Chapter Text
Alhaitham never set out to write a thesis about Kaveh. That would be ridiculous. Impractical. Self-indulgent. A waste of intellectual resources.
And yet, as he stared at the mess of annotations, philosophical rebuttals, architectural critiques, and utterly baffling red-ink comments scrawled in Kaveh’s handwriting across his original manuscript, he had to accept the truth.
He had, in fact, written a thesis about Kaveh.
Or rather, he had written an objective analysis of the methodological inconsistencies in emotional-based reasoning as demonstrated by one (1) irrational Sumerian architect, only to find that said architect had taken it upon himself to refute every claim in increasingly dramatic fashion.
He should have expected it. Kaveh had always been an invasive species in the wild ecosystem of his thoughts—never content to simply exist as a presence in his life, but rather, an invasive vine determined to strangle the order from within.
And now the vine had gotten hold of his research.
Alhaitham pinched the bridge of his nose as he read through Kaveh’s marginalia:
“This is the most heartless, robotic assessment of human nature I’ve ever seen. Have you ever even FELT a genuine emotion?!”
(Author’s Note: Irrelevant to the discussion of logical methodologies. Strike through.)
“I find it laughable that you think ‘rational thought’ exists in a vacuum. You live with ME. You should know better.”
(Author’s Note: Ad hominem attack. Unfounded.)
“If you ever manage to fall in love, it will be the most systematic and painful process imaginable. I almost feel bad for whoever gets caught in your crosshairs.”
(Author’s Note: Redundant speculation. Also, false.)
Alhaitham’s eye twitched. This had started as a mere intellectual exercise. A challenge, if you will. An attempt to amuse himself by systematically deconstructing the flaws in Kaveh’s reasoning.
And now—somehow—he was losing.
A lesser man might have ignored the provocation. But Alhaitham was not a lesser man. He was a scholar.
He turned the page.
Cyno and Tighnari stared at the scene before them, visibly pained.
Kaveh and Alhaitham sat across from each other at a café table, a sprawling battlefield of annotated papers between them. Neither had spoken a word in nearly ten minutes, yet the sheer tension between them was enough to make the air crackle.
Tighnari, ever the observant one, had clocked the phenomenon long ago: The two of them weren’t just arguing. They were… doing something else.
Something bizarre.
Something unholy.
Something that no well-adjusted academic should ever do to their so-called rival in public.
They were, for lack of a better term, intellectually flirting.
Kaveh, sprawled dramatically over the table, smirked as he scrawled something in aggressive cursive in the margins of Alhaitham’s paper. The latter’s eyes flickered to the annotation, narrowed slightly, and then—slowly, deliberately—he scratched out the comment with a single, precise stroke of his pen.
Kaveh’s smirk widened.
Tighnari had never wanted to die more in his life.
Cyno, however, was studying them with the kind of fascination normally reserved for tragic natural disasters.
“Do you think they know?” he mused.
“Know what?” Tighnari said, massaging his temples.
“That they’re not actually debating academic theory,” Cyno said flatly. “They’re just circling each other like two mating predators.”
Tighnari nearly choked on his tea. “Please, please don’t phrase it like that.”
Cyno shrugged. “I call it like I see it.”
Tighnari pinched the bridge of his nose. He had long since resigned himself to the fact that Kaveh and Alhaitham had the single most insufferable dynamic in existence, but this was a new low.
They weren’t just arguing. They weren’t just flirting.
They were weaponizing intellectual discourse as foreplay.
He wanted to go home.
“Did you seriously just write ‘Alhaitham’s framework lacks an essential human element and thus fails to grasp the soul of its subject’ in my paper?”
Kaveh, reclining smugly in his chair, took a slow sip of his coffee.
“I did,” he said, voice dripping with insufferable amusement. “Because it does.”
Alhaitham’s eye twitched. “You’re making the assumption that the subject in question has a soul.”
Kaveh gasped, clutching his chest theatrically. “How dare you!”
Tighnari exhaled slowly, setting his cup down with careful precision.
“Alright,” he said. “I’m leaving. I refuse to be complicit in whatever… ritualistic courtship display this is.”
Cyno leaned in, resting his chin on his palm. “Actually, I want to see how this ends.”
Tighnari shot him a look. Cyno shrugged.
“What?” he said. “I find it entertaining.”
Tighnari exhaled.
Of course he did.
Meanwhile, Alhaitham had taken out his own pen, scribbled something beneath Kaveh’s comment, and—without breaking eye contact—pushed the paper back across the table.
Kaveh picked it up, read the annotation, and promptly turned red.
Cyno and Tighnari leaned in.
“What did it say?” Cyno asked.
Kaveh slammed the paper against his chest, scowling. “None of your business!”
Alhaitham, meanwhile, smirked.
Tighnari sighed.
He was going to need so much tea to get through this.
---
The moment they stepped out of the café, Tighnari rounded on Cyno.
“We need to have an intervention.”
Cyno blinked. “For what?”
Tighnari gestured wildly at where Alhaitham and Kaveh remained seated, now locked in yet another heated, paper-rustling, margin-defiling, table-dominating battle of wits.
“For that.”
Cyno considered it for all of five seconds before shaking his head. “No.”
Tighnari narrowed his eyes. “No?”
“No.” Cyno crossed his arms. “I refuse to be responsible for whatever the fuck those two have going on. That’s an act of divine punishment waiting to happen.”
Tighnari exhaled sharply through his nose. “You say that like it hasn’t already happened. Every time they get like this, I feel like I’m witnessing a forbidden academic rite. A scholarly summoning ritual gone wrong.”
Cyno nodded solemnly. “Exactly. Which is why I’m not getting involved.”
Tighnari groaned.
Behind them, Kaveh scoffed loudly, flipping over a page in Alhaitham’s thesis with all the grace of a man about to declare war.
“First of all,” Kaveh announced, stabbing a finger at the text, “this entire argument is built on an inherently flawed assumption: that emotion is an obstacle to logical reasoning rather than a component of it.”
Alhaitham, unbothered, turned to a fresh page in his notebook. “An assumption that remains unchallenged by any empirical evidence thus far.”
Kaveh’s jaw dropped. “You empirical evidence—”
Tighnari turned back to Cyno with a dead look.
“See?” he hissed. “Do you see?”
Cyno sipped his drink. “I see two people flirting through academic dispute.”
Tighnari threw his hands in the air.
“We need help.”
---
Kaveh should have walked away.
He knew this. He had things to do. Projects to complete. A list of clients that were either going to ruin his life with unreasonable demands or be the sole reason he could afford his next meal.
But here he was, still sitting across from Alhaitham, engaging in the most frustratingly stimulating debate he’d had in weeks.
And it was killing him.
Because Alhaitham—smug, insufferable, brilliant Alhaitham—had the audacity to be enjoying himself.
The bastard was smiling.
Not the sharp, condescending smirk Kaveh was used to. Not the infuriating half-smile of someone who knew he was winning.
No.
This was different.
This was genuine.
And it threw Kaveh so thoroughly off his axis that he completely lost track of his counterargument.
Which, frankly, was unforgivable.
“What?” he snapped.
Alhaitham tilted his head. “What?”
“You’re smiling,” Kaveh accused, as if this were some great crime. “Like you’re actually enjoying this.”
Alhaitham blinked, looking entirely unbothered. “I am enjoying this.”
Kaveh’s brain promptly short-circuited.
There was a pause.
A long pause.
Then, in what Kaveh would later identify as one of his greatest moments of unhinged impulse, he grabbed the closest napkin, scrawled a completely incoherent sentence across it, and shoved it at Alhaitham.
Alhaitham read it.
Frowned.
Then narrowed his eyes.
“This is…” He looked back at Kaveh, something unreadable in his gaze. “This is grammatically incorrect.”
Kaveh grinned, utterly deranged. “I know.”
A beat of silence.
Then Alhaitham picked up a pen and—calmly, methodically—corrected every grammatical error in the sentence before sliding the napkin back across the table.
Kaveh picked it up.
Looked at the neat, precise handwriting.
Then, without a word, he scrawled something else beneath it.
Alhaitham’s eyes flickered over the text.
His lips parted.
Then he exhaled, slow and measured.
Cautiously, he picked up the pen once more.
Tighnari, who had yet to escape, buried his face in his hands. “They’re annotating each other’s flirting.”
Cyno, completely unfazed, watched as Kaveh smirked in victory while Alhaitham calmly jotted down yet another counterpoint in the margins of the napkin.
“I respect it,” Cyno said.
Tighnari groaned.
At some point—neither of them knew when—their debate had ceased to be about logic and methodology and had become something else.
Something tangled in the way Kaveh’s breath hitched when Alhaitham wrote just a little too close to his own words.
Something wrapped in the way Alhaitham’s fingers brushed against Kaveh’s when he slid a note back across the table.
Something drowning in the way their arguments no longer had clear winners or losers, only endless loops of counterpoints and half-spoken truths and things neither of them dared say aloud.
And neither of them stopped.
Because to stop was to acknowledge.
And to acknowledge was to lose.
So they kept writing.
Kept circling.
Kept chasing each other’s words down to their most ridiculous, intimate, infuriating conclusions.
Until finally, finally—
Kaveh made a mistake.
A real mistake.
A slip of the tongue, or rather, the pen.
A sentence—half-formed, half-mad—scribbled in the margin of Alhaitham’s notes in the heat of frustration:
“You wouldn’t understand love if it strangled you with a thesis paper and left you breathless.”
He hadn’t meant to write it.
And yet, there it was.
And Alhaitham—damn him—read it.
Then, in a move so calculated Kaveh nearly lost his mind, Alhaitham picked up his pen, leaned in, and—without breaking eye contact—wrote something beneath it.
Slow.
Deliberate.
Intolerable.
Kaveh watched in real time as his own reckless words were underlined, considered, and then countered in a single stroke of ink.
The napkin slid back toward him.
He looked down.
Read.
Froze.
“Wouldn’t I?”
His pulse stuttered.
He looked up.
Alhaitham was watching him.
Kaveh swallowed.
Alhaitham’s lips curled—not quite a smirk, not quite a smile. Something else.
Something dangerous.
Something real.
Kaveh stood so fast his chair scraped against the floor.
Alhaitham’s gaze followed him, patient. Expectant.
Kaveh’s breath came short.
He needed to leave.
Needed to think.
Needed to—
But then Alhaitham did something stupid.
Something reckless.
Something so utterly against his usual nature that Kaveh lost all ability to breathe.
He reached across the table.
Picked up Kaveh’s pen.
And—ever so gently—tapped the end against Kaveh’s wrist.
A question.
A challenge.
A dare.
Kaveh inhaled sharply.
Then, before he could talk himself out of it—
He picked up his pen.
And wrote.
---
Kaveh should have left.
He should have scooped up his things, thrown a parting insult over his shoulder, and stormed out, just to keep up the illusion of control.
But Alhaitham had tapped his wrist with that godforsaken pen—like a scholar nudging a hypothesis forward for examination, like a scientist poised to test a theory with reckless abandon—and Kaveh, in all his wisdom, had taken the bait.
Because of course he had.
Because the real mistake had never been the sentence he scrawled.
It had been thinking, for even a moment, that he could win this particular game.
And now, the napkin lay between them like a battlefield, war-torn with ink stains and overwrought syntax, and Kaveh—trapped by his own arrogance—picked up his pen and wrote:
“You wouldn’t. Because love isn’t something that can be understood. Only felt.”
He underlined felt twice for emphasis.
Then shoved the napkin back across the table.
And waited.
Alhaitham didn’t blink.
Didn’t smirk.
Didn’t do anything except lower his eyes to the words and read them with the kind of careful, measured attention he usually reserved for academic texts.
Then, after a long pause, he tilted his head.
“An interesting assertion.”
Kaveh’s fingers twitched around his pen. “Not an assertion. A fact.”
Alhaitham hummed in a way that made Kaveh want to strangle him. “And yet, there is significant philosophical debate on whether feelings, as subjective experiences, hold empirical weight.”
Kaveh gaped at him. “Alhaitham.”
Alhaitham tapped a finger against the napkin. “Are you suggesting that something must be experienced firsthand in order to be understood?”
“Yes! That’s exactly what I’m suggesting.”
Alhaitham’s gaze flickered up. “So then, by your logic, I should experience love firsthand in order to understand it.”
Kaveh opened his mouth.
Closed it.
Because there was something dangerous in Alhaitham’s expression now.
Something sharp and unreadable and very, very intentional.
It hit Kaveh all at once—like a mathematical equation he had just realized was unsolvable, like an architectural design whose foundation he had neglected to reinforce before the entire structure collapsed on top of him.
He had walked straight into this.
He had built the gallows of his own undoing, laid the bricks of his own rhetorical tombstone, and Alhaitham, patient and insufferable as always, had simply waited for him to realize it.
The worst part?
Kaveh had no one to blame but himself.
Which was, frankly, unacceptable.
So instead, he narrowed his eyes and said, “You did that on purpose.”
Alhaitham exhaled, the ghost of a smile playing at the corner of his lips. “I have no idea what you mean.”
Kaveh groaned. “Liar.”
Alhaitham shrugged, utterly unrepentant.
And Kaveh—who hated to lose, who was only still sitting here because part of him thrilled at the intellectual carnage—picked up his pen and wrote:
“Fine. Then prove me wrong.”
Alhaitham’s brow arched. “What do you mean?”
Kaveh leaned back in his chair, arms crossed. “If you think love is something that can be understood through experience, then go ahead. Experience it.”
Alhaitham considered this. “You want me to fall in love?”
Kaveh shrugged. “I want you to test your own hypothesis.”
Another pause.
Then—
“That would require a subject.”
Kaveh snorted. “Good luck with that.”
Alhaitham hummed.
And then—calm, calculated, infuriating—he lifted his pen, tilted his head, and wrote beneath Kaveh’s challenge:
“You’ll do.”
Kaveh forgot how to breathe.
For a moment, the café, the napkin, the entire conversation dissolved into static.
Then, slowly—too slowly—Kaveh looked down.
Read the words.
Read them again.
Then snapped his gaze back up to Alhaitham, whose expression was unreadable except for the barest glint of satisfaction lurking beneath the surface.
Kaveh’s heart was pounding.
“You—” His voice failed him.
Alhaitham lifted his cup to his lips. Sipped. “Problem?”
Kaveh sputtered. “You cannot—”
Alhaitham gestured to the napkin. “I thought you wanted me to test my hypothesis?”
Kaveh gawked at him. “Not on me!”
Alhaitham leaned back, expression as neutral as ever. “Then retract your challenge.”
Kaveh bristled. “Absolutely not.”
Alhaitham’s gaze flickered down, scanning the napkin like it held the answers to some grand philosophical dilemma. Then, with an air of finality, he said, “Very well.”
Kaveh frowned. “Very well what?”
Alhaitham exhaled. “I accept.”
The words landed like an earthquake in Kaveh’s brain.
“You accept?”
“Yes.” Alhaitham set down his cup. “I’ll use you as my test subject.”
Kaveh’s jaw nearly unhinged. “That’s not—”
“You proposed it.”
“That was rhetorical!”
“Shouldn’t have written it down, then.”
Kaveh let out a noise that was part exasperation, part complete existential crisis. “You’re actually going to attempt to fall in love with me?”
Alhaitham, completely deadpan: “For science.”
Kaveh considered flipping the entire table over.
Instead, he buried his face in his hands. “This is not how love works.”
Alhaitham hummed. “Guess we’ll find out.”
Kaveh groaned into his palms.
Tighnari, from across the café, had witnessed the entire thing and was now staring into the void like it owed him an explanation.
Cyno, sipping his drink, nodded sagely. “I support their experiment.”
Tighnari didn’t even have the strength to argue.
Because he knew—he knew—this would not end well.
And yet, just like the two scholars now engaged in the world’s worst methodologically unsound love study, he was trapped in this absolute disaster of an academic pursuit.
And there was no escaping it now.
---
The worst part was that Alhaitham wasn’t even smug about it.
If he had been—if he had smirked or leaned back with that unbearable self-satisfaction—Kaveh could have handled this. He could have exploded in righteous indignation, denounced this ridiculous “experiment,” and stormed out, pride battered but intact.
Instead, Alhaitham just looked at him, completely and utterly neutral, as if this was nothing more than a routine scholarly debate, and somehow, that made it so much worse.
Because it meant he was serious.
It meant that Kaveh had started something he had no idea how to finish.
The napkin still lay between them, ink drying like the terms of some unholy academic contract, and Kaveh—who was supposed to be the rational one—was rapidly losing his grasp on logic.
“This is ridiculous,” he said, half to himself.
Alhaitham hummed. “You say that, and yet, you’re still here.”
Kaveh hated that he had a point.
He also hated that Cyno was watching them like an intrigued scientist observing a particularly fascinating case study, while Tighnari had his face buried in his hands like he was witnessing two people walk off a metaphorical cliff in real time.
“Fine,” Kaveh said, huffing. “If you’re going to commit to this absurdity, then what, exactly, do you plan to do?”
Alhaitham exhaled thoughtfully. “Well, first, I should conduct a literature review.”
Kaveh blinked. “A what?”
Alhaitham leaned forward, completely unaffected by Kaveh’s rising horror. “If I am to understand love through experience, I should first analyze existing perspectives. Gather data. Identify patterns.”
Kaveh gawked at him. “You want to research how to love me?”
Alhaitham tilted his head. “That phrasing suggests a predetermined outcome. I am merely exploring the variables.”
“The variables,” Kaveh echoed, scandalized.
“Yes,” Alhaitham said, like this was the most reasonable thing in the world. “For instance, in romance literature, common elements include acts of service, physical affection, and emotional vulnerability.”
Kaveh refused to acknowledge the way his brain stuttered at the phrase physical affection.
He refused to acknowledge the heat that shot through him at the prospect of Alhaitham attempting—gods forbid—to be romantic.
Instead, he scoffed. “So what, you’re going to follow a checklist?”
Alhaitham shrugged. “It’s a start.”
“Oh, is it?”
“Unless you have a better idea?”
Kaveh made a strangled noise. “Yes! How about not doing this at all?”
Alhaitham exhaled, as if Kaveh were the unreasonable one. “You proposed the challenge.”
“I hate you.”
“That doesn’t negate the premise.”
Kaveh groaned, scrubbing a hand down his face. “You are the worst man alive.”
“And yet,” Alhaitham mused, picking up his pen, “you still haven’t left.”
Kaveh wanted to die.
Tighnari, who had been silently suffering through this entire exchange, finally snapped his head up.
“Okay,” he said, rubbing his temples. “I can’t believe I have to ask this, but are you two actually dating now?”
Cyno nodded, deadpan. “Yes. For science.”
“Not for science!” Kaveh shrieked.
Alhaitham sipped his drink. “It’s merely an experiment.”
“That’s worse!”
Cyno looked deeply invested. “So, what’s your hypothesis?”
Alhaitham set his cup down. “That romantic attraction can be systematically understood and replicated.”
Tighnari gave him a long, long look. “So you’re just going to… what? Study love like a research paper?”
“Essentially.”
Cyno hummed. “I approve.”
Kaveh lunged at him. “You would.”
Tighnari pinched the bridge of his nose. “I cannot believe I’m saying this, but Kaveh has a point. You can’t just analyze romance like it’s a physics problem.”
Alhaitham shrugged. “Why not?”
“Because it’s irrational!” Kaveh burst out. “It’s not an equation. You can’t just plug in numbers and expect to solve it.”
Alhaitham tapped his fingers against the table. “That sounds like a claim worth testing.”
Kaveh let out a noise somewhere between frustration and existential despair.
Tighnari sighed. “This is going to be horrible.”
Cyno grinned. “This is going to be hilarious.”
THE NEXT DAY.
Kaveh woke up to the smell of coffee.
Which was, in itself, suspicious.
Alhaitham was not the kind of man who brought him coffee. Alhaitham was the kind of man who stole the last cup from the pot and told Kaveh to be more responsible about his caffeine dependency.
So when Kaveh stumbled into the kitchen and saw Alhaitham—standing there, casually reading a book, with two cups on the counter—he froze.
Alhaitham glanced up. “Morning.”
Kaveh squinted. “What are you doing?”
Alhaitham gestured at the cups. “Bringing you coffee.”
Kaveh’s eyes narrowed. “Why?”
Alhaitham went back to his book. “Acts of service are a common romantic gesture.”
Kaveh nearly threw the mug at him.
Instead, he inhaled deeply and snatched the cup off the counter. “This is not how romance works.”
Alhaitham hummed, turning a page. “That remains to be seen.”
Kaveh choked on his first sip.
Because it was perfect.
Not just decent. Perfect.
Which meant—
His head snapped up. “You memorized my coffee order?”
Alhaitham didn’t look up. “I live with you.”
“That doesn’t explain why.”
Alhaitham finally met his gaze. “Because it makes you happy.”
Kaveh’s brain short-circuited.
His grip tightened around the mug, heart hammering against his ribs, because that—that—wasn’t a scientific statement. That wasn’t an objective hypothesis or a calculated test result.
That was an answer.
And it terrified him.
Alhaitham watched him carefully, as if studying his reaction, and then, after a beat, said, “This is also part of the experiment.”
Kaveh groaned. “You ass.”
Alhaitham smirked. “You seem flustered.”
“I hate you.”
“You’ve mentioned.”
Kaveh inhaled sharply.
Then, without thinking, he scrawled a note on the back of a receipt and slammed it onto the counter before storming out of the kitchen.
Alhaitham picked it up.
Scanned the messy handwriting.
And then—after a long, slow pause—he huffed out something that might have been a laugh.
Because written in rushed, aggravated script was:
“Fine. Let’s see if you can actually make me fall in love with you, genius.”
---
It was a mistake.
Kaveh knew it the second he slammed that stupid note onto the counter.
He knew it when Alhaitham picked it up, scanned the words, and—worse than smirking, worse than gloating, worse than anything else—said nothing.
Just let the silence stretch out between them, like a taut thread, like the unspoken confirmation that Kaveh had played right into his hands.
Kaveh left the kitchen in a storm of self-inflicted regret, coffee still burning his tongue, pulse hammering for reasons he refused to acknowledge.
This was not going to end well.
This was going to be a disaster.
He knew it. Tighnari knew it. Cyno was actively looking forward to it.
And worst of all—worst of all—Alhaitham was having fun.
Kaveh could tell.
And if there was one universal truth about this world, it was that Alhaitham should never be allowed to have fun at Kaveh’s expense.
Yet here they were.
And Kaveh had no one to blame but himself.
DAY ONE OF THE “EXPERIMENT.”
The first thing Kaveh noticed was that Alhaitham started hovering.
Not in the way normal people hovered—not in the way friends lingered around each other’s spaces. No, Alhaitham hovered like an academic specter, like a scientist watching a test subject, like a man who had decided that romance was now a controlled study, and Kaveh was the unwilling participant.
At first, it was subtle.
A book placed exactly where Kaveh would reach for it, with the precise passage on love and emotional attachment already marked. A comment made in passing about emotional vulnerability in relationships while Kaveh was sculpting. A seemingly offhand observation about Kaveh’s annoying tendency to overwork himself and neglect his meals.
Kaveh brushed it off.
Then Alhaitham started bringing him food.
Not just any food. His favorite food.
Perfectly portioned. Seasoned exactly how he liked. Placed on his desk with a stupidly neutral “You should eat before you collapse.”
Kaveh would have refused, but the bastard knew his weaknesses.
So Kaveh ate.
And glared at him the whole time.
Alhaitham just took notes.
(HE TOOK NOTES.)
Kaveh nearly choked on his soup.
DAY THREE.
Kaveh woke up to a handwritten letter.
For a brief, stupid moment, he thought it was from a client.
Then he saw the signature.
From the desk of Alhaitham.
His stomach dropped.
With deep, measured suspicion, he unfolded the paper.
Dear Kaveh,
A key component of emotional attachment is personal affirmation. Studies indicate that words of appreciation and admiration contribute significantly to relational satisfaction.
Thus, in an effort to broaden the parameters of this study, I have compiled a list of your notable qualities.
Your architectural designs are highly innovative.
Your color theory applications exhibit masterful nuance.
You possess an exceptional ability to articulate your emotions. (Loudly.)
Despite your impractical idealism, your conviction is admirable.
Your hair defies all known laws of physics.
This concludes today’s assessment. Expect further updates as the study progresses.
Sincerely,
Alhaitham
Kaveh screamed.
Tighnari, half-asleep, poked his head into the room. “What.”
Kaveh, trembling, held up the letter like a death sentence.
Tighnari read it.
Paused.
Read it again.
Then sighed.
“Gods,” he muttered. “He’s actually committing to this.”
Kaveh collapsed onto his desk.
“I’m going to die,” he whispered.
Tighnari patted his shoulder. “Probably.”
Cyno walked in, took one look at the situation, and grinned.
“So what’s the control variable?”
Kaveh threw the letter at his face.
DAY FIVE.
It got worse.
Alhaitham didn’t just stick to words.
Oh, no. He had to escalate.
Suddenly, Kaveh found himself subjected to a horrifying new routine:
Thoughtful gestures. (Holding the door open. Carrying his books. Leaving extra blankets on the couch when Kaveh worked late.)
Gentle physical contact. (A hand on the small of his back. A casual brush of fingers when handing him a quill. A subtle nudge of knees under the table.)
Intellectual engagement. (Casual debate over breakfast. Thought-provoking discussions at midnight. Unprompted philosophical musings while Kaveh was trying to SLEEP.)
And the worst part?
It was working.
Kaveh hated it.
Hated that every calculated compliment sent warmth curling in his chest.
Hated that every deliberate touch left a phantom heat on his skin.
Hated that every insightful conversation reminded him why he fell in love with Alhaitham in the first place.
(Wait.)
(What?)
Kaveh’s brain short-circuited.
DAY SEVEN.
Kaveh had a crisis.
In public.
Tighnari and Cyno were both there to witness it.
“He’s playing a game,” Kaveh hissed over his drink. “He’s playing a game and I’m losing.”
Tighnari sighed. “You did this to yourself.”
Kaveh buried his face in his hands. “I hate him.”
Cyno took a sip of his tea. “Do you?”
Kaveh froze.
Cyno smirked.
Tighnari sighed.
Kaveh groaned.
“I’m going to kill him.”
Tighnari patted his shoulder. “You could just admit you like it.”
Kaveh scowled.
Cyno grinned.
Alhaitham, sitting two tables away, continued reading.
As if he wasn’t perfectly aware of exactly what he was doing.
Kaveh swore under his breath.
He was so screwed.
DAY NINE.
Kaveh was spiraling.
It wasn’t dramatic. (It was, actually.) It wasn’t a big deal. (It was ruining his life.) It wasn’t—
Gods, he was so fucked.
Because here was the thing.
The more Alhaitham did all this insidious, underhanded, completely calculated romantic shit, the more Kaveh started noticing things.
Horrible, inescapable, life-altering things.
Like the way Alhaitham always made coffee exactly the way Kaveh liked, even though he never asked.
Like the way Alhaitham could tell when Kaveh was stressed just from the way he held his quill.
Like the way Alhaitham’s hands, calloused from years of books and battle, were still gentle when they brushed against his.
Like the way Alhaitham looked at him.
Gods.
The way Alhaitham looked at him.
Like he was a puzzle that Alhaitham had already solved but still found fascinating.
Like he was a book Alhaitham had memorized but still wanted to read again.
Like he was something—
Something that—
Kaveh stood up so fast his chair scraped the floor.
Tighnari, who had been drinking his tea, didn’t even look up. “Oh, boy. Here we go.”
Cyno did look up. “Realization finally sinking in?”
Kaveh ignored them both.
He had bigger issues.
He needed air.
He needed space.
He needed—
Alhaitham.
(Wait.)
(No.)
(Yes?)
Kaveh made an incoherent noise of frustration and bolted.
DAY TEN.
Kaveh was avoiding him.
Alhaitham, unsurprised, merely observed.
It was expected, really.
Kaveh was many things—brilliant, stubborn, emotional—but above all else, predictable.
He fought hardest against things that made him feel too much.
He ran from things he couldn’t immediately rationalize.
And right now?
Right now, Kaveh was running from him.
Fascinating.
Alhaitham had hypothesized that prolonged exposure to genuine affection, delivered through carefully executed acts of service, affirmations, and quality time, would yield significant emotional reactions.
He had not anticipated Kaveh would break this quickly.
(Interesting.)
Alhaitham, ever the scholar, adjusted his thesis.
And pursued.
DAY ELEVEN.
Kaveh was dying.
Not literally. (Unfortunately.)
But emotionally? Spiritually? Intellectually?
He was a wreck.
Because he had done the worst possible thing a man in his situation could do.
He had thought about it.
About Alhaitham.
About them.
About how this—the fighting, the bickering, the ridiculous push and pull of their lives—had always been something more, hadn’t it?
Hadn’t it?
Hadn’t it?
The realization sat like a stone in his gut.
He felt sick.
He felt pathetic.
He felt—
A shadow fell over his desk.
And Kaveh, already knowing exactly who it was, refused to look up.
Alhaitham sighed.
Then he sat down.
Wait.
Wait.
Wait.
That wasn’t normal.
That wasn’t part of the usual routine.
Alhaitham, despite all his obnoxious, intrusive tendencies, never outright cornered him.
Which meant—
Oh, no.
Kaveh’s breath caught.
Alhaitham folded his hands. Leaned forward. Watched him with calm, unreadable patience.
“Kaveh.”
Kaveh winced.
“I have a question.”
Kaveh winced harder.
Alhaitham, predictably, ignored it.
Instead, he tilted his head—just slightly, just enough that the light caught the sharp angles of his face, the soft edges of his mouth, the unrelenting clarity of his gaze.
And then, voice infuriatingly steady:
“What are you running from?”
Kaveh’s world stopped.
His heartbeat stuttered.
His stomach dropped.
Because Alhaitham wasn’t asking as a joke.
He wasn’t asking as an academic challenge.
He wasn’t asking to mock him.
He was asking because he already knew the answer.
Because he already knew Kaveh.
Knew how he thought.
Knew how he felt.
Knew—
Kaveh shot to his feet.
The chair scraped the floor.
His hands shook.
“I—” His voice cracked. He swallowed, throat dry. “I don’t—”
Alhaitham simply looked at him.
Waited.
Let him break apart in real time.
And Kaveh, backed into a corner of his own making, realized:
There was no way out of this.
Alhaitham had him.
Completely.
Utterly.
Entirely.
And maybe—
Maybe Kaveh had always been his to begin with.
Gods.
Gods.
He was so fucking screwed.
Kaveh needed to leave.
Immediately.
Right now.
Because if he didn’t, if he let Alhaitham keep staring at him with that terrible, patient, infuriatingly gentle look, he was going to—
He was going to—
Gods.
He didn’t even know.
And that was the problem, wasn’t it?
For once, he didn’t know.
For all his intellect, his ability to analyze structure, to dissect meaning, to construct something coherent out of chaos—this?
This was beyond him.
This was a tangle of thoughts and feelings and things he hadn’t let himself examine for years.
Things that were now crashing down all at once.
Because Alhaitham was looking at him.
Because Alhaitham was waiting.
Because Alhaitham wasn’t letting him run.
Kaveh exhaled sharply. Clenched his hands.
Turned away.
But Alhaitham—of course, of course—was relentless.
“You haven’t answered my question,” he said, voice even, unaffected.
And Kaveh, already frayed past the point of repair, snapped.
“Because I don’t know the answer, you smug, insufferable bastard!”
Silence.
Thick.
Heavy.
Suffocating.
Kaveh pressed his palms against his eyes. Inhaled. Exhaled. Tried to force himself back into something stable, something composed.
Failed.
Alhaitham, for once, didn’t speak.
Didn’t push.
Didn’t offer some self-satisfied observation.
Instead, he did something far, far worse.
He sighed.
Soft.
Understanding.
And then, calmly:
“Kaveh.”
Kaveh flinched.
Because there was something about the way Alhaitham said his name—low, certain, unshakable—that made his stomach twist.
That made his walls crack.
That made everything too real.
“I know you’re afraid.”
Kaveh’s breath hitched.
“I know it’s easier to fight than to admit you—”
Alhaitham paused. Tilted his head. Considered.
Then, voice quieter:
“—than to admit you care.”
Kaveh staggered.
Because that—
That was—
No.
No.
No.
He couldn’t do this.
Not here.
Not like this.
Not with him.
Kaveh turned on his heel. Stormed out.
Alhaitham let him go.
For now.
DAY TWELVE.
Kaveh was a mess.
Which was saying something, considering his natural state of existence.
But this?
This was another level entirely.
Because no matter how many times he paced his room, threw himself into work, buried himself in his sketches and calculations, nothing—nothing—could erase the way Alhaitham had looked at him yesterday.
Not smug.
Not mocking.
Not victorious.
Just—
Understanding.
And that was what ruined him.
Not the arrogance. Not the infuriating logic.
But the simple, unshakable knowledge that Alhaitham knew him.
Knew him in ways no one else did.
Knew him in ways Kaveh had spent years trying to deny.
Kaveh groaned, collapsing onto his bed. Dragged a pillow over his face.
Muffled, to no one:
“I am so fucking doomed.”
A knock on the door.
Kaveh froze.
Slowly, carefully, he peeled the pillow off his face.
Another knock.
Steady.
Measured.
Familiar.
Kaveh’s heart lurched.
Because he already knew who it was.
And he wasn’t ready.
But Alhaitham?
Alhaitham had never cared about readiness.
“Kaveh,” came the voice through the door. Calm. Certain.
“Let me in.”
Kaveh didn’t move.
Didn’t breathe.
Didn’t think.
Alhaitham waited.
Of course he did.
Always so damn patient, always so impossibly steady.
And Kaveh?
Kaveh was nothing but a storm.
A mess of contradictions and feelings and all the things he couldn’t say.
“Kaveh,” Alhaitham tried again. “Open the door.”
Kaveh squeezed his eyes shut.
“Go away,” he said, voice hoarse.
A pause.
Then—
“No.”
Kaveh let out a frustrated, borderline hysterical laugh.
“Of course not. Of course you wouldn’t. Why would you ever do the reasonable thing?”
“Kaveh.”
Gods.
Why did his name sound like that when Alhaitham said it?
Soft.
Measured.
Unbearably certain.
Kaveh ran a shaking hand through his hair.
He had two choices.
One: Stay locked in this room forever, slowly losing his mind.
Two: Open the door and deal with whatever the hell this was.
Neither were good options.
But one was inevitable.
With a deep, bracing breath, Kaveh stood.
Took three steps.
Paused.
Another breath.
Then, slowly—so, so slowly—he reached for the handle.
Turned it.
And opened the door.
Alhaitham stood there.
Calm.
Collected.
Waiting.
For him.
Kaveh gripped the doorframe.
Stared at him.
And in a voice barely above a whisper:
“…What do you want?”
Alhaitham exhaled.
Stepped forward.
And with absolute certainty:
“You.”
Kaveh’s heart stopped.
Alhaitham kept going.
“You,” he repeated, quieter this time. More measured. More undeniable.
And Kaveh—
Kaveh, for all his intelligence, his theories, his designs—
Had no idea how to respond.
So instead, he did the only thing he could.
He let the door swing open.
And let Alhaitham in.
---
Kaveh hadn’t thought this far ahead.
The door was open.
Alhaitham was inside.
And Kaveh had just—
Let him in.
Physically.
Metaphorically.
Disastrously.
Now what?
Alhaitham stepped forward, unbothered, like he belonged here, like Kaveh hadn’t just spent an entire night tearing his hair out over the mere thought of this moment.
The door clicked shut behind him.
Kaveh swallowed.
His throat was dry.
His palms were clammy.
He should say something.
Do something.
Reclaim control of the situation.
Because this wasn’t control.
This was—this was—
This was him standing frozen like an idiot while Alhaitham silently studied him, one step too close, one breath too steady, one look too—
Too much.
“Are you going to say something,” Kaveh finally managed, “or are you just going to stare at me all night?”
Alhaitham raised an eyebrow.
“You’re the one who’s been avoiding me.”
Kaveh scowled. “And?”
“And,” Alhaitham said, entirely unruffled, “that suggests you have something to say.”
Kaveh gritted his teeth.
Gods, he hated him.
And by hate, he meant—
No.
No, he wasn’t going down that road.
Not now.
Not yet.
He needed to think.
To be rational.
To be—
…Rational?
Oh.
Oh, that was funny.
He actually laughed—short, sharp, humorless. “You think I have something to say? You think I have some—some brilliant, logical explanation for why I—”
He broke off.
Because he didn’t even know how to end that sentence.
Why he was avoiding him?
Why this was so much?
Why his hands were shaking?
Alhaitham tilted his head. Studied him. Then, calmly:
“Tell me.”
And that—
That was the last straw.
The absolute last straw.
Because how could he?
How could he possibly put words to something that had been festering in him for years?
How could he stand here, with Alhaitham staring at him like he wasn’t a complete mess, like this was a puzzle he could just—just solve, and say—
Say—
Say what?
That he hated him?
That he didn’t?
That he didn’t know where the line was anymore, between frustration and obsession and something deeper, something worse, something so big it made him want to tear his own ribcage open just to get it out?
He exhaled shakily.
Ran a hand through his hair.
Stared at the floor.
Then, voice barely above a whisper:
“I can’t.”
Alhaitham was quiet.
Then:
“Can’t, or won’t?”
Kaveh squeezed his eyes shut. “Does it matter?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because if you can’t, I’ll wait,” Alhaitham said, tone too even, too certain. “But if you won’t—”
A pause.
A step closer.
“Then you’re lying to yourself.”
Kaveh’s breath hitched.
And that—
That was the moment he knew.
He was going to break.
There was no avoiding it.
No intellectualizing it.
No escaping it.
Alhaitham knew.
He had always known.
And Kaveh—
Kaveh had spent years trying to pretend otherwise.
But there was no pretending now.
Not when Alhaitham was standing here, waiting.
Not when Kaveh had let him in.
Not when his entire body was screaming at him to—
To—
To what?
To shove him away?
To pull him closer?
To finally, finally—
“…Say something,” Kaveh whispered.
And Alhaitham, voice softer than Kaveh had ever heard it—
“I’m right here.”
Something inside Kaveh snapped.
He moved before he could think.
Or maybe, finally, he was thinking.
Maybe this was the first rational thing he’d ever done.
Because he surged forward.
Because he grabbed Alhaitham by the front of his shirt.
Because he yanked him down.
Because he kissed him.
And it was—
It was—
Gods.
It was a disaster.
Clumsy.
Desperate.
Teeth clashing, hands grasping, a collision of pent-up frustration and need and everything Kaveh had spent years denying.
Alhaitham didn’t even hesitate.
Didn’t flinch.
Didn’t pull away.
He just—
Responded.
Steady.
Certain.
Hands finding Kaveh’s waist, grounding him, anchoring him so he didn’t collapse from the sheer force of it all.
Kaveh was shaking.
He didn’t know if it was from relief or fear or the terrifying, overwhelming realization that there was no going back now.
That he had finally, finally—
“Breathe,” Alhaitham murmured against his lips.
And Kaveh did.
Or tried.
Failed.
Because how could he breathe when everything was changing?
When Alhaitham was still holding him?
Still looking at him like he wasn’t a mistake?
Still waiting, as if Kaveh hadn’t just obliterated every last ounce of plausible deniability between them?
Kaveh exhaled shakily.
Pressed his forehead against Alhaitham’s shoulder.
Muttered, half-hysterical:
“I hate you.”
Alhaitham’s hand slid into his hair.
“Liar,” he said, so damn sure.
Kaveh wanted to punch him.
Or kiss him again.
Maybe both.
Maybe forever.
He groaned.
“You are the worst thing that has ever happened to me.”
And Alhaitham, with the audacity of a man who had known this would happen from the very beginning:
“Good thing you let me in, then.”
Kaveh pulled back.
Glared.
And then, because what else could he do?
He kissed him again.
And again.
And again.
Until all the words ran out.
Until there was nothing left but them.
---
Kaveh was going to die.
Not figuratively. Not poetically. Not even in some grand, romanticized martyrdom of the soul.
He was literally going to perish. Right here. Right now.
Of what, exactly?
Unclear.
Probably some kind of acute, self-inflicted, entirely preventable heart failure caused by prolonged exposure to Alhaitham’s sheer audacity.
Because Alhaitham—
Alhaitham was still kissing him.
And he was good at it.
Disgustingly good at it.
The kind of good that made Kaveh want to punch him in the face for being so goddamn smug about everything.
Because of course he was.
Of course he was smug about this too.
Alhaitham, whose entire existence was a series of cold, precise calculations, always perfectly timed, measured, prepared.
Alhaitham, who never did anything without knowing exactly what he wanted out of it.
And right now—
Right now, he wanted this.
And he was winning.
Winning in the same infuriating way he won every argument— calm, unbothered, fully aware that Kaveh would eventually talk himself into circles and self-destruct.
Except this time, Kaveh wasn’t talking.
He was—
Gods, he was gripping the front of Alhaitham’s shirt like he was trying to physically hold himself together.
Like if he let go, he might break apart completely.
Like if he let go, he might lose.
Kaveh never lost.
(Except to him.)
Which was why—why, for the love of all that was holy—
Why did Alhaitham have to be so goddamn methodical about it?
Like this was an experiment.
Like Kaveh was some new, fascinating theorem he was testing for validity.
Which—
Which, frankly, was humiliating.
Kