thread unraveled from the ends of a shirtsleeve, or a stray seed that had found its way into his fruit’s flesh, or an itch on his back that he could not quite reach properly. Kaveh was like a rune left untranslated, its meaning beyond the capability of his mother tongue, a multitude of opposing meanings concisely tucked into one compact symbol. That untranslated rune was a challenge in itself, to make into solid words meaning and sense, to turn paradox into logic. Even after all these years, he had yet to solve it.

Kaveh is commissioned to build the Palace of Alcazarzaray. Al-Haitham puzzles over its existence, among other things.

Notes:

*eminem throws this word soup onto ao3* fuck it we ball. no edits no plan only vibes

EDIT: RIP MY CANON COMPLIANCY YALL… I DID MY DAMNEDEST… HAHAHAHAH

The news came to him in the form of a flustered Mahamata sweeping into his office, a stack of documents in hand. “I’m glad I caught you before you left for the day,” he huffed as he held the papers out. “The budget and expected financial balances of the Kshahrewar.”

The other darshans had submitted their respective plans that morning. Al-Haitham checked the time. The sun was already about to set, long orange panes of light falling across the floor. “What took them so long?” he asked, taking the documents.

The Mahamata hunched over, hands on his knees, catching his breath. “Apparently they were in talks for a huge project that just got finalized an hour ago. Had to redo the entire thing to account for the new funds.”

“A huge project, you say.” Al-Haitham shuffled the papers on his desk around to make room for the new ones. “What does it entail?”

“A building, I think. Some commission for the Lord Sangemah Bay.”

It made sense. The Kshahrewar, no doubt, were more than willing to take on such a commission, if only to make up for the rejected request for funding from the Grand Sage once again. None of it was directly related to Al-Haitham’s work, but he did not make it a habit to ignore things he had no business in. Rather, he took it in and stowed the thought away for later, for there was nothing known in the world that was useless: only things that interested him, and things that did not interest him.

The notion of a building, however, implied that Kaveh would be involved, and Kaveh’s involvement in particular did interest him, however, if not for the strange cult of personality that the famed architect attracted. They were not strangers—far from it—nor did Kaveh’s reputation not precede him; since his days as a student one could hardly walk through the halls without hearing of the Light of the Kshahrewar, that prodigious student of promising talent. Never mind all that, either. There were many at the Akademiya with promising minds and talent. Kaveh stood out in other ways, so it was said. He was not just smart and capable, but he had dreams and ideals, foolishly so.

Who dared to dream as a man of the Akademiya? That riddle’s very existence bothered him like a stray thread unraveled from the ends of a shirtsleeve, or a stray seed that had found its way into his fruit’s flesh, or an itch on his back that he could not quite reach properly. Kaveh was like a rune left untranslated, its meaning beyond the capability of his mother tongue, a multitude of opposing meanings concisely tucked into one compact symbol. That untranslated rune was a challenge in itself, to make into solid words meaning and sense, to turn paradox into logic. Even after all these years, he had yet to solve it. Time passing had all but tucked it away into a dark recess of his mind, only to be brought forth by a sheer passing mention or encounter, then stored again when he inevitably and invariably made no significant progress on the matter.

He thanked the Mahamata, who bowed and saw himself out of his office. It took ten minutes to make the additions provided by the documents—he was nothing if not a fast worker—then when he was done, he gathered his things to leave.

His first stop after leaving the Akademiya was to make his way down through the winding Treasures Street towards the terrace that overlooked the riverfront, where Lambad’s Tavern sat. He gave a nod to the hostess standing outside and pushed through the doors.

A man sitting at the bar turned his head when he heard Al-Haitham enter. His long blond hair was arranged in an intricate plait, held together by a multitude of red clips. It was a style Al-Haitham had seen many times before, and when their gazes met, his teal on the man’s cinnabar red—

“You!” said Kaveh, sitting straight up.

Al-Haitham hadn’t been counting, of course, but it had been approximately three months since he had last seen Kaveh. His hair had gotten longer, falling across his face fashionably, framing his eyes prettily, his skin a little darker as if he’d spent time in the sun, and the earrings looked new, inlaid with what was probably just red glass, but otherwise he looked just the same as always. Perhaps a bit more well-rested, at least.

“Kaveh,” said Lambad with a chuckle from behind the counter. “While I appreciate both your and mister Al-Haitham’s patronage, I must ask that you two refrain from fighting. It disturbs the other customers.”

“I had no such intention,” said Al-Haitham impassively.

“Nor I!” insisted Kaveh, puffing his chest up and pouting childishly. “In fact, I’ve a mind to treat my beloved junior today to celebrate my good fortune!”

“Yes, yes,” Al-Haitham sighed. “Congratulations on the commission from the Lord Sangemah Bay.”

“Huh? How’d you know already?” Kaveh frowned.

“Scribe,” said Al-Haitham, sitting at the bar next to Kaveh. “The Kshahrewar budget passed over my desk right before I left today. Thank you, for waiting until the last possible minute, by the way.”

“That was out of my control and you know it,” Kaveh retorted, eyes narrowed in a glare. “They don’t let me near those things.”

“Good. Knowing how poorly you spent your money in school, I wouldn’t, either.”

“Hey!”

Lambad shot another glance at them. Kaveh slumped over his cup of wine. “Sorry, Lambad,” he muttered.

“Thank you. What can I get for you, Al-Haitham?”

“Nothing today—I only dropped by to see if the wine I had requested had gotten in yet.”

“Oh, that?” Lambad frowned, still absently polishing the glass in his hands. “I was told that something got held up along the trade route from Mondstadt. Delayed by another week.”

“That’s unfortunate.” Al-Haitham sighed and made to stand up. “Well, I’ll stop by then and see if they haven’t delayed again.”

“Hey, wait!”

Al-Haitham looked down to Kaveh’s hand gripping his forearm, then up into his cinnabar-colored eyes, widened with something almost like panic.

“Stay for a bit, at least, if you’ve nowhere to go,” he said. “It’s been a while. I’ll treat you.”

Three months, but Al-Haitham wasn’t counting, and he did not wager Kaveh was, either. They had both been busy, so much so that their paths did not cross, Al-Haitham in his lofty office and Kaveh in the studios and wherever else his projects took him, all over Sumeru, rainforest to desert to port to jungle. Three months and only now did they coincidentally meet each other in Sumeru City’s nicest tavern.

“If you insist,” Al-Haitham said instead, and sat back down.

“Not even your dour attitude and arrogant air can dampen my good and generous spirit today,” Kaveh proclaimed with a laugh. “Lambad! Another bottle of wine! White, this time. And some of those fish rolls, too.”

“You got it,” said Lambad with a wink, before disappearing into the kitchen.

“So you know of my escapades, evidently,” said Kaveh after a long swig of his wine. “But what of you? What have you been up to?”

He was looking right at Al-Haitham while slouched with one elbow on the bar, chin propped up in hand. Some of the tannins from the wine lingered on his lips, darker purple against the lighter flush pink of his skin. Al-Haitham resisted the urge to wipe Kaveh’s mouth like erasing a mistake in a written essay. “I’m far too above you for you to be privy as to what my work entails,” he said.

Kaveh scowled. “You don’t have to be so patronizing about it.”

“I didn’t think you would be so interested in my affairs.” The fish rolls and the second bottle of wine arrived, and Kaveh set about pouring for both of them; Al-Haitham watched as he filled each cup to the brim. “You’re the one always going on about how Haravatat scholars don’t know the first thing about romance or beauty or art.”

“Well, it’s true,” Kaveh insisted, pushing the second wine cup towards Al-Haitham. “Only a Haravatat scholar would endeavor to annotate a translation of the Scroll of Streaming Song, fill it with pretentious quips as to the translation’s quality, and then fail to appreciate the beauty of the prose altogether.”

“They are translating it,” Al-Haitham pointed out. “Not passing subjective judgment on the contents.”

“One can translate a text and form an opinion on its appeal,” Kaveh sniffed. “They can coexist. Staying perfectly objective is impossible.”

“It is,” said Al-Haitham. “But it is an ideal we strive to emulate in scholarly work.”

“Yes, and emulating perfection is a fool’s errand,” said Kaveh matter-of-factly.

“That does not mean it is pointless to strive for such an ideal and form good habits in the process.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m not in the mood to argue this today. I have a contract to celebrate.” Kaveh tapped the table next to Al-Haitham’s cup. “We can pick this up again later. But for now, drink! It’s on me.”

The wine, he recalled, was made by the Amurta scholars who concerned themselves with matters of agriculture. It was good, refined by years of study and experiment, with a full-bodied bouquet of flavors, though perhaps more bitter than the wines of Mondstadt’s countryside. Ah, but it was Kaveh’s treat, and that sweetened it more than anything.

Beside him, Kaveh smacked his lips after another long sip, then picked up one of the fish rolls and took a big bite. “Gods above,” he almost moaned with his mouth full. “I’ll miss eating this when I’m away.”

Al-Haitham paused, his cup halfway to his lips. “When you’re away?”

A gulp of the fish, washed down by more wine. “In a few days,” said Kaveh. “Have to survey the site. Preliminary estimates. The location… it could be more ideal, I suppose, but I can make it work.”

“Where is it?”

“Northeast of here, right at the edge of Lokapala Jungle. Not too far outside the city, actually. But I almost…” He trailed off, chewing thoughtfully. “Well, it’ll work out.”

“Do elaborate.”

Kaveh turned his head away in a haughty motion with a soft tch! “You aren’t nearly kind enough to be privy to the workings of my mind.”

“I was not aware that kindness was a prerequisite for continuing the conversation,” said Al-Haitham dryly. “But if you don’t want to talk about a project that you clearly are interested in for once, then it does not affect me.”

“I had interest in that urban design project,” Kaveh protested. “And in the—okay, fine, maybe I didn’t care as much about the lighthouses, but I’ve been given so much free reign on this project… It's almost terrifying. Great, but terrifying.”

His expression had settled into something subdued, lashes lowered, a knuckle absently tracing the underside of his lip, doubt furrowing his brow. Doubt, the ever-conniving enemy of achievement, plaguing the mind of even the most accomplished. It suited Kaveh poorly. 

“Isn’t it just a house?” Al-Haitham swirled the wine around in his cup. “Surely nothing substantial.”

Kaveh scoffed. “Really? You would belittle this, too.”

“I haven’t seen you so afraid of an opportunity like this before, is all. You’re the renowned Kaveh. Designing someone’s house is child’s play.”

Kaveh did not answer for a long moment. Al-Haitham took the opportunity to tuck in to the fish rolls, sprinkling them with a squeeze of lemon. They were as delicious as always.

“You’re right,” Kaveh said finally. 

“I always am.”

He ignored Al-Haitham, instead picking up the bottle to refill their cups. “It will be the best damn house in all of Sumeru—no, Teyvat.”

He did not elaborate further. He had begun to retreat into that space again, his cinnabar-colored eyes taking on that faraway gaze, words fading away in favor of line, shape, form. It was a look that frustrated and fascinated Al-Haitham in equal parts. For Kaveh, matters of design were not so easily translated into words, nor was the reasoning; instead he hid them away behind the language of sweeping gesture drawing. For all Al-Haitham had known him, he still could not easily decipher it, just as he could not decipher the person behind the drawings, who now was mulling over whatever dream of a building with the wine cup at his lips.

“Kaveh,” Al-Haitham said instead. “If you don’t want the last fish roll, I’m eating it.”

“Help yourself,” said Kaveh.

So help himself, he did. Kaveh watched him while he ate, but the quality of his gaze still floated towards dream-like. Once Kaveh had started his descent into thoughts of line and shape and form, he was loath to return to the real world. Many nights had passed where he had spent hours on end at a drafting table, forgoing food and drink sometimes until his body gave out, the intensity in his eyes unchanging, unmoving, just like his work.

That gaze, however, had never been directed at Al-Haitham, not so close where he could see it, languid but full of something that settled in his chest with an unfamiliar chill. Or heat? The Amurta papers that had passed over the Scribe’s desk recently noted that the experience of heat, in fact, triggered the body’s sensory experience for both warmth and cold simultaneously. Thus what was thought of as two distinct, opposing qualities became inseparable, impossible to perceive without the other. Lies told by touch to frame a truth, he thought.

Hot-cold, cold-hot. Even as they stepped outside of the tavern after finishing their meal, seen off by a hearty wave from Lambad, the temperature did not move. The air of Sumeru City at night was warm as it always was, but that feeling still stayed, hot-cold, cold-hot. Even as Kaveh bade him farewell, the way that he looked at Al-Haitham lingered. The tannins of the wine stained his lips still, and his lashes were long and dark in the night. Hot-cold, cold-hot.

It was strange. Even after three months’ absence, they had fallen into that same path they always trod, words sharp and clever, something like a routine, just as a river flowed uninterrupted; but still, still, Al-Haitham could not make heads or tails of that puzzling rune. 

In all his observation, Al-Haitham had come to the conclusion that Kaveh had two faces. 

Back then he had never sought to observe Kaveh with any specific intent, but his appearance in so many social circles at the Akademiya simply facilitated such observations. This, in part, was the first of Kaveh’s faces, so Al-Haitham thought of it. 

