Chapter Text
There is a flash of red.
Kaveh remembers that he had once gotten into an argument with Alhaitham concerning this very colour.
The point of the argument ultimately escaped them, of course, like how most of their catfights tend to go.
But what Kaveh really hates is that Alhaitham would remember every argument with crystal clear clarity, since he has the memory of an elephant. And then he would always leverage all the dumb things Kaveh says in the heat of the moment with the most irritatingly condescending of smirks, because he’s the type of asshole to focus on the most mundane of details enough to lose sight of the bigger picture.
But Kaveh is different, Kaveh sees the forest for its trees. He likes to think that everything is part of a bigger, holistic picture of existential purposes and beau ideals of life and soul.
But he digresses.
The argument, although it was a fair while ago, went something like this:
That red rug you bought two days ago could not be worth the three-thousand mora that you paid for it, Alhaitham had said, standing in the middle of his home and grimacing at the floor.
They told me it was imported from Fontaine and handwoven with due love and effort, Kaveh bit back. Neither of which you have ever put into your own work.
If I were instructed to fashion such a terribly mundane-looking rug, I would not be able to find myself giving it any amount of love and effort either, Alhaitham said.
That’s because you don’t even know what love is, Kaveh replied, mostly in jest.
Alhaitham scoffed. You could have at least gotten a green rug to match the rest of the furnishing.
What’s wrong with the colour I got?
Alhaitham opens his mouth, and he looks like he wants to say something again. But then the moment stutters, briefly, like a recording error on an old Kamera film, and then everything stops. His frozen figure is suspended in shallow motion, brows furrowed, lips parted, a familiar argument petrified at the back of his throat.
Kaveh tries to blink, and finds that his eyes are already closed.
There is a flash of red.
Vaguely, he can also feel a terrible dull ache, like pounding at a wall while submerged in water. There’s a strange noise in the background, coming in erratic ripples, almost as if stringing together an incoherent sentence.
Suddenly the red disappears, and in its place there is a white light. It overtakes the vision, the memory, and envelops the senses—pain, adrenaline, fear all melting away until there is only left an empty, liminal space.
For the longest stretch of time there seems to be everything and nothing at once,
and then, there is a beep.
Or, more specifically, a series of beeps. A familiarly annoying monotone tune to signal the start of one’s daily routines. An alarm clock.
It takes three cycles of mechanical beeps until Kaveh groans like a dying horse on a hangover, dragging his hand out of his blankets to slam the big red ‘off’ button on his homemade alarm clock. Homemade and specifically optimised for durability, because the last few clocks he had bought from the merchants and bazaar stalls had all gone horrendously pancake shaped within the few days of purchase, thanks to the amount of force Kaveh dropped his hand onto them with everytime he woke up.
Yawning, he stretches beneath the blankets as he opens his eyes, blinking a few times and wincing at the mild throbbing headache in his temples, a sure sign of a major migraine to come.
What a marvellous way to start the day.
Absently, he wonders if there are any painkillers left in the house, it seems to be a constant item on his shopping list these days, he recalls.
Dragging himself out of bed, Kaveh heads into the living room connected to his bedroom, noting that some of the books seem to be scattered on the coffee table. Given that Kaveh doesn’t recall pulling out those books, he can only assume that it’s the work of his roommate, which is a little strange. Alhaitham has always kept his things neat and orderly—mostly his books, always taking them out one by one and putting them back as they were after he’s done with them.
But it doesn’t matter. The house is silent today, so it seems that Alhaitham is out.
Kaveh glances at the calendar hanging from the wall, and it tells him that today’s date marks the 4th of the Ninth Moon.
There are a few crosses marked through the previous days, and a few notes about the upcoming days in blue and black pen. However, only one date has writing in red pen scribbled beneath it, declaring in big, capital letters: ANNIVERSARY.
“Anniversary…?” Kaveh blinks. His mind is still a little foggy, perhaps from sleep, or the headache, but soon enough the details come back to him like a sudden flash of light. “Ah!”
The door opens then, a familiar creak echoing through the house from old hinges that have seen years of wear and tear. He turns around to see Alhaitham closing the door behind him, wearing a long coat and carrying some paper bags whilst toeing off his shoes.
The younger man looks up—his expression calm and eyes bright, and then his face breaks into a smile.
“Good morning.”
“Alhaitham,” Kaveh says, after a moment, his breath getting caught in his throat for some reason. Maybe it’s the way the light hits him at just the right angle, refracting the green of his headphones into the silks of his hair, framing him in a way that makes him look just a little larger than life, a little more perfect than he remembers. Whatever it is, it leaves Kaveh’s mouth agape in awe, as if he’s seeing some inexplicably breathtaking Kamera film unfold before his eyes.
The younger man holds up a bag. “Went shopping for essentials. We were running low on rice and oil, and I bought a new bulb for the lamp that exploded because you—”
“I love you,” Kaveh blurts out suddenly.
Alhaitham glances up, confused, and Kaveh slaps a hand over his mouth, panickedly wondering why he’d said that.
But it felt so right at that moment… even though it definitely wouldn’t be something he would normally say—much to his roommate of all people—but now the more Kaveh thinks about it, the less strange it feels. In fact, perhaps it’s always been something he’s wanted to say.
He lifts his hand away from his mouth.
“…I love you,” he tests again, unsure, the words melting lightly off his tongue, like a drop of warm honey. “I love you.” It feels natural.
Alhaitham looks at him, a faint smile on his lips. It blends seamlessly into his sharp, hawkish features, and for a moment Kaveh wonders whether he’s looking at a person or at a painting.
“Thank you,” he replies teasingly—the little brat—and follows it up with, “I love you too.“
Kaveh’s breath stops in his throat, feeling immediately entranced. Something bursts into life inside his chest, like a smattering of woodland flowers, or an explosion of colourful fireworks.
“Put the oil in the pantry.”
A bottle is tapped against his chest, and Kaveh blinks himself out of his dazed stupor, feeling lighter than he has in a long time.
“Okay,” he replies, still a little breathless.
The headache hasn’t gone away yet, but now it’s receded into the background, masked with a strange but pleasantly fuzzy sense of contentment. Kaveh grins unabashedly as he places the bottle of oil on the shelf, not even minding the way that the cupboard door almost slams into his face.
“Don’t you have an appointment today?”
Kaveh startles out of his daydreaming. “I do?”
Alhaitham shoots him a look.
Kaveh shakes his head. “Oh. Right.”
…
An hour later finds him at the Grand Bazaar standing in front of a stall while Tighnari hands him a bundle of bright yellow sunflowers.
“Thanks ‘Nari,” he grins. “You always know exactly what I need.”
Tighnari makes a face. “I still can’t believe you two decided to have your anniversary on the 6/9 just because you forgot when you actually started dating.”
Kaveh shrugs, rubbing his fingers on the leaves from a sunflower stalk as he says naturally, “It was Itto’s idea.” (Who?)
“I don’t think it’s good to take ideas from him,” Tighnari sighs. “Itto can’t count beyond the number of his fingers and toes.”
Kaveh leaves Tighnari’s flower stall and the Bazaar with a nice, full bouquet in hand, humming a little tune that he doesn’t exactly remember where he first heard from.
The sun is bright today, enough to feel warm when it hits his skin, but not enough to be unpleasant. A mild wind weaves through his hair, and all of a sudden Kaveh feels as if he were floating on his feet. It all seems a little surreal, how perfectly the world seems to move around him, how each moment slides neatly into one another.
Even his house key slots in perfectly the first time he tries it, which is something he swears has never happened before. But he quickly dismisses it—maybe it’s the effect of getting more than six-and-a-half hours of sleep for once. Maybe he’s just having a Good Day.
Closing the door and locking it behind him, Kaveh sets the flowers aside for now and heads to the kitchen.
Alhaitham is already there, chopping vegetables and cuts of meat while a pot of water boils next to him. He’s wearing a black turtleneck shirt with a green apron that resembles the colour of the potted desert cactus on the windowsill, and his hair is pinned back with two of Kaveh’s red hairclips. His figure is a little fuzzy around the edges, the harsh lines smoothed out by a gentle afternoon glow, the scene looking as if it came straight out of a film.
Kaveh is going to implode on the spot.
His roommate somehow senses his presence without even turning around, swiftly dissecting a clove of garlic as he says, “Dinner in fifteen minutes.”
“I love you,” Kaveh says, unabashed.
“You’ve said that three times today,” Alhaitham mutters, but with his headphones off, Kaveh spies the way his ears take on a pretty pink blush, despite his face staying as stoic as always.
Kaveh snakes his arms around the other man’s waist, at first a little hesitantly, then more daring when he doesn’t receive any objections.
Could he kiss Alhaitham like this? he wonders.
So he does just that.
Alhaitham sighs at the action, but it’s one of subtle fondness rather than the harsh irritated exhales that Kaveh remembers. So he does it again and again, pressing light smooches onto Alhaitham’s cheek, holding their bodies close to each other as he’s overcome with a strange mixture of a sense of longing and elation.
The feeling is exhilarating, this closeness, this warmth of holding the other man so close is unlike anything Kaveh has ever felt before, and it almost leaves him lightheaded before he realises he’s held his breath for too long.
“The pot is going to burn,” Alhaitham breathes.
Reluctantly, Kaveh lets go.
“What is it?” he asks, gesturing at the pot on the stove, a small flame of pyro humming beneath it. It burns steadily red-orange-yellow-orange, and for the briefest moment Kaveh is almost tempted to stick his hand right into it, as if it wouldn’t actually burn.
Alhaitham takes the lid off, and a delicious aroma blooms in the air.
“Stew,” he responds simply. “But if you didn’t let me go it might’ve turned into the dried burnt remnants of something barely edible.”
“You can cook the worst food ever and I’ll still eat it,” he grins. “Barring anything lethal.”
“Good to know you still have a sense of self-preservation,” Alhaitham hums, scooping ladlefuls of his perfectly normal vegetable-and-meat stew into two bowls.
Dinner goes by in relative peace. The books splayed out across the tables seem to be back in their respective shelves now, although if Kaveh looks closer, he thinks some of them are upside down. He decides not to dwell on it.
“Something on your mind?” Alhaitham asks later, as he lays on the couch with a book in hand and Kaveh is nearby fiddling with a new invention.
“I was just thinking,” Kaveh pauses, “There are so many sticky notes everywhere.”
He points at one of them, stuck to the cover of a novel. It’s bright yellow and a little crooked, the writing on it an elegant scrawl. Obviously a product of Alhaitham’s doing, because Kaveh has been enlightened not just once, or twice, or even five times, that his handwriting looks like a mix of a doctor’s prescription, kids’ scribbles, crazed chicken scratches, cursed illegible ancient runic scripts, et cetera et cetera.
“I wrote them,” Alhaitham responds evenly. “They’re just reminders.”
“For you? Or me?” Kaveh asks, peering at one of them. It says: current tavern tab: 1370 mora. He remembers owing way more than that.
“Both.”
Kaveh looks away, confused. Doesn’t Alhaitham have a perfect memory? He shouldn’t need something as mundane as notes to keep his life in order. The scribe is one of the most scarily efficient and organised people he knew, filing away details that would have eluded any other mind in the Akademiya to the point where it’s honestly admirable. But Kaveh isn’t going to say that out loud.
The night sweeps by, and before Kaveh even realises, the clock locks onto 11:00pm.
Realising that he should maybe head to bed soon, Kaveh stretches and gets up, then heads towards the direction of his room…
…which is nowhere to be found.
“Huh?” he mutters, staring at a wall where he remembers should lead into his room.
But now there’s now a new door a few meters away, and when Kaveh pushes it open he’s greeted with the sight of a large bedroom with a double bed, and Alhaitham still reading as he’s snuggled in between the blankets, his visage cast softly aglow by the bedside lamp.
“I was wondering how much longer you would take.” Alhaitham hardly glances up from his book. The cover of it reads in big, bold writing: Introduction to the Structure & Dynamics of the Psyche.
“…”
Alhaitham looks up. “Are you okay?”
“Haha,” Kaveh laughs, half in disbelief. “What are you talking about? I’m perfectly okay. Everything’s perfectly normal!”
Alhaitham shoots him a look that says he doesn’t quite believe that, but Kaveh has already dived under the covers, a warm heat rising to his cheeks as his mind whirs at the implications of the situation.
Him, sharing a bed with Alhaitham? Kaveh can feel his blush spread to his ears. It was one thing to share living spaces, and another to be dating, but this makes it seem like they’re…
But the sheets smell kind of nice, and the bed is big and wide enough for him to stretch his legs, and on second thought, it isn’t that bad.
He could get used to this arrangement… in fact, maybe he already has.
He peeks his head out.
Alhaitham glances at him, then. His bangs are clipped back, twin eyes of bright, mirror-like emeralds, wide yet opaque. “You must be tired. Go to bed, we have work tomorrow.”
“Right,” Kaveh says. “We have work. So I’m a…”
“Architect.”
Kaveh claps the back of his hand. “That’s right. I’m an architect!”
How could he have forgotten? It had always been his dream job, one that he had worked so hard to become, had trodden through hell and high waters to achieve. Sure, he might’ve gotten sidetracked along the way by tangential interests like magic tricks or technical engineering or…
Alhaitham sighs and slips a bookmark between the pages, placing his book aside before leaning in to give the other man a kiss on the cheek. Kaveh promptly stops thinking.
“Your face will grow ugly if you think too hard,” he mutters softly. “You’ll get wrinkles like the Grand Sage.”
“Haha…” Kaveh rubs his cheek, feeling it heat up beneath his palm. “Good point.”
Alhaitham switches off the light and then the world is engulfed in darkness. Kaveh drifts into sleep almost immediately, his eyes fluttering closed as all thoughts, sensations, emotions all cease to exist in a void of reality.
…
When he opens his eyes, he’s no longer laying in bed, but instead on something cold and a little damp. He sits up, suddenly awake, then looks down and frowns.
Beneath him is a patch of grass, and upon a look around him it seems that he’s now in a clearing in the middle of a forest. Above him, the trees extend far beyond his line of vision and deep into the darkness—the kind of darkness that devours stars and souls.
The area around him is illuminated by some unknown light source, bathing him in a warm, golden glow. It feels strangely warm across his skin.
