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Kaveh peeled his sleep-sticky eyes open to the sight of Al-Haitham’s pillowy pectorals.
Not that he had ever held them; Kaveh could not say definitively how pillowy they were. But in another life Kaveh spent a lot of time furiously jerking off to Al-Haitham’s tits—though at the time they were two-dimensional—along with the rest of Al-Haitham, since he was a character in Kaveh’s novel. That is, Kaveh’s webnovel. His awful, trashy harem webnovel—the very webnovel he had since transmigrated into.
He wouldn’t have written it if he knew it was going to come to life. Well. He probably still would have—it paid the bills! It was a brainless way to destress after a long day at work!! The brave, strong, beautiful outlander swooped in, saved the day, and got the girl, and the other girl, and the next one too, until every H-cup heroine in the land of Teyvat knew his name. Or not, because no one knew his name, but that was part of his allure. The outlander didn’t tell anyone his name because he was so devastatingly handsome and charmingly mysterious.
Of course, Kaveh knew, because the outlander was his son, inasmuch as the protagonist of the webnovel he wrote could have been his son. As far as Kaveh was concerned, Aether had been birthed from his own body, umbilical cord and all.
“What are you staring at,” asked Al-Haitham, who was still looming creepily over him. Scratch that—Aether had every H-cup heroine except for one. Kaveh dragged his eyes up to Al-Haitham’s face.
“Put on a shirt,” Kaveh griped, focusing on Al-Haitham’s big, round… eyes. “What is it? Aren’t you supposed to be at work? Aren’t you the Grand Sage?”
“Good morning, senior,” Al-Haitham said, ignoring Kaveh’s question entirely. “Why did you sleep on the couch?”
“I was working.” Kaveh realized after he said it that it wasn’t true. He’d been drinking and couldn’t bear to drag himself to his room, that is, Al-Haitham’s spare room, which Kaveh lived in. Oh god.
“Sure,” Al-Haitham agreed in that awful monotone. “And I’m not the Grand Sage anymore. I quit.”
Aether rescued Sumeru from the Fatui’s evil plot and Al-Haitham orchestrated the scheme from behind the scenes, all-knowing asshole that he was, and then he became the leader of the country after Azar was sent off to Gandharva Ville—
And he quit?!
Kaveh didn’t write that. At least, not yet. He couldn’t remember what he wrote much at all. It had been thirty-odd years by now; he’d been plonked into Master Kaveh of Kshahrewar’s body as a pink, screaming baby, which was about as much fun as it sounded. He’d lived every second of Kaveh of Kshahrewar’s life, and if there was one thing Kaveh of Kshahrewar was good at, it was obsessing over Al-Haitham, and Al-Haitham had not resigned from the position of Grand Sage directly after freeing Nahida in Shadow of the Sand King. It was supposed to take a while! He was supposed to suffer! If Al-Haitham was quitting, it meant that the story was over. Kaveh had never actually written his resignation. It was nothing more than an idea for a scrapped sequel because it was supposed to happen in some vague, distant time post-Aether. Which couldn’t be now. That meant the story was over. That meant—
“What do you mean, you quit?” Kaveh demanded, sitting up. It put him eye-level with Al-Haitham’s—
“And put on a shirt!”
“I quit,” Al-Haitham repeated. He looked down at Kaveh, expressionless. “Let’s take a vacation.”
“A vacation,” Kaveh echoed. A vacation? Al-Haitham left his country floundering after the government was replaced from the ground up, and he wanted to take a vacation? He wanted to take Kaveh with him?
Kaveh closed his eyes. “Lord Kusanali, save me.”
“It was me who saved her,” Al-Haitham said. “Get off the couch. You drooled on the pillow.”
✧
Shadow of the Sand King was Kaveh’s child, inasmuch as a novel could be his child. Aether was everything Kaveh wasn’t: cool and smart and courageous and heroic. If Aether did his undergrad in architectural engineering, he’d probably have slept for at least seven hours every night, unlike Kaveh, who was lucky to manage four before he died a sad, miserable death in his sad, miserable one-bedroom apartment. But it was great while it lasted! Really! Kaveh bought the good rice with the money he earned from SotSK after it got popular. He went to the nice coffee shop before class. He’d been living the good life.
It was, of course, spiritually destructive—even soul-sucking—to deviate from his original plan for the story for the sake of his bank account. In an old draft, Aether found his sister and explored the endless abyss, but Kaveh got used to the good rice and the nice coffee, so the Aether from the published version of SotSK explored warmer, wetter pastures fenced in by thick, soft thighs. It didn’t matter. Kaveh was real and Aether wasn’t. Or, that was true thirty-odd years ago.
It was alright. Kaveh only felt guilty about it twenty-three hours a day. The other hour was spent cursing himself for ever creating Al-Haitham, who was possibly more evil, more disturbing, more heart-wrenchingly, bone-crushingly awful than the story’s true antagonist, because he was just so—
So—
Annoying!!!
He wasn’t supposed to be important. Honestly, Kaveh didn’t think anyone would like him. He needed someone to mastermind the plot to save Sumeru and so he stuck Al-Haitham in at the last second, and then he’d sort of, kind of, fallen in love with him. Al-Haitham was awful and stuck-up and irritating and stubborn as a bull, but he was beautiful, and really, Kaveh was lonely. Wouldn’t it be nice to have someone so smart and unerring? Someone who clung to their principles so strongly they saved the country without lifting a finger? Someone strong and reliable? Well-read and handsome? Kaveh’s sketchbook was full of him. His folder on Al-Haitham had a higher word count than Aether’s. Al-Haitham—the two-dimensional version—was, unfortunately, his ideal man.
But the Al-Haitham that Kaveh had envisioned was nothing like the Al-Haitham he lived with. Up close, well-read became pedantic and stubborn became shutthefuckuporI’llthrottleyourightnow. Worse was Kaveh’s dependency on him—he knew that Al-Haitham had a miserably destitute roommate, he wrote the roommate, but the roommate was an irrelevant side-character with one scene after all the action was done. He’d never expected to be him.
It wasn’t that Al-Haitham didn’t act like he was supposed to. It was just that Kaveh would like him to err a little bit sometimes!!! Like when Kaveh asked him to make dinner, or when he refused to wear a shirt around the house, or when he insisted on carrying Kaveh home when he stayed too late at Lambad’s. Why did he care what Kaveh did at Lambad’s, anyway? What did it matter?! Kaveh had asked himself what and how and why a thousand times over in the last three decades, but if there was an answer out there, he hadn’t found it.
✧
Once, during the sunny part of the spring when their ages were only one year apart instead of two, Al-Haitham—seventeen to Kaveh’s eighteen—opened the conveniently unlocked door to Kaveh’s dorm at the Akademiya and found him masturbating. Already the situation was unsalveageable, but Kaveh managed to make it worse by bursting immediately into pathetic sobs.
In Kaveh’s defense, he was an eighteen year old boy, which wasn’t any easier the second time around. He’d been guilty-horny, which wasn’t new, but this guilt was disturbing, existential, and impossible to shake. Kaveh knew he was a horrible person; the Man of his Dreams (that is, the one whose fingers Kaveh had just been imagining wrapped around his cock) had come to life and didn’t know that the broad expanse of his person was created by Kaveh’s guiding hand. He didn’t know that Kaveh was effectively a higher power in this pocket universe and the puny, seventeen year old boy blushing furiously at Kaveh’s penis (which had quickly gone flaccid) was the result of a cosmic character selection screen that Kaveh swiped through with his dick and not his brain. And then the object of Kaveh’s wretched desire, the person Kaveh was halfway to committing suicide over, had walked in.
For a decade or so, Kaveh thought that nothing in his life could be possibly be more mortifying than that. But the fact that Al-Haitham’s Al-Haitham-ness still hadn’t scared him off fifteen years later—the fact that the guilty-horny had never stopped—probably took the cake.
“Senior, where do you want to go?” Al-Haitham asked that evening over dinner. His politeness was off-putting; even frightening. He’d at first disappeared around dinnertime, so Kaveh assumed he was going off to do whatever it was he did and started to cook, only for Al-Haitham to return with takeout. (“I brought food,” Al-Haitham announced. “I think that was obvious, thank you. You couldn’t have told me before?!”)
“I’d like to go to a cemetery and bury you in it,” Kaveh said pleasantly. He made a come-hither gesture. “Come on, something’s on your face.”
Al-Haitham leaned forward obediently. Kaveh wiped a grain of rice away from his mouth. The way he listened without question made Kaveh’s stomach twist pleasantly. Really, this is why he felt so guilty all the time—Al-Haitham was so much younger, and so much handsomer, and if Kaveh all but birthed Aether, was Al-Haitham so different? Maybe Kaveh’s perverted aura had changed something within Al-Haitham from through their shared wall, and that’s why he was resigning.
“I think we should go to Chenyu Vale,” Al-Haitham went on, oblivious to Kaveh’s turmoil.
“What? Why are you going to Chenyu Vale?”
“We’re going on vacation.”
“We are?”
“I told you this morning.”
Kaveh scoffed. “You said you wanted to go on vacation. I didn’t agree to anything.”
“We can afford it. My salary is staying the same.”
But why are you resigning, Al-Haitham?! What changed? Just wait a little longer, please!! “I don’t care about your salary. You have a responsibility to the people, Al-Haitham. You can’t just quit. You’re leaving Nahida at the mercy of someone untrustworthy.”
Al-Haitham shrugged. “Well, I already did. I read a paper by a researcher from Qiaoying Village. I’ve been corresponding with her for a while. I’d like to speak with her if I can. We could see Yilong Wharf. Have you ever been?”
Stubborn. Unerring. Handsome. Well-read. Reliable. Embarrassingly and against all logic Kaveh’s cock stirred. Down, boy. He stared at the table instead of Al-Haitham’s face. “I don’t have time to go to Chenyu Vale. I have work.”
Al-Haitham’s brows pinched. “I told you we can afford it.”
“You can afford it. I’m not some kept man, you know,” Kaveh muttered. As soon as the words left his mouth, his face burned. He squirmed in his seat.
“Whatever you say, senior.”
Al-Haitham liked to pitch up his voice when he said senior, which Kaveh assumed was because he was hell-bent on being so all-consumingly annoying. He hated expending his energy and yet he spent a not-insignificant part of his day trying to get on Kaveh’s nerves. Stop calling me senior, Kaveh wanted to beg, but Al-Haitham would ask why, senior, and then Kaveh would have to hear his teasing, pitched-up ‘senior’ again. The problem wasn’t Kaveh’s two lifetimes of lust over this stupid, stubborn idiot—it wasn’t even his half-chub under the table. It was that Kaveh’s lifelong obsession was completely, desperately one-sided. Al-Haitham didn’t like him. He was only inviting Kaveh to Chenyu Vale out of pity. He terrorized Kaveh every day. He was a menace. He was probably running away with that woman from Qiaoying Village.
“Is something wrong?” Al-Haitham asked.
“Nope,” Kaveh hissed. “Everything’s great. You have fun in Qiaoying Village on your own while Sumeru falls apart.”
✧
Al-Haitham, despite being the worst person in Teyvat—which Kaveh could say categorically because Teyvat was his brainchild—had never once walked into Kaveh’s room without knocking since That Incident. Still, it was impossible to be grateful for his politeness because the alternative he had apparently decided on was banging on Kaveh’s door until Kaveh told him to fuck off.
“Fuck off,” Kaveh shouted.
“Wake up,” Al-Haitham shouted back. “You have an appointment with Lesser Lord Kusanali.”
“I have a what?”
Finally Al-Haitham opened the door. He stared intensely at Kaveh’s unruly hair and horrifying eye bags. “Get dressed,” he said. “You’ll be late for God.”
✧
Lesser Lord Kusanali was very small and very cute. Kaveh wanted to die. He knew what Lesser Lord Kusanali looked like because he invented her, but it was one thing to draw her chibi likeness on a sticky note between his solid mechanics notes and yet another to see her realized as a living, breathing person. She was so short. Her hands were so tiny. Was this baby fever? Was Kaveh having baby fever over God? Over Al-Haitham’s boss?
Al-Haitham explained the situation succinctly, which was helpful because Kaveh did not understand why he’d been dragged here. So succinctly, in fact, that Al-Haitham slandered Kaveh in front of the Archon of Wisdom, which Kaveh refused to suffer, but before he could argue, Lesser Lord Kusanali laughed. “I’m glad you’re concerned about me,” she said sweetly, legs swinging where they dangled from the seat of her too-tall chair, “but please feel free to take a vacation. You’ve done more than enough, Al-Haitham.”
Kaveh blinked. Al-Haitham smirked. Lesser Lord Kusanali looked between them with an inscrutable grin.
“Waitwaitwait,” Kaveh hissed, “I didn’t—ugh. Sorry.” He took a deep, calming breath which was not calming at all, hoping to at least appear composed before Lord Kusanali. “I’m not stopping Al-Haitham from going on vacation. I just don’t think he should quit his job and leave you out to dry.”
“I’m alright, Kaveh,” Lesser Lord Kusanali assured him. Was that a don’t worry about me, Kaveh or a don’t patronize me, Kaveh? Could she read Kaveh’s mind? It had been so long since Kaveh had written her. He couldn’t remember.
“She’s alright,” Al-Haitham repeated.
Kaveh huffed. “She’s probably too polite to tell you otherwise. Al-Haitham, is there—Lord Kusanali, I’m sorry he’s made this your problem. Al-Haitham, is there a point to this?”
“Yes, but you seem to have missed it as usual.”
Lesser Lord Kusanali looked up at Al-Haitham, then at Kaveh. She smiled an all-knowing smile. “Kaveh, you’re just like I imagined.”
What, Kaveh thought. What did Al-Haitham say about him. Al-Haitham talked about Kaveh when he wasn’t there? Was Al-Haitham complaining? What did he say? What could he say that would make the Archon of Wisdom smile like she knew—something? What did she know?
Everything, said the Al-Haitham that lived in Kaveh’s head. She knows everything.
Finally, Kaveh said in a watery voice, “Lord Kusanali, I don’t understand what’s going on at all.”
“Hmmmmmmmmmmm,” said Lesser Lord Kusanali. “Al-Haitham has been waiting for this a long time. Consider it a free blessing! Please bring me back a souvenir.”
✧
Did Kaveh really, truly believe that Al-Haitham was betraying his country by quitting his job?
Yes, a little bit, but if he examined the issue very, very closely—which Kaveh did not want to do, as deep reflection on his role in the world he inhabited generally led to getting blackout, since Kaveh lived as a side character in an erotic webnovel of his own creation—it was not that Kaveh felt betrayed by Al-Haitham’s lack of conviction. Al-Haitham was perfectly principled, he just had no interest in leading the country, and Kaveh couldn’t fault him for that. Or Kaveh shouldn’t fault him for that—he still did, just a little. But the root of the issue, if Kaveh looked deeply into the mirror, was not Al-Haitham’s lack of political ambition. No, it was Kaveh’s own uselessness—he’d ruined Al-Haitham somehow.
In this world, Kaveh was something of an oracle. He knew his father would die before he did, and still he couldn’t prevent it; he barely survived the fallout. He knew that he’d argue with Al-Haitham while they were students and still he hadn’t been able to stop himself. He had vague memories of planning something about a palace and something about a collapse, and even knowing it was coming wasn’t enough to stop him from putting himself into lifelong debt—Kaveh knew the future, and he was still fatherless and living off of Al-Haitham’s charity.
And now Al-Haitham was deviating from the story because the story was over. Kaveh’s son was betraying him. Not that Al-Haitham was Kaveh’s son. But Al-Haitham had come from Kaveh’s own mind, and now he was behaving strangely. More strangely than usual. Kaveh didn’t know what would come next, and though his prophetic eye had never helped him before, it was frightening to leave land behind and swim into the unfathomable deep.
What if Al-Haitham went to Chenyu Vale and got eaten by those stupid cats? What if the author from Qiaoying Village was a serial killer and Al-Haitham was walking straight into her well-researched trap? What if Al-Haitham met that woman and they eloped in Yilong Wharf? Then Kaveh would be homeless. Homeless! In the book he wrote! It couldn’t be.
“So,” Kaveh said, not three days after the strange conversation with Nahida, “…what are you doing in Yilong Wharf?”
Al-Haitham was shirtless again. Kaveh didn’t remember writing that particular habit into him. How much self-indulgence was too much self-indulgence? “Pushing you into the wharf,” Al-Haitham said.
Kaveh stood. His chair clattered to the ground. “And you think that’ll make me go with you?”
Al-Haitham nodded. “I assumed you wouldn’t be asking unless you planned on coming with me to celebrate my resignation. I even got you permission from Nahida.”
“You better not push me into the wharf. How embarrassing.”
“Hm.”
“Al-Haitham?!”
“It would be embarrassing,” Al-Haitham said. His cold eyes raked over Kaveh. “The clothes you wear are so flimsy. You’d be shut up for the rest of the trip with a chill.”
“I bet you’d like me to shut up,” Kaveh snarled. He didn’t know what he was arguing for. Al-Haitham was staring so intensely. It made Kaveh feel naked, even though Al-Haitham was the naked one. Al-Haitham liked to stare, perhaps as some form of perverse psychological torment. He liked to watch. Sometimes Kaveh felt as though the house had eyes. Sometimes Kaveh wondered what Al-Haitham could possibly be thinking about, glaring like that. What were they talking about again?
“We’ll leave from Bayda Harbour in three days,” Al-Haitham announced. “Please be ready.”
Al-Haitham did not like to say please, but sometimes when he did, he was so disgustingly earnest about it that Kaveh couldn’t help but give in. Kaveh wanted him so badly he thought his heart might stop.
✧
Al-Haitham’s explanation for their quarters on the ship was this:
“It was last minute. This was the only room available.”
The only room available consisted of one double bed; a double bed would hardly have fit Kaveh on his own, let alone Kaveh and Al-Haitham together, but insulting Al-Haitham for his lack of forethought wouldn’t improve the situation. Kaveh did it anyway.
“How are we going to fit?” he demanded. “You’re sleeping on the floor. You know how my back is. How am I supposed to—ugh. You’re the worst. How thoughtless.”
Al-Haitham only shrugged. “I’m not sleeping on the floor. I’m the one paying.”
And so Kaveh, who was prone to violent seasickness, spent the day throwing up over the side of the deck while Al-Haitham pet his hair during brief moments of respite. Asshole. Bastard. Pretending to be nice when he’d done something so stupid. How was Kaveh meant to survive sharing a bed with him? For a whole night? This was like one of Aether’s wife plots. There was only one bed, so Kaveh had to cram in close and pray Al-Haitham didn’t move in his sleep, except Kaveh knew that Al-Haitham moved in his sleep because he wrote him.
“Kaveh?” Al-Haitham asked. “Are you feeling sick again?”
