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It’s 3 a.m., and Kaveh can’t sleep.
Not that Kaveh is trying particularly hard to sleep. Trying comes with disappointment, and he can just not, so.
He isn’t quite as drunk as he wishes he was. Alhaitham is sleeping, and so the house is absolutely peaceful. There’s no one around to bother him and ruin his night.
This is definitely as enjoyable as Kaveh pretends it is, and the silence isn’t making him grow maudlin.
Surely there’s more alcohol in the house somewhere.
Kaveh isn’t as drunk as he wishes he was, but he’s definitely more drunk than he seemed when he was only sitting down. He’s been working in his sketchbook, doodling designs for a treehouse for Collei.
It could be for Collei. The design had started out simple and practical but had gradually grown more whimsical, a little house developing turrets that could be suspended with anemo, window boxes for Tighnari’s herbs, and a spiral staircase that turned into a beautiful twirling slide with the touch of a button.
It was completely impractical, of course. The materials would be very expensive, but Kaveh wanted a project, and it doesn’t hurt to dream. Needed one, really, and this was soothing to him, making adjustments and scratching out structural lines, adding eaves and trellises, finials on top of elegant ionic posts. The gentle blur of wine puts to rest any nagging thoughts of impracticality, and Kaveh’s imagination soars while his hand flies across the page, inspired and completely unencumbered for a few happy hours that he doesn’t even feel—until he realizes that the wine goblet by his elbow is tragically empty.
He doesn’t think about the pressing projects that still need his attention. That can wait until after he’s designed an absolute dream house of a children’s fort. He’s trying to work out a problem with the slide. The stair panels won’t integrate perfectly unless he coats them with something. If they’re ridged, someone is going to get hurt. He mutters to himself as he walks down the hallway, stumbling now and then in the dark.
He’s completely out of wine, but he’s sure that Alhaitham has some. Kaveh goes into his cupboard, rummaging around in the dark kitchen.
Something falls to the ground, making a loud metallic bang that rings through the high-ceilinged kitchen.
“Where is it—”
Kaveh stands on his toes, shoving aside the dry bread that Alhaitham likes to snack on, even though he pretends he doesn’t while he gets on Kaveh’s case for eating in parts of the house that are not the dining room, the hypocrite. It’s not like Kaveh doesn’t know it’s in here. It’s not like Kaveh doesn’t literally buy their groceries, ergo restock the crackers that he never sees Alhaitham eat but that nevertheless always disappear.
He shoves aside the backup spices that live in this cupboard, neatly sealed in bags and waiting to be used as refills because Kaveh doesn’t have enough space to put them anywhere else in the kitchen.
“If I just coat the whole thing in slime residue and then sand and bake it— Or maybe a coating of scarab resin?” Kaveh mutters to himself, a bizarre pastiche of running architectural dialogue and commentary on the state of Alhaitham’s housekeeping skills.
He tosses something else out of the cupboard.
“Has that been in here since we graduated? Disgusting.”
Kaveh does finally find a very old, very dusty bottle of red wine pushed to the back of the shelf. It’s got an equally dusty silver bow wrapped around it and looks like it was a gift.
Kaveh pulls it out with a triumphant sound, hugging it to his chest, wholly pleased with himself and fully content with his wine.
He forgets the copper lid that had fallen off the shelf in all his rummaging, takes a step back and promptly trips on it, finding himself treated to the stomach-lurching experience of falling backwards and too surprised to break his own fall.
“Fuck!”
The fated collision with the ground never comes. Alhaitham catches him, grabbing his falling roommate under the arms with a grunt.
“Oh,” Kaveh says. “Alhaitham. I didn’t hear you come in.”
He’s remarkably blase for someone who just got caught drunkenly stumbling around in the middle of the night. He’s clutching the bottle of wine to his chest like it’s a child, and when he sees Alhaitham’s gaze light on it, he clutches it tighter, like Alhaitham might try to take it from him.
“You were making a lot of noise. It’s hard to sleep when someone is throwing things in the kitchen.” He looks pointedly at the wine. “That’s mine.”