Despite not knowing where he is, Kaveh does not feel at all afraid.
He gets up to his feet and walks forward a few steps.
The light follows with him, brightening the areas he walks towards and leaving the path behind him dark and empty. The trees part away from each other in front of him when he gets close enough—only to reveal another line of trees a few metres ahead, standing unnaturally straight and ordered like soldiers keeping guard.
With no other choice, Kaveh continues to walk.
He walks and walks and walks, the sound of his feet hitting the lush ground muted and steady and echoing into the silence beyond; the absence of a wider world, as if this forest was carved and shaped solely around Kaveh’s small presence, like a bubble of air, or a doorless room, or a moving cage.
Strangely enough, he doesn’t ever get tired.
Eventually the fifth (or sixth? Seventh?) wall of trees opens into another clearing, with nothing else in it except a large tree stump and a small girl sitting on top of it.
She waves at him in greeting, and Kaveh’s legs move towards her on instinct.
“Hello,” he greets with a smile.
The little girl looks at him, and she seems to be no longer a little girl, and he is still smiling and the sky opens up above their heads into vast, infinite midnight, yet the golden light remains all the same, drenching them in a gentle lucidity, rolling over them like eventide waves lapping at the sand.
They are at the shoreline—at his shoreline—and he can see a cliff only a few steps away. A shoreline next to a cliff. Beyond that, Kaveh knows, is somewhere quite far away. Like the horizon. Or the forest. Or the sky. Kaveh is no longer standing at the shore. He is now everywhere which means that he is nowhere at all, and then he is anchored down again with the sound of a dull thud and suddenly his feet find purchase on solid, damp ground again, grass tickling the bottom of his ankles as if he had never moved, as if he had always been there since.
Kaveh blinks. He stops smiling.
“Hello,” the little girl replies.
“Are you alone?” Kaveh asks, feeling vaguely concerned at the notion of a child alone in the woods at night, despite the sun-like light reflecting off her hair.
“Not anymore,” she replies.
“Oh.”
“Where are we?” she asks, the sounds soft and rounded from her petite mouth.
“I don’t know,” he responds truthfully, watching the trees around them rustle, despite there being no wind.
“My apologies. Perhaps that was too direct. Let me rephrase,” the little girl corrects herself, perched daintily on the stump like a small, white sparrow. “Where do you think you are?”
“A… vision of some sort?” he tries. “Am I seeing a hallucination?”
The little girl nods, as if she were an administrator of some unknown test or trial. “Something like that. The fact that I am able to appear before you here means that you must be ‘dreaming’ in some capacity,” she says, eyes wide. “But what is a dream?”
“It’s something only children have.” Kaveh recalls, “But I’m not exactly sure how it works.”
“When you look at a cloud in the sky, what do you see?” the little girl asks again. “If it is the shape of a dog, do you call it a dog?”
“No,” Kaveh says incredulously. “It’s a cloud.”
“But is it a cloud?” she asks innocently, “Is it a mass of water vapour suspended in the sky? Or, is it simply a part of our perceptions of which we have accepted to be absolutely true and irrefutable? Does it actually exist beyond the boundaries of our senses?”
Kaveh blinks. “Of course it would. Everything exists for a reason.”
She claps, satisfied with his answer. “That’s right. A very clever answer. Which is why you should remember this: hold onto that curiosity. Never stop asking questions.”
“…?”
Admittedly, Kaveh doesn’t understand a word that she says, but the little girl hops off the tree stump—a strangely coloured stump, he realises now, for what kind of tree is white?—and looks up at him with those big, bottomless green eyes.
“I’m glad we could talk, but unfortunately our time is up,” she says with a smile.
Before Kaveh can ask what she means by that, suddenly the ground collapses beneath them, like falling off the edge of a cliff, into a gaping sinkhole opening up its wide, black, oceanic maw.
Kaveh sucks in a breath.
Then, he falls.
…
When he opens his eyes again, his vision blurs before things come back into focus. The first thing he sees is Alhaitham is standing above him, resolutely holding a bucket, and Kaveh is silent for a grand total of two seconds before he finally utters, “What the fuck?”
“You’re awake,” Alhaitham notes, and then he draws back. The bucket appears to be filled with iced water. “I was afraid I would need to take drastic measures to wake you up at this rate.”
Kaveh sputters. “What? By drowning me?”
Alhaitham sets the bucket on the ground and begins counting on his fingers. “Your alarm has been going off for fifteen minutes. I tried all sorts of methods to wake you up, including pulling off your blanket, shaking your shoulders, slapping you in the face, threatening eviction or breaking up—”
Having stopped listening halfway through the sentence, Kaveh kicks the other man in the thigh and hauls himself upright. “Okay, okay! Enough! I’m awake now, see!”
“That’s wonderful, but now you’re late for work,” Alhaitham tells him, deadpan.
“Fuck!” Kaveh takes a look at the clock and cusses very unlike how a very prestigious and very esteemed architect graduated from the very esteemed Kshahrewar Darshan would and should act. He scrambles around the room and pulls together a vaguely acceptable combination of professional attire before hauling ass straight out the front door, breakfast be damned.
It is 9:16am when he stumbles through the door of his office, eyes wide and hair unbrushed, looking like he had just returned from the battlefield that is his usual morning commute. Dori stands by the water dispenser holding a cup of water, looking at him with raised brows.
“Dori!” he gasps, out of breath. “Where’s the client?”
“Nine-o’-clock client rescheduled the meeting,” Dori sighs. “If you had looked at your Akasha messages this morning you would’ve known.”
“Slept through my alarm,” he grumbles, the adrenaline now wearing off and leaving him an exhausted wreck.
“I can tell. For one, you’re late. Two, your shirt is inside out,” Dori snickers. Kaveh groans, opting to excuse himself to the bathroom to fix his appearance rather than put up with his little gremlin boss’ devilish laughter.
“Even the tie is back to front,” he grumbles, loosening the offending article of clothing and relooping it around his neck properly. He backs away from the sink, giving a final once-over on his appearance, and frowns.
Something feels off. Did he really leave the house wearing a pink polka-dot shirt? He didn’t even know he had a shirt like this. Maybe Alhaitham bought it for him while he wasn’t looking?
…Not that it matters now.
But the feeling bothered him even as he reentered the office, even as he put on easy smiles to greet his familiar coworkers. It didn’t make sense, because this was the life he had always known. There was nothing wrong with it. Everything was the same.
Even then, he still can’t help but feel like he’s forgetting something very important. Like he was supposed to look for something, or do something, or ask something…
What is it? Kaveh glances around.
Albedo is scribbling away on some design in his cordoned workspace in the far corner with headphones on. Dori is chatting on her Akasha terminal and making animated hand gestures, no doubt pitching the business to some new client she got through her network. Layla, the part-time receptionist, is sorting files into colour coded folders and nodding off intermittently.
Everything seems to be normal. It is simply a regular workday through and through, like it has been for as long as he can remember.
…So what was it that gave him such discomfort?
This sense of unease trailed behind him for the entire day, like a strangely shaped shadow beneath his feet. He turns the question over and over in his mind, recalling the day to try and pick out anything strange while he walks home from work. It’s as if he were holding a blank piece of paper, expecting to see something written on it every time he turns it over.
