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It’s because he just got off the phone with his mother before calling Alhaitham. Yes. That’s it. Kaveh’s weekly phone calls with his mom have always had a way of reviving his spirit like no other interaction with another human being could — leaving him a little bit lighter, a little bit happier, a little bit more… loving. Yup. That’s definitely it.
To even consider that there could be another reason— no. Fuck no. Eww no.
He takes a deep breath and tries to will his heartbeat to slow down and the blood that has rushed up to his cheeks to go back to wherever veins they normally belong. In thirty minutes, Alhaitham is going to be home, and Kaveh needs to be able to be his most composed self for the inevitable confrontation that will happen the second his roommate is through the door.
Actually— no, scratch that.
Why live through the confrontation at all when he could move out right the fuck now? If he starts packing this very second he can at least take a bag for some of his clothes and another for his most important tools. Right? Right. Kaveh nods to himself as he shoots up from the couch and goes to his room to start. Yes. This is an infinitely better plan. The rest of his things he can come back to after five years when Alhaitham could no longer hold this over him— wait. No, knowing that bastard, it would take at least ten years. He still brings up Kaveh’s embarrassing moments from their Akademiya days even now, after all. Or better yet! He can ask Dehya to get his things for him. She still owes him for setting up that date with Dunyarzad last month, doesn’t she? Yup. Yup, that’s what he’ll do. God, Kaveh’s brain is just bursting with brilliant ideas right now.
If this all works out, he never even has to see Alhaitham again.
“Bye, I love you.”
The last words he (absent-mindedly, distractedly, unconsciously, accidentally) (!!!) uttered to his roommate just a few minutes ago over the phone keep echoing in his head, so loud that he feels like they’re echoing around the house as well. Jesus. Of all the embarrassing words to mistakenly say. And to Alhaitham of all people. It’s because of my mother!!! Kaveh wants to scream out but no one’s around to hear his excuse— er, valid reason anyway. He glances at the clock on his bedside table in between throwing his favourite shirts into his overnight bag. Twenty-five minutes before his roommate’s home. Fuck.
He can never see Alhaitham again.
🌱
The way it happened was this:
The last reminder from his mother before their call ended was for Kaveh to not skip dinner, as he tends to forget whenever he’s at the tail-end of a huge project like right now, and that she will know if he does. Kaveh had never dared test his mother’s omniscience before and he wasn’t about to start now, so he just let out a low laugh, said I love you (because that’s what he always says to end calls with his mom! because apparently you can get so distracted and accidentally say the same words to the next person you talk to on the phone!) and hung up, letting out a long sigh as he let his head fall back against the couch.
This day was a bit more tiring than usual, and he didn’t have the energy to make something even as simple as fried eggs, so he decided he’d just order in. He was craving for some fast food anyway.
And because he was such a good roommate, he decided to call Alhaitham first and see if he wanted some as well. (Out of his own pocket, of course.) (Kaveh was definitely not just trying to save by splitting the delivery cost.)
Alhaitham had been staying late at the Akademiya these days, ever since he’s been appointed as the Acting Chancellor after a failed coup by the old Chancellor and majority of the colleges’ Deans. Long story. Wild, but honestly not the wildest thing that ever happened in his godforsaken alma mater. Why they picked Alhaitham — twenty-six years old, mere secretary to the Vice Chancellor — was beyond Kaveh. But then again, so many things about his roommate had always been beyond him, generally speaking.
“I’ll be home in around thirty minutes,” Alhaitham had said as soon as he picked up the phone, not bothering with so much as a hello as usual.
Kaveh rolled his eyes at the assumed question Alhaitham was answering. “I was just calling to see if you wanted some fried chicken for dinner.”
“I was planning to make some pasta when I get home, but if you’re so hungry that you can’t wait, then by all means.”
Alhaitham — Kaveh had learned over the years of living with him — would answer everything except the current question asked. “That’s not what I— ugh,” Kaveh cut himself off with a groan of frustration, then narrowed his eyes as he heard the sound echo over the phone. “What the—? Am I on speaker?”
“You interrupted my meeting with the registrar’s assistant,” Alhaitham replied, matter-of-fact. Then— “don’t worry, she doesn’t mind,” added for good measure as if that’s what Kaveh cared about.