“No,” Kaveh hissed, sat on the deck of the ship and miserable. “I’ve never been sick in my life.”
Al-Haitham rubbed his back. “It’s alright, senior. It’s only until tomorrow morning.”
And between then and now was Kaveh surviving the night. Which was not certain, because Kaveh hadn’t predicted this. He had no idea what Al-Haitham wanted. What if Al-Haitham was the serial killer? What if Al-Haitham was going to kill Kaveh and throw him into the sea? No one would ever find his body. What if Kaveh died and then Al-Haitham went through his things? He’d find Kaveh’s writing. His secret stress-relief, and then if Kaveh died he might transmigrate again, which would be even worse because if Kaveh died Al-Haitham probably wouldn’t be in the—
“You should try to sleep, senior,” Al-Haitham said. He manhandled Kaveh until his head was pillowed on Al-Haitham’s thick, solid thigh. Kaveh could bite him. He could. He could—
✧
Did Kaveh really, truly believe that Al-Haitham wanted to kill him?
No. If Al-Haitham was a murderer, Kaveh would know as his god-creator. However: as Al-Haitham’s god-creator, Kaveh did not understand why Al-Haitham let him sleep on his lap for hours, even after the sun hid behind the clouds. When Kaveh woke, there was a wet spot on Al-Haitham’s pants from where he’d drooled. Al-Haitham had stared at Kaveh, and then at the wet spot.
“I’ll just jump off,” Kaveh said to himself. “It’ll make this easier.”
Al-Haitham huffed. “Don’t. I’d have to come get you.”
“The polite thing to do would be to let me kill myself in peace.”
That night, Al-Haitham sprawled out like a starfish on the far-too-narrow double bed. In this body, Kaveh had twenty-twenty vision, but it came at the cost of sciatica, and so sleeping on the floor was not an option. He was left with no choice: he shoved Al-Haitham to the side and crawled into the bed. Al-Haitham threw his arm over Kaveh’s chest. Kaveh wanted to die. He wanted to die.
I’d have to come get you, Al-Haitham said. He formed the words with the mouth Kaveh gave to him, and formed the thought with the brain Kaveh made for him, and spoke with the voice that Kaveh imagined when he couldn’t sleep in his old life. Aether was the main character, the reason Kaveh could afford to eat—but Al-Haitham was Kaveh’s; his beloved side project; his favourite doll.
And yet Al-Haitham was not his. Al-Haitham didn’t think of him much at all; Kaveh couldn’t even have a quarter of the bed because Al-Haitham insisted that Kaveh come with him and then held his money over Kaveh’s head. He was an asshole. A handsome, reliable, smart, insufferable asshole. What kind of person was Kaveh if the man he’d sculpted from clay hated him?
Before Kaveh could spiral any further, Al-Haitham rolled onto Kaveh’s side. Selfish bastard can’t even sleep right. But it was there that Kaveh fell asleep: crushed under the weight of him.
✧
The morning was just as terrible as the day before.
“Senior,” Al-Haitham said, shaking Kaveh awake, and Kaveh hated how he said senior like he was submitting, because he was Al-Haitham and he would not submit, and so Al-Haitham was teasing him. Kaveh was older. He had earned his seniority. But Al-Haitham was bigger and stronger and richer and—
“Kaveh?” Al-Haitham interrupted his train of thought. “Are you alright?”
Kaveh blinked. He was perfectly alright. He was distracted by Al-Haitham’s lack of a shirt and his honey-sweet senior. “Yes. I’m fine. What did you say?”
“I woke up a few hours ago. I thought I’d let you sleep, but you looked…” Al-Haitham paused. He stared like he liked to. “I don’t know. You kept moving. I thought you were having a nightmare.”
Kaveh sighed. He stared over Al-Haitham’s shoulder so he would not have to look at Al-Haitham’s face, but Al-Haitham stared on, deep into Kaveh’s eyes. Kaveh knew. He could tell. He could sense it. “I’m not sure,” he finally said. “I don’t remember anything.”
The horrible truth was that Kaveh was achingly hard and he’d spent the night pressed up against Al-Haitham, and Al-Haitham probably knew it because he was staring.
“Staring is rude,” Kaveh said, but his voice cracked. He flopped back onto the bed and curled up on his side. For the thousandth time, Kaveh wondered perhaps if he had not transmigrated but instead fallen to hell. “Why do you always do that? It’s horrible.”
Al-Haitham didn’t reply. He kept staring for seconds that felt like days before he suddenly stood said, “I’ve already gathered my things. You should make yourself presentable. We disembark in an hour.”
As soon as Al-Haitham shut the door behind him, Kaveh buried his face in the pillow that smelled like Al-Haitham and fucked his fist until he came with a shout he couldn’t bite back and then he cried a little bit. He was so seasick. He was so pathetic.