Kaveh pulls open the door to the house, his body operating on autopilot.
“I’m home,” he says.
“Welcome home.”
Despite the fact that he works terribly strict 9-5 workdays in the Akademiya, Alhaitham is nevertheless there to greet him from his place sitting on the classy leather sofa, holding a book in his hands and looking up at Kaveh in greeting. And just like that, all the tension eases out of Kaveh’s shoulders at the sight.
It’s almost like magic, how Alhaitham manages to be both the biggest source of annoyance and infatuation in his life at once. But the simple fact is that Kaveh, no matter how much he likes to say otherwise, is grateful for it.
Yesterday, today, tomorrow, and all the days after that—Alhaitham will always be waiting for him the moment Kaveh opens the door. Just the thought of that, of having someone always there to go home to, gave him no small amount of comfort and reassurance.
Of course, logically it may not make sense; the Akademiya is half an hour further away than Kaveh’s office, and by that logic Kaveh should be getting home earlier than he does. But Alhaitham, being the man he is, must have his ways, and Kaveh has stopped questioning the many strange things about him. By now he’s figured that the mystery is a part of his charm.
“How was work?” the younger man asks, eyes soft.
“As usual,” Kaveh waves it off, toeing off his dress shoes. “Client was a no-show today, so I mostly caught up on paperwork. How was yours?”
“As usual,” Alhaitham parrots. He never talks about his own daily routines or discloses details of his job, but perhaps the secrecy is simply a part of his role. Kaveh had never bothered to ask. He never found a reason to be caught up in the details.
“That’s good,” Kaveh grins. He treads over to Alhaitham in his socks and leans down to kiss the other man on the cheek.
Alhaitham pushes against Kaveh’s chest as a token gesture of resistance, though he doesn’t shy away at all. “Insufferable idiot.”
Kaveh grins, feeling his heart skip a beat in his chest. “You love this idiot.”
When Alhaitham is embarrassed, it never shows on his face, instead, it always manifests elsewhere; like breaking eye contact, or hiding behind a book, or firing back pointed quips as a defence mechanism. But without any of these options to turn towards, Kaveh tries to memorise the way the other man scowls adorably, the dusting of pink on his ears.
Cute, he can’t help but think.
Slender fingers thread through his hair as he leans down for a kiss. It’s chaste and quick, since Kaveh pushes them both down onto the couch soon enough.
“I thought you would be tired after work,” the younger man mutters as he unbuttons his shirt. “But it seems you’ve got plenty of energy.”
“Your fault for tempting me,” Kaveh whines.
Alhaitham grumbles something unintelligible but ultimately goes along with him, framing Kaveh’s hips with his legs and pulling him down until their breaths mingle and Kaveh can feel the other man’s heartbeat close to his fingertips.
“Can we—”
“Not today, I need to make dinner first,” Alhaitham gestures towards a wicker basket of clothes that Kaveh swears was not there before. “Can you hang those out?”
“Well… okay.”
Carrying the basket of laundry, he catches a glimpse of outside the window, and pauses.
“Why do we have a giant tree in our backyard?” Kaveh asks, completely disregarding the fact that they were never meant to have a backyard in the first place.
“It’s always been there,” Alhaitham responds bluntly.
Kaveh frowns. Something doesn’t seem right about that, but he decides not to dwell on it. After fiddling with the lock with his free hand, he steps outside holding the basket. He hums a little tune as he hangs the laundry, some tavern ditty he overheard a while ago. The sun shines on his face, but it doesn’t feel too hot or blinding. Today is a good day.
“Oh!” A bird lands on his shoulder. It's such a small critter, no bigger than his hand, its plumage soft and pristine, staring at him with wide, wide eyes. “Hello.”
A chirp in greeting. It seems familiar somehow—perhaps it’s one of the birds that sings its morning tunes outside his window each day?
By the time Kaveh heads back into the house, the wind has picked up and he hurriedly closes the doors and windows to keep the noise and dust outside, briefly wondering how the weather could change so quickly, eventually chalking it up to the wonders of seasonal transitions.
The rest of the day passes in relative peace. Alhaitham doesn’t reinitiate from where they left off, and Kaveh is admittedly too nervous to ask about it, and by the time he’s finished getting ready for work the following morning and having slid into bed, Alhaitham is already asleep next to him, as still and peaceful as a corpse.
Kaveh stares for a few minutes, the sight of the other man washing away all his previous worries, then he switches off the light.
…
The little girl comes to visit him in his sleep again, this time rocking idly on a swing in a large rotunda, overlooking the sunset. Kaveh takes a seat around the edge of the rotunda, and watches the sunset with her. She doesn’t say a word, but her presence seems to extend past the boundaries of the structure beneath his feet, past the glistening horizon, far beyond the skies behind the sun, but not quite reaching the stars.
Eventually, she speaks.
“If I may, I have a thought experiment that I would like to share,” she says. Kaveh looks at her and nods, to affirm to her that he’s listening.
“Let’s say, you have an object,” she begins slowly, as if she were the adult speaking to a child instead. “You can pick any object. For example, a cup. If you leave it on the table and look away, would the cup still be there?”
“Of course,” Kaveh replies instantly. It would make no sense otherwise. “A physical object wouldn’t just disappear out of nowhere. That doesn’t work with the laws of physics.”
“That scenario assumes the laws of physics are valid and true,” the little girl points out. “But what if those laws of physics don’t matter? When you look away from that cup, you have no way of knowing it’s still there, unless you look at it again. Logic ceases to function when you realise the only things that can truly exist, are those you can ascertain within the scope of attention.”
“That… makes sense.”
“With that in mind,” she says, “would you say that I am real?”
Kaveh bites his lip. “If you’re not, then that means that whatever answer I give you ultimately won’t matter.”
“Hehe,” she giggles. “So the Light of Kshahrewar is just as astute as he told me.”
“You know me?”
“Of course I do,” she replies. “I know many things.”
“Y’know,” he pauses, “the way you talk reminds me of somebody I know.”
The little girl laughs again, and it sounds like bells in the wind. “I would hope that I am a much more cordial conversationalist than he is.”
Kaveh blinks, even as the world fractures around them. “How did you—”
“See you soon,” she waves, her head tilted and her smile warm.
And then the sky ruptures above their heads; large cracks tearing down towards the horizon with a thundering roar, splitting the lucid dawn apart, rearranging all the colours and lights and shapes into something whole again, yet imperceptibly broken—the whole scene filtered against old ochre wash and the remnants of something pale, wan, celestial. The colour of bygone days and lonely reveries.
Kaveh blinks again, and then the world falls back into place.
“What’s wrong?” a voice asks him from the side, and when he swivels his head around there stands Alhaitham, in his black turtleneck and chartreuse jacket and quizzical expression, and when Kaveh looks up again he finds that the sky is gone.
Kaveh stares at the roof of his—of their house, and then frowns intensely, the memory of the scene only a few minutes ago suddenly escaping him.
There was a swing, there was a sun, there was a…
“Are you okay?” Alhaitham asks again, breaking his train of thought. “Your eyes are red.”
“I’m fine,” Kaveh says. “I’m perfectly normal! What were we doing again?”
“We’re going heading out to have dinner,” Alhaitham explains, scrutinising him. “Don’t tell me you forgot.”