“Oh my god,” Kaveh slapped a hand to his forehead. “Put me off speaker, Haitham!”
“But that would be rude.”
“And taking a call while in a meeting is not?”
Alhaitham let out a long-suffering sigh like this was all some great inconvenience for him. “But you’d complain endlessly if I ignored your call.”
“I—” Okay. True. “Whatever. Do you want chicken or not? It’s the weekend tomorrow, you can make pasta then.”
“Fine.”
Agreement from Alhaitham could never come simply, at least not when Kaveh was the one on the receiving end. It always sounded like a great compromise off his lips, leaving Kaveh feeling like he just unwittingly fought hard for something and was begrudgingly given a prize.
“Is there anything else? I would have been home in twenty minutes but since you’ve delayed the meeting, it’s back to thirty.”
“I— I’m not—” Kaveh sputtered out, feeling an unwelcome blush heat up his cheeks at the words. He knew Alhaitham was just stating a fact (that for the record absolutely no one asked about), but he made it sound like Kaveh was so desperate to have him home. God. The fact that he was on speaker and there was another person in the room with Alhaitham made it all the more embarrassing, too. He wanted to say something to save his reputation, but he had a tendency to dig a deeper hole from a simple dent on the earth that Alhaitham started so in the end he just settled with, “No, there’s nothing else. I’ll just— I’ll just order the usual for you.”
God, Mom, Kaveh thought. See what telling me not to skip dinner does to my stress levels?
“Great. Bye, then.”
“Bye, I love you.”
Kaveh pressed the ‘End call’ button, sighing a heavier sigh than the happy one he let out after the call with his mom. He closed his eyes for a moment, before remembering he was supposed to order their dinner and opening them again. It took him a whole ten minutes, going through the motions of opening the app and placing an order, before what just happened — what just slipped out of his dumbass mouth — finally occurred to him.
“Shit.”
No way. He did not say that, did he? Oh my god— He did not just say Bye, I love you to his roommate. “Fuck!”
(In Kaveh’s defense, it’s all because of his mother.)
🌱
“Bye, I love you.”
Huh.
Alhaitham blinks at his phone, propped up by a wooden stand on his desk, the screen still lit up by Kaveh’s contact photo. It’s a stolen shot — his eyes half-closed like crescent moons, his lips caught in an incredulous grin — from when he won Clue at the game night that Cyno and Tighnari roped them into last month. Alhaitham secretly snapped it with the intention of getting some blackmail material, but Kaveh still ended up looking unfairly good in it. He never got around to deleting the photo, and if anyone would see it on his phone, Alhaitham would just insist it’s an embarrassing shot still. Getting caught so carelessly happy like that? Couldn’t be him.
He hasn’t gotten the chance to process Kaveh’s words yet before his photo is slowly dimming on the phone screen, the call already ended from Kaveh’s end.
What was that?
Alhaitham’s thoughts are stopped short from venturing any further by a gasp to his right. He looks over at the registrar’s assistant (right, he’s supposed to be in a meeting right now, isn’t he?) whose attention isn’t on him but down on her phone and her fingers that are flying rapidly across the keyboard. Alhaitham’s vision isn’t sharp enough to make out what she’s typing from this angle, but he’s intuitive enough to get an idea based on the letters she’s pressing: the acting chancellor and that cute lecturer in the archi department???
“Sorry about that,” he says, clearing his throat and making the girl snap her head back up. “Shall we continue where we left off?”
The girl nods far too enthusiastically for someone trying not to look guilty for gossiping about her supposed boss, and immediately shuffles the papers in front of her to get back to the matter at hand. Alhaitham merely half-listens, nodding at opportune moments, but the other half of his brain is still stuck on the words that Kaveh said before he ended the call.
Bye, I love you.
That’s new.
Kaveh has been in Alhaitham’s life longer than most of the people currently around him, and he tends to talk a lot — all of which is just to say that Kaveh has said so many words to Alhaitham before, but never those four, or at least the three that really matter. And at least not in that exact combination.
Was he supposed to say I love you back?
There’s a strange feeling in Alhaitham’s chest, thinking about it, but in all the languages that he knows, he doesn’t know of a single word to call it just yet.
“…that’s the current status on that,” the registrar’s assistant is still talking. “Um, yeah. That’s all from me, sir. I’ll, uh— I’ll leave you to it now. I’m sure you can’t wait to go home.” She punctuates this with a soft, knowing smile. Alhaitham furrows his brows, something about the sight making his skin prickle. Like she knows something incorrect about him, or at least something that he doesn’t know about himself.
(Kaveh has a habit of that, too. Figuring things out about Alhaitham that he himself is just halfway through understanding on his own.)
He simply nods, not liking the feeling of being at a loss for words. The girl leaves his office, and Alhaitham takes a deep breath and a moment to himself, his heart strangely racing at the thought of going home.
🌱
Kaveh doesn’t end up moving out before Alhaitham can arrive home. Halfway through haphazardly throwing his clothes into his bag, he finally sees reason and recognises the ridiculousness of what he’s doing: this is no way to properly pack his expensive silk shirts.
And so he takes them out one by one, meticulously folding them before gently putting them back in. He’s just finishing folding his fourth shirt when he hears the unmistakable sound of Alhaitham’s key turning in the lock, and before he can even steel himself, there’s another sound of Alhaitham’s boots padding across the floor and then stopping just short of Kaveh’s open door.
Shit.
This is it. Kaveh’s done for. Maybe he really should have finished packing faster, because now that he can feel Alhaitham’s eyes boring into his back, he’s suddenly certain that he’s going to get kicked out tonight. That just seems like the thing that Alhaitham would do — kicking out a roommate for saying stupid stuff over the phone.
Kaveh inhales deeply, closing his eyes for a bit before slowly turning around to meet his fate.
He’s expecting for Alhaitham to start barking at him to get out the moment their eyes meet, before he can explain that really, it’s his mother’s fault and it’s not like he means anything by it anyway, but instead Kaveh is met with the sight of his roommate just… lingering outside his door. If he didn’t know any better, he’d say Alhaitham almost looks timid.
They stay like that for a few seconds — Kaveh rooted to his spot on the bed as if awaiting judgement, and Alhaitham looking at him like he wants to come inside but doesn’t quite know how to. They’re both not saying anything. A first for them, since they’ve always had something (usually scathing) to say whenever they’re so much in each other’s vicinity. Kaveh furrows his brows. It’s not like anything’s ever stopped Alhaitham from barging inside his space before — what’s with all this now? Again, if he didn’t know any better, Kaveh would think Alhaitham is waiting for something—
Ah.
It makes sense now. Alhaitham’s waiting for Kaveh’s apology, isn’t he? Pft. Like Kaveh would say sorry for accidentally saying I lo— I lov— ugh, he can’t even say it in his head. And honestly, thinking about it now, why would Alhaitham even be mad over that? Is it so bad — the thought of Kaveh saying those words to him? (In the unlikely event that he meant them.) (He did not mean them.) (God, it was an accident. Shut up.)
“What are you doing?”
Kaveh’s increasingly escalating train of thoughts gets cut off by Alhaitham’s voice. He focuses on him again, narrowing his eyes for the fury that he thinks is there but can’t get a glimpse of. Instead, Alhaitham just looks confused now, his gaze sliding from Kaveh and to the open bag beside him. “Are you going somewhere?”
Right. This is it. This is where Alhaitham kicks him out. Kaveh waits for the words to come, but Alhaitham doesn’t say anything more. After another second of awkward silence, Kaveh finally realises that Alhaitham is just honest to god asking a question.
“Yes.”
Uh.
Kaveh totally didn’t mean to say that.
Well— okay, he was going somewhere (moving out, in fact) but that’s all before Alhaitham got home and appeared in front of his door and messed up his brain waves. (Kaveh has a theory that his brain cells are allergic to Alhaitham’s sweat or something with how they stop working whenever he so much as catches a whiff of the guy.) (There are so many things wrong with that sentence but in Kaveh’s defense— Alhaitham Sweat Allergy!)
“Oh.” Alhaitham crosses his arms and leans against the doorway. “Another project? But you’re not supposed to finish your current one until next week, right?”
Alhaitham knows Kaveh’s schedule down to the T and he doesn’t let a single conversation go without making Kaveh aware of it, like Kaveh’s some hapless kid whose affairs need to be managed by his mom.
This should be the perfect opportunity to pretend that he heard Alhaitham’s question wrong the first time and clarify that no, he’s actually not going somewhere and if he can help it he’d like to not go anywhere else in the foreseeable future because he actually doesn’t know of another place that he can move into at such short notice (and er, such short funds) but, well — digging a deeper hole from a simple dent in the earth and all that.
“I’m staying with a friend for a few days,” he finds himself saying.
Alhaitham’s look of surprise is gone as quickly as it came, and Kaveh would have missed it if he wasn’t looking so intently. (For signs that he’s going to get kicked out, of course. He hasn’t let his guard down just yet.) Alhaitham doesn’t say anything for a moment, and then he nods to himself, as if he just had a gripping conversation with himself in those few quiet seconds and just came to an agreement.
“I see,” he says. For a moment he looks like he wants to say something more about the matter, but another few seconds pass and all he does is quirk his head towards the direction of the kitchen. “The food’s here. I ran into the delivery guy at the door just as he’s about to leave, said he’s been waiting for a while now but you’re not responding.”
Kaveh blinks. “Oh. Fuck.” He scrambles towards his phone, before realising that there really is no use considering that Alhaitham already got the food. The in-app messaging window with the delivery guy has expired now since the delivery is considered complete, and Kaveh drops back down to his bed dejectedly, pouting at having lost the chance to properly apologise.
“Obviously, I paid for everything,” Alhaitham says, already moving away from the door and walking towards the kitchen. “I knew you would pull this trick when you asked to share the order. Make sure to pay me your half by tomorrow, I did not budget for treating you to a free dinner this week.”
Kaveh looks away from his phone to glare at his roommate’s retreating back. There is no real spite in it, though. Instead, Kaveh weirdly feels… relieved. At not having gotten kicked out, yes, but also — there was something there, in the few weird minutes that Alhaitham was standing by his door. It felt like some fog had descended over them both, making Alhaitham act differently — or maybe making Kaveh see things in his expressions that weren’t really there. Whatever it was, Kaveh exhales a relieved sigh as he stands up to go to the kitchen. Alhaitham hounding him about paying him back for something or other that Kaveh didn’t ask of him in the first place — this is familiar territory.
It takes him all throughout dinner and washing dishes together with Alhaitham, then finally muttering a good night and retreating back to his room, before he remembers his slip up earlier in the night and realises that through it all — Alhaitham has never said a thing about Kaveh’s accidental I love you.
Maybe he hadn’t heard it, after all. And maybe Kaveh got his shirts out from their hangers all for nothing. Called Tighnari and begged him for a surprise three-day sleepover to keep up the lie he told Alhaitham earlier all for nothing, too.
Kaveh did end the call a little quickly, so really — maybe he just freaked out for nothing. If Alhaitham heard it, he’s not the kind of person to just not say anything about it. Yeah. That’s most probably the case.
He goes to sleep feeling relieved, and when he wakes up the next morning, he knows he dreamt of something but he can’t remember anything about the dream.
All he knows is that it left him feeling disappointed.
🌱
Alhaitham still didn’t say anything about it the next morning, nor three days later when Kaveh finally got kicked out by Cyno for intruding on his precious time with Tighnari came home.
If Alhaitham heard Kaveh on the phone with various people, heard him pointedly say I love you to each one of them before ending the call (just to be safe, just to show that it’s just one of his new quirks, ending calls with I love you with everyone including the poor Internet customer service representative like the quirky guy that he is), Alhaitham didn’t show any signs that he noticed, too.
And just like that, days pass uneventfully with the two of them co-existing in the house they share as peacefully as they could. (Which is to say, not very peaceful if you ask their neighbours.)
Some days, Kaveh wonders what would have happened if he hadn’t ended the call right away — if he’d gotten an answer, not that he wants any.
Does he?
It doesn’t matter.
And not like he wants it to matter, anyway.
…Does he?
🌱
It’s hard not to feel like he’s constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop, but Kaveh realises it’s what he’s been doing all this time until this morning, when he decides that he and Alhaitham are finally even — on a score he’s not even aware he’s been keeping.