He had seen it first, in that Vahumana elective long ago when they were both students, where Kaveh had stood up to ask a clarifying question, but really that was all nominal and his true intent was much bolder, aiming instead to question the very premise of that lecturer’s speech. Then, every other time—his challenging, scrutinizing mind came out often with Al-Haitham around, for anything that came out of Al-Haitham’s mouth, Kaveh was sure to have something to say about it. By the time Kaveh had graduated, people no longer turned their heads in curiosity when they heard arguing on the campus. Perhaps the sages who built the Akademiya foresaw this, their great rivalry, and set the Haravatat hall opposite from the Kshahrewar hall, across sweeping ceilings and intricate glass windows, in an attempt to separate them. It was a futile endeavor, if so. Even from that distance, Kaveh still found things to say, all the way from below that carved lion above the door, and in the middle, on the bridge to the House of Daena, they would face each other and speak plainly, barbed words sharp and clever.

It went without saying that Kaveh had seen his fair share of disciplinary action for this sort of thing, speaking out when he ought not to, deliberately challenging ideas that others dared not question. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, people flocked to him like helpless moths to a lantern. He possessed a certain charisma in the way his voice lilted when he spoke, the way his eyes looked at someone as though they saw the whole of their person, the way his hands gestured in passionate speech or reaching out to someone to clasp them on the shoulder. It was hard for anyone to refuse if Kaveh was the one asking. Over a glass of wine, or two, or three, he could carry a conversation as easily as he dreamt up buildings. There were scarce few nights that Kaveh spent at the tavern where he was not the center of attention, the raison d’être for that party’s very outing, passionately debating whatever occupied his mind for that night with those accompanying him.

And yet, for all his time surrounded by people, he went home every night alone. This was not to say he did not dabble in his dalliances, because he did, and oh, how very good he was at it, too. The lowered lashes, the sly and almost-shy smile, the lingering hand on the wrist. There was no shortage of people who had fallen for this dazzling spell Kaveh wove: Farghani from Rtahawist, Dunya from Vahumana, Zinat from Spantamad; the tax collector who lingered by the antique store, the freelancer who frequented cafes at night, the spice merchant in the bazaar who probably gave him free tahchin in exchange. Yes, men and women alike were bewitched by Kaveh’s good looks and charm.

Yet none of his trysts lasted before the next rainfall of the Lokapala Jungle, on account of his aloof nature when he would inevitably turn to matters of work. It seemed, after all, that Kaveh truly loved none except for that which he made from his own hands.

This, Al-Haitham considered, was Kaveh’s other face. Al-Haitham had only caught glimpses of this face before his graduation, as fleeting as dreams, in those large, cavernous studios of the Kshahrewar hall, occupied by large drafting tables imported from Fontaine, with a number of attachments and gadgets meant to enable the drawing of precise angles and neat lines. Each and every scarce time he had deigned to look in to satisfy his curiosity, Kaveh had never noticed him, too absorbed in the drawing, his nose nearly pressed up right against the paper. Only when he turned to reapply ink to his pen did Al-Haitham see that placid expression, the lowered lids of his eyes and the neutral draw of his lips belying nothing but absolute focus. That Kaveh of fiery tirades and rebellious outbursts seemed to disappear entirely when he was drafting, like flames extinguished by serene water.

Or, perhaps, it was simply concentrated, directed, like how a blacksmith controlled flames to produce the exact heat needed to forge weaponry. In this crucible did Kaveh forge those creations from his brilliant mind, earning him his reputation as a master builder and craftsman.

It was a working hypothesis, and Al-Haitham had yet to see anything to disprove it. There was little about Kaveh that could be drawn from logical reasoning alone; he seemed to defy definition by that means in every way he moved about the world, and so Al-Haitham was reduced to empirical observation. It did not require much effort on his behalf. Observing and drawing conclusions was simply habit for a scholar, and the facts laid themselves out so.

That Kaveh he had seen before parting from Lambad’s Tavern that night was the Kaveh that buried himself in his work, serene like a still lake in winter. This much he was sure of. But there was no drafting table for Kaveh to map his thoughts or to put to paper the schema that his mind conjured. For Kaveh, as was necessary for his profession, to draw and to think were one and the same. Thus, without a paper and a pen, it could be said that he was not able to clearly form his vision, for his hand did as much of the thinking as his eye and his mind did.

What, then, was he so pensive about? And if he could not express those thoughts on paper, then what sort of thoughts were they that he had receded into that pensiveness so easily? But alas, Kaveh had left Sumeru City to survey for his project, leaving Al-Haitham without means to search for an answer to his question. 

He went about his day instead: one black coffee in the morning, a chickpea curry for lunch, and in between it all, paper after paper to read and copy, ordinance and ordinance to draft. Distractions, from the thing that nagged at him in the recesses of his mind. When the sky began to wane into pink and orange hues, one of the Mahamata suggested everyone who was around in the office go out to the tavern for shisha and wine. He declined and walked home, as he always did, passing by the smith and the grocer in the evening light.

It was not as if he disliked shisha and wine. He enjoyed both in moderation, in part because the life and palate of an adult grew accustomed to those things, sour and burning and bitter, and in part because Kaveh had insisted, and Kaveh so enjoyed those things that he could not help but pull Al-Haitham into them with him. That was the Kaveh you could hardly say no to, and where Al-Haitham might have refused, he obliged because it had been a free lunch, and his opportunism won out.

Thus, what were Kaveh’s vices had become his, through a slow, poisoning, gradual addiction. The hookah itself, glass-bottomed and tinted dark red, was bought with Al-Haitham’s own money, but the packets of various tobacco flavors littered in his drawers were not. The novelty ones, flavored with peaches and sunsettias, Kaveh had left carelessly months, years before; the unflavored ones ran lower in quantity, used more often, their stronger effect and tobacco taste more to Al-Haitham’s preference.

The house was quiet when he locked the door behind him. After settling his keys and belongings in their place and stepping out of his shoes to be left in the entranceway, he set about filling the bowl of his hookah with the black-leaf. Then, with a pair of tongs, he gathered a few pieces of charcoal from the hearth, set them alight into a smolder, and placed them on top. The bottom piece he filled with water until the tube in the main body was just submerged.

Kaveh always overfilled the water. He insisted on it, he thought it was better, or some other multitude of excuses. That, said Al-Haitham, just made the effort to get the smoke much more and therefore made it more difficult and therefore worse; and like he had every other time, Kaveh shook his head and said that the effort was better, it made you take deeper breaths, made you really appreciate the smoke. And then they bickered like that while the coals cooled, and then Al-Haitham would have to go and re-light them again until the embers glowed hot enough, and Kaveh, impatient for his smoke, would sigh and let the water be filled to whatever level it would be filled at, the experience of deep pulls be damned.

But Kaveh was not here. Al-Haitham smoked alone. The taste was good, but it was too quiet. The silence seemed to beg for noise, for Kaveh’s voice, Kaveh’s breath, the rustle of his clothes as he shifted around where he sat because he was too restless to stay still.

It was always after he had just seen Kaveh that it was like this. Kaveh’s absence left a hole in the room where he otherwise would have occupied. Time passing would soften the edges until it no longer felt so jarring, but then Kaveh would come and fill it again, as though nothing had happened; then when he inevitably disappeared to wander his own path, the emptiness he left felt larger than it had previously. Just as the smoking and drinking had made their way into Al-Haitham’s habits and tastes, so, too, had Kaveh bullied his way into Al-Haitham’s life, slowly poisoning him until he felt irreparably worse without.

Not that he would ever say so out loud. He liked the quiet. His thoughts sounded clearer. But even in the pleasure of his solitude, the thoughts curled into the air like his exhaled smoke, lonely with nowhere else to go, no other ears to hear them.

“I’m being fucking scammed, is what it is, Lambad,” said Kaveh, very loudly, when Al-Haitham entered the tavern. “That’s quite literally all there is to it. How is anyone supposed to build something there, let alone a palace? ‘By all means just work a miracle, Kaveh! You’re the Light of the Kshahrewar! You’ll figure something out!’ I’m not a fucking god, there’s only so much I can humanly do!”

“Glad to hear your project is going well,” said Al-Haitham, sliding into the barstool beside him.

“Oh! Of course! Kaveh’s no-good-very-bad week is about to cap off with an appearance from his most favorite person in the world, none other than the exalted Scribe of the Akademiya himself, in the flesh!” Kaveh glared at him with a renewed ferocity. “I’m not in the mood, Al-Haitham.”

“I was here about my wine, actually.” He raised an eyebrow. “Not everything is about you, Kaveh.”

“Oh, right, because it’s about you!” Kaveh threw his hands in the air. “You are so insufferable, you know that?!”

“Kaveh,” said Lambad with a warning tone. Kaveh recoiled at the reprimand, and sank back down into his cup of wine.

“Sorry, Lambad,” he muttered, then, at the same quiet volume: “You are so insufferable, you know that?”

“Were there any delays this week?” asked Al-Haitham, ignoring him entirely.

“None at all,” said Lambad, putting down his rag. “I’ll have them delivered to you by tonight.”

“Thank you. Could I trouble you to prepare some takeout as well? The shawarma wraps, please.”

“Coming right up!”

They sat in silence after he had gone, Al-Haitham with his arms crossed and Kaveh simmering.

“I didn’t take you for one to drink in misery alone,” Al-Haitham said after a minute. “No friends to accompany you today?”

“It’s not like that,” Kaveh muttered angrily. “I just… needed a break from looking at the numbers for a bit.”

“With wine?”

“It helps me think,” he returned with a glare. “I don’t need you to judge me on my life choices.”

“No, you invite that into your life as it is.”

“You—!” Kaveh scowled. “Would it kill you for once to leave the patronizing attitude at the door?”

They had bickered hundreds if not thousands of times before, but his response lacked any of the fire that he usually had. In the low light of the tavern, he looked less like a proud lion and more like a wounded stray dog, with guarded red eyes and cheeks flushed with vulnerability and wine. Al-Haitham studied the scratches in the varnish of the bar counter instead, worn by the years and passing of customers.

“The trip didn’t go well, then?” he asked.

“Understatement of the year,” said Kaveh darkly. “Building something in the forest is already tricky enough but building where the site is? Ridiculous.”

“There have been structures built in the forest before.”

“If you mean Gandharva Ville, that was built with materials more suited to its location, and with different considerations altogether. This is—I can’t make a Gandharva Ville, and I’ll be damned if this building gives out less than a decade in. It’ll ruin my career.” Kaveh hunched over the counter, his hands on either side of his head, fingers curling into his hair. “There were things me and the client decided on that are so… unlikely to happen now that I wonder if this project is even worth anymore.”

So he had run off to drink instead, filling the tavern with his angry tirade—or to quietly sink into his doubt, voice faltering and small, loath to admit his insecurity to anyone in the Kshahrewar. His reputation, it seemed, was too heavy to uphold sometimes. Even now, as he was hunched over on the counter, it pressed down on him, between his shoulder blades, a weight invisible and unbearable. Al-Haitham looked away.

“No one else said anything?” he asked instead.

“Why would they?” Kaveh scoffed, his face still hidden behind the curtain of his hair. “We’re getting paid this much.”

“Then what, exactly, were you aiming to create that could not be so easily built at the designated site?”

Kaveh made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a sniffle. When he spoke, his voice was soft and even, but drained, as if his body was worn out entirely by the exhaustion of emotion.

“Look at the data yourself if you really want,” he murmured. “They’re all in my office. I’m no Amurta scholar, but the facts are pretty damn obvious.”

“If you insist,” said Al-Haitham.

“It’s for your satisfaction, not mine. I couldn’t care less either way.”

He rather thought both of those statements were wrong, but that was better, at least. It sounded more like the Kaveh he was used to. When Lambad came back with the shawarma, Kaveh gulped down the last of his wine and threw a handful of mora on the counter. Then he picked up Al-Haitham’s shawarma, wrapped carefully in parchment and paper, and walked out of the tavern, up the winding paths of Sumeru City, through the gilded doors of the Akademiya, and Al-Haitham followed like a silent shadow.

He knew, nominally, which office was Kaveh’s. He was no stranger to the layout of the Kshahrewar hall in mapped form, boxes as rooms, labels lettered neatly in that way the Kshahrewar students were all taught. It did nothing to capture the space of it, desks and walls and chairs, an empty cup stained ochre with tea, plans and notes littered everywhere. Across all of them, the same, steady hand noted numbers and labeled diagrams. And then the sketches, that very hand outlining drawings of buildings, with sweeping roofs and elegant pillars, doors stretching tall with ornate window panes. It was curious how expressive his drawing was. A single, unbroken line was enough to suggest the structure he envisioned, as though the lines already existed on the blank page unseen, and his hand had simply traced over their invisible remains.

But even more curiously, drawn with equal care and attention as the buildings, were plants: trees draped over brick, flowers crawling up vines and framing windows, fruits gathered among leaves and falling to the ground. Padisarahs with their long stigma between pale petals, lotuses in their cradles upon the water, peaches ripe on their stems. The scribbled dark trunks of trees stretched as tall as some buildings, the shade of their foliage falling on the roofs with a quick swipe of the broad side of a graphite pencil. How clearly his intent and vision was made with such a simple gesture.