“Of course I didn’t!” Kaveh’s eyes trail over to the calendar on the fridge (has that always been there?), as he says, “How could I forget our anniversary dinner?”
The other man raises a brow. “Our anniversary? It’s Tighnari and Cyno’s anniversary.”
Kaveh looks at him, disoriented. “Wait, what? Isn’t today the sixth day of the month?”
“Yes? And like I said, today is Tighnari and Cyno’s anniversary. Ours is in another three months.” Alhaitham begins buttoning up the upper half of Kaveh’s dress shirt that he didn’t even realise he was wearing. “Why can’t you ever button up your shirt properly?”
“Is it inside out?” Kaveh asks suddenly.
Alhaitham glances up, and Kaveh can’t help but marvel at how his lower lashes fan out against high cheekbones. “Why would it be?”
He tears his gaze away. “Just making sure.”
“Hm.” Luckily, the other man drops the topic. “We should leave now if we don’t want to be late.”
Sumeru City is rather chilly around this time of the year—although in comparison to the likes of Snezhnaya and northern Mondstadt, it may as well be a winter tropical paradise.
Cyno’s home is half an hour’s walk away, so the pair waste no time locking the door and making their way down the quiet streets towards their destination.
Kaveh glances to the side. Alhaitham is looking stern as always, although his face breaks into a small smile when their eyes meet.
Kaveh glances away, cheeks warm.
The General Mahamatra’s residence is huddled away on the other side of the city; a small discrete apartment in a quiet neighbourhood, perhaps contrary to what the general public would expect from an authority of such position. Ambient lights illuminate the empty streets around them as birds once again sing their songs above.
This part of the city should not be so lifeless so early in the evening, but it might just be that they’re out on a particularly quiet day, Kaveh muses. He tries to ignore the strange feeling in his mind by humming along with the birdsongs.
Tighnari is the one who opens the door and ushers them in, looking happy to see them. Collei waves at them from the background, while Cyno is holding a dish that looks like something straight out of a desert tomb—is that a rice pyramid?
“Congratulations,” Alhaitham says with a straight face. “You’ve both made it this far.”
Cyno puts the massive rice pyramid on the dinner table. “Why does it sound like you were expecting us to break up.”
Tighnari laughs. “I’m sure he doesn’t mean it that way. If anything, Alhaitham, I’m surprised that you of all people managed to last this long in a relationship of your own.”
A bottle of wine is cracked open, glass goblets are clinked together. The night moves along gently as laughter fills the small apartment, the moment as delicate as the fog on their windows, or the starlight in the distance.
Somewhere along the way, Cyno has pulled out his deck of TCG cards and started teaching them about popular combo cards and various obscure technical jargon (like meta and one-turn-kill and brainless cancer deck) while Tighnari tries to trap a moth flying around the room by mixing a bowl of sugar and water and staking it out with a cup and a piece of paper like some personified praying mantis. Only Tighnari isn’t praying to actually catch the moth—he’s praying for Collei to not pick up Cyno’s habit of cussing out loud every time he draws a bad set of cards or rolls unfortunate dices.
Kaveh drinks, because of course he does, it’s what he’s known for. But what’s even more surprising is that Alhaitham drinks along with him this time, perhaps influenced by the familiar atmosphere or Kaveh’s own ferocious drinking habits.
Kaveh plucks the bottle of wine out of the other man’s slender hands. “How many have you had tonight?”
“Mmh,” Alhaitham leans down against him, his hair strands tickling Kaveh’s cheek. “Two… or three. Shared with you.”
“Lightweight numbers,” Kaveh mumbles, pouring the remaining wine out of the bottle into his own glass and downing it swiftly. “No wonder I’ve never seen you drink before.”
“…Why do you drink?”
Kaveh glances at him. “…Well.”
It’s a good question.
Kaveh recalls that he never picked up the habit during their Akademiya years. It only became a vice of his afterwards—but why?
Maybe it was a way to destress, or going out to the tavern was an excuse not to return home… but something didn’t match up there; Kaveh was always content to return home and stay home, there was nothing that upset him enough to force him back out. He can’t recall any particular source of stress or frustration that would encourage such a habit either. The train of thought ultimately leads nowhere, so Kaveh decides to drop it entirely.
Alhaitham mumbles something unintelligible before nuzzling against Kaveh’s neck, resting his head on his shoulder.
The sleepy type of drunk, it seems like. The action is irresistibly cute, similar to how a cat would trustingly fall asleep on someone’s lap, and Kaveh feels his heart explode in his chest. He tries to mask the blush rising in his cheeks by taking another swig of wine.
Cyno walks by then, and upon noticing them, puts a hand on his hip. The faintest of smiles flutters across his face.
“He can sleep here tonight,” he offers. “I promise not to assassinate him.”
Kaveh laughs into a hiccup. “Thanks, but no thanks.”
Eventually bidding farewell to the other three at the door, Kaveh slings Alhaitham’s arm over his shoulder and slowly, they begin to hobble back to their own house.
Alhaitham is frankly, quite heavy (Kaveh blames it on those muscles, yeah, definitely), and by the time they reach their own front door he's sweating like he’d just run a marathon race to the desert and back. He hastily unlocks the door and pushes them both inside, heaving a sigh as it relocks behind him.
Alhaitham stirs, “Do you think… people can tan faster if they run towards the sun?”
Kaveh may be tipsy, but even then he still puts some thought into the drunken statement. “Depends on who... If it’s Grand Sage Azar, prob’ not since he can’t run very fast no offence.”
“Wh’ do you think of Azar?”
“Bit of a dick,” Kaveh replies honestly. Are they playing Twenty Questions now?
“Woul’ you work in the Akademiya again?” Third question.
“Too many stuffy scholars,” Kaveh grumbles, dragging them both towards their room. “Most o’ them’re either sticklers for rules or just downright insane.”
“What if I became the Grand Sage?”
“I’d sooner believe Azar isn’t actually bald under his hat.”
“Do you like me?” Alhaitham asks suddenly.
“I do,” Kaveh says without restraint, without an ounce of hesitation. “I like you a lot.”
Alhaitham looks down, breaking his gaze. There’s a small, wistful smile on his face. It seems so far away.
“…That’s good.”
He doesn’t ask anything else after that, seemingly having dozed off by now. Kaveh hauls both of them onto the bed, undressing himself then Alhaitham, going into the bathroom to briefly wash himself up before going back and toppling onto the bed, almost immediately falling asleep.
…
“See that star over there?” The little girl points upwards.
Kaveh follows her line of sight up above their heads, into the depths of the swirling night. Into that deep abyss of slithering space, gravity-well black, adorned by the sprawling galaxy as if swept from a paintbrush.
“Did you know that by the time its light reaches us, it may already be dead?” she muses. “Maybe that star doesn’t exist anymore. Yet, that light seems more real than anything.”
“I thought people’s fates are written in the stars,” Kaveh tells her.
She laughs lightly. “Not all people, and not under the same sky. Real stars are further away. They are far more real and far greater than we can ever dream of them to be.”
…
It is 8:00am sharp when he wakes.