He told himself all sorts of lies to get over the matter — that Alhaitham didn’t really hear the words (the most likely), that Kaveh actually never said the words in the first place (less likely), or even that maybe Alhaitham is more mature than he thought and knew that Kaveh said it by accident and didn’t mean it, decided to be the bigger person and decided to not mention it to save Kaveh the embarrassment (close to impossible).
It’s exactly twenty-three days since it happened, not that Kaveh has been keeping count. He’s just. Really good at Math. Anyway.
He finally finished his project the other day after some unexpected delays, and last night was the first time in a long while that he had some good night’s sleep, so he woke up with the sunrise this morning and decided to seize the day and get out of bed early to cook some breakfast.
Alhaitham’s so lucky to have him as a roommate really, because here Kaveh is cracking two eggs and brewing coffee for two when he could have just as easily made breakfast for one. (Okay, it’s because Alhaitham bought all the groceries and technically Kaveh is just “borrowing” the eggs.)
He’s playing his favourite playlist on speakers (Alhaitham’s premium Spotify account, of course) and humming to himself as he sways to the beat in front of the stove so he doesn’t hear his roommate’s sleepy footsteps before they’re right behind him.
“Hey, you’re awa—” he starts to say without turning around, but the word gets stuck in his throat when he feels a sudden warmth against his back, and a pair of arms gently circling around his waist.
Kaveh freezes — the only parts of him moving are his eyes blinking rapidly as if trying to help his brain process what the fuck is happening. He wants to turn around, but there’s something about the moment that’s so breakable, and it’s with a sinking feeling that he realises he doesn’t want to be the one to break it. Three seconds that feel like three hours pass with him just standing rooted to the floor, before he feels Alhaitham (fuck, this is Alhaitham, right? it smells like him and feels like him, but his brain refuses to compute the fact) moving his head, resting his chin on Kaveh’s shoulder. Kaveh doesn’t dare breathe as Alhaitham’s nose touches his nape, his lips humming as he. As he breathes in Kaveh’s hair. What the fuck.
“Uh.”
“Morning,” Alhaitham says so softly that Kaveh doubts he hears the word so much as feels the vibration of it from Alhaitham’s chest to his back.
“M-morning?” Kaveh manages to get out amidst the tight feeling in his chest. Something in his voice seems to wake Alhaitham — at least, that’s what Kaveh tells himself because believing that Alhaitham is just sleepwalking before all this is the only thing his brain can come up with that makes a semblance of sense. Alhaitham’s hands tighten around him for a moment before stilling completely, and Kaveh feels Alhaitham’s breath hitch as if it’s his own lungs that stuttered.
He completely expects Alhaitham to jump as if he’s been burned at the realisation that he’s hugging Kaveh, but instead he stays like that for a little while although with his head no longer buried in Kaveh’s hair. Kaveh finally dares turn around, hoping that the heat he’s feeling in his face is just a result of standing in front of the stove and not an indication of any blush rising to his cheeks. His body has no business reacting like this to Alhaitham’s touch, what the fuck.
But Alhaitham doesn’t jump away even as Kaveh faces him, either. Instead, he slowly untangles his arms and steps back for barely a ruler’s distance, meeting Kaveh’s confused gaze with a steady one of his own — no inidication whatsoever that what he’d just done is so completely out of this world that Kaveh is starting to consider he jumped to some alternate universe where— where— No. He doesn’t want to think about it.
Kaveh just stares, hoping Alhaitham would say something, hoping Alhaitham would put his arms around him again because that was fucking confusing for his brain but his heart is a little clearer in how it wants to feel Alhaitham’s warmth again. But Alhaitham doesn’t do either of those things. Instead he just turns to the coffee maker and pours himself a cup, taking a generous sip and taking his time — completely indifferent to how he just tilted Kaveh’s world on its axis.
“Ahh, that’s good,” Alhaitham almost moans, turning to Kaveh with a slight smile. “Thanks for making breakfast.”
He steps forward again, and for a moment Kaveh is scared that his roommate will do something truly unhinged this time, like. Like kiss him, or something. But Alhaitham just walks around him and towards the stove to turn it off. “—even though the eggs are burnt,” Alhaitham says with an arrogant smirk.
Kaveh’s world tilts again, and when he blinks away his confusion, he’s afraid it would never be quite right after this time.
🌱
They never talk about that, either. Alhaitham doesn’t say anything about it and Kaveh doesn’t even know if there is something to say.
He figures they’re even now — that’s the key takeaway from the whole thing at least. He can stop dreading the day Alhaitham will taunt him about saying I love you by mistake over the phone when he has Alhaitham— what? Accidentally? Absent-mindedly? Sleepwalking…ly? hugging him from the back and sniffing his goddamn hair like they’re. Not just roommates? Whatever it is and however Kaveh is supposed to call it, it’s an ace up his sleeve.
Right? Right.
🌱
Alhaitham thinks he knows what to call it now — this thing in his chest, but he of all people knows full well that knowing a word is not the same as knowing how to say it. So instead he waits for Kaveh to figure it out. He’s good at that, anyway. Figuring things out about Alhaitham, even ones that he himself doesn’t know just yet.
He’s never had a real relationship, but he knows enough about the world to at least determine that this is not how most relationships go. Not that he minds in the slightest. The registrar’s assistant said it best herself, in another meeting when she dared to ask about Kaveh. Nilou, her name was. Alhaitham makes it a habit to learn people’s names only when he has to talk to them more than once. Alhaitham knew it was purely for gossip material, and god knows the Akademiya grapevine is already obsessed with him enough as it was, but he’s never one to not indulge himself when he wants to talk about something either.
“I didn’t know that you and Mr. Kaveh were together,” Nilou said.
“I didn’t know for a while, too,” Alhaitham replied, more to himself than anything.
“Huh?”
“Nothing.” He shook his head and looked straight at her. “Is it so surprising to find out, though?”
“It’s not!” Nilou immediately put both hands in front of her chest, as if to physically ward off any misunderstandings. “It’s just— well, I guess surprising is a word for it, sir, but not in a bad way. Most people just know of you two for your, er, bickering whenever Mr. Kaveh is at the Akademiya. It’s just— I guess the last thing I would expect is for something going on between you two but now that I know there is, it all makes some sense.”
Alhaitham didn’t say anything for a moment, which Nilou seemed to interpret in a negative way as she immediately started apologising. “I didn’t mean to intrude so much on your personal life, I just found it amusing— I mean. Oh my god, I didn’t mean that in a bad way, either. I just meant—”
“No, I know what you meant,” Alhaitham decided to spare the poor girl. And it was true, anyway. He knew what she meant.
Just like how he knows what to call it now.
🌱
He kisses Kaveh on the cheek the next day when he leaves for work.
And the day after that, and the day after that.
Kaveh stares at him open-mouthed the first time, but by the second and third he just hums and doesn’t even look up from whatever sketch he’s currently working on.
When Alhaitham forgets his lunch one day and Kaveh brings it to his office in the Akademiya, Alhaitham kisses him before he leaves, too. And later that night, when he comes home later than usual and finds Kaveh curled up on the couch with a cold cup of tea in the table in front of him, and Alhaitham gently wakes him up to make him go to bed and kisses him good night — Kaveh barely blinks and wraps his arms loosely around Alhaitham before sleepily walking to his room.
They never talk about it, but just like how things tend to fall into place around the two of them, this weird thing ends up making some sense in the end.
🌱
It’s by the thirty-eighth day — not that Kaveh’s counting — that it finally occurrs to him to ask. Alhaitham is shrugging on his coat and walking over to him on the couch as usual, bending to give him a kiss goodbye when Kaveh turns his head the last second so Alhaitham’s lips land on his own instead.
Kaveh reaches up a hand to cup Alhaitham’s cheek and keep him in place before he can stand up straight. Then he kisses him again, a little deeper this time. His brain’s still struggling to compute, but his heart has always been more honest right from the start and all it wants is this. So leans up to kiss Alhaitham once more — and a second, and a third time.
“Hey,” he whispers against Alhaitham’s lips when they pull away for air. “What are we, Haitham?”
Alhaitham smiles and slowly stands up, leaving a gentle caressing thumb on Kaveh’s cheek as he does so. “Bye,” is all he says. “I love you, too.”
Alhaitham — Kaveh had learned over the years of loving him — would answer everything except the current question asked.