Work Text:
Kaveh was a deeply emotional creature, even he would admit. The care and closeness that came after sex was almost more important to him than the actual orgasm itself. He wanted Alhaitham to know that he loved him, but it was an emotion too strong for words: When they were intimate, Kaveh often felt an intense desire to crawl into Alhaitham’s skin, to sew his fingers around Alhaitham’s beating heart, to be so close that their humors intermingled. Thus, he felt the best way to express his feelings to Alhaitham was to hold him.
Over on his side of the bed, Alhaitham was steeling himself. To hold Kaveh while they were making love was one thing: Alhaitham had gladly agreed to— and even suggested— all manner of creative and challenging positions, and the personal satisfaction of watching Kaveh gradually go insensate with pleasure had yet to lose its novelty. To hold Kaveh while he was trying to sleep, however, was another matter entirely, and seemed to always leave him numb-limbed and smothered under six feet of gangly adult man, with little actual rest to show for it.
Blissfully ignorant Kaveh, anticipating nothing but another night of beautiful sleep with his lover, prepared to enact his bed time routine as he had every night for the past week:
He would wait for Alhaitham to roll into his usual, corpse-like sleeping position and murmur, "Good night, Kaveh."
"Good night, Haitham," he would reply, and then he would lay his cheek upon Alhaitham’s shoulder, press the warm line of his nude body to Alhaitham’s side, reach around Alhaitham’s waist to pet the skin of his hip, send him good dreams and comfort him like no one else could—
Only, on this night, Alhaitham pressed Kaveh back down to the mattress, and then left him there.
"I don’t want to cuddle any more."
Kaveh’s first instinct was to laugh at the sound of such a childish word in Alhaitham’s mouth, and make him say other silly words, like canoodling and hanky-panky. But then the actual meaning of the sentence caught up to him, and he went cold all over.
Satisfied that he’d gotten his meaning across, Alhaitham closed his eyes for some much-needed sleep. Kaveh was silent and didn’t move from where Alhaitham had placed him, so surely the problem was solved. Alhaitham would get a full night’s rest, and then perhaps he would wake early enough for them to kiss for a while in the morning before he left for work.
Beside him, Kaveh lay, choked, awash in shame, as the crystal palace of his hopes and dreams collapsed on top of him. What had he done wrong this time? How could he have missed the signs? Kaveh screwed his eyes shut against hot, stinging tears. If their relationship were to fail again, Kaveh knew this time he would never again walk free: the desiccated remains of his murdered heart would have its cold fingers wrapped around his ankle evermore, and he would drag the cadaver of his love through the dirt behind him for the rest of his days.
Alhaitham was out like a light in minutes. He didn’t even twitch as Kaveh heaved himself from the bed and staggered out of the room.
~
In the morning, Kaveh convinced himself he must have had a terrible nightmare. He woke, dehydrated and cottony, in his own bed. He had sleepwalked there some time in the night, perhaps. Certainly no hysterics involved at all.
Okay, no, Kaveh was too smart to fool himself: he had tripped over one of Alhaitham’s odd personal triggers, spiraled fantastically for no good reason, and then fled to his room to wallow in self-pity. He must have just misunderstood Alhaitham’s meaning. This type of thing used to happen to them all the time, and they were both mature, fully-realized adults now who could confront their problems.
But the cuddling, really? Of all Kaveh’s flaws, the cuddling was the deal-breaker? Oh, Gods, Kaveh had been all over him since the first night they fell into bed together, and that was over a week ago now—
Kaveh put a clamp on his thoughts and took a deep breath. At the very least, he recognized it would do neither of them any good to catastrophize. He resolved to talk things through with Alhaitham. As soon as he could work up the courage to face him.
Meanwhile, Alhaitham had woken bright and early, well before he needed to, feeling refreshed, rested, and… cold? Opening his eyes, he found the blanket had been thrown down, exposing his whole torso to chilly air. Alhaitham tended to sleep perfectly still, so that couldn’t have been his doing. What’s more, the only other possible culprit was nowhere at the scene, and the bed was lacking his residual warmth.
Alhaitham pulled on a robe and padded barefoot out to the kitchen, where he imagined Kaveh getting an early start on their morning coffee, but found no one. He checked the study, where he imagined Kaveh working feverishly at his drafting table after being struck by inspiration in the middle of the night, but found no such scene. He was standing, lost, in the middle of the front room when he heard the click of the lock in the one door he hadn’t wanted to check.
When Kaveh slunk out of his bedroom, Alhaitham’s head snapped around to look at him like he was some kind of escaped zoo animal.
"You slept in your room?" Alhaitham asked, incredulous.
"Well, yes," Kaveh replied, fidgeting with the cuffs of his pajamas. He was trying to keep his voice even, like he always did when he was holding back some kind of large emotion and trying to make it seem unimportant.
"Why?" Alhaitham pressed.
"You… asked me to."
"I most certainly didn’t."