“Here,” said Kaveh from somewhere behind him, and Al-Haitham turned around to see more pages pulled out, more numbers, more notes and labels and calculations, all still in the same steady hand, never hurried or scrawled carelessly. Kaveh’s hands smoothed them out over the table, and with a single finger he tapped on a diagram detailing the site’s soil quality and the composition of the rock underneath.

“The bedrock that does happen to exist,” he began, “isn’t an issue. Not by itself. The soil has high acidity, so it could pose problems for foundation materials. Fortunately those are things we can work around, since half of Sumeru City sits on top of a similar type of soil. But this—the amount of water around and at a site where we wanted to install gardens, with a working aqueduct system for fountains and the like? On top of the other things? That’s worrisome.”

His finger traced over another diagram, a topographic survey of the site. “Not to mention that we also would need to build a bridge of some kind, since functionally it is an island surrounded by water. But I have no idea how to go about that, either.”

The admission lingered in the silence, with no one else to hear it. Al-Haitham walked around the table until he could see the diagrams right side up, elbow brushing against Kaveh’s.

“The problem is overwhelming you,” he said. “Don’t get lost in the details. Start small. What can be done about the water?”

Kaveh jerked his arm away from Al-Haitham, eyes flashing. “What’s with you being helpful all of a sudden?”

“I’ve been helpful this whole night. You’re the one who brought me here to solve this menial problem of yours.” 

“It is not menial, I—”

“The water,” said Al-Haitham. “What can be done about it?”

A beat. They stared at each other, Kaveh confrontational and Al-Haitham neutral, before Kaveh leaned back forwards over the table again, putting his weight on his palms and studying the plans.

“Normally we would take measures to remove the water from the site,” he said. “For example, digging a well to create a gradient in the soil so the moisture doesn’t interfere with the foundation. But it could also run the risk of being too disruptive to the surrounding environment, and possibly destabilizing the ground there.”

He paced away from the table, his eyes faraway into that mindscape of form and shape and light. “But what?” he muttered to himself. “What else could I do?”

“Well, surely, it must be possible,” said Al-Haitham, pushing some of the plans on the table aside and unwrapping his shawarma. “Sumeru City was built half on a tree, so clearly, anything can be done even in the wildest of circumstances.”

Kaveh paused then, in front of one particular drawing pinned to the wall, with trees and flora and brick side-by-side. The building he had drawn had a roof that flaring down and outwards, like a blooming flower that sighed as it looked towards the earth. Beside it a tree twined itself around the side, its branches reaching towards the apex of the roof. Sweeping arches and pillars lined its facade. For several long moments, he did not move from in front of the drawing, drinking in the lines made by his hand, looking as if seeing them for the first time.

When he turned around, the look in his eyes glowed wildly with newfound intensity. He paced a few steps around the table, and stopped again, looking at Al-Haitham, but not quite into his face, his eyes focused on a spot a little bit lower instead, where Al-Haitham’s Vision was attached to his cloak.

“Tree,” Kaveh breathed, almost inaudibly. Then without warning, and before Al-Haitham could begin to ask what had caught Kaveh’s eye so about the Dendro Vision hanging on his cloak, he had grabbed the surveys still spread out on the table where Al-Haitham was eating and begun gathering them up into a transport tube. Then he looked back at the drawing of his palace with the hanging-flower roof, seemingly waiting, for one heartbeat of consideration, before pulling out the tacks that held it to the wall, and tenderly rolling the drawing up alongside the survey documents.

“Headed somewhere?” asked Al-Haitham, with some reserve.

“Yes,” said Kaveh breathlessly. Al-Haitham put down his shawarma. The subdued quiet of Kaveh’s voice seemed to command more attention than his loud protest of before.

“I need to go to Gandharva Ville,” Kaveh continued, pushing the cap onto the tube. “Right now.”

“It’s dark out,” said Al-Haitham. “And you’ve still got alcohol in your system. Why not leave tomorrow morning?”

Kaveh shook his head, his blond hair brushing his face. “I’m not gonna be able to sleep until I get it sorted. It won’t take long.”

“That’s not it,” said Al-Haitham, agitation lacing his voice. “It’s dangerous.”

“I’ll be fine,” said Kaveh. He had moved to shrugging his cloak on. “I have a Vision.”

It was fast and slow, time was, at that moment. Kaveh was three steps walking towards the door when Al-Haitham stood up, his shawarma a mostly-eaten mess of a roll of bread and meat and filling on the parchment, and said, “Kaveh!”

He was not sure what he meant to say after that, but it stopped Kaveh in his tracks. He turned, looked at Al-Haitham. One moment with shock, probably mirrored. Then one moment with a smile, that nearly made Al-Haitham sit back down.

It was not a loud smile, or a smile with teeth, or one insufferably smug that he had come to know well over the years. Kaveh always smiled widely, bright like the sun, as if he had laughter snide or heartfelt brimming at his lips, his eyes narrowing into curved red moons, framed with lashes long and dark. 

Always until now. In the doorway, Kaveh looked at him. His red eyes in the dim light held a softness that pierced flesh and bone and blood, that stole speech and sight and mind, cinnabar poisoning the body and soul.

“Don’t worry, Al-Haitham,” he said. “I’ll be back soon.”

With that he was gone, again. The doorway looked emptier for it, and the office quieter in turn.

Most scholars, both Vahumana and Haravatat, agreed that the three gods of Sumeran antiquity gave their people five pramanas as means of receiving accurate knowledge. Of these, only those main tenets that the Greater Lord Rukkhadevata left were heralded in current schools of thought among the Haravatat: pratyakṣa or perception of the senses, anumāna or inference as a result of reason, śabda or the testimony of a past or present expert.

Curiously, a Haravatat scholar had recently suggested that an ancient text recovered from the desert civilizations suggested one that had been lost to time: abupalabdhi, or non-perception. It was not a pramana from the Greater Lord, he had written in his thesis, but from the Scarlet King, who in his own right was a god that concerned himself with knowledge, and was worshiped as such. Knowing something that is not, according to Deshret, was still a form of knowing, and one’s knowledge of not still furthered knowledge more than without such means.

The thesis was a rejected one that did not pass over the desk of the Scribe for documentation and incorporation into the Akasha’s body of wisdom. For one, to write of the Scarlet King’s ideals as equal to the Greater Lord’s, while not outright sinful, was still an uncommon opinion, one looked down upon. For another, non-perception as a means of knowing perhaps did not settle well in the minds of others. The absence of something meant it did not exist, thus how could knowledge be gained from the absence of it? How could the surety of such knowledge be guaranteed? 

But there was something about it. He tracked down the paper and read it regardless, right under the Akademiya’s nose in his office, in part because the sages’ vehement denial of its validity had only whet his curiosity all the more, and in part because the very idea intrigued him. The more he considered it, the more fascinated he became. What was not, still was. What was not made the other more pronounced. 

In his mind, the absence of Kaveh seemed to suggest things that he had not thought of when Kaveh was around. Only in that place, where Kaveh had been, were those things thrown into sharp relief: the silence of the office covered in plans, the soft wisp of solitary shisha smoke, the dim light of parting before a tavern. Al-Haitham, without Kaveh, was still Al-Haitham, but rather than being defined with things heard, seen, and touched, with things reasoned from an observed past, it was defined by that specific quality of not, Al-Haitham without Kaveh.

Kaveh had not yet returned from Gandharva Ville. It had been three days. Things heard, things seen, things felt—over the time of Kaveh’s absence, they had ceased to define Al-Haitham and began instead to be Al-Haitham-without-Kaveh. Wine, without another to savor the full-bodied flavor sweetened with the water of the fresh springs of Mondstadt. The shisha, without whatever heinous over-fragrant fruit nonsense piled into the bowl. Silence, without the voice he knew as warm and as close as honeyed milk to bicker and criticize and proclaim, loudly, such foolish ideals and intentions.

Over all of those years, he had not the words to describe the phenomenon, despite his erudition and mastery over language. The feeling did not quite sink in so deeply, either, when it had been nameless. But the word lent it weight, a kind of solidity in Al-Haitham’s mind, not just Al-Haitham, but Al-Haitham-without-Kaveh.

It did not take a genius mind of the Akademiya’s Scribe to infer why Kaveh had gone to Gandharva Ville. Tighnari, while no longer officially a part of the Akademiya’s infrastructure, was still highly regarded for his botanical expertise, and Kaveh had surely felt that a botanist like Tighnari would offer great insight to the environment of the site. Not to mention the ambition for gardens at the palace, another botanical undertaking altogether.

But the days passed, long and slow. What was only three days felt like thirty. The quiet of absence only slowed it down further. Al-Haitham-without-Kaveh was naturally untalkative; only Kaveh could draw out words and feelings that he had not thought odd until they were gone. 

It was a shame. He wanted to see what Kaveh thought of non-perception. They could go to Puspa Cafe on a day where neither of them had demanding schedules, Al-Haitham with his black coffee brewed in burning hot sand and Kaveh with his tea sweetened with a whole sugar cube and then some, and debate the matter, just as they had done when they were students, and Kaveh had run crazy idea after crazy idea by him.

No, Al-Haitham did not want to wait longer. Three months and a week ago, it would not have bothered him so much. Since Kaveh graduated, they had faded in and out of each other’s lives, sometimes crossing, arguing vehemently and debating passionately when they did, and then walking separate paths again for however long. It was normal. In fact, three days was on the far shorter end of their separation periods, and therefore was nothing to sneeze at.

They had made a habit of things back then, when they had come back together. Somehow, inevitably, Kaveh would wander to Al-Haitham’s house for the night instead of his own whenever he went out to the tavern. His visits were always punctuated with a comment on some poor rug whose only sin was simply that Al-Haitham had bought it and put it in a place where it existed in Kaveh’s sight, or a wilting plant in a vase that Al-Haitham was too busy to care for otherwise somehow even with his affinity with Dendro. Then they would eat, or drink wine, or Kaveh would open a book just to say something about it, and they would carry on debating or arguing until Kaveh decided to go ad hominem with his logic or they were too tired to continue. Al-Haitham would put out the lamps and Kaveh would put the bottles and dishes away—he had been there so many times that he knew where things were, and how to arrange things on the drying rack in that particular manner Al-Haitham preferred. Then they would retire, Kaveh claiming the master bed, because despite his criticism of everything and anything under Al-Haitham’s roof, he refused to move otherwise, claiming that the guest should have the nicer place to rest. In the morning when Kaveh went to the Akademiya or the market or wherever else he pleased, he left behind that faint smell of jasmine in the oil for his hair, intertwined with some other kind of musk that uniquely belonged to him, and Al-Haitham would launder it away.

Neither of them remembered how it had started. Al-Haitham did not think it important to remember, so he had let the memory fade until his mind forgot how to rewrite that scene. It simply became how things were. 

It was different now. It had to be; otherwise the quiet would not itch under his skin with a kind of restlessness he had not felt before. And he suspected it was because of that look that Kaveh had, that Al-Haitham could not place. Strange and soft and unfamiliar, or was it familiar, simply unnoticed before? How long had Kaveh been wearing that expression where Al-Haitham could see it? Had it been right there all along?

Three months had passed before he had run into Kaveh at Lambad’s Tavern and after they had smoked together in Al-Haitham’s home. The recollection of it had not crossed his mind in months, but even at the mere suggestion the memory wove itself back into the fabric of his conscious thought in full clarity.

Kaveh, at his doorstep, with a bottle of wine, a look in his eye that insisted in a way that was hard for anyone to deny, especially Al-Haitham. Especially Al-Haitham in his house. Kaveh hadn’t given a reason, he usually didn’t, but something in the way his smile didn’t quite reach his eyes seemed insistent.

They had smoked in Al-Haitham’s home with the hookah he had bought, glass-bottomed and red-tinted; Kaveh had deposited more of his atrociously sweet flavored tobacco into the ever-growing collection in the kitchen drawer; Al-Haitham had opened that bottle of wine from Sumeru, fragrant with the countryside and the scent of roses. They had bickered about the flavor, and then the heat of the coals, and then the water level, and when the smoke finally started going and Kaveh had taken a pull, he had sighed and said, “I still really would have liked to try the lavender melon.”

“It’s my house,” said Al-Haitham. “You can do as you like in yours.”

Kaveh shook his head while his lips were closed around the end of the hose. “You know I won’t be home for a while,” he said, smoke curling around his mouth as he spoke. “They’re sending me into the desert.”

He was right. It was not news, not to Al-Haitham, but hearing a sage say it and hearing Kaveh say it were two different things. The sands were unforgiving and the flow of goods and mail and information usually trickled to a slow crawl at Caravan Ribat, unwilling to venture further into the sands so easily, and even then it was unlikely that they would go further west than Aaru Village.

Al-Haitham reached for the hose. Kaveh let him, the metal end leaving his hand with a look that held no bite. 

