Chapter Text
Present Day; Alhaitham and Kaveh’s Apartment
In his second year of university at the Akademiya, Kaveh took a class on poetry and literature as one of his electives. It was to fill a breadth requirement, and it looked like a breeze course with low stakes, just something to indulge in while the rest of his life was full of diagrams, textbooks, energy drinks, and drunk frat boys buying him cocktails at the campus bar.
In one of the assigned readings, there had been a poem about the thin line between love and hate, and that if pulled like a thread that line would connect both emotions in a perfect circle. At the time, he’d scoffed at the idea. It was completely absurd to consider. Love is love and hate is hate, he’d insisted.
Sure, you could love to hate or hate to love, but calling it a thin line was a stretch even for Kaveh’s artistically prone expectations. With this in mind, he’d scribbled out his thoughts for a response, submitted it two minutes before the deadline, and never thought much of it or the only C- he’d ever received.
Several years later, Kaveh realizes he gets it now, and he’s pissed off about it.
You’re in love with someone you used to hate. Supposed to hate? No, you don’t… love him. Right?
Truthfully, if he dares to be honest with himself (and Kaveh does not like to self-reflect more than he has to), he’s been pissed off about it for a while now. Emotions make everything so… messy and complicated. It steals time. It burns bridges. Sometimes the love and hate mix into something in between that he can’t name anymore. It’s a strange sensation that’s simmered down into a sort of dull ache in his belly that gnaws at him from time to time.
Today is one of those times.
“Alhaitham.”
His junior (a fact he feels the need to remind himself of as often as possible) doesn’t lift his head, nose still tucked away in the book he’s been reading the entire time the movie has been playing. Not that Kaveh’s really been paying attention either, mostly scrolling TikTok and favouriting videos of cats and thirst traps and the odd life hacks that he will most certainly never try (he’s also fairly certain some of them are just kinks, but Cyno’s explanation of the whole thing made his head spin).
“Alhaitham,” he says again, craning his neck to get a better look. He sees his ears are uncovered, the gold and jade earpieces laying next to his thigh on the charger, and so he nudges his shoulder with a socked toe.
Alhaitham looks up, never startled, and cocks his head in question. Kaveh blows air out his nose in a sigh and signs, Do you want me to order dinner?
What do you want?
Kaveh can’t help but admire the way his hands move when he signs. There’s an elegance to the movements, conveying that same tone he does when he speaks. He can almost hear the pleasant rasp of some words, and the faint drawl of others. It wasn’t until taking his final certificate in his sign language courses that he really grasped just how easily hands could have tone and flow and personality… and how much of Alhaiham could exist through his hands. I could go for some fried noodles from Wanmin’s.
Alhaitham nods and closes his book, tilting his head back to rest it on the cushion. His bangs fall across his forehead in a way that makes Kaveh want to brush them away, but who would just do that? It’s weird, right? Is it weird to be so fucking in love with someone you want to move their hair from their eyes? Absurd, Kaveh isn’t in love with Alhaitham.
Everyone tells him he is (or still is), though. Cyno deadpans that they’re basically married at this point, rattling the ‘stone cold’ facts on one hand.
(“One, you’ve lived together since undergrad so you might as well be common-law. Two, you’re both in denial but I think for tax purposes it could work. Three, you will eventually sleep with him.”)
Well. The last one is… complicated.
(Toes curling. Hips arched. He’s gasping with his hands in Alhaitham’s hair.)
Stop thinking about it, dumbass.
Kaveh scrolls through the delivery app on his phone and finds their usual order. He triple checks that everything is in stock, adds on some drinks, and confirms things before he rests his phone against his chest and closes his eyes. His new contract work has been great, both financially and mentally, but his eyes are so tired after spending hours looking between blueprints, 3D designs on screens, and squinting at his phone while on MSTeams calls (because for some reason the program won’t run on his laptop).
Naturally, this is something Alhaitham points out as one of his many hundreds of flaws he’s sure he has stored somewhere in a mental list he whips out at any given moment. It would be impressive if it wasn’t so fucking aggravating.
Unfortunately, despite how much he’s liked this job, the contract ends in six weeks.
Such are the woes of capitalism, or something, he thinks.
Kaveh feels a tap to his ankle and he cracks an eye open. Alhaitham stands up from his place on the floor and grabs his book — some sort of collection of essays he’d been talking about centering around logicians and the art of philosophy. Cyno calls it ‘nerd shit’ while sorting through his deck of genius invocation cards, and it’s the sort of irony that Kaveh can’t bring himself to mention, though he has incredible fondness for it. Without Tighnari, and in time Cyno, he’s not sure how he survived the trenches of high school and his degree. How the four of them haven’t been in prison yet honestly feels worthy of a prize.
Grabbing a shower, Alhaitham signs.
Kaveh yawns. Use my nice shampoo and I’ll stab you.
Your shampoo is chemically a scam, you want silicones and sulfides for your hair products.
I just like it!
Alhaitham rolls his eyes and twists his wrist to end in a rude gesture that makes Kaveh scoff.
He sticks his tongue out at him. “You have shit taste,” he mutters, and Alhaitham only heads off down the hallway. Kaveh follows the lines of his legs and the way his shirt clings to the muscles of his back. For a guy who claims to aim for a low effort job and a cozy life, he’s the only one between them who goes for a run, lifts weights, and even has a gym membership.
Kaveh, admittedly, would probably cry if someone threw him on a treadmill.
Something, something mental and physical strength working together, yadda yadda.
In the third year of their undergrad, he was drunk at a party and ended up in Alhaitham’s lap, lips on his own while whining about their upcoming graduation (he thinks — the details get a little muddy over time). Somewhere in the middle of kissing and babbling, Alahaitham had brought him back to their dorm room and dropped him into his bed. Not Kaveh’s bed. Alhaitham’s bed. His sheets smelled like cotton and bamboo and Kaveh had pressed his face to the pillows before coming to the horrifying realization Alhaitham was sitting at the desk working through his readings the morning after.
(“Did we…?”
“You wish.”)
They didn’t speak about it for years. For a time, he wondered if maybe he just hallucinated the whole event and had some fucked up lucid dream of being drunk on Smirnoff lemonades and tequila shots while telling his classmate he wanted to shove his tongue down his throat.
Then, once Kaveh thought it was a distant memory, they did talk about it. And it was… No, it’s better if Kaveh doesn’t think about the ‘almost’ that made everything fall apart.
Twenty-one is a terrible age. I didn’t deserve rights.
It’s not that Kaveh dislikes their living arrangement, either. Things are stable now, and manageable now that he’s older and wiser. But they hadn’t been for a long time, and the memory still hangs over him.
Alhaitham never asks for rent when he’s stretched for cash. He ‘accidentally’ makes extra coffee or meals, usually when work is consuming his waking hours. He brings home leftovers and always gets the soup of the day from the cafe down the street every Wednesday and Friday because it’s Kaveh’s favourite.
And Kaveh does the same. They exist in a state of care without wanting to say it. Or maybe it’s that they can’t. Either way, the routine is comfortable.
It almost feels like grad school, when they shared a too-small apartment and tried to make sense of their lives. They had a friendship he always thought would last, filling the gaps between them and keeping them close.
When they split for three years, Kaveh felt.. Lonely. Angry, but lonely.
Nothing lasts forever, I guess.
He hates to say it, but Alhaitham taking him back in under his roof while Kaveh threw himself into the job market was probably the only reason he didn’t end up homeless like he’d feared. The weight of everything had been crushing: money, drinking, unemployment. One thing after another had been piled on so high that it was like drowning.
But this? This is easy.They’d found an equilibrium again, and Kaveh wants to keep it like this and not drag up all their baggage..
It’s been almost five years. Maybe he’s over it.
He has a headache. Alhaitham is naked somewhere in the next room in the shower, and Kaveh is so fucking deep in his feelings it’s unreal.
I wish I was over it.
“Mehrak, I order you to assassinate me,” he groans. His cat meows from her place at the window and rolls over, fluffy white paws in the air. “Good job. Fantastic.” Kaveh rubs a hand over his face and checks the app, seeing that there food should be here in a few minutes.
Realistically… he’s going to need to move out at some point. Alhaitham hasn’t exactly said anything about it, but they’ve also never discussed the ongoing arrangement and what the future would look like. He’d been looking at apartments but the rent was still so stupidly high in the city. With mortgage rates the way they are, the cost of the market, his lack of retirement or tax free savings accounts…
No, just thinking about it makes his head spin and his stomach flip. Maybe he’ll just bunk down in an IKEA showroom and live off Snezhnayan meatballs and coconut water until someone kicks him out. It’s practically a flawless plan.
Kaveh continues his existential crisis until he gets the notice his driver is close and he rolls off the couch to go downstairs for their food, hauling the bags back upstairs after rating and tipping because he thinks he’ll forget in the elevator.
He’s not wrong. He would have forgotten, because when Kaveh pushes the door open, Alhaitham is shirtless in the kitchen filling his water bottle and Kaveh feels his blood move from his brain to his groin like an electric shock. He sets the bags on the counter, risking a glance while Alhaitham is focused on his task at hand.
He’s gorgeous. It’s so fucking unfair that it’s wasted on the most aggravating, neurotic, ego-driven man he knows. And he only really has like… three friends (Alhaitham included) so the sample size is admittedly a little small.
“Smells good.” Alhaitham takes a long drink and leans his hip on the counter. Normally he would’ve asked Alhaitham to set some plates, but the kitchen table is currently home to a stack of precariously placed books of various formats and sizes attempting some sort of abstract tower design that Kaveh can only describe as ‘experimental’ and ‘avant garde (derogatory)’. If Kaveh thought his former classmates were bad at collecting books, they have nothing on Alhaitham’s continued hoarding tendencies of academic texts and the disordered way he keeps them.
“I got spring rolls if you want some.” Kaveh’s eyes flick from Alhaitham’s waist to his face. Then back. Then once more to his face. “Are you going to put a shirt on? It’s weird to eat shirtless.” And distracting. Very distracting.
Alhaitham pauses. “It’s humid in here. Also, it’s my apartment.” He motions lazily around the kitchen. “You could also take off your shirt if it would make you feel more included in the conversation,” he adds dryly. “I seem to recall your crop top phase.”
“It wasn’t a phase, it was a charity thing!” Somewhere in his closet is a light green crop top that says ‘Akademiya’s Best Boys’ for a charity drive (a la ‘wet t-shirt car wash’) raising money for university related activities and student programs. The matching ‘free booty calls’ hot pants were a gag from Tighnari, but it raked in some rather impressive donations. “And I looked good in it, thank you very much.”
“If wet noodles are what you’re into,” he drawls, prodding at Kaveh’s boney hip. “Didn’t that get you your first boyfriend?”
“He wasn’t my boyfriend. I’ve never had one, and you know that,” Kaveh grumbles, slamming the takeout down with a bit more force than necessary and tearing at the plastic knot of the tied bag like a starved animal. “He was the guy who tried to sleep with me, who you called a slimy pig, said his academic integrity was as flimsy as a piece of wet paper, and he’d be lucky if he ever managed a career in a field that wasn’t run by monkeys. Direct quote, by the way.”
“Ah. That guy.”
Kaveh lifts his brows, unsure if he’s impressed or annoyed that Alhaitham doesn’t even look remotely ashamed. In anything, he looks smug.
“He was annoying. You could do better.” He glances back up at Kaveh and tilts his head, eyes flicking around his face and up into his hair while a small smile tugs at his lips. “There was glitter in your hair for weeks afterwards.”
Kaveh inhales, a little too sharp. Alhaitham’s mentioning the shower incident after the charity drive, and that’s… that’s not something they bring up anymore. “Yeah, well… I looked fabulous, leaving a trail of glitter and gold.”
Alhaitham’s small snort makes his chest relax. “Fabulously a problem getting it all over our floor.”
Kaveh redirects, motioning to Alhaitham’s head and trying to move the conversation away from his abysmal romantic life that’s been crashing and burning for a while now. “You shouldn’t wear those while your hair is still damp,” he says, “you’ve been told it’s bad for the materials.”
“I’m aware.” Alhaitham pulls the cartons of food out and checks that the order is correct, scanning the receipts and prodding into every box until he’s satisfied they match. Kaveh’s long since given up trying to tell him he doesn’t matter and the order is probably right — whenever he tries, Alhaitham just levels him with a withering stare and says ‘probably’ is not ‘certainly’. “I’m not worried. I’ve refitted the casings with something less likely to let any water in and sealed it accordingly.”
“How’s the feedback issue been?”
“Better since the recalibration, but I think the external headpiece is going to need replacement soon.” He taps the ear in which the device has been giving him issues. “I’ll see my specialist soon.”
“Did he get a laugh out of your reasoning for making them look like headphones?” Kaveh can’t help but smirk, cracking the tab of his ginger ale and picking up a spring roll. “I did check, you know. It doesn’t void the warranty as long as you never tamper with the receiver.”
“Just because I can hear with them doesn’t mean I want to hear people talking.” Alhaitham hands him a pair of chopsticks and leans back on the counter as he fishes around his box for a piece of shrimp. “Have you made a decision about the doctorate now that your work contract is ending?” It sounds casual enough, but Kaveh can feel the way Alhaitham’s eyes are focused on him, as if he could see the answers through his skin.
“Ah. The EngD.” Kaveh, who’s admittedly still not the best with chopsticks, fumbles for a bite while he thinks. “I’d like to, but I have some interviews lined up and I’d like to focus on that for now. There’s a few really good contracts, and if I can secure one, I might manage to finally make it out of debt.” He pauses again, shrugging. “I eventually need my own place, right?”
“I’m not kicking you out.” There’s a slight change to Alhaitham’s voice he can’t place. He’s tense, somehow. Like he’s anticipating something. “Stay if you need to. You’ll want a financial cushion anyway if you’re moving out.” He drops a piece of shrimp into Kaveh’s box — he always gives him some even if he doesn’t ask — and in turn nabs one of his baby corns. “Besides, Cyno won’t help you move anytime soon while he’s planning a wedding.”
“I still need to get a suit for that. Tighnari’s wearing a Natlanese floral shirt to get married in, why do I have to wear something so stuffy?”
“Because they asked you to.”
Kaveh snorts and moves to sit on the edge of the table without jostling the books. “If I ever get married I want it to be in a building I design. Everyone dressed to the nines! It will be the most beautiful wedding they’ve ever been to.”
“All three of us?”
Kaveh laughs and takes a long drink. “Your ideal marriage would be a courthouse in twenty minutes or less for maximum efficiency.” He waves a hand. “Though I seem to recall you saying marriage was a useless contract and you had no interest in relationships.”
Kaveh goes to take a bite, but he catches how Alhaitham’s brow furrows, confusion lining his features in a way that seems… wrong. He looks like he wants to speak. “Unless you’re telling me you’ve now decided to throw yourself out there and get into dating. We could set up a profile for you. What’s your type, apart from rectangular, four hundred pages, and preferably vintage?”
“Very funny, don’t quit your day job,” he grumbles into his noodles. “Why would I want to date a complete stranger? Someone who would touch my things and make unnecessary comments on my appearance?” He shakes his head, a few damp strands still clinging to his neck. “No. I’d only date someone I knew well enough to know they weren’t going to annoy me.”
Kaveh makes a noise and looks down at his food. “Doesn’t everyone annoy you?”
“No.”
The answer comes so fast that Kaveh almost misses it. He glances up and sucks in air, Alhaitham’s gaze steady and piercing when their eyes meet. It’s the sort of look he sees on a cat watching a room from the doorway.
There’s always been something distinctly cat-like about him, be that his fussy nature or the way he only seeks out company and affection on his terms. How he always finds a spot of sunlight to read his book in, or those rare nights Kaveh can push his hair back and he’ll lean into his touch… Oh no, he’s staring. Yet he can’t just look away when this feels so… personal.
“You make it sound like you’d marry me,” Kaveh manages to get out, a nervous laugh catching in his throat. “But let’s not kid ourselves, I’ve made a career out of annoying you. If I got paid for it I’d be living in a penthouse.” He clears his throat and shovels some more food into his mouth, but Alhaitham’s still staring at him so he starts to babble around a bite of noodles. “I mean if we could -”
“Don’t talk with your mouth full.” Alhaitham reaches out and takes his chin, dragging his thumb over the corner of his mouth. He pulls back to lick the sauce from the pad of his thumb. “It’s childish.” He pushes himself off the counter and makes his way down the hall, abrupt as always when he’s decided he’s done with a conversation. “I have some papers to read. Try not to fall asleep out here again.”
Kaveh’s brain is still full of static. He can feel Alhaitham’s thumb ghosting across his lips and he looks up at his roommate, suddenly unsure of how he’s supposed to react.
Alhaitham stops at the doorway and looks back over his shoulder, eyes flicking from Kaveh’s face to his socked toes and back to his face once more before his lips twitch in the ghost of a smirk. “Make sure you toss those containers, yeah?”
Kaveh sucks in a breath and sets down his can of soda with all the gentleness of a sledgehammer. He knows exactly what he’ll be doing in the shower later. He tries to snap back that he’s not a dog or a child, and yet the words catch in his throat and all he manages is a quiet ‘asshole’ before Alhaitham’s smirk turns away from him.
Is he… was Alhaitham just flirting with me?
…Shit, I need to call my mom.