Kaveh yanked his fingers through his disheveled hair. "You definitely implied it! You pushed me away and said you didn’t want to cuddle!" Kaveh cried. "But never mind, it’s fine! I can handle one—"
"Wait, wait," Alhaitham interrupted, and stepped into the hall towards Kaveh. "Stop talking. I didn’t imply anything. I didn’t want to sleep with you hanging onto me. I didn’t ask you to leave."
"What do you expect me to do, then? Lay there and stare at you?"
Alhaitham could see the meltdown on the horizon. He was thankful to have gotten enough rest to be able to handle it. This would be over shortly, and then they could both move on to more reasonable things, like caffeine.
"I expected you to sleep. Obviously," he said, crossing his arms over his final point.
Of course, obvious logic had never calmed Kaveh in the past, so why should it now?
"Oh, well, sorry for not meeting your obvious expectations," Kaveh seethed. "You just want to fuck and then fall asleep like a lazy animal."
Alhaitham screwed his eyebrows together.
"I do tend to want to sleep at night, yes."
Kaveh let out an explosive sigh.
"Alright, you smart-mouthed brat, fine. Why did you wait so long to tell me this? I feel like an idiot!"
"I needed time to gather sufficient data and confirm my hypothesis," Alhaitham explained. "Essentially, I thought I might get used to it. I didn’t. Therefore, I decided it was time to instigate a change to our routine. Simple."
"I knew things were going too well," Kaveh muttered to himself. "I knew we were getting along too well, the sex was too good, I should have seen this coming…"
If ever Alhaitham had a nemesis in life, it would be Kaveh’s stubborn insecurity.
"We both know this phase won’t last," Alhaitham said in what he thought was a reassuring voice. "We can’t have sex every night for the rest of our lives. I’m not interested in investing in something unsustainable."
Kaveh, who was unable to see what was (by Alhaitham’s standards) practically a marriage proposal as anything other than a complete rejection, reeled back like he had been slapped.
"You… You don't understand how I feel! When we’re together, I just… I… I feel so strongly for you that I…" Kaveh gritted his teeth to try and keep from spitting up his own ridiculous heart. "I want you to know how I feel, not just with words but in your… your bones! And you just told me to get off you, like I’m an unruly child!"
Kaveh was beginning to feel quite foolish, but he was on a roll and couldn’t stop. He babbled on, "Can’t you see this from my perspective? When we’re close, even when we’re as close as we can get, I want to be closer. Sometimes I love you so much I just want to climb inside you…"
In an act of great devotion, Alhaitham refrained from dissecting Kaveh’s bizarre metaphor and simply replied, "That’s all well and good in theory, but in physical reality, I wake up sore in the morning like I’ve been sleeping under a stone. It’s uncomfortable."
Kaveh sputtered, "I— my head is not as heavy as a stone! You’re exaggerating!"
"A human brain already weighs about three pounds, and that’s without the skull and all the other meat. Not to mention the rest of your body."
"Ew, why are we talking about this," Kaveh groaned, as if he hadn’t just been imagining curling up to sleep between Alhaitham’s lungs.
"If I move to try and make more room, you follow after me, and I end up at the edge of the bed. All I’m asking is for you to give me some space while I’m trying to sleep. Also, you drool on me."
"I’m a side-sleeper, I sleep better with something to hang onto! I can’t help it!"
"Well I use my arms every day at work, I’d prefer not to have to amputate one any time soon."
"Gods, you’re such an ass," Kaveh ground out. "Well, you always get what you want in the end. Can’t I have something? Can’t you just give me what I want?"
"What do you want that I’m not already giving you, Kaveh?"
"Just hold me, Alhaitham! I just want to be held!"
Alhaitham— who was immune to the words of any man in Teyvat, except for the one standing in front of him— found himself hurt.
"I do hold you," he said eventually, quiet. "Were you unconscious for the past week? I’ve barely been able to put you down."
Kaveh clammed up immediately.
"So what are we really arguing about?" Alhaitham finished.
All of a sudden, Kaveh regretted this entire conversation. Of course Alhaitham was right. They had been in each other’s laps every day since their official un-breakup, and not just intimately. They were reading together on the same couch, cooking together, and barely letting the other leave a room without a farewell kiss. Only now had Alhaitham’s behavior suggested anything other than ardent appreciation for their new situation. Kaveh just needed to get his head on straight. Alhaitham was tactless and could be callous with Kaveh’s fragile emotions, but he’d never been cruel or manipulative in his life; it was Kaveh, then, who was to be the unstable element that would ruin this experiment.
For his part, Alhaitham looked on as Kaveh wilted in misery, and suddenly understood what Kaveh had really meant by wanting to climb inside him. No matter how illogical, Kaveh’s pain was genuine— who would put themselves through this, otherwise? Alhaitham would gladly reach into Kaveh’s heart and untangle all those hurts with his own hands if it would finally convince the man of how loved he was. In as close as he ever got to desperation, Alhaitham knew he had to try and fix this.
"Let’s stop talking about this and come up with a solution—"
“Never mind!” Kaveh bulldozed over him in a shrill and tremulous voice. “It’s fine, I was wrong! I just— I’ll just— never mind!”