The shisha had tasted thicker than usual. He hadn’t pulled that hard, he didn’t think so at least, but the smoke settled deep into his lungs in a way that suggested he had. When he exhaled, the smoke rushed out and tumbled away, glad to be free of his breath.

“It might have been mentioned earlier this week,” he said. “I did not pay attention.” A half-truth. 

“Don’t mess with me. You remember everything. That big brain of yours is big enough to remember even minute details like that.”

“Untrue,” Al-Haitham said. “I don’t bother if the Kshahrewar is involved.”

“Oh, enough of that, will you? I’m looking forward to this one and I won't have you spoil it.”

“Then you look forward to it. It doesn’t interest me.”

“You’ll reap the benefits after the fact, I’m sure.”

“Yes, I’ll look forward to the paper that I won’t read.”

Kaveh held his hand out for the hose, and Al-Haitham gave it to him. “Well, I, for one, don’t mind the change of pace. I’ve never done conservationist work before.”

“Are you going to go back to the Akademiya to become a Vahumana scholar?”

“That’s rich, coming from you,” Kaveh retorted with a puff of smoke. “You took so many Vahumana electives you might as well have properly graduated from two darshans.”

“As if I would ever want to do that. They waste their time putting the cart before the horse more often than not.”

Kaveh reached over to flick Al-Haitham’s forehead. He dodged. Kaveh leaned back with an unsatisfied scoff. “Enough of that patronizing attitude, already,” he said, turning to his wine cup. “You don’t have to act as though you’re above the gods themselves.”

“I don’t act like that,” said Al-Haitham. “I simply don’t care for them.”

Their ideals and processes of thought that had been passed down to the people of Sumeru, yes, for it was intertwined inexplicably with language and knowledge, but for the actual personalities and stories warped with blinded faith, he had no interest.

“Don’t let anyone hear you say that, then,” Kaveh said. “You know how they get about the Greater Lord. I almost get sick of it myself.”

“You prefer the Lesser Lord?”

“I don’t prefer, because faith isn’t something you can pick and choose.” Al-Haitham would argue otherwise, but Kaveh kept talking. “The other gods interest me just as much but in an intellectual sense.”

At least he could understand a sentiment like that very well. There had been a paper that had floated across his desk about it, and he had skimmed it just to see, to know things, because that was his job and his pastime both.

“Yes, I also read that paper,” said Kaveh, when Al-Haitham mentioned it with a lazy exhale. “I didn’t find you to be interested much in the affairs of gods long gone, though.”

“Nor you. I’m surprised you read it at all.”

“There were topics of interest to me covered in there,” said Kaveh. “Ay-Khanoum’s urban structure, for one. The Scarlet King and the Goddess of Flowers built that city together, and in the middle of that city the Scarlet King asked Rukkhadevata to help him, with her knowledge of those things that grow, to make a garden in a magnificent palace such that the Goddess of Flowers would reside in beauty for as long as she lived.”

“You’re interested in the architecture of a city that no longer exists?”

“No,” said Kaveh, heated, flushed from chest to forehead with anger, or perhaps wine. “Well, yes. But not entirely. Not necessarily. But architecture can reveal much about the history and life of the people who lived there. Architecture can tell a story as well as language can.”

“Architecture would not exist if not for those practical concerns of protecting oneself from the elements,” said Al-Haitham. “A story does not supplement any of these.”

“This again,” Kaveh bit out, venomous like mercury. “They aren’t mutually exclusive concepts, you know. You can have both. That’s the point of it, to marry function and form. Function gives way to form.”

“If the function is unnecessary, then the form serves no purpose.”

“Unnecessary?” Kaveh narrowed his eyes.

“You meant to imply it, didn’t you?” Al-Haitham said. “That the Scarlet King built the palace because he loved the Goddess of Flowers.”

“Why else would he have built it?” Kaveh demanded.

“I don’t know and I have no interest in those things.” Al-Haitham took the hose; the end of it nearly fell out of Kaveh’s hand. “They don’t pose any constructive benefit.”

Kaveh stared at him. “Don’t they,” he said, some sort of uncharacteristic coldness in his voice. 

Kaveh’s emotions usually burst out of him with a fire, bright and curious and scathing. But not then. Not there.

He stood up from the rug, brushed off his pants. Al-Haitham watched, breathing out the smoke.

“Retiring early?” he asked. “I’ll go make the bed, then.”

Kaveh ignored him, and in the sting of silence put his cloak around him. When he did speak he was facing the door, looking out, only the back of his head visible to Al-Haitham.

“Good night,” he said. 

The door closing had echoed loudly in the house, all the way into the depths of Al-Haitham’s dreamless sleep. 

He had used his Vision, apparently. The news of it had spread like ripples in a pond, all the way to the Scribe’s office tucked among the Mahamata.

Not to fight, they said. That was commonplace and unremarkable. No, Kaveh had used his Vision to, well, landscape a part of the forest.

Was that even allowed? Would the Lesser Lord Kusanali approve of such a thing? Such aggressive use bordered on heretical. To shape the land as if one were a god, like Barbatos had tempered the countryside of Mondstadt, like Morax had raised Mt. Tianheng to protect Liyue’s safe harbor, was that not too far?

It would explain why he was away for a whole week, at least, among other things; namely, that wide-eyed look at Al-Haitham’s Vision before he’d flurried out of the office. The feat itself was moderately remarkable. Al-Haitham hadn’t known Kaveh was capable of that kind of thing. Gandharva Ville may very well have been a multipurpose trip: Tighnari served not only as a botanical consultant for Kaveh’s great project, but also another Dendro user to assist him in landscaping.

Perhaps it was just as well that Kaveh had not asked Al-Haitham. A Vision expressed itself differently from person to person—in the Inazuman language, they called a Vision an eye of god; in Sumeru, it equated to something closer to “divine foresight.” The element he wielded was close to neither of these things. Al-Haitham’s Dendro did not bloom gently in the sun and rain; it was sharp, cutting. It searched for words, the very essence of wisdom and knowledge itself, piercing in a way that almost seemed like another element altogether, like light reflected from mirrors. His Vision was not an eye of a god, or divine foresight; it was his own ambition manifested much more literally than anyone could have foreseen, utterly human through and through. 

Kaveh knew. Light would have done nothing for that soil he had been so worried about. He needed something that would intertwine itself with the ground, setting roots down to drink deep of the water and support the earth. A builder, someone whose Dendro nurtured and grew, like how Tighnari watched over the forest and nurtured the Rangers into a capable force of their own. Kaveh was, after all, a master craftsman who knew how to use his tools, the people around him included. It was a skill that usually afforded him respect from his colleagues. Usually.

“You need to explain this! Right now!”

The shout came from under that great lion emblem, the door to the Kshahrewar halls, echoing all the way to the fountain in the lobby of the Akademiya. Al-Haitham recognized the voice as one of the Kshahrewar engineers who had been also assigned to the Sangemah Bay commission. The commotion that had kicked up under the Kshahrewar hall stopped foot traffic and turned heads, and at the center of it all was—

“It’s already been done,” said Kaveh, his voice carrying across the atrium connecting all of the darshans’ halls. “Nothing you can do about it now!”

He was practically running from the door, up the stairs towards the entrance to the lobby, earrings swinging, cape fluttering behind him. The engineer, still standing under the Kshahrewar emblem, seemingly unable to move out of shock, sputtered, his face turning a bright red.

“But the logistics of it, you’ve created more problems than solved them—”

“Oh, Haitham!” Kaveh stopped just short of barreling into him, one overly friendly hand on his shoulder. “Just the person I was looking for!”

“Am I really?” muttered Al-Haitham under his breath.

“Don’t flatter yourself, I just need an out,” Kaveh muttered back, curling one hand around Al-Haitham’s elbow, then louder, “To the tavern, yes?”

“Kaveh!”

“Check in with me tomorrow, I’m off!” Kaveh yelled back, dragging Al-Haitham across the atrium towards the Akademiya’s main lobby, leaving the engineer sputtering angrily still. 

“I see that your master plan to stabilize the site is going over well,” Al-Haitham remarked dryly once they had passed the great stained-glass front doors.

“It worked ,” said Kaveh with an eyeroll. “Sure, we have to wait a little longer to observe the effects, but it gives everyone else time to double check on everything else. Lord Kusanali knows they need it. There are so many other things we have to worry about. The windows, for one—”

“Where are you taking me?”

They had rounded the turn to the winding path down towards the rest of the city, Kaveh’s hand still curled firmly around Al-Haitham’s bicep. At the question, Kaveh stopped walking. The momentum caused Al-Haitham to stumble forwards, farther than he thought. The hand around his bicep had retreated.

“Nowhere,” said Kaveh. “Unless you’ve got somewhere to be.”

“Home,” said Al-Haitham dryly, brushing the dust off his coat.

“Oh.”

Kaveh had a strange look on his face, unreadable but expressive all the same. Someone who didn’t know him would think it a mere frown, but somehow it seemed more alien than that, not just unhappiness. Disappointment, in some way. Cold, like three months ago. Al-Haitham did not dare look too long. It burned, not just cold, but cold-hot.

“And here I’d thought you’d be eager to join me,” he said instead, adjusting his earphones, “seeing how often you invite yourself over?”

A half-question, an almost-lingering invitation. Kaveh flushed, anger flickering in his eyes alongside something else.

“No,” he said. “It’s… I’d rather go to the tavern. They have better wine.”

It was a pitiful excuse, delivered with no bite. Al-Haitham scoffed. “You’ve forgotten so soon that I had a shipment of wine from Mondstadt delivered to my house? I thought you’d jump at the chance.”

“I wouldn’t,” Kaveh said indignantly. “I’m not so impudent.”

What a lie that was. Impudent, greedy, stubborn, rash enough to show up whenever he felt like it, to grab Al-Haitham’s arm to run away from stuffy Akademiya whenever he saw fit. Al-Haitham shrugged his cape into place before turning away. “I suppose I’ll open one without you, then,” he said.

The crease between Kaveh’s brows deepened. “See if I care.”

“Maybe I’ll even pour a second glass for myself,” he called behind him, waving his hand casually.

He’d walked just a short way before he heard footsteps behind him and then an exasperated sigh, a warm hand on his shoulder, the same one that had curled around his arm earlier.

“Wait up, at least, you long-legged freak,” Kaveh said.

“Walk faster,” Al-Haitham replied. “It’ll do your heart some good.”

“I’m tired, or did you forget that I only just came back from Gandharva Ville?”

“Not tired enough to talk my ear off about your project, apparently.”

“Oh, you want me to?” Kaveh curled his hand around Al-Haitham’s elbow again, and ignored Al-Haitham’s eye roll. “See, we were going to do a stained glass deal, of course, because why would we not, stained glass windows are the pride of Sumeru…”

He kept it up all the way to the house, describing it in great detail. The windows, he said, had to be a specific thickness, else they would shatter with wind and rain, but a window that thick tinted with particles of gold would have too much color that it would turn black. Thus they were looking into a new technology from Fontaine, in an attempt to perfect it at the Akademiya, in those forges of the craftsmen they worked with. Instead of tinting the whole window, they would tint a thinner sheet of glass to achieve the desired red, then fuse it while it was still hot to the main body of clear glass, thus satisfying both requirements for color and thickness.

“Why red?” asked Al-Haitham while he was unlocking his door. “Why not another color? Green? Blue? Orange? Surely it will be less trouble.”

Kaveh scoffed as he stepped out of his shoes. “Why are a Dusk Bird’s breast feathers orange? Why is the sky blue? The color of the windows should be red, so I’ll make them red.”

“A Dusk Bird has no say in its feathers’ color any more than the sky can help being blue by the particles refracting light in the sky,” said Al-Haitham. “But you have control over what you create. You can choose much more freely than a Dusk Bird or the sky.”

“Only a fool that doesn’t engage in the arts in any form thinks that is true,” said Kaveh. He had set about towards the kitchen already, rummaging through cabinets for that wine. “It’s like tending to a garden. You till the soil and you water the earth and you give it light but the plants grow by themselves, and you cannot fight it. You let them grow the way that they must. You can guide them, and encourage this way or that way, but ultimately you have to watch. And let them.”

“I fail to see how such a thing is possible.” Al-Haitham opened a drawer, pushed aside the flavored tobacco in favor of the bottle opener. “A building does not have a life of its own. A building doesn’t bleed, or have a mind, or think for itself.”

Kaveh scoffed from behind the cabinet door. He had picked a bottle, finally, as though the wine bottles in Al-Haitham’s pantry were not all from the same harvest and did not have similar qualities. They moved to the couch, and Al-Haitham set to work opening the bottle.

“A building does all of those things,” Kaveh said, settling on the opposite end of the couch, lounging back without a care in the world, or perhaps because he was tired. “The people that walk through its doors and sit in its rooms and look through its windows give it life.”

“You confuse the building with its inhabitants.” The cork popped out with a soft noise, and Al-Haitham poured the wine into two glasses, generously for Kaveh and moderately for himself. “Stone and metal and glass don’t breathe the same way people do.”

“Architecture is the design of space,” said Kaveh, taking the glass. “And what is space if not for the people who occupy it? Speaking of, how rude of you to provide wine but no accompaniments? I can’t drink on an empty stomach, you know that.”

“Brat,” said Al-Haitham, but he stood up anyway to go find something from the kitchen, Kaveh’s laughter following behind him.

He was never mad about those kinds of things, Kaveh was. If he really was, then he wouldn’t be sitting on that couch, laughing like that, drinking Al-Haitham’s wine. The coldness of before was a one-time thing, an anomaly of some kind, one that Al-Haitham turned over and over in his mind in quieter moments when Kaveh wasn’t there, because something about it refused to leave his memory entirely. He doubted that Kaveh forgot it either. He hid it well, but the hesitation and doubt from earlier in the day seemed to confirm it.

They had known each other for long enough. Kaveh ought to know by now. Things like that would not stay in the shadows forever. 

There wasn’t time to prepare a proper dinner; Al-Haitham hadn’t expected company, though, knowing Kaveh, he should have known better. Knowing himself, he should have known better. A handful of figs and candied nuts would be enough to tide them over, at least.

When Al-Haitham returned from the kitchen, Kaveh had set his wine cup on the side table and stretched his legs across the length of the couch, one arm folded over his torso, the other dangling off the plush seat towards the floor. His eyes were closed, brows relaxed and smooth, lips slightly parted in an almost erotic way, breaths shallow with slumber.

How tired had he been to fall asleep so quickly? Even a journey from Gandharva Ville alone wouldn’t tire someone this much. Presumably, he had worn himself out, with the stress and the landscaping and the wine . How very typical of him. A lion that consumed the whole of its prey, flesh and blood and bone, such was his zeal for a project.

Al-Haitham set the food down. It was tempting to leave Kaveh there, outstretched on the couch, sleeping like the dead. It was more convenient, actually, from a strictly practical sense. He wouldn’t have to deal with Kaveh fussing over how he preferred Al-Haitham’s bed, or having his back ache from sleeping on the couch—he really ought to furnish that spare bedroom at some point. Maybe then he could sleep on an actual bed when Kaveh inevitably forced him out again. 

For a moment, standing there, he deliberated. Then, slowly, against his better judgment, he slid one arm beneath the crook of Kaveh’s knees, and the other around his shoulders, and lifted.

He was not heavy by any means, but his weight was not insignificant either; it was somewhere in between, warm and reassuring and easy to carry. Al-Haitham held him, propping up Kaveh’s head onto his shoulder so that his blond hair spilled down the front of Al-Haitham’s shirt. Kaveh stirred slightly, but did not wake, and his face remained pressed against Al-Haitham’s chest, his breath warm and steady.

The master bedroom was up the stairs, down the hall, through the door on the left, and Al-Haitham set him down on the bed gently. He took the feather out of Kaveh’s hair, and took out the pins and clips holding the braids back and put them on the side table. Next he undid the cloak around Kaveh’s shoulders, gently tugging it out from under his prone position and draping it over a chair nearby. Then he pulled the covers and sheets over Kaveh’s body, and sat on the edge of the bed, and watched.

In truth, Kaveh’s outburst of anger when he had walked into the tavern after their three-month separation was comforting, in a way. It was familiar. He knew how to deal with it, and he knew that the fire would not hurt him, because it never meant to seriously burn. It never had. He trusted Kaveh that it never would. 

And sure enough, it didn’t burn. It warmed.

“Stay for a bit,” Kaveh had said with his voice. 

Let’s start over again, with his eyes.

Perhaps Lambad only saw Kaveh’s laughter, the product of the high of a celebratory outing, and thought it the cause of their truce. It was not as if it was an illogical conclusion. But Kaveh had been sitting at the bar almost as if he knew Al-Haitham would show up—it wouldn’t make sense that he knew, how would he have known something like that? They had not seen each other, let alone spoken to each other, and that kind of information would not have been available to him. Al-Haitham was the one who observed and listened and knew, and Kaveh knew that probably better than most people, because Kaveh saw him, just as much as Al-Haitham saw Kaveh, if not more. That was what made Kaveh Kaveh, that singular eccentricity of brightness, the sharpness of his wit, and his eye sharper still.

It did not have to make sense how Kaveh knew, Al-Haitham amended. It only mattered that Kaveh knew, because Kaveh always knew. They had walked together, out of step and in step, for this long now, that Kaveh would always know, like his body remembering how to fight, how to use his Vision, how to draw. They had always looked and seen each other, that was how they were, that was how it was.

Until then. Kaveh turning his back, with that strange coldness, bit into Al-Haitham’s skin like thorns digging deep. Afterwards he had stowed that pain away until the chill no longer bothered him.

Pain. He was loath to call it that, he really was. To admit that it had hurt was an ugly truth, but it stared back at him in the mirror unflinching and unchanging. Did it hurt for Kaveh, too? It must have, enough that he did not want to show Al-Haitham his face before walking out the door. He wouldn’t give him that kind of satisfaction.

But hot or cold, maybe it was the same, anger and clashing temper. Unyielding and unwilling to give way, thorns that refused to relinquish their seat from deep inside flesh, drunk on that bite of blood. If Kaveh pulled, Al-Haitham pulled as far as he could in the other direction; if Al-Haitham pushed, then Kaveh pushed back, an uneasy equilibrium of force. Then, in softer moments in between, a reprieve in silence, with nothing but that strange, fleeting look, a hand that poured him wine and gave him the shisha hose, the faint scent of jasmine.

He did not imagine it would come close to anything like that with anyone else. Only Kaveh could do such a thing. Only Kaveh dared to, and in turn only Al-Haitham could bring out Kaveh’s lovely flush of anger in his cheeks. Kaveh lived robustly, highs and lows in stride, but it was because of Al-Haitham. Nobody else would do. 

On the bed, Kaveh slept peacefully, and Al-Haitham watched his chest rise and fall steadily for a quiet moment. He hadn’t figured Kaveh out still, but in reflection, he realized those things that he knew about himself had changed. Or perhaps, like that look in Kaveh’s eyes, they had been there all along.

But even still, he could not put a name to it. To name it would give it substance, and the very notion suggested itself to possibilities that he rather disliked, not because of their inherent nature, but because of the uncertainty. One half was accounted for, but the other was too wild, too mysterious still, to be any grounds for action.

Even now, as that unaccounted half slept, Al-Haitham resisted the urge to touch him, warm him. Even when Kaveh was asleep and helplessly vulnerable, he was reluctant to act. It would be too much. Instead he stood up and put out the lamp, and then left the room with Kaveh still sleeping in the bed. In the morning, he decided, he might skip laundry and let the smell of jasmine linger on his pillows.

Behind the Akademiya, facing west towards the sunset, where students lingered and researchers debated, was Razan Garden, lush with a pond full of lotus flowers, trees swaying over the paved stone paths, and dotted with pavilions held up by slender stone columns and roofs of glass and tile.

It could be said, according to Kaveh over one or more cups of wine, that the very concept of a garden was absolutely essential to architecture in Sumeru, just as the windmills in Mondstadt, or curved roofs in Liyue. To create a paradise on earth, a trove of knowledge embodied by the element of Dendro, sitting alongside that which man built to house his body, was akin to recreating the forest that Greater Lord Rukkhadevata raised in the midst of what had been thousands of years ago a desert. Therefore, a garden was symbolically significant to any structure of even moderate importance, and the Akademiya’s self-importance surpassed moderate by miles.

For the most part, Al-Haitham did not care for it, nor did he put much stock in those things plastered with official titles and fancy names, or dramatic high ceilings and intricate stained windows. But it had always concerned Kaveh, for the execution was only secondarily important to the reasoning, the choice. The intent, in his mind, informed everything else, and even if it was barely visible, even if it was inexplicable to those less-versed in art, it would still be there, and you would just be able to know, instinctively.

He had always been convinced of some divine intent that had gone into its making, Kaveh was. The engineering for the lotus pond against the great Divine Tree such that it sustained the tree and was supplemented by it in turn, if only made from mortal hands, must have been a creation guided by the gods. And for what other reason would man make those pavilions if not to make a place to rest and look up at the sky, where the gods’ domain resided? To connect heaven to earth, to receive that knowledge and guidance which was divinely provided, to feel the world which the Greater Lord created around them—or, perhaps, that which was divine was innate and sprung forth from man’s soul.

It was Kaveh’s favorite place in all of the Akademiya campus, more so than the House of Daena, more so than the drafting studios in the Kshahrewar hall. In their student days, he could be found there more often than not, outstretched on the stone patios, drawing, reading, or taking Al-Haitham by the wrist or elbow under one of the many pavilions to debate whatever had come to mind for them that day. It was Al-Haitham’s favorite place for Kaveh, partly because something about it hushed his voice into a low whisper, and partly because under the shade of the pavilions, Kaveh would watch the stars, or the lotus flowers floating in the pond, and dream. And every time without fail, Al-Haitham would leave utterly confounded by those red eyes looking far away and close up at the same time, in that silence that said nothing at all and said volumes simultaneously. 

Only in hindsight were things like this made clear. In the shade of Sumeru City’s great tree, between white stone columns, beside the pond full of lotus flowers, the quiet and sometimes not-quiet between them arose. As students it lingered in the warmth of youth, on the cool white stone of the patio; as they became adults and moved forwards in life and in time, it had wandered to settle in the rooms of Al-Haitham’s house, beside the wine and the shisha and the jasmine-scented oil.

Kaveh awoke in a rush, after Al-Haitham had already risen and bathed and begun breakfast for the day. He hadn’t meant to sleep in so late, apparently, even if his habit was to rise after the sun streamed in through the windows—Al-Haitham knew this from every other time Kaveh had slept in his bed after drinking too much wine—but today was busy. Today he had to placate those prickly engineers and barter with material suppliers, Greater and Lesser Lords help him both.

He wanted that same white stone found in the Akademiya’s gardens to pave the gardens for his house, no, palace. This much he had told Al-Haitham while rubbing his hair dry with a towel after his bath, and picking up the cup of tea set out for him, with one entire sugar cube’s worth of sweetness dissolved in. That was his plan, he said as he sipped the tea and dipped the flatbread into the hummus. That supply of the stone, however, had gotten scarce since Liyue had stopped most export and mining work in the Chasm; naturally, the price had shot up since. 

But he had to use that stone. It was more than ideal for his palace. That stone, he said, did not warm easily, and stayed cool to the touch even in the hottest of days, providing respite for anyone who wanted to spend the day in the garden in the heat of the jungle. It lent itself well to carving, and did not wear so easily against plants and water and sun. And that gleaming white color, how beautiful would it look, shining under the trees and flowers and waters? There was a reason that the Akademiya’s gardens were paved with it, so even if the price was high and the stone was valuable, he refused to compromise on it.

Al-Haitham didn’t know who the hell Kaveh was trying to convince. It wasn’t as if he controlled the market for various types of building-grade stone, nor was he taking any Kshahrewar elective on material science. But Kaveh swept out of the house with one last piece of flatbread in his hand and a carefree wave, and it was enough to rouse a suspicion.

Not of Kaveh, of course. His intentions were easy enough to understand in this context. Kaveh was a man who, when he knew what he wanted, would grab on and not let go, devour his desire flesh and bone and blood all, like a lion, though, admittedly, that was part of the issue. No, Al-Haitham was wary of those material suppliers, and the likely mind behind those material suppliers.

How cunning of the Lord Sangemah Bay to place herself at the center of all this, to commission a mansion as splendid as mora could buy, but also to have a finger in every trade that an architect might concern himself with to build such a mansion. Al-Haitham cared little for the practicalities of business itself, for the things he was interested in were more often available to him not through money but through his word and title. Still, it was not as though he was completely unaware of how things were. He was the Eye of the Akademiya, the Scribe that observed and recorded the comings and goings of Sumeru. The last he had heard, she had negotiated an exclusive deal with the Qixing on the import of that stone to Sumeru. Kaveh was right in that supply was thin due to the Chasm’s closing, driving up the value and price, but it was also because of the Lord Sangemah Bay acting as the middleman. She would undoubtedly squeeze out something as advantageous to her personal funds as possible, and Kaveh with his single-minded vision on that grand creation might not be so attentive. Like a lion that devoured prey whole, he paid no mind to what parts nourished and what parts did not. All that he knew was what he desired to build.

Strictly speaking, there wasn’t much Al-Haitham could do. Attempting to warn Kaveh when he had already set his mind to it was a futile endeavor, and though the title of Scribe sounded official and self-important and undoubtedly afforded him privilege and power in some regards, most of it was just for show. Furthermore, the Lord Sangemah Bay tended to avoid anyone from the Akademiya like the plague, barring those Kshahrewar collaborators. Victims, more like. Or slaves shackled under some semblance of a business deal. With a contract outside of the Akademiya’s jurisdiction like that, the Mahamata held little sway.

The only thing he could do was wait, and catch Kaveh if he fell. When he fell. That sort of thing, Al-Haitham concluded, was nigh-inevitable.

Early spring was the dry season in Sumeru, as dry as it could get on this side of the Wall of Samiel, and it was this time that Kaveh took advantage of to start construction on that palace—the Palace of Alcazarzaray, they were calling it.

It was an ostentatious name. An endlessly redundant one. For all that Kaveh talked up with regards to aesthetic and beauty, Al-Haitham thought that he might have better sense when it came to words, but he supposed language wasn’t Kaveh’s domain, anyhow.

Not that Kaveh cared. The progression of a new project put a spring in his step, widened his smile, sweetened his wine. He cared far less about names and words than he did about stone and brick and glass. It took him away from Sumeru City much more often, but he went willingly, for his heart, in the moment, was nestled in that half-formed site, amidst that mere skeleton of a building. Like he was a god, or God, breathing new life into a child.

The way Kaveh talked about his buildings sounded sometimes like an overly fussy parent, proud of every minute development that occurred under his watch. Every return, or visit back, to Sumeru City was reliably punctuated with Kaveh finding Al-Haitham somehow—and Al-Haitham supposed he could not fault Kaveh for finding him so easily; after all, he was human and therefore a creature of habit, and for how long they had known each other it would have been more of a surprise if Kaveh didn’t know his habits—and dragging him out to a tavern or somewhere else to show off Kamera-taken photographs of his child, his building. 

“She’s coming along so well,” he said fondly over another cup of tea, brewed strong and black and, Al-Haitham thought, with entirely too much sugar. He pushed another photo forwards, next to Al-Haitham’s own cup of coffee. “We’re getting the fountain in next week, it’s going to go in that spot that’s cleared out in the middle.”

Al-Haitham glanced briefly at it. “Is the fountain made of that expensive stone, too?”

“No,” said Kaveh a little too indignantly. “The kind of stone you’d use for pavement isn’t the same kind you’d use for fountains. But,” he admitted in a lower voice, “they’re similar enough to come from the same mine.”

Al-Haitham hid his smile behind his cup. “Does the Lord Sangemah Bay have the budget for this kind of thing?”

“Of course. Their wealth is nothing to joke about.” Kaveh crossed his arms. “Must you question everything I do?”

“If you don’t, then who will?”

“I am covering my bases, thank you very much. Enough with the questions, I’m trying to have a nice time here showing you something I’m proud of.”

“If you really wanted a nice time, you wouldn’t have sought me out.”

Kaveh narrowed his eyes. “You’re insufferable, you know that?”

“Yes, you tell me often enough.”

“Well, you are!” Kaveh said. “You know, I was going to ask you for your opinion on something, but this has just reminded me that you have no artistic or literary sense whatsoever and probably wouldn’t be able to help me.”

“Oh?” Al-Haitham turned a page in his book. “You, the Light of the Kshahrewar, deferring to my authority and expertise on something? This project really has changed you.”

“I can’t believe that’s your takeaway,” Kaveh sniffed into his cup. “You’re impossible to even insult. But yes, I was going to ask about potential literary works relating to the Goddess of Flowers. You’re the language person, after all.”

“Just because I had to translate them doesn’t mean I cared enough to remember it. You’re better off asking some fool Vahumana,” said Al-Haitham. “I have no interest in it and therefore no knowledge.”

“I should’ve known better,” Kaveh mumbled. “I’m not asking you anymore, anyways.”

He put down his cup and shuffled the papers spread out over the café table. Most of the surface had been taken up by notes and photos of the site, save for one spot where Al-Haitham’s cup sat. Al-Haitham had brought a book of his own to read, but with Kaveh around it was an exercise in futility. How dare he ignore those pictures of Kaveh’s buildings, and this sketch for the house’s interior, sorry, palace, because neither he or the Lord Sangemah Bay would settle for less.

“Why do you need to know about literary works?” Al-Haitham said, turning his gaze back to his book. “I can’t imagine that it has many practical applications for your palace.”

“I would have thought that it had occurred to you, Haravatat,” Kaveh rolled his eyes, “that the words and runes of language lend themselves to decorative patterns that can be used for my palace, but once again you demonstrate a remarkable ignorance for things when they pertain to aesthetic use.”

“If you mean that carpet that those merchants in the Bazaar love to make up useless stories about, then surely you know they are made up to entice customers to buy them.”

“I wasn’t,” Kaveh said, flipping open his sketchbook to a page covered with words written in black ink, gracefully swirling and twisting over the white of the paper. “But again, not asking, your arrogant handling of knowledge is no longer needed.”

It was not just normal writing that Kaveh pored over, he realized when he bothered to look over his book. Nor was it Kaveh’s usual handwriting; he usually wrote in a script that had been hammered into him since their Akademiya days through that required Kshahrewar course on drafting and lettering. Al-Haitham had watched, once, when he had come by Kaveh in those studios, drafting, those wood tools arranged around the paper in strange ways. Kaveh’s hand wrote steadily, without hesitation, without flaw, like a printing press copying letter by letter. It was nigh-hypnotizing.

But this was not that script, with its slanting tails and tight loops. This was more elaborate, expressive, something that Al-Haitham was certain was not taught at the Akademiya because it veered quite widely away from draft lettering into calligraphy, and that, in a way, was an art that was sorely detested by the sages. The letters curled around themselves in a way that was far removed from the normal script found in books and signs, but still recognizable with their general shape. Even upside down he could read it:

From her sleeves sprang sweetwater
And in her wake flowers bloomed in fields
Even the moon laid low his light in her path
Reverent before her beauty

He recognized the poem. There had been a rather eccentric professor in Haravatat who taught Classical Sumeran, when Al-Haitham was still a student slogging through required courses. He had made them read such poems to analyze the structure and lexicon and their relation to modern language, but also, he told them with something akin to reminiscing nostalgia on his face, because it was good for them to hear the words, crafted so carefully by the poets of old Sumeru.

It was a course available only to Haravatat, so Kaveh had never taken it and had no reason to copy those poems in swirling script with that steady hand of his. Any Classical Sumeran he knew was through that habit of theirs of being together, sitting under the pavilions in the gardens, or knocking knees in the tables of the cafe, or fussing over the tobacco flavors in the tavern’s shisha. Between that space of their two bodies, however much or little of it there was, Al-Haitham would read, and turn the words over in his mouth, where the vowels sat on the tongue, where the consonants clicked around his teeth and lips, and Kaveh would listen, his hands idling across the page, or curled around a glass of tea, or fiddling with the feather he had liked to put in his hair, still liked to put in his hair, uncharacteristically quiet. As if he hung on every word that tumbled out of Al-Haitham’s lips.

Those days seemed far off now, but he had remembered enough to write it in his sketchbook, and even if he had not known it word for word, he had remembered enough to know it was there and looked for it. The thought of it blurred the words on the page of Al-Haitham’s book. He looked and read them but did not really see or read them, lost as he was in the mental image of Kaveh writing, pen moving across the paper in even, controlled strokes, committing the words to paper and heart.

“Did you want more coffee?” Kaveh asked. Al-Haitham looked across the table, but Kaveh was not looking back at him, instead peering into his empty glass of tea. “I might ask for the candied nuts as well, I’m feeling kind of peckish.”

“No, I don’t want anything,” said Al-Haitham.

The waitress came by when Kaveh flagged her down with a raised hand. Maybe she walked a little fast to get to their table, maybe she wrung her hands a little much while Kaveh rattled off his order, maybe she lingered looking at him a little long. Kaveh gave her a smile, kind and cheerful, and she fluttered a little; Al-Haitham held his book before him still, but he did not read it.

He hadn’t been keeping track, of course. It didn’t matter. But the fact that pulled at the back of his mind was that Kaveh had not been seen on someone’s arm in at least a few months, not since he had started the whole project with the Palace, nor had Al-Haitham heard of him on someone’s arm in those months, let alone further. The Mahamata gossiped like it was their job, and to an extent, it was, but the topics at hand grew out of control when it had little to do with work. Like tendrils on a vine, curling around the windpipe until it became almost insufferable to hear about. Kaveh had gained a kind of renown in the last handful of years that had acted only to increase the amount of dalliances he’d had, until recently. It was a relief, for a time. 

But this, he was sure to hear of this the next day, he surmised. She was attractive enough: dark eyes, well-proportioned limbs, long hair, delicate hands. Perhaps she was Kaveh’s type.

It didn’t matter. Kaveh’s life was Kaveh’s, except for that detail of his constantly barreling into Al-Haitham’s as if he went out of his way to make sure Al-Haitham did not fade from his view, burrowed a space into Al-Haitham’s home as if he lived there, because they seemed to settle into something of a pattern, like pieces of stained glass placed together to make something more than the sum of their parts. But it was not something that fit in those spaces between them, whoever Kaveh saw, whoever Kaveh took to bed. With too many pieces, the structure would shatter, fragile tension spilling into broken shards. They wouldn’t be able to handle it. None of them had seen Kaveh like he had, really seen him. There was no place for them. One might even question what place Al-Haitham occupied in Kaveh’s view, let alone elsewhere.

“And what are you thinking about?” asked Kaveh, still poring over his papers and photos. “Because you aren’t reading.”

He didn’t question how Kaveh knew. “The waitress,” he said instead. “She’s pretty.”

That earned him a sharp laugh. “What would you know about that kind of thing? If beauty struck you in the face, you still wouldn’t recognize it.”

“I know enough to know she’s looking at you.”

“Me,” Kaveh scoffed, with one raised eyebrow. “And what of you? You’ve never had any inclinations and you’re looking.”

“I observe with no other intent,” Al-Haitham said. Kaveh hummed, turned his head to look and then looked away almost as quickly.

“She is pretty,” he said absently, turning back to pore over his photos, “but she’ll get bored.”

Don’t you mean you’ll get bored? “Bored?”

“I’m busy and people don’t have patience nowadays. Building something takes time. I don’t have time to dabble in stuff like that right now.”

“You have time to sit here and drink overly sweet tea with me,” Al-Haitham said.

“That’s different.”

“In what way?”

“I don’t have to explain myself to you,” Kaveh said, sifting through the photos and drawings, but he looked definitively more ruffled than before.

“I think you do,” said Al-Haitham, because Kaveh never did explain himself, it was not his habit, but almost everything he did needed an explanation. No one else was so puzzlingly nonsensical in the way they moved about the world, hot and cold, cold and hot. Rational action did not exist with Kaveh.

The question, however, did not sit well with him, because Kaveh simply stilled his writing hand and looked up with a frown. “Don’t push it, Haitham,” he said.

“No, I want to know,” said Al-Haitham. “Why do you bother to spend time with me when you said so yourself that you would rather work?”

Kaveh’s hand curled into a fist around his pen with a grip so ferocious Al-Haitham thought it might snap in half right there and splatter ink everywhere. He stared at Al-Haitham with an expression halfway between pain and frustration, his mouth trembling as though he was holding back words that threatened to burst out of him.

“You know,” he said, his brow furrowing even further, “you ask a good question. Why do I spend time with you? When all you do is—is—” Something caught in Kaveh’s throat and he looked away. 

Al-Haitham waited. Kaveh did not speak for a long moment, his face twisted as though he was doing his best to hide a wound. “Never mind,” he said finally, red eyes downcast. “You’re right. I need to devote more time to my work, evidently, instead of wasting it doing”—he gestured wildly at the space between them—“whatever this is.”

The swiftness of it all, the sudden cold. It chilled Al-Haitham’s bones even in the warmth of Sumeru City’s afternoon, and he could not move, helpless while Kaveh gathered up the myriad of papers on the table. Cold, his words. Hot, whatever ailed him, shown plainly on his face, threatening to boil over. Thus were two opposing, distinct qualities intertwined to become the same, indistinguishable without the other.

Hot or cold, cold-hot or hot-cold, it did not feel different. They both brought pain, a strange kind of it. In Kaveh’s absence, it settled deeper, like Snezhnayan permafrost, ice that lay beneath the earth, slumbering even in summer.

The coffee in his cup had gone cold. A tepid, timid kind of cold. He found that he liked it less than the piercing feeling of permafrost, but he finished it and made to leave.

“Finishing up, Al-Haitham?” A different waitress passed by, her gaze falling on Kaveh’s empty cup and empty seat. “Should I open a standing tab for Mister Kaveh or…?”

“No,” Al-Haitham said, against his better judgment. “I’ll pay for it.”

He had predicted wrong. The Mahamata didn’t gossip about Kaveh and that waitress; no, they gossiped about Kaveh and him.

It was pathetically obvious from the way they clamped their mouths when he walked into the office that morning. But he tapped his earphones and gave them a curt, if polite, nod, before walking into his office. They were foolish enough, then, to speak again, as though the sound did not carry through the walls, as though he could not hear them even with earphones over his ears.

“It was not the usual kind of argument,” said one. “Normally they’re—well, Kaveh—Kaveh’s so loud that half the city would be able to hear what they’re talking about. But it was just a few words and then silence.”

A few murmured hums of thinking. “What do you suppose they argued about?” said someone else.

“Beats me. But the point is that it looked serious. Like friendship-ending serious.”

“Friendship,” scoffed a new voice dripping with sarcasm, and everyone chuckled.

Friendship. Al-Haitham turned over that word in his mind. Friendship. 

Words were something he did not take lightly. He had devoted the lion’s share of his time in the Akademiya to words, the shape of them, the anatomy of them, dissecting them as thoroughly as Amurta scholars did with fungi or flowers or small animals. “Friendship” seemed too shallow for what he and Kaveh had. It implied something content and easy between them, when they were anything but.

What did those Mahamata know of it? The sarcasm said as much as to what they thought of the label, but if even they did not think of Al-Haitham and Kaveh as friends, what were they?

“In any case,” said that first voice, so loud that it cut through his thoughts intrusively, “Kaveh is gone anyways, he went back to his construction site.”

Of course he had; he had made good on his word to go to work like Al-Haitham had told him to, then. It was not unusual for Kaveh to bury himself in work like that. None of the Mahamata commented on it; evidently they did not suspect anything. But there was something unusual about it to Al-Haitham, and none of them knew Kaveh like that; none of them saw Kaveh and was seen by Kaveh the way he did and was. Twice over Kaveh had walked away with only a cold word and an expression as hard as ice, like a third face that he had not seen before. Light, dark, and coldness. Now that he had seen it twice, he searched for similarities, points of causation in each instance, splitting it open like he dissected words and sentences.

Between those separate instances, he had questioned Kaveh’s words both times, which was normal for them. The first time had been on those principles of the gods that Kaveh had found so fascinating from an intellectual view, but Kaveh’s attachment to his ideals and convictions were so strong that they might as well have been personal insults. The second had been something of a reprimand, but even still, he reprimanded Kaveh often, and he was usually met with a loud and fiery rebuttal, or if less loud, then something much warmer, more impassioned; that was the Kaveh he knew. 

He had told Kaveh that he found functions of grand gestures unnecessary and uninteresting. When had that ever stopped Kaveh from doing as he pleased, though? On a surface level, Kaveh had no further reason to build such a thing other than to fulfill what had been commissioned of him. However, the parallel between his fascination with that grand palace of old and his current project was undeniable, and the fact that he had sought out literary reference pertaining to those gods to whom that palace belonged only served to further reinforce that point. Building the palace to emulate those gods of old from those romanticized texts translated from ancient words was not so far-fetched a conclusion.

That, however, was the creation, and not the creator. And for Kaveh, there was something about it all that escaped Al-Haitham’s notice, something that he could not place his finger on. As if Kaveh had taken that insult more personally than usual, because it hit some exceptionally sore point. 

He combed through that memory, recalling the words spoken. Insinuating Kaveh was lazy for indulging in that habit of their sitting together was unusually harsh, probably, but was it unusual enough for him to react so strangely, in that quick burst of hot followed by deep cold? Al-Haitham’s opinion, then, seemingly mattered much more than he had thought, on account of their relationship.

Relationship? It certainly wasn’t just friendship, because it had long passed that. It had never been important to name it, because for nearly as long as they had known each other, it had simply just been, and labeling it was unnecessary. Even when they were apart, it lingered, in letters, or in memory, or in the softness of smoke and wine consumed in solitude, and in that darkness did that strange uncomfort emerge. In the mundanity of day to day Al-Haitham tuned it out, but it had become much more solid lately, a fatigue or dissatisfaction that he could not shake off.

He did not have any meeting that he was required to attend in the next few days. He had finished all the ordinances demanded of him, and had no abstracts of theses to compile. Even showing up at the office today was a nominal formality, because he had not set in stone what he wanted to do yet.

Well, no, that wasn’t true. He did know, and he had been thinking of that question for that amount of time, since Kaveh had walked away, but the answer was not fully-formed yet. He had yet to figure out the important part, the part that would inform all else remaining around it, the answer.

Kaveh always said something like that. It was not about the what of the matter, he had said so surely with his hair splayed out over the white stone of the garden patio, like a regal lion’s mane.

But it was, Al-Haitham said, because the what would inform the rest of the shape of it, the where and the who and the why and the how, and Kaveh had looked at him with that gaze the color of cinnabar, with something like mirth, and said exactly.

So it was not the what of it that Al-Haitham did not know the answer to, but the how. The how was the most sensitive part, especially when it came to Kaveh, whose heart flickered like a temperamental flame. Especially now that the warmth that Al-Haitham had been so accustomed to had all but puttered out into that thin layer of ice underneath the earth, the frost lying with the greenery side by side, unmoving and inert. Al-Haitham was, if nothing, someone who liked to get to the point, but this sort of thing required care, coaxing, timing. 

Timing. The when . A headache nearly brewed in his skull at the thought of navigating that particular strait. Kaveh did not bow to anyone else’s time. His time was his own, he made of it what he would; when he disappeared into that depth of his work, he did not come out until he wanted to.

But Kaveh would come back, surely. He would return and they would start over again. Or pick up where they had left off? As if it had ever ended at all, Kaveh and Al-Haitham, irreversibly tangled together since they had met eyes so long ago.

The door opened and a Mahamata stuck his head in. “Scribe,” he said, holding out an envelope between two fingers, his arm stretched into the space of the office. “Missive for you, from the sages. Well, one sage.”

“Which one?” Al-Haitham asked, rising from his seat.

“Kshahrewar.”

He tried not to roll his eyes. “What do they want?”

“Don’t know. I haven’t opened it. Figured I shouldn’t.”

It was probably the “right” thing to do, but if he were in that Mahamata’s position, he would’ve tried to sneak a look at least. He took the envelope and opened it. The words, printed neatly, told him to go observe the work done on the Palace. The Palace. Kaveh’s palace.

He couldn’t help a scoff then. For what? As if Kaveh needed babysitting on matters like this. When it came to things like eating real meals, and drinking water instead of wine, and sleeping a full night’s rest, then yes, Kaveh sorely lacked in ability and needed someone more responsible to whip him into shape, but not when it came to this. Fool was the man who got between Kaveh and his work. Al-Haitham had watched it happen enough times over the years that he knew better.

Not that the Akademiya cared. That was the nature of power. The pious pursuit of knowledge withered pitifully compared to the greed that control brought. The roots of this greed curled deep into the ground, the buildings, the people; those high up were either complicit sheep content with comforts, or a form of competency they had sought to bring under control. Kaveh was neither, for he was hardly complacent, as idealistic as he was, and found himself lacking in those cushy comforts afforded to people high up, and he was rebellious and marched to the beat of his own drum with a stubbornness seldom matched by anyone around him.

For all intents and purposes, it was a pointless trip. He could very easily cut corners on this report; after all, he had seen photos of it just yesterday, he had seen the drawings in Kaveh’s office, he had even looked at the topology surveys before and after the whole landscaping thing that Kaveh had done with his Vision. In a strange way, he had watched the Palace be built as though he were a god-parent watching a child grow up.

But Kaveh had always said something, architecture was the design of space, and it was impossible to know that sort of thing just from photos and drawings and diagrams. Those were mere tools to communicate the creation of such a complex thing. No, it was impossible to understand how the building came to be just from that; if you were to stand there, compared to simply looking at a picture, then the body would know and the heart would know and the mind would know. The space of being inside a building was different. He had insisted on it enough times that Al-Haitham could recite it the way Kaveh would say it perfectly, how his voice would rise and fall with inflection and romantic zeal. Al-Haitham could hear it clearly even now, Kaveh’s laughter, Kaveh’s anger, Kaveh’s voice.

Amidst the ice that had settled in the space between the two of them, the paper in his hands held some kind of weight that broke through it. A foot in the door, a handhold in the cliff face, an opening in a fight. An elaborate excuse. They could have asked anyone else, someone from Kshahrewar who knew more about architecture and engineering, someone who could better comment on it. Instead, they offloaded the petty tedium onto the Scribe, and with it, a precious kind of opportunity.

No sense in waiting around in his office, then, when he had finished all his work, and could easily handle anything that came up. There were more pressing matters at hand.

He left for the Palace at dawn. By horse it would take half a day’s ride, and he would surely arrive just after noon.

The road leading north to the Palace lent itself to a splendid view, gently sloping down into where the building was situated atop a rocky islet surrounded by murmuring waterfalls. The building itself was nearly the same as he remembered from Kaveh’s drawing, sweeping roofs like a hanging flower, gently shaded by trees that sighed gently over it, radiant smooth white stone reflecting the light of the noon sun.  In front, that empty space from Kaveh’s photograph had been filled with the fountain he had mentioned, though the water did not run yet, and bare earth still surrounded it; the white stone tile had yet to be laid.

And off to the side, a sight that caught Al-Haitham by some kind of surprise, enough to tug the reins of his horse, signaling to stop.

A pavilion, with a dome, crowned in elegant stone. The same shape as those pavilions in Razan Garden, tucked behind the Akademiya, the same curve of the dome and the same straight columns holding it up. It wasn’t the same, remotely; the dome was tiled with the same green of the roof of the main building, and it was not tucked among the branches of the divine tree, instead watching over the waterfalls with a clear, proud air about it, but it was close enough. The sight of it stirred the memory, caused him to stop for a moment before urging his horse forward again.

He was not received by Kaveh, to his mild disappointment, but by another working on the project. It would be very well, he supposed, for the chief architect, the Light of the Kshahrewar, surely didn’t have the time to meet with feeble scholars sent to babysit the project. The horse was left in care of the hired groundskeepers, and they set off, just Al-Haitham and that engineer who was important enough to speak on all aspects of the project but unimportant enough that he could not push the tedium of a tour to someone else.

“I don’t know how much you’ve heard of the conception of the Palace,” the engineer said as he led Al-Haitham towards the fountain, “but Chief Architect Kaveh has said upon the prompt of creating a luxurious and peaceful haven, he was inspired by the ancient city of the Sumeran gods which also served as a haven in the desert. I am sure you’ve heard as much from the Chief Architect, himself, though.”

“I have not.”

In fact, he had never heard such a sentiment. They hadn’t discussed the gods since his long absence working in the desert. Presumably Kaveh had thought not to bother him with such topics. 

“I…see,” said the engineer with a strange look on his face. “Well, it’s no secret, really. The fountain, here, for example, we had stone-workers carve a poem around the rim. As a Haravatat graduate, I am sure you may appreciate it.”

He did not appreciate it because of his Haravatat education; rather, it was because he had seen that script, those words in the same, flowing hand, black ink on a sketchbook made into shallow indents on white stone. He knew those words, as they were clearly engraved into his memory. Even the moon laid low his light in her path, reverent before her beauty.

They continued on, up the sloped path and into the main building of the house. Al-Haitham lingered when the door closed behind them, studying the patterns of colored light thrown on the floor by the afternoon sun. 

The engineer followed his gaze and smiled. “You have a good eye. It was quite difficult to achieve this red color—”

“Yes,” said Al-Haitham. “Because the appropriate amount of pigment needed to create the red color for stained glass would be too dark if the glass was too thick, but a certain thickness is required if the glass is made for architectural use.”

The engineer looked at him in surprise. “Why…yes, that’s exactly it. I suppose you also know how we resolved the issue, then.”

“By staining a thinner sheet of glass to achieve the desired red,” said Al-Haitham, his gaze following the shapes of the window, “after which the thinner sheet is fused to a thicker clear sheet of glass to satisfy the required thickness for architectural use. Yes?”

“Yes,” said the engineer. “You live up to your reputation, Scribe.”

They continued on, through all of the splendid rooms in the Palace, the intricately painted tiles, the patterning on the walls and ceilings, the furniture that was trickling in to fill the space. The vaulted ceilings in the halls were ornamentally carved to resemble flowers and reeds, the engineer said, and the rugs on the floor were woven with the softest of Sumpter Beast wool and silk imported from Liyue. Outside, the paths were lined with budding flowers, earth with the rich smell of petrichor, a clear path to the pavilion overlooking the water. The engineer continued to talk about the design choices while Al-Haitham ran his fingers over the railing, the columns, shaded by the ornamented roof of the pavilion.

It was well-crafted, well-designed. He would concede that much. The principles of formalism always applied especially so to architecture, so Kaveh always said, because one could look at a painting and appreciate its closeness to life in its representation, but a building could hardly resemble a person or an object in the same capacity, and therefore had to rely on the execution of its most fundamental elements to uphold aesthetic ideals.

But that was not enough. Kaveh was more romantic than that. Inspired by that ancient city, on paper—perhaps it was, to a degree. He did not doubt that. But to have something so magnificent be so single-mindedly single-faceted would be a disappointment. It was not just that dream of a far-off city from another time that had shaped his creation, but those things that Kaveh had lived and thought and felt that had laid the groundwork, planted the flowers, carved the designs. Only a multitude of experiences, boiled down in essence to lay upon every stone that made the palace, could make something like this.

“Al-Haitham?”

They both turned around. Kaveh stood at the steps of the pavilion, his face contorted into a mix of shock and horror. Al-Haitham wanted to photograph it and keep it forever.

“Chief Architect,” said the engineer. “This is the representative sent from the Akademiya to oversee the project.”

Kaveh’s eyes flickered back and forth as if to process the information. “I see,” he said after a moment. “I can take it from here, then.”

Al-Haitham rested a hand on the railing and looked out towards the water while the engineer left. When his footsteps had faded, Kaveh advanced with a guarded, hostile expression.

“What are you doing here?” he said.