Just like every other day, Kaveh turns off his alarm, stretches and yawns before he slides out of bed, blinking away the wisps of sleep and feeling pleasantly surprised at the lack of a headache or any symptoms of a hangover. It seems that last night he drank enough to feel tipsy, but not enough to kill his liver, which he could consider a huge self-improvement.
Unlike usual, Alhaitham is the one still sleeping peacefully beside him, for once being the one out of the two of them to neglect waking up on time.
Kaveh smiles at the sight; Alhaitham breathes out small puffs of air as he snoozes, his hair fanned out across his face and pillow, as serene and calm as a winter’s morning. Simply looking at him makes Kaveh feel at ease.
He leaves Alhaitham a glass of water and a bottle of painkillers on the bedside table, then he gets dressed and heads off to work.
“Good morning,” his boss smiles at him. She looks different today, with long white hair and a smart looking suit and shrewd smile instead of… what Kaveh thinks he remembers.
He glances down at her ID tag.
“Morning, Ningguang,” he smiles casually.
A girl’s head pops out from around the corner. “Miss Ningguang,” Ganyu, their receptionist (or so he suddenly recalls), calls out, “you have a meeting in five minutes!”
“Oh dear,” the older woman chuckles. “I believe that today will be quite the busy day for me.”
True to her words, Keqing pushes past them with a stack of papers half her height, looking worse for wear even though the day has just barely started.
Kaveh passes by Albedo’s work area on the way to his desk, and what he sees makes him pause.
Albedo is painting something on a canvas standing on an easel—god knows why they have something like that in an architects’ office—but what really catches Kaveh’s eye is the book lying innocuously on his desk. It’s a hardcover book, moderately thick with a few notes sticking out from the pages, looking a little worn but still well maintained. He’s not sure why he feels so magnetised towards it.
The cover reads: The Substantialization of Dreams.
“Hello,” he says.
Albedo turns around, his eyes the colour of ancient ice and rime.
“Hello,” he parrots back. His voice is softer than expected.
“If you don’t mind, can I take a look at the book on your desk?”
Albedo turns back around to his painting of a starry sky, each pale dot distinct, sprawling across the dark canvas like swirling glitter. “Be my guest.”
The cover of the book feels soft to touch. A velvet covering? Tasteful.
Kaveh scans through the contents first and frowns at what he assumes must be a load of pseudoscientific mumbo-jumbo, before he flips the book to a random page.
What he reads gives him pause.
There is still a question which cannot be answered by the sheerly rational nature of the explicit definition of solipsism. Something more must be offered, not outside logic, but from a different train of logic, to dispel the most pertinent and powerful worry, a worry that is based on a very real possibility: a mind’s enclosure in delusions or dreams. Could we be so certain that we are not simply so immersed in a false reality that we are incapable of recognising it? Can we truly wake up from it all?
He ponders at the last sentence. Could it be possible that the girl he constantly sees in his sleep is a dream? Does that mean they’re not real?
Or, maybe…
Kaveh glances around and bites his lips, thinking.
Maybe he could ask Alhaitham about this. After all, the other man is admittedly one of the most knowledgeable scholars in Sumeru, given his position and also his genius mind. At best, he would have an answer (like he does most of the time). At worst, Kaveh would be called some nicer, more eloquent synonym of stupid, which… he could handle, he supposes.
Having decided on a plan of action, Kaveh closes the book and returns it to its owner, thanking Albedo before turning to take his leave.
Before that, he glances at Albedo’s sketches on the desk, noticing that the subjects on each piece of paper all seem to be the same: himself. But each piece seems different somehow, as if they weren’t really him but of people in his image instead, like portraits of twins or caricatures.
Deciding that it’s really none of his concern, Kaveh heads to his own workspace and keeps his head buried in his work for the rest of the day, only occasionally thinking back to the passage in the book.
…
That night, Kaveh asks.
Alhaitham looks back at him like he’s perhaps grown a second head, eyes thinning in incredulity.
“Are you implying that I’m simply a figment of your imagination?” Alhaitham reasons. “…Here, take my hand,” he stretches it out.
Kaveh takes it, noting that the thin pale digits are little cold against his own, nails neatly trimmed, the edges of Alhaitham’s knuckles a little sharper than a regular person’s—a writer’s hand, complete with the callous on the finger. It feels solid to touch, all flesh and skin and angular bones. Most importantly, it feels real.
Alhaitham watches his roommate examine his left hand for a while before speaking again. “What do you think?”
“You have nice hands,” is what Kaveh replies, like a smitten fool.
Amused, Alhaitham stretches his lips into a smile. “Thank you.”
Kaveh stares at Alhaitham’s hands for a few more moments before he speaks again. “This is gonna sound really weird, Alhaitham, but do you think it’s possible that… well, apart from you, everything else around us is just a delusion?”
To the younger man’s credit, he doesn’t immediately dismiss Kaveh’s strange question, as mad as it may seem. “What brought this on?” he asks back, raising his eyebrows.
Kaveh swallows drily. “Today, I asked a coworker about a book he owned. It was about ‘dreams’.”
Something seems to shift in Alhaitham’s demeanour, then. It’s so subtle that Kaveh would have missed it had he not been looking for it.
“Dreams are a postulated concept originating from outside of Sumeru,” the scribe explains as if it were obvious. “The Akasha determines we simply have no solid basis for their existence, either empirical or anecdotal.”
…Figures that he would say something like that.
Deciding not to pursue the matter further, Kaveh sighs and lets go, flopping back onto his pillow and rubs his face, feeling terribly annoyed for some reason. He can’t blame Alhaitham for it, or more like he doesn’t want to. What the other man says makes sense, after all. Maybe he’s the one that’s making a big fuss over nothing. Maybe things will keep being normal and everything will turn out fine, and there’s no reason for him to have this headache in the first place.
Alhaitham leans over and pushes Kaveh’s hair back before pressing his lips against his forehead. It’s a sweet gesture, something Kaveh has always secretly imagined before now. His heart beats harder than a sumpter beast on a bouncy mushroom.
“Good night, Kaveh.”
Kaveh looks over. Alhaitham’s face is unguarded and open, a far cry from how Kaveh has known him for most of their time in association with each other. But maybe that’s just the effect of being in a relationship?
It doesn’t matter anymore; at the end of the day Alhaitham is still Alhaitham, and Kaveh still can’t exactly remember how they got to this stage, but he isn’t going to fuck the whole arrangement over by looking a gift horse in the mouth. So he smiles back, content, feeling an unmistakable fondness swell in his chest.
“…‘Night, Haitham.”
The light flickers out, and then the world is enveloped into darkness.
But unlike all the other times, Kaveh doesn’t immediately fall asleep.
Where it was a windy night outside, now the trees have stopped rustling. The nightingale has stopped singing. Not even a sliver of moonlight can be seen in this overwhelming vacancy of time and space. He doesn’t see a familiar white figure, or feel as if he’s been teleported somewhere else.
Kaveh lies face up, eyes open.
He listens for the sound of Alhaitham’s breathing, and realises that he hears absolutely nothing at all.
“Alhaitham,” he says into the empty space.
Silence.
“Haitham,” he tries again, louder.
Silence.
Dragging himself into a sitting position, Kaveh turns to his right and pushes his hand against the blanket, heartbeat quickening. It meets a solid person-shaped lump, and after a brief moment of confusion the light switches on, then the world falls back into place.