Red and embarrassed, he turned right around and dove back into his room, shutting the door in Alhaitham’s bewildered face.
~
That night, Alhaitham prepared for bed alone, and then trudged into the hallway to knock on Kaveh’s door.
"What?" came Kaveh’s voice, muffled.
Alhaitham just wanted to know what was going on, but he knew he’d used up his allotment of Kaveh button-pushing for the moment. He settled for a simple question.
"Are you going to sleep in there?"
"… Yes."
Alhaitham swallowed his disappointment.
"Alright. Good night, Kaveh."
"… Good night, Haitham."
~
Kaveh spent the next day moping alone in the house while Alhaitham was at the Akademiya. After replaying their argument in his head so many times he lost count, Kaveh made a resolution. He didn’t want to lose what they had so soon after regaining it. He would eat the cost of this one, and go back to his own room after their trysts. More than anything, he just wanted things to go back to normal; he truly didn’t think he’d be able to survive another breakup as explosive as their first with his heart intact.
When Alhaitham got home, Kaveh would welcome him and apologize for being an idiot, and they would move on. And he would be careful not to get too comfortable in the future.
When Alhaitham actually did come home that afternoon, he had a variable that Kaveh could not possibly have accounted for cradled underneath his arm:
It appeared that Alhaitham had brought with him a large, fluffy, stuffed animal.
"I’m home," Alhaitham called.
"Welcome home," Kaveh responded faintly. "What’s that?"
"Dinner," Alhaitham said, and held out a box bearing the logo of Lambad’s Tavern.
"No, you jerk, that huge thing you’re holding."
Alhaitham lifted it so Kaveh could get a better look. It was easily four feet tall, not even including its long, trailing tail. It looked like a rishboland tiger, but heather grey instead of orange, and with dark spots instead of stripes.
"It’s a gift for you," Alhaitham explained. "I understand you feel most comfortable holding onto something while you sleep. I found a stall selling these things at the Bazaar today. I looked through them and chose the one that"— he looked vaguely pained to say this— "spoke to me. If you like, you can think of it as an extension of my body."
Kaveh took the animal and held it at arm’s length. It was a bit heavier than he expected, stuffed tight with soft fur, and the paws and bottom were filled with beans. It was cute. Felt eyelids sewn over the tops of its shiny glass eyes and a frowning mouth stitched in black yarn gave it a facial expression so familiar that Kaveh felt his heart swell with fondness.
"The vendor told me it was modeled after a type of animal that lives in Snezhnaya," Alhaitham continued. "It has a pocket in the front where you can store a hot water bottle if you want it to be warm."
Kaveh’s eyes grew misty, and he blurted, "I’m sorry I blew up at you. You don’t have to comfort me just because I’m so high-maintenance."
"On the contrary, I do have to comfort you," Alhaitham said, as always with the confidence of a man who is only rarely wrong, "because I want you to be comfortable."
He gestured to the stuffed animal.
"With this, there shouldn’t be any other reasons for us to sleep separately ever again."
"Al… Alhaitham," Kaveh choked out. "Thank you."
"You’re welcome," Alhaitham murmured, and the sides of his mouth ticked upwards. Kaveh recognized it for the whoop of joy that it was.
He cradled the creature to his chest and composed himself.
"I’m going to name him Nyalhaitham," Kaveh decided.
Alhaitham raised a brow.
"So we’re separate entities after all? I thought the point was to use him as a surrogate for me."
"Nyalhaitham and you are nothing alike. He actually does what I tell him to! Isn’t that right?" Kaveh rubbed his nose against the stuffed toy’s snout. "You’re a good boy, aren’t you?"
"Careful, I might get jealous," Alhaitham drawled.
"Oh, relax," Kaveh laughed. He rested Nyalhaitham against his hip and leaned into Alhaitham, crushing them both into a group hug. "I’ll treasure this. I won’t take it for granted, I promise."
~
That night, they fell together into their bed and got back to business as usual.
Kaveh had fretfully shoved a pillowcase over Nyalhaitham’s head, like a really stressed-out kidnapper.
"I can’t do it with him watching!" he cried.
Alhaitham snorted. "But he’s me. He’d enjoy it."
Afterward, Alhaitham stayed to pet Kaveh through his afterglow, then rolled onto his back to prepare for sleep. He watched through the corner of his eye as Kaveh fussed with the giant stuffed animal, arranging its limbs and squishing its stuffing around into the ideal shape. When Kaveh finally quieted, he was lying on his side, facing Alhaitham, hugging the toy tightly with his arms and legs. The soft fur of it brushed against Alhaitham’s bare shoulder. Kaveh peered at him over the top of the toy’s head.
"Good night, Haitham," he said.
Alhaitham rolled towards Kaveh just enough to press a warm kiss to his forehead, then laid back down flat. He groped through the fur of the stuffed animal until he found one of Kaveh’s hands, which opened to accept his like a flower in the morning.
"Good night, Kaveh."
They both slept soundly, and dreamed well.