There was a furrow between Kaveh’s brows that Al-Haitham wanted to smooth away with a thumb, but he resisted, as tempting as it was. “You heard him. They sent me here to survey progress.”

“You’re dead if I find out you’re lying to me.”

“It’s the truth. You don’t believe me? When have I ever lied to you?”

“Plenty of times. All the time.”

“Name one time, then, if you’re so sure.”

Kaveh opened his mouth to retort, then seemed to think better of it. “Don’t distract me from the point. I—why did you even agree to come? You’d rather stay at home and read your worthless books before going out here to see m—this.”

“I was curious,” Al-Haitham said. “The same reason I do anything. You know.”

“And since when were you curious about architecture?”

“I’m not. I came here for the view.”

“Don’t start—!”

“It’s nice.”

Kaveh stared at him.

“It’s nice,” Al-Haitham repeated. “The palace, the fountain. It’s nice.”

Kaveh narrowed his eyes in shock and almost disgust. “You can’t just say things like that,” he sputtered.

“Why not?”

“Because you don’t give me… compliments . That doesn’t just happen.”

“Maybe it does.”

“You are so insufferable,” said Kaveh, turning away. “You know that?”

“You get angry when I insult you and then you get angry when I compliment you,” said Al-Haitham. “If anything, you’re the one being irrational.”

“Me?” Kaveh laughed humorlessly, still turned away. “I’m sorry to have offended your sensibilities.”

“My sensibilities? If anyone’s offended, it’s you.”

“I am glad to hear you can now state the obvious.”

“Of course that much is obvious,” said Al-Haitham. “But I struggle to see why—”

“Why? Why?!” Kaveh whirled around. “Because you insult these—these things I value and reject romance as useless and question why I bother with you—gods above forbid that I value a relationship as more than just a ledger or a transaction—if you stopped to think for one minute, you’d see what I really think of you!”

His voice broke halfway, and Al-Haitham saw that look in Kaveh’s eyes then, really saw it, the same kind of look that Al-Haitham felt on his face. Like a mirror, reflecting back at him, this newfound knowledge, like the Dendro that resonated with his Vision, that same mix of turmoil and emotion in Kaveh shining like a light, plain as day.

But he could not say it. It was not right. He was incapable of it, because he didn’t have the words, and Kaveh didn’t have the room in his heart to hear them, not when he was all but giving everything just short of his flesh and blood to this building, this creation, that strange crystallization of all that he had lived and all those things between them. The pavilion that had shaped their student years, the poem carved onto the fountain’s sides, the white stone that shined in the sun like Razan Garden, that tender hollow of intimacy tucked away from the world. All he could do was stand there, looking at Kaveh and having Kaveh look at him in turn, while those words hung in the air between him.

No, Kaveh didn’t have to say anything. He had already said it, with his hands, with his drawings, with the stone laid on the ground, with the vines that curled around the islet, with the flowers that he had planted all around. It had taken this long for Al-Haitham to see and understand. But he did not know how to say it back, yet.

People were starting to trickle by, curious, so Kaveh wiped his eyes, with just a knuckle, small but noticeable, and said without looking at Al-Haitham, “If you need more information I suggest you talk to Razi. He’s been overseeing things just as much as me and can help you just as well. Otherwise, I’d like you to leave.”

And this request, Al-Haitham could not deny. He had no more say here.

“All right,” he said.

He turned and began to walk, strangely cold, strangely hot, perhaps strangely both. Then, because he could not help it, he stopped and looked back.

Kaveh did not seem to have noticed that he was not yet alone; instead he stood there, one hand still lingering on the stone column, as if bracing himself on the stone of his creation.

“You fool Haravatat,” said Kaveh, to the pavilion, the flowers, to no one in particular. “You insufferable, idiotic fool.”

The waver of his voice betrayed a kind of ache that Al-Haitham had seldom heard before. He watched without a word as Kaveh settled on one of the benches, reclining, an arm under his head, eyes closed, golden hair spilling everywhere, a familiar pose.

Fool Haravatat. Fool Kshahrewar. What love made of them both.

A month after he had drafted that report, word fluttered about the Akademiya that the Palace had been completed. It was a creation unparalleled in splendor and beauty, according to anyone who had seen it, upon passing from the northern roads around to Sumeru City’s southern entrance. It shone like a pearl within a bed of flowers in the sunlight, magnificent even from far away. 

And yet, whispered the Mahamata outside his office, gathered around the table with their coffee and baklava, the one who designed it was nowhere to be seen? 

Everyone knew Kaveh at the tavern. It was probably his favorite place to be—Al-Haitham scoffed to himself hearing such a plaintively false statement—and even during the construction of the Palace, when he went back and forth between Sumeru City and the site, he was found there drinking a toast and eating the grilled fish Lambad prided himself on.

But see, that wasn’t the case at all, not recently. He hadn’t been there in the last month. Really? Yes, really. Well, Erfan—he works at Lambad’s so he would know—said that Mister Kaveh had a running tab that he hadn’t paid off yet. Odd that he must have squandered all that money from building that Palace already. Anyone who designed such a splendid thing surely got paid a lot, especially considering the person who commissioned it.

Yes, and the house that Kaveh lived in—there was a new tenant, my aunt’s friend saw them moving in yesterday. Surely Kaveh used all that money to buy a nicer house for himself, perhaps higher up, a nicer neighborhood, that must be why he moved out of that old house?

They didn’t have the full story and they were still speaking so carelessly. No, those rumors didn’t know Kaveh as well as he did, nor was it hard for Al-Haitham to put two and two together.

He opened the door of his office, and all the Mahamata gathered at the table jumped, like children with their hands caught in the bowl of candied nuts. 

“Good afternoon,” he said instead to their shell-shocked expressions, and walked out.

Summer had set in with full force in Sumeru, and with it, the humidity, like thick soup in the air. There was a great habit of stores closing early during this time of year, because to walk about and do things was terribly tiring when the air outside was as dense as it was. Even the Akademiya was less lively than usual, even that path through the doors leading up towards Razan Garden, normally dotted with lingering students and researchers, was empty.

He found Kaveh in the spot they had always gravitated towards, as though things folded upon there like the center of the world, under those pavilions and flowers and the softly rich smell of soil and bark. Tucked away, so that it wasn’t so easily seen, enclosed by vines and moss like a secret gently held by the Divine Tree. He lay on the stone patio the same way he did back then, golden hair spilling over, one arm pillowing his head and the other holding his waist, his long lashes resting on his cheek. When Al-Haitham approached, he turned to look at him, then looked away just as quickly.

“Haitham,” he said, voice barely above a whisper, then sighed. “You can say ‘I told you so,’ I give you permission.”

Al-Haitham sat down next to Kaveh instead. “It wasn’t your fault,” he said.

“It was. It is. I got myself into this hole.”

He waited. Kaveh did not look at him, instead facing towards the bark of the Divine Tree around which the Akademiya curled itself, spattered green with moss and vines and time. His eyes were closed, and the muscles around the corners of his mouth were tight, as though he was holding something back. Al-Haitham resisted the urge to brush the golden hair out of his eyes. “It is not a mistake to create something you are proud of,” he said.

“It’s not,” Kaveh said, his voice rising from the defeated whisper, “but it is to stake too much on it so that you’re left with nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing.”

He didn’t have to ask what had happened, and Kaveh did not tell him. Kaveh knew that he knew. Kaveh probably knew that he had known all along, suspected and watched and waited, and not warned him because even Kaveh knew that Kaveh would not have listened. If it was not done right, then he would rather not have it done at all. This had been true since their youth and it was true now. Nothing else needed to be said in that regard.

Instead, Al-Haitham asked, “What is nothing, in this case?”

“Must I say it?” said Kaveh, his voice receding back into a whisper. “Surely you’ve heard people talk.”

“Rumors are rumors. The truth is the truth.”

A deep sigh answered him. “The truth is ugly and painful.”

“As it tends to be.”

Kaveh laughed hollowly. “If you must make me say it, then…yes, I’ve moved out. I can’t afford where I was living anymore.”

He had expected as much, but even hearing it was pitiful, and he had no answer for it. Beside him Kaveh shifted, curling up like a child, burying his face in his hands.

“What do I do?” he lamented, so quiet that it almost escaped notice. “I have nowhere to go.”

Light, dark, cold, but this Kaveh was none of these, and he thought rather he ought to do away with the theory because even now Kaveh defied definition, as endlessly fickle and complex as he was. Al-Haitham had seen Kaveh colored by a rainbow of emotions, sadness, anger, joy, but he had never seen despair. The kind that would keep others at arm’s length, crowned in thorns and poison, here, was close and tender and vulnerable.

He could not apologize, not directly, he was incapable of it, but he knew Kaveh would know, Kaveh would understand. The words spun themselves like silk, not in his mind, but in his heart.

“If you need a place to stay,” he said, softly, “then… stay with me.”

Over twenty languages he had studied, and this would be the closest he could get to saying it for now. Beside him, Kaveh sat up and looked at him, as loud as the rush of blood in his ears, disbelieving, daringly hopeful, wholly astonished.

“You’d hate it,” he whispered. “You’d find me insufferable.”

“So would you,” Al-Haitham replied, just as soft. “You find me insufferable already.”

“Why should I accept, then?” asked Kaveh. “If you find me so insufferable, and if I find you so insufferable?”

“You are not just insufferable. You are confusing, and contradictory, and vexing—”

“And you—” Kaveh barked out in sharp laughter.

“—and it is far too quiet without you.”

Kaveh’s breath caught. His eyes looked back and forth between Al-Haitham’s for a minute, as if to gauge the truth of his words, as if to allow him a gentle last chance for him to back away from this thing between them so new and fragile and warm.

How kind a gesture. But how misguided it was, too. He didn’t dare back away. Not after this long.

“Come home,” Al-Haitham said. “Come home, if you’ve nowhere to go.”

“All right,” said Kaveh, voice barely above a whisper. 

He reached up to brush Al-Haitham’s hair away from his face. His expression was peculiar, brows furrowed but not in anger, lips slightly parted but without words. It wasn’t unfamiliar but Al-Haitham hadn’t known what it was before. Instead he leaned into the touch, leaned closer, craving more of Kaveh’s palm on his face. Kaveh’s breath hitched, surprised at the sudden proximity. As if he hadn’t instigated it, by touching Al-Haitham’s face. Like this Al-Haitham could smell the perfume on his neck, the notes of jasmine in the oil in his hair. It was terribly intoxicating.

“What’s this?” Kaveh murmured, his eyes half-lidded, a stray strand of hair sweeping across his face. Al-Haitham reached up with one finger and brushed it away, behind one ear.

“Don’t move,” he murmured.

Kaveh didn’t move. Al-Haitham looked over his shoulder, one second, two seconds, before leaning in further to kiss him. He could feel Kaveh laughing into it, his lips curved up too far to properly kiss Al-Haitham back.

“Are you that afraid to be seen with me?” he said, his voice cracking despite himself, his heart still in pieces. “Broke failure of an architect, me?”

“No,” Al-Haitham said, with conviction, because that did not matter, it never did, and Kaveh laughed as though he was relieved to hear it and pulled him in again. This time, softer, gentler, warmer, another word in that strange, unvocalized language that had sprung up between them, or had been there all along. Al-Haitham opened his mouth, searching for a definition, looking for a place to unwind the puzzle, the taste of Kaveh’s mouth frighteningly and wonderfully new.

He understood it. Like brushing sand away to finally reveal smooth, gleaming stone, painted and shining in the sun, the word formed in the space between his breath and Kaveh’s. He probed further, wanting to hear it again, taste it on Kaveh’s skin, feel the shape of it on his tongue. Kaveh responded in kind, and Al-Haitham could not help but think finally, finally, echoing through his entire body. Finally.

“Haitham,” Kaveh whispered, his lips moving against Al-Haitham’s, and the sound traveled down Al-Haitham’s neck, hot-cold, cold-hot. 

“Kaveh,” he whispered in response, pushing forward, looking to kiss him again.

“Haitham,” said Kaveh again, a sigh into Al-Haitham’s mouth, and Al-Haitham drank of it like a man dying of thirst. He gave one last, lingering kiss, and then Kaveh moved his face away, resting his cheek against Al-Haitham’s shoulder instead, breathing slowly, eyes closed, his arms draped over Al-Haitham’s back. “Give me a minute,” he murmured. “Just a minute. Just a minute like this.”

“Whatever for?” asked Al-Haitham, winding his arms around Kaveh’s waist.

“I want to savor this.” Kaveh shifted, his golden hair fluttering on Al-Haitham’s face. “Let me savor it.”

So Al-Haitham let him savor it. He, too, wanted to savor it. Between them, the words of their unspoken unwritten language—of Al-Haitham and Kaveh, of opposing and distinct qualities intertwining irreversibly—the words blossomed like a field of vibrant and beautiful flowers. Of these, one shone brighter than the others, brilliant and reassuring. Al-Haitham held onto it fiercely as he held Kaveh.

Finally. The word vibrated through his fingers and arms and chest, passed between them in their breath, warmed them from inside out. Finally. 

Notes:

i like to talk here (tumblr) and here (twitter), come say hi!

notes/outtakes if you are interested