Alhaitham has a hand on the switch of the lamp as he looks back at his boyfriend. “What are you doing?”
Kaveh relaxes, only minutely.
“…Sorry,” he whispers shakily. “Must’ve been sleep paralysis. Or something.”
“That’s not what it means. If it was sleep paralysis then you wouldn’t be sitting up right now,” Alhaitham responds. His words are blunt, but the way he says it is reassuring, as if trying to comfort him but also making him feel a bit like an idiot; such was his way of affection after all.
“Yeah,” Kaveh mutters. “I guess so.”
…
The next morning, everything seems to be in place, it as usually is.
Despite that, Kaveh walks around the house and silently ticks off a mental checklist; the fruits on the table, the upside down books on the shelf, the bright yellow sticky notes, the fresh sunflowers in the vase.
Alhaitham gives him a worried look while he paces back and forth in the living room, feet dragging across the rug on the floor. But in the end he says nothing, even when Kaveh’s alarm blares loudly in the background like a warning, echoing as he leaves the house for work until it disappears into the back of his mind.
At first glance, work is also as usual.
His coworkers have changed faces again, but Albedo is still sitting in the corner like he has always done so, scribbling away in a notebook, hair messily tied back. It feels as if his steadfast presence is the only constant in the entire place.
Kaveh goes up to his desk, ignoring the mess of papers and wires and other various knick knacks on it. “Albedo. Can you lend me that book you showed me yesterday?”
“Of course,” the other man replies bluntly. “But make sure to return it to me in the same condition.”
“I will, I will, don’t worry.”
His Akasha terminal rings then, and Kaveh promptly places the book on his own desk and forgets about it for the rest of the day, up until it’s time to clock out.
“I’ll head out first,” Jean, his boss, tells him with a smile. “Be sure to lock up the office properly before you leave.”
“Sure.”
By the time Kaveh gets up ready to leave, the sun is already settling down past the mountains, streaking the sky in vivid pinks and golds. But the clock reads 5:15pm, and surely the sky can’t be going dark this quickly.
Nevertheless, Kaveh hurries home at a quicker pace than usual. Albedo’s book in his bag seems to weigh him down like a barbell, and by the time he’s in front of his door he’s broken out into a small sweat, breathing heavily, anxiety skittering through his veins.
He fumbles with his keys, grasping the one with the lion charm attached. But the door opens before he can even put his hand on the handle, revealing Alhaitham behind it.
Kaveh blinks.
“You’re late today,” Alhaitham tells him, the worry evident on his face.
“Sorry,” he mumbles back, gently pushing past the other man and toeing off his shoes. “I got held back by a particular project.”
The younger man doesn’t say a word when Kaveh dumps his bag on the floor and pulls out his borrowed book, settling down on the couch while holding it in his hands.
His thumb catches the cover of the book, and he holds his breath as he turns it open.
It’s blank.
Kaveh rubs his eyes.
He flips the page. Still blank. Another page. Another. Another. He thumbs into the middle of the book and opens it up, but all he sees are old yellow pages, a little crinkled, a little torn, with not even a single speck of ink on any of them.
Kaveh sucks in a breath, eyes widening.
How could this be? He closes the book and reopens it again only to be met with the same blank pages staring back at him. But it shouldn’t be possible—earlier today he had seen exactly what was written in there with his own two eyes. Maybe someone had come and swapped the book when he wasn’t paying attention? Did Albedo pull a prank on him? Or could it be…
A presence approaches his side. Alhaitham doesn’t look at the book with interest, but rather at Kaveh’s pained expression.
“You look stressed.”
Kaveh laughs, the sound a little rough. “Gee, I wonder how you can tell.”
“Stress isn’t good, it’ll impede your logical thinking.”
“Logic, huh?” He thinks back to the person he keeps seeing in his sleep; if he recalls correctly, she had also said something similar.
Alhaitham looks at him wordlessly before speaking again. Kaveh isn’t paying attention to him—his mind is racing through all the possible explanations for this strange phenomenon, and he doesn’t realise his foot is tapping anxiously against the floor until Alhaitham puts a hand on his knee.
“…Do you want to do it now?”
Alhaitham offers the proposition as easily as if he were asking about what to eat for dinner, his intent immediately obvious.
Kaveh drops the book. “Huh?”
It falls to the ground with a dull thud, but before Kaveh can reach down and pick it up Alhaitham is already in front of him, wordlessly unbuttoning his shirt and settling effortlessly into Kaveh’s lap, as if he was always meant to be there.
“Wait,” Kaveh stutters. “You mean— now? But—”
Alhaitham drags him into a kiss then as if to shut him up, and Kaveh freezes up, obediently opening his mouth to allow entry to the demanding tongue at his lips. Alhaitham’s mouth is wet and warm, the heat mingling with the taste of mints and fruits, and Kaveh feels his head spin at the intensity of it all.
They part away for air, Alhaitham works to unbutton Kaveh’s shirt as the latter sits still, still in disbelief.
“You’re stressed.”
“I’m not—! I mean, I am, just a little, but—”
“I’m helping you relieve it. Tonight, you can do anything you want to me,” Alhaitham breathes, the implications of his words ringing through the air. My body belongs to you.
Kaveh swallows. Despite the sense of urgency swelling in his mind (the book, the book), he finds himself falling into the other man’s rhythm as easily as if they were dancing hand in hand, choreographed to perfection.
Alhaitham’s body is warm and pliant—so, so pliant—beneath his hands. He trails his lips against the pale lines of the other man’s neck, kissing and sucking marks into it along the way, as if staking his claim. He touches everywhere he can reach, trying to imprint the feeling and the taste of the other man into his mind.
Alhaitham never resists, simply lying still and letting breathy, hushed moans fall from his lips while giving himself up freely to desire. He offers himself like a noble sacrifice, and Kaveh has no choice but to take, to fill himself to the brim with only Alhaitham, Alhaitham, Alhaitham, until he’s sated and hungering and entranced and—
Kaveh slides his hand along the small of Alhaitham’s back as he brings their mouths together for a kiss again.
He ruts their clothed lengths together, hissing at the heat between them, the friction sparking between their straining bodies. Alhaitham arches into him perfectly, his wide shoulders and narrow waist slotting neatly along the contours of Kaveh’s straight, lean figure.
Noises rise from Alhaitham’s mouth like the song of a nightingale, or a whistle of wind, or a lone siren‘s call—beckoning harboured ships and sailors into the carnal deepness; the most unassuming of hypnotisms.
“Kaveh,” a wrecked gasp, “please.”
It doesn’t take long after that for Kaveh to succumb entirely.
Truly, it doesn’t take long at all.
…
When Kaveh looks down afterwards, the book is nowhere to be found.
He looks back up.
Alhaitham approaches him, he’s thrown on a dress shirt and is now holding two cups of water in his hands. One of them is placed on the furniture in front of Kaveh.
“You still look stressed,” he points out, putting his own cup down. “Are you unsatisfied?”
Deciding to forget about Albedo’s book for now, he plasters on a grin. “It’s not that,” he admits. “It felt good. It was good. But… something still doesn’t seem right.”
Something is missing, not just from their relationship or their daily routine, but from something more fundamental. It’s as if Kaveh has been dancing to the tune of life with soulless puppets in a meaningless, endless routine.
The other man stares back at him, his gaze so intense that it almost seems to burn right through him.
“Is this not the life you wanted?” Alhaitham asks directly, his expression indecipherable. “Do you not want to live with me anymore?”
Kaveh tries to imagine a life without Alhaitham, and it’s certainly possible. He would wake up at 8:00, get ready until 8:30, leave the house and arrive at the office at 9:00, work until 5:00, bid farewell to his ever-changing coworkers and arrive home, cook dinner, do chores, work on his side projects, shower, brush his teeth, and go to bed by 12:00, ready for the next day. The same kind of day, always. Over and over and over. Forever.
But that isn’t the life he wants. He wouldn’t want that kind of life without Alhaitham.
Kaveh puts on a smile. “Of course I do.”
“Then, why are you unhappy?” Alhaitham says, softer now, as if discussing something confidential between them, as if Kaveh’s emotions were something to be kept secret and taboo. Under the pale lights, his uncovered green-yellow eye seems to shimmer with a faint, gem-like lustre, almost otherworldly.
Kaveh’s smile falters. “I don’t know,” he says, wondering. “Why?”
Alhaitham draws back and gives him that indecipherable look again, stone-faced, looking like he wants to say something, but for some reason hesitating.
Has he always looked like that? Kaveh suddenly thinks, eyes widening.
“You’ve forgotten something,” Alhaitham tells him.
“Maybe I have,” Kaveh says, still staring at the other man’s face. Alhaitham quietly stares back at him, still and porcelain-like, and it would be unnerving were Kaveh’s mind not so preoccupied with the overwhelming sense of presque vu washing over him.
There’s something so strange, so off about those perfect features, but he still can’t pinpoint exactly what it is.
Kaveh narrows his eyes, and scowls.
What is it? What is it…?
…
…His eye.
Something is absent from it. Some shape or colour which seems to have blended into the iris around it, disappearing altogether.
But that’s impossible, Kaveh scowls harder. He has lived with Alhaitham for what feels like years now, and known him for even longer than that. Surely changes to something so obvious like the colours of his eyes wouldn’t have escaped him, not to mention that it would be impossible in the first place.
…But if not that, then what?
The kettle whistles then, a shrill sound coming from the kitchen and shattering the suspense.
“I’ll get that,” Alhaitham slinks out from under his boyfriend and begins making his way to the kitchen.
Kaveh smiles as he admires the marks on the other man’s thighs before his eyes trail down to the floor, and the smile falls off his face as he notices something amiss.
“Haitham,” Kaveh begins. The diminutive immediately catches the younger man’s attention.
Alhaitham turns around and looks at him. His iris is missing its distinct ring of red.
“Kaveh?”
“Why is our rug green?” Kaveh asks, heartbeat quickening, his stomach suddenly feeling like it might jump out of his throat.
“What do you mean?” Alhaitham responds evenly, “That rug has always been green.”
Sheer, cold dread plummets through him like a sinking boulder. “No, it wasn’t.” His breathing staggers. “It wasn’t.”
Time seems to slow down, then, as his mind spins into overdrive. Now, the more he thinks, the more he realises all the things that are plain and simply wrong: the blank book, the faces of his coworkers, the notes around the house, the single bedroom, the tree in the backyard, the—
“Oh my god.” he mutters, eyes wide, the sudden epiphany engulfing him like a forest aflame. “It’s not real.”
“…Kaveh.”
Things begin to break apart then, little by little, the edges of his vision cracking like a broken Kamera film. But when he turns his head, all those things are put back together again, as if never to be possibly doubted.
But now Kaveh knows better than to trust his senses.
The kettle screams again, distantly, like an alarm; a distress siren in the back of his mind.
(The yellow sticky note on the table next to the cup reads, in elegant black print cursive: wake up. The next note, too: wake up. Again and again: wake up. Wake up. Wake up.)
“Nothing is real. Nothing… nothing,” Kaveh says slowly, wide eyes looking back. “…Everything has been a goddamn lie!”
“Kaveh—!” Alhaitham grabs him by the shoulders, but the blond jerks away, high-strung like a wounded animal. Pain licks at his temples as a familiar migraine begins to set in. “Calm down. Look at me.”
“Alhaitham,” he replies, breathless.
“Kaveh,” Alhaitham says again, sounding almost robotic in his usual calmness, and yet somehow he seems to sound so normal, as if he had always been that way.
Strangely enough, that manages to calm Kaveh down, even if only slightly. It’s like the other man can flip some magical switch within him, dispelling his worries instantly.
Alhaitham gently pushes both of them back until Kaveh’s knees hit the edge of something (his couch, logic tells him, despite his doubts) and he falls back onto it, eyes wide, ears ringing.
He slowly climbs over him, slender legs framing each side of Kaveh’s thighs, and Kaveh can’t help but place his hands onto them as if to steady himself. It felt natural to do so.
“I promise everything will be alright,” Alhaitham says, voice low and soothing, and something about it just seems so, so unreal, as if the sound came from some omniscient being in the sky rather than his perfectly shaped mouth. “You just need to do one thing for me, okay?”
Kaveh swallows. His throat feels so dry. “Okay.“
Alhaitham cups Kaveh’s cheeks into his hands and suddenly Kaveh feels a little lightheaded; at the touch of his long fingers brushing against blond locks, the subtle, sharp scent of artificial mint soap.
The other man leans his head down, his long gray bangs brushing between them like a veil, eyes half-lidded, and in that moment Kaveh’s breath stops as his hands creep up to settle around Alhaitham’s bruised hips, slotting together like keys to a lock.
Kaveh cannot seem to look away—now perfectly, ruthlessly mesmerised by his imminent coup de grâce; like a mouse to a rattrap, a moth to the moon.
“Kaveh,” Alhaitham murmurs, but his lips aren’t moving. “Wake up.”
Kaveh opens his mouth to speak—
—and then the world collapses.
Like a brittle shell falling into itself, as fragile as a piece of broken glass, or an old photo, or a dying star: imminent decay following in the footsteps of its ruinous descent.
First, the sun blinks out.
Then, the house falls apart.
With it, the olive rug on the floor fillets itself into strands and strands and strands of cotton or wool or reality, and then it begins to unwind, slowly, slowly, slowly, until the patterns are gone, the colours are gone, and in the end the whole thing vanishes like it had never existed at all.
Kaveh looks up.
There is a small, white bird up in that nonexistent sky. There is a flash of red. There is a warm weight on his lap, but Alhaitham is already long gone.
Kaveh inhales, and thinks that his head might explode with the amount of air he takes in. Yet despite the sprawling pain in his head, strangely he feels at ease.
He looks down.
There is now a shopping list in his hand. It is the only thing he can see. The writing on it is in immaculately perfect black print cursive, and he knows there is just one person who can pull it off so effortlessly.
Shopping list.
Milk.
Olive oil.
Laundry detergent.
16th edition limited reprint of ‘On the Configuration of the World’.
Wake up.
A1 architectural drafting paper.
Painkillers.
Wake up.
Wake up.
“Wake up,” someone tells him.
There is no beeping sound this time.
Kaveh opens his eyes.