✧
The problem was:
The story was over. Aether saved Sumeru and Lesser Lord Kusanali sat at its helm. The evil was defeated, and Kaveh had no part in it. He’d gone on so many trips to the desert that he’d honestly forgotten that that particular trip to the desert coincided with the puppet-god-thing, and so when he returned to find Al-Haitham the Grand Sage, his shock wasn’t an act. It upset him that Al-Haitham put himself in danger. It upset him that Al-Haitham didn’t tell him about any of it. Didn’t Al-Haitham trust him? Didn’t Al-Haitham think about him too?
The problem was:
The story was over, and Kaveh was still pathetically in love with his awful roommate. He was just as frustrated as he’d been at thirty and twenty-two and seventeen—just as frustrated as he’d been drawing Al-Haitham in his notebook between classes in another world. The story had moved on, and Kaveh no longer knew Al-Haitham’s future. Was there room for Kaveh? Perhaps this trip was a farewell—one last hurrah.
“Pay attention,” Al-Haitham hissed as the boat shrank in the distance behind them, yanking Kaveh’s arm and saving him from walking into an elderly man walking the opposite way. “What’s with you?”
Al-Haitham didn’t let go of his arm. Kaveh, arrested by his suffocating grip, didn’t reply.
“Fine,” Al-Haitham muttered. “I’ll show you the inn, and then we can go get lunch before we leave for Qiaoying Village.”
Kaveh frowned. “I thought you were going to talk to that woman in Qiaoying Village? I’ll just explore the city for the afternoon.” He didn’t want to admit it, but his back was acting up and he wasn’t sure how far they’d be walking. It would be easier if Al-Haitham went off on his own and Kaveh could rest. Not that he’d would admit it to Al-Haitham. It would be as good as admitting Al-Haitham won; he’d played a stupid game booking one double bed and now Kaveh was paying for it. Al-Haitham could run away with his girlfriend from The Middle Of Nowhere, Liyue and they’d never see one another again and everything would be fine.
But Al-Haitham didn’t argue. Instead he stared. He stared at Kaveh as he walked, expertly dodging the passersby walking the other way as he did it. It was creepy. It was hot. Kaveh looked away.
“Fine,” Al-Haitham finally agreed. “I’ll probably be back late in the evening. Please be awake when I return.”
Please. It was a bad omen.
✧
Kaveh moped over lunch and returned to the inn to mope some more. The more he thought about it, the worse it seemed. Al-Haitham didn’t correspond with anyone. Who was this woman from Qiaoying Village? Didn’t they make the tea? What did Al-Haitham care? Why should he care? Al-Haitham was Kaveh’s. But it seemed that Kaveh was not Al-Haitham’s.
The bed at the inn was impossibly soft. Better, there were two of them—two beds in the same room, but two beds all the same. There were some battles Kaveh could not win, so he burrowed into the downy blankets and closed his eyes.
The afternoon seemed to pass in an alternate universe. Seconds stretched into hours and hours passed in a blink; here, his anxieties were soothingly distant. Before Kaveh knew it, the sun was sinking in the sky. He’d wasted half a day in Yilong Wharf in bed.
Kaveh dragged himself up. His back twinged but it wasn’t unbearable. A walk would do him good—perhaps fresh air in a foreign city would lend him some much-needed perspective. Perhaps he’d fall into the water and his back would spasm and he’d die a sad, watery death.
While Kaveh could have navigated Sumeru with his eyes closed and his hands tied behind his back even before being forced to live there, Yilong Wharf was only mentioned once in a throwaway line. He’d sketched out the city once or twice but the details had been lost in the clutter of three decades’ worth of memories. For the first time in a very long time, Kaveh was somewhere new.
This was a good thing, he decided as he beheld the harbour from the edge of a wooden dock. The city was beautiful. It was so beautiful he could not convince himself it came from him; how could Kaveh have fathomed the view of Lumidouce Harbour in the distance? How could he have fathomed the scent of the sea on the wind? It was new—it wasn’t his, and he didn’t mind it.
It was at that moment that the excited scream of a child sounded, and Kaveh found himself unceremoniously knocked into the water.
There was no time to panic; Kaveh was standing, and then in an instant he was submerged. The water couldn’t have been deep, but Kaveh couldn’t see and his lungs burned—it was impossible to tell which way was up no matter how he thrashed, and his back was on fire, and his leg was cramping. So this was Kaveh’s fate after Aether left Sumeru—a sad, miserable death following a sad, miserable life—
Suddenly, a pair of arms encircled him. Instinctively Kaveh tried to fight back, but it was useless, and he soon realized that he knew these biceps. Al-Haitham had returned from Qiaoying Village to witness the second or third most embarrassing thing that had ever happened to him.