“Left to your own devices, you would let it sit until the next major deity took power. I’m liberating it. Saving it from you, that’s no way to treat a good bottle of wine. And for your information, I didn’t throw anything.”
Kaveh is saying so many words for this time of night. Alhaitham really did just wake up, and he doesn’t have the patience for Kaveh being Kaveh right now.
“Go to bed,” Alhaitham says as he sets Kaveh upright.
There’s a delay between Alhaitham putting Kaveh back on his feet and Alhaitham actually letting Kaveh go. Maybe it’s because he’s tired.
Maybe Kaveh is drunk, and that’s why it feels so good to have Alhaitham’s arms wrapped around him. He’s in a tight-fitted black tank that he wore to sleep. Without the gauntlets and cape, there is more of Alhaitham’s skin pressing against Kaveh’s body than is usual. Alhaitham’s body feels hot, even through the light fabric of Kaveh’s clothes.
He’s warm from being wrapped in blankets during a Sumeru spring, and he smells so strongly of himself. Like something clean and grassy, with the lightest hint of sweat. The smell is masculine, and with the feeling of strong arms wrapped around him and enough Shiraz in his veins, is it any real wonder that a few of Kaveh’s signals get crossed?
His heart beats a little faster, and his pulse throbs. When Alhaitham pulls away, there’s a fleeting sense of loss, and Kaveh’s body sways toward him. Alhaitham frowns, thinking him unsteady on his feet.
“Have a drink with me?” Kaveh says suddenly.
“It’s the middle of the night. I was sleeping,” Alhaitham emphasizes.
“But you’re awake now,” Kaveh points out. “Plus, it’s your wine.”
Alhaitham doesn’t point out that, in that case, the best thing for Kaveh to do is to put the wine back where he found it in Alhaitham’s things. It’s late. He’s tired. He doesn’t have the energy to verbally spar with Kaveh right now, nor the desire.
He has the sudden fleeting urge to scruff Kaveh around the neck like a mother lion with her cubs. He wants to push Kaveh down and make him go to sleep and stop spilling his nervous energy all over everything.
“One drink,” Alhaitham relents. He crosses his arms, and Kaveh stares. “Then you go to sleep.”
“Fine,” Kaveh says after a small pause, thinking that he can probably get Alhaitham to have more than one drink, and also that he can go back to his drawing once Alhaitham taps out and goes back to bed.
Despite his complaints about it being the middle of the night and him being tired, Alhaitham takes the bottle from Kaveh’s hands. He opens it on the counter and pours two perfectly neat, standard servings into a pair of wine cups. He stands in the kitchen, barefoot, and takes a sip.
It is good wine, and the quality hasn’t suffered much for the indignity of the way he’s stored it. A small ghost of a smile graces his lips. Kaveh was wrong.
“You can’t just drink it in the kitchen,” Kaveh complains.
“Why not? You didn’t specify where you wanted me to drink it, just that I should drink with you.” He wraps a hand around Kaveh’s cup—still in Kaveh’s hand—and brings it to Kaveh’s mouth, tilting it back so he has no choice but to drink or let the wine spill all over him. He tilts it a little high, and Kaveh ends up gulping more of the wine than he should. A trickle of it still escapes, dripping in a single line down the corner of Kaveh’s mouth to his chin.
“There,” Alhaitham says a little smugly. “I’m drinking with you.”
Kaveh gasps for air when Alhaitham stops holding the cup to his mouth. His eyes are a little watery, and his lips are stained purple as he licks them and glares at Alhaitham.
He drags his thumb up the spill of wine at the corner of his lips and sucks it into his mouth. “Why are you always so bossy?” he mutters.
Alhaitham shrugs.
Kaveh had drained most of his glass that way, so he pours himself a little more. Color is smudged high on his cheeks like two bright points of crimson, and Alhaitham sips from his own cup and doesn’t say anything about it.
“It’s uncomfortable here,” Kaveh says, clearing his throat. “I want to go lie down.”
His feet are bare, and Alhaitham notices them now. His toes are long and fine-boned. They’re strangely graceful as he scratches absently at the top of one foot with the other. The tiles in their home are heated, so it’s not like the cold is radiating upward.
Kaveh looks plaintive and soft. His soft sleeping pants drape loosely around his thin hips, revealing a cut of slim white ankle.
There are daybeds in the living room. Perfectly fine places to lie down. Alhaitham doesn’t lead Kaveh into the living room but into his bedroom instead. If Kaveh thinks this is strange, he doesn’t mention it.
They both still have their wine glasses in hand, and Alhaitham is hoping nothing ends up spilled in his bed.
Kaveh is a slightly muted version of himself. This isn’t the first time he’s been in Alhaitham’s bedroom, but it is the first time he’d been invited since their days in the Akademiya dorms.
Alhaitham’s room isn’t especially distinctive or unusual. It’s slightly bigger than Kaveh’s (unfair; annoying). It’s clean and well-swept with a large rug under the bed and table. There’s a place to sit at the desk, and the decorations are uninspired but not eye-searing. Alhaitham doesn’t live like a monk. It’s a passable, habitable living space.
Kaveh goes to sit heavily in Alhaitham’s chair without saying please or thank you, the wine sloshing precariously in his goblet but not spilling onto the carpet. As soon as he sits, he starts to droop, head falling to hand with tendrils of blond hair sweeping into his eyes.
Alhaitham looks at him strangely once he sits down, and the look, seven parts habitual disdain and three parts honest confusion, feels like it harpoons Kaveh straight through the middle. Maybe he’s too drunk; it makes him want to squirm. It feels hard to breathe, and his chest feels like it’s pressing in.
“I thought you said you wanted to lie down,” Alhaitham says. He sounds grumpy and tired and a little bit of something else that Kaveh can’t put his finger on.
“O-oh. Right. Yes.”
Kaveh coughs. Alhaitham can’t possibly mean—
But he raises his eyebrows, pointedly waiting. “How drunk are you? Are you waiting for a signed invitation?”
Kaveh grinds his teeth in irritation, crossing the room and tossing himself down onto Alhaitham’s bed with an unsubtle oof. “Better?”
Alhaitham doesn’t point out that Kaveh is the one who wanted to lie down, not him.
Kaveh turns onto his side after instinctually burrowing into Alhaitham’s blankets. Curled up like this, he looks like a small desert fox, everything about him both lean and lithe with sleepy, slivered eyes that tilt up at the corners. His cheeks are still flushed with a blush that travels all the way down his chest and beneath the collar of his shirt. His hands clutch in Alhaitham’s sheets like a kitten kneading for milk, and those hazy eyes are turned up toward Alhaitham.
“Bed’s comfortable,” Kaveh says, nuzzling his face into Alhaitham’s sheets. The words come out muffled. “Mine isn’t this comfortable.”
Alhaitham’s mouth goes dry. He has to clear his throat twice in order to actually speak, and then he gives up on the words before they actually make it out of his mouth. He thinks he’s being terribly obvious, but Kaveh is, for better or worse, very drunk.
Alhaitham doesn’t feel as bad as he should for pouring quite a lot of wine into him when he was already inebriated. It’s not like he doesn’t know Kaveh—Kaveh who likes to drown his sorrows. Alhaitham had only gotten there first, this time. It’s not like Kaveh wouldn’t have gotten there eventually, sooner or later, probably sitting alone in his room working on projects that would bring him, possibly, some acclaim but nothing to actually eat.
Something about the sight of Kaveh writhing around in his bed, pressing his face into Alhaitham’s sheets and breathing them in, is doing thing to him. He reaches out like a man possessed and puts his hand on the curl of Kaveh’s back. Kaveh doesn’t try to stop him as Alhaitham strokes him from the middle of his back down to his tailbone. His hand dips dangerously low, and all Kaveh does is shiver and make a small, plaintive sound.
Alhaitham’s face starts burning immediately, although not from embarrassment. He wants to hear Kaveh make that noise again. He does it again like a trial of a new experiment, stroking Kaveh’s back down past the hem of his waistband. Kaveh squirms into the bed, opening his mouth to pant against the bedsheets with his eyes squeezed shut. Alhaitham does it a few more times before pushing up the back of Kaveh’s shirt and touching him on his bare back.
Kaveh moans. His hips nudge forward as he pushes into Alhaitham’s touch. His eyes stay shut tight, and Alhaitham wonders, with a twist of bitterness, if he remembers whose bed he’s lying in.
“What are you doing?” Alhaitham asks, speaking aloud to make sure he remembers it.
Kaveh freezes, and Alhaitham’s fingers curl against his back, twitching against his waistband.
“You’re the one touching me,” Kaveh says in a low voice. He rolls over onto his back to look at Alhaitham through squinted eyes. “You’re the one who pushed me into your bed. What, did you want something?”
“From you?”
“Do you see anyone else here?”
Alhaitham kind of regrets opening his mouth. This is certainly a lot less pleasant than what they were just doing.
Kaveh makes an impatient sound and squirms his way closer. “Don’t be weird about it, and don’t tell me you’re going to chicken out now. If you want to touch me, then touch me.”
Kaveh’s squirming has made his shirt ride up, and now Alhaitham can see the taut, flat expanse of his belly before it curves into one sharp hip bone that Alhaitham wants to bite.
He sighs internally and tugs down the hem of Kaveh’s shirt to cover him up again. “How much have you had to drink?”
Of course, this somehow has the opposite effect and makes Kaveh very, very angry for some reason. All of his harmless, fuzzy sleepiness evaporates in an instant, and he sits up, as mad as a spitting cat.
“Not enough to put up with you. God. I’m not an invalid. You’re not about to take advantage of me,” Kaveh snaps.
And this is, somehow, exactly the problem every time. Kaveh has a startlingly accurate, unerring instinct to misinterpret every single one of Alhaitham’s good intentions and then to spit them back in his face.
Kaveh’s going to get up from his bed feeling embarrassed, and then he’s going to walk out of Alhaitham’s bedroom, and depending on whether or not he can get over the humiliation that he’s made up in his own oversensitive mind, he might give Alhaitham the cold shoulder for the next few days or he might not talk to him for another eight years.
Alhaitham hasn’t had enough wine to justify the way he grabs Kaveh by the wrist.
“Watch it!” Kaveh snaps.
He tries to tug his wrist back, but Alhaitham doesn’t let go. Kaveh’s face is already red because he’s drunk and embarrassed, and now it goes even redder. Alhaitham pulls, and Kaveh overbalances toward him.
He’s not very heavy at all when Alhaitham, dubiously intentionally, pulls Kaveh straight into his lap, which he crashes into.
“Ow. Fuck. What are you doing?”
Kaveh pulls at his wrist again, and this time, Alhaitham lets it go. Kaveh is half-sprawled over his lap, rubbing at his wrist, and muttering angrily as he starts to push himself up.
“You’re drunk,” Alhaitham says.
“Thank you, Haravatat genius. Brilliant deduction.”
If there was going to be more of that, Alhaitham never hears it because he covers Kaveh’s mouth with his own.
“Mmph!”
Kaveh is startled enough by the kiss to bite Alhaitham by accident, which stings, but not badly enough to convince him to stop. He puts his hand on Kaveh’s chin, tilting his head to find a better angle. He isn’t delicate or careful at all, fully licking into Kaveh’s mouth in smooth, even strokes. The way Alhaitham kisses him is overwhelming. It makes Kaveh feel dizzy, even as he opens his mouth wide for Alhaitham’s attention.
It feels like swallowing down too much wine in the kitchen, like something golden and sticky being poured into his throat. His eyelashes flutter, and he lets Alhaitham fuck his mouth with his tongue, making small noises as he kisses Alhaitham back.
The feeling of Kaveh going limp and docile in his arms is hot enough to choke and burn him. It’s like an arcane switch flipping, like a flaw in the universe. One minute Kaveh was bickering with him like usual, the next he was clutching at Alhaitham’s arms, pushing himself closer and making sinful sounds as he sucks on Alhaitham’s tongue.
When Alhaitham has to pull away because he’s legitimately getting dizzy, a trail of dazzling, clear saliva connects their mouths. It breaks, and then Kaveh is dabbing at his lower lip with his tongue like he’s chasing the taste. He’s breathing hard and tipped over Alhaitham’s lap, grabbing at him while he looks up with a dazed and flushed face.
Alhaitham has a sudden cavalcade of exceedingly base desires. He wants to grab Kaveh by the face and see him make that look some more. Kaveh looks like he might cry, and Alhaitham wants to bully him until he does.
He realizes belatedly that he himself is breathing very hard.
Kaveh slinks forward, rearranging himself, depositing himself so that he’s properly sitting in Alhaitham’s lap, and although he couldn’t possibly have been unaware that Alhaitham was aroused by this, his eyes still fly open when he feels the unmistakable evidence below him. He doesn’t grind against Alhaitham, but he doesn’t spare his weight, either.
Kaveh is a slim man, but he’s still a grown adult, and the solid, warm bulk of his body putting pressure on Alhaitham’s stiff cock makes Alhaitham grunt. His hands fly to Kaveh’s hips and squeeze.
“What do you want from me?” Alhaitham asks.
“Shut up.” Kaveh rocks his hips down against Alhaitham’s, ducking his head to kiss Alhaitham’s mouth again. “Shut up, shut up, shut up.”
Kaveh clearly doesn’t want him to speak, but that apparently doesn’t mean that he has no interest in Alhaitham’s mouth. He seems keenly interested, especially in biting at it until it turns red.
This is as clear an answer as any. That Kaveh wants this now in no way means that he won’t regret and blame Alhaitham for it later. Still, Alhaitham shoves his hand down the back of Kaveh’s pants and is rewarded with a suck of air against his lips and a low, resonant moan as Kaveh starts to squirm back against his fingers with more urgency.
Alhaitham traces the seam of his ass, working in that tight, confined space, and Kaveh keens like he loves it.
It’s wonderful and terrible. It makes Alhaitham bite Kaveh back, something that startles Kaveh so much that he jerks in Alhaitham’s lap. It goads Alhaitham on to push his hand deeper, using the pad of one finger to tap and rub at the pucker of Kaveh’s hole. Kaveh moans and thrashes, biting at Alhaitham’s lips with increased urgency as Alhaitham starts working his finger inside, pushing the tip in just a little. It’s dry and full of friction, and Kaveh still works his ass back against Alhaitham, crying out and looking for more.
It’s clear, at this point, that Alhaitham is going to fuck him. The inevitability makes it hotter, like careening toward an incontrovertible end point. This is better than a night spent poring over his sketchbook, or certainly more interesting. Kaveh hates him, he really does. He wants to actually hurt Alhaitham as he feels the tip of one of his long, well-manicured fingers pushing insistently inside him. It hurts so good.
Don’t hurt yourself, he can feel Alhaitham saying in the way he tries to draw back.
Fuck you, Kaveh responds with the way he pushes harder, working his ass back specifically to make Alhaitham fuck him on his fingers.
It hurts. Kaveh moans about it. Neither of them will stop aggressively making out for long enough to actually say any of these words out loud.
It’s a short trip to half of their clothes ripped off. They’re in too much of a hurry to bother getting undressed all the way. Pants are opened (Alhaitham) or yanked off (Kaveh). Kaveh jerks Alhaitham’s shirt over his head like he fucking hates it. He bites at the side of Alhaitham’s neck like a hungry animal, digging his fingers into the warm, smooth planes of Alhaitham’s chest. His muscles, never hidden especially well by his clothes, are fucking unfair with his clothes off.
Kaveh groans, giving in to the urge to touch him more.
Alhaitham pushes up the back of Kaveh’s loose shirt and presses his mouth into his skin. He mouths over a shoulder blade, moving down to kiss the center of Kaveh’s back. The muscles in Kaveh’s back contract in sequence, pressing another gasp out of Kaveh’s mouth. Alhaitham tastes their movement, pressing open-mouthed kisses over the rungs in Kaveh’s spine.
“Don’t—” Kaveh shudders. “Don’t do that.”
Alhaitham pauses, his mouth poised above the divot beneath Kaveh’s tailbone, breath misting moist across his skin and making him shudder again, waiting for the rationale.
“Tickles.”
“Mm.”
Alhaitham considers the complaint and then discards it in favor of licking a little lower, down into the dark seam between Kaveh’s legs.
“Gah—!”
The noise Kaveh makes then is inhuman, complete with a perfectly arched back, dramatically bowed. Alhaitham spreads him open with his hands without warning or hesitation, and without any of the hesitancy that normal people bring to these kinds of acts, he spreads the flat of his tongue over Kaveh’s hole and licks him from the bottom up.
Kaveh collapses forward against the bed, face flat against Alhaitham’s sheets.
“Oh, fuck. Fuck. What’re you doing, fuck.”
He moans like he’s dying, and Alhaitham keeps steadily licking him. This is probably the most satisfied Alhaitham has felt in Kaveh’s presence in years. Kaveh isn’t quiet. He’s actually very loud in bed, but the things Alhaitham are doing to him are stealing his coherency all the same. Alhaitham hoists him up by the hips, pulling Kaveh’s ass closer to his mouth while Kaveh claws at the sheets and squawks.
It’s a rhetorical questions that Alhaitham doesn’t feel the need to answer. It’s obvious what he’s doing, and Kaveh doesn’t seem to mind it because besides sobbing into Alhaitham’s sheets, he’s not making any move to push Alhaitham away or to make him stop.
Kaveh’s dick is bobbing between his legs, leaking precum at the tip while Alhaitham eats him out. It feels devastatingly good. So good that Kaveh isn’t sure he still has full control over his body and face. Alhaitham has him spread open just a bit too far, pulling at his cheeks in a way that stretches his hole until it stings. He licks against the outside, teasing the furl of Kaveh’s hole until he melts like butter in his hand.
Kaveh is drooling into the sheets, and he slaps a hand over his own mouth in the hopes that he’ll stop embarrassing himself. Alhaitham points his tongue and starts to slide it into the wet, lax bud of Kaveh’s hole, and that’s it—he’s done for, he’s a fucking goner.
He doesn’t come, but he sure does black the fuck out, or at least that’s what it’ll feel like later. He starts babbling for Alhaitham to fuck him, begging and twisting and needing for Alhaitham to give him more while also needing him to definitely not stop what he’s doing, for the love of god.
Somehow, they split the difference. Alhaitham eats him out until Kaveh’s spine has turned to jelly. Lube gets involved at some point, and then Alhaitham is sliding his very big dick into Kaveh’s well-prepared hole, and it feel like nothing more than a god fucking damn it moment. Kaveh mentally runs through every single swear that he knows because it feels perfect, the way part of him had always known it would.
It feels hot and tight, like being stretched full to the brim—uncomfortable—pleasure with an edge of pain, and he loves it so fucking much. It feels like Alhaitham’s dick was made for him, which feels very much like the stupidest fucking thought Kaveh has ever had in his life.
And also it still kind of feels like his spine is melting out through his ears, so there’s that.
Alhaitham slams into him from behind, his grip tight around Kaveh’s hips, every stroke perfect and jarring Kaveh’s teeth in his head.
He wonders, while he scratches at the sheets, if Alhaitham has ever done this before. He actually can’t imagine anyone liking Alhaitham’s personality enough to fall into bed with him, but then again, he looks like that, and he’s sure fucking Kaveh like someone who knows what he’s doing.
Alhaitham makes sure Kaveh comes first, like a gentleman. Then he keeps fucking Kaveh through his orgasm and beyond, long after his legs have gone limp and Kaveh is shuddering through the aftershocks. It’s so ungodly hot lying here with his legs spread for him. The bed smells like Alhaitham beneath him, and the man himself is biting tender, firm marks along the curving slopes of his shoulders.
“Is this okay?” Alhaitham asks beside his ear.
Their skin is stuck together with sweat, and the drag of Alhaitham inside his body feels heavy and slow, teasing all the way out just to slide back in again, implacable like the tides. Kaveh’s skin ripples with goosebumps.
His throat is hoarse from screaming, so he gropes his hand behind him to find the dense muscle of Alhaitham’s ass and pull him closer, squirming tiredly back and widening his legs.
Kaveh is glad he’s on his belly so he doesn’t have to see Alhaitham’s face.