Al-Haitham dragged him onto the dock with no help from Kaveh. Drowning was exhausting. Kaveh coughed up filthy seawater and then coughed some more for good measure. His back hurt. His leg ached. His pride stung. The kid was trying to apologize but her voice was so annoying Kaveh wanted to throttle her. The city that had just seemed so beautiful had become very cold.
“Senior can’t survive without me,” Al-Haitham cooed.
Embarrassingly, Kaveh started to cry.
✧
Al-Haitham gathered Kaveh in his arms and brought him back to the inn. Never having experienced a bridal carry before, Kaveh decided at once that this was not how he wanted it, and that he did not like it at all. Al-Haitham was too close. He was wet and cold and miserable and though Al-Haitham apologized every time he jostled him, Kaveh still wanted to kill him a little bit.
The last time that Al-Haitham had seen Kaveh cry was—
It was best not to think about it. But it had been many years. Kaveh wasn’t a crier. It was just that he’d worked very hard on this story, and now it was over, and Al-Haitham was—
“Kaveh, I’m going to put you down. Take off your clothes,” Al-Haitham commanded.
They were back at the inn. Al-Haitham set him on the bed and stared.
“Take off my—? You’re going to watch?” Nothing made sense and Kaveh wanted to die.
Al-Haitham only shrugged. “Clearly I need to, if this is what happens when I turn my back.”
“Enough from you, Al-Haitham,” Kaveh hissed. The words spilled out like a volcanic eruption. He couldn’t help it. He was embarrassed. He was embarrassed and afraid. He’d liked being carried by Al-Haitham. He didn’t like wondering when Al-Haitham would ever come so close again. “You wouldn’t take no for an answer when you invited me here, and then you hold it over my head that you’re paying for me and then you, you leave me all alone in a foreign city! With nothing and no one! And then I get pushed into the fucking wharf and you’re telling me, what, that I—”
“You should get out of your wet clothes,” Al-Haitham interrupted. “Do you need help?”
Kaveh gaped. Al-Haitham didn’t care at all.
“No. I’m fine.”
He peeled off his gloves, and then his scarf and his shirt and pants and tossed them onto the floor. Al-Haitham stopped watching him to fetch a towel; he hadn’t bothered to deal with his own clothes, which were equally soaked. Kaveh suddenly felt like a child, cold and naked. Al-Haitham wrapped a towel around his shoulders and used another to dry Kaveh’s hair, pressing their thighs together.
“I don’t understand why you brought me here,” Kaveh whispered. “I don’t get it.”
“I’ve been corresponding with Moyan in Qiaoying Village about relief for back pain,” Al-Haitham said, sharp and curt like he was under orders. “She’s worked with a few patients with your condition. She gave me a tea she said helps. I was going to give it to you tonight. And I thought if you came with me, you’d get more rest than you would working at home.” He passed the towel over Kaveh’s hair once more before setting it aside. “Though I wanted time off work anyway. Are you cold?”
Kaveh froze. He really was a horrible person. He’d made Al-Haitham like this. He’d made Al-Haitham, and Al-Haitham—
“Al-Haitham,” Kaveh said, staring at the water pooling on the floor. “I don’t…”
Kaveh had survived That Incident when he was fifteen, and he had survived being rescued by Al-Haitham from Yilong Wharf’s evil clutches, and he had survived thirtysomething years in his stupid, shitty book, and now he was naked and shivering in an inn Al-Haitham paid for on a vacation Al-Haitham had orchestrated for him.
This was definitely the most embarrassing thing that had ever happened to Kaveh.
“Just.” Kaveh said. “Fuck. Come here.”
At least things couldn’t get worse.
Al-Haitham didn’t move; he just stared. Steeling himself, Kaveh pulled him in by the wet collar of his wet shirt and kissed him, cautiously chaste. For a moment, it was like kissing a brick wall; Al-Haitham, cold and unyielding, froze, and so Kaveh pushed him away.
But as soon as Kaveh tried to get up, Al-Haitham grabbed his arm and whined, “Senior.” Their mouths crashed together painfully. Al-Haitham kissed Kaveh like he’d die if he didn’t, and he wasn’t very good at it. It could barely be called a kiss at all. It was too much. If Kaveh thought about it for longer than half a second he’d cry. Their teeth clacked. Al-Haitham didn’t know what to do with his tongue. Yes, Kaveh thought, he’s never done this before, and it was mortifying how arousing that was. The man that Kaveh sculpted for his own pleasure was—untouched. Undefiled. It was too much. Drowning, and crying, and now this.
“Senior,” Al-Haitham said into Kaveh’s mouth, but he didn’t go on. He was saying it just to say it.
Kaveh pushed him away. Al-Haitham followed his mouth, which was too much!! Too eager, Al-Haitham!!! “Just a second,” Kaveh promised, though he wasn’t quite sure what he was promising at all, “just. Um. Are you? Sure?”
Al-Haitham nodded obediently. Kaveh shivered. “Yes. I’m certain. I was waiting for you.”
“Waiting?”
“Because you live in my house,” he explained. His eyes kept dropping down to Kaveh’s exposed chest. “I didn’t want to force you.”
How considerate. It was so considerate that Kaveh considered putting an end to things. Kaveh shouldn’t because he made Al-Haitham. Al-Haitham was Kaveh’s. He shouldn’t. But.
“Don’t worry about that.” It came out stilted. What else could Kaveh say? Don’t worry about it, I drew the face you make when you come on the back of my undergraduate thesis before you even existed? He wanted Al-Haitham so badly it made him dizzy. In the end, Al-Haitham was a better person than him.
“Senior,” Al-Haitham said again for no reason at all, and if Al-Haitham had never done this before, then it was Kaveh’s duty as his senior to teach him. What he lacked in technique Al-Haitham made up for with enthusiasm. Kaveh wanted so badly to be put off by it, but unfortunately, Al-Haitham’s wanton, unselfconscious desire was cute. He was a grown man, and grown men didn’t whine like this. Kaveh pulled at the edges of his shirt until Al-Haitham shucked it off, but he was still wet and Kaveh wanted, he wanted to—
“Lie down,” Al-Haitham said, eyes dark. “Your back, senior. You shouldn’t push yourself. Tell me what to do.”
And so Kaveh lied back. The bed was a mess and he smelled like the harbour, but Al-Haitham’s thoughtfulness absurdly made his dick twitch. “Tell you what?” He had no idea what Al-Haitham wanted. Already Al-Haitham looked halfway gone.
To be contrary, Al-Haitham crawled between his knees and nosed at the soft inside of Kaveh’s thigh instead of replying. Kaveh almost couldn’t bear to watch—Al-Haitham was lying prone beneath his legs. His breath was hot on Kaveh’s skin.
“You don’t have to.” The words came out despite himself.
“Hmmmmm,” Al-Haitham replied. “I wondered if you were blond here too.”
Kaveh scoffed. “Really? That’s what you—”
But he couldn’t finish his sentence. Al-Haitham mouthed his way up from Kaveh’s knee to his thigh. He was impatient. He was enthusiastic. Kaveh wanted to die. Right then, he could tell Al-Haitham anything. He could mold Al-Haitham however he liked and Al-Haitham would listen and he would like it. Already Al-Haitham couldn’t help from grinding down against the bed when all Kaveh had done was lie there. “Kaveh,” Al-Haitham murmured into his skin. “Tell me what to do.”
Kaveh wasn’t sure if he could even speak.
Al-Haitham learned quickly. Kaveh said wet your mouth and Al-Haitham stuck his tongue out to show off. Kaveh said lick and Al-Haitham, obedient like a dog, restrained himself to short, awkward kitten licks until Kaveh said suck and Al-Haitham swallowed down as much as he could, sloppy but enthusiastic. It had been years since anyone had touched Kaveh like this. He’d spent so long imagining Al-Haitham on top of him, or under him, or being inside of him, and now Al-Haitham was here, hollowing his cheeks around Kaveh’s cock, moaning with abandon like sucking Kaveh off was the single greatest pleasure he’d ever experienced. Kaveh tugged on Al-Haitham’s hair to tilt his head just to the right angle and Al-Haitham shuddered as if he’d been struck by lightning. It was horrible, and Kaveh wasn’t going to last.
Al-Haitham choked when Kaveh came down his throat, coughing until his eyes watered. Horrifyingly, Kaveh liked it. He liked it so much that he sat up and licked the tears off Al-Haitham’s face like some kind of animal. He began to reach down, but Al-Haitham batted his hand away.
“What, let me—”
“It’s fine,” Al-Haitham said, at which point Kaveh realized that he’d already come. He liked sucking Kaveh’s cock so much that he’d humped the bed until he came in his disgusting, harbour-soaked pants. Kaveh wanted him so badly. He wanted to live inside of Al-Haitham’s skin.
“Let’s. The other bed,” Kaveh said vaguely, suddenly grateful for two beds in the same room. “Take off your pants. Fuck. Aren’t you, like, chafing?”
Al-Haitham did not reply but to strip and lift Kaveh onto the clean bed and lie beside him. Kaveh laid his head on Al-Haitham’s chest at long last. It was pillowy. It was exactly how Kaveh wrote him.
“I have the Grand Sage’s salary forever now,” Al-Haitham said.
“I don’t really give a fuck,” Kaveh replied sleepily.
“I mean that money isn’t a concern.”
“Money has never been a concern for you.”
“Hmmmm,” Al-Haitham said. “Just go to sleep, senior. I’ll take care of everything.”
“Sure. Whatever. Good night, Al-Haitham. See if you regret this in the morning.”
But Kaveh’s jab lacked any bite. Curiously, Kaveh thought that this did not feel like the end of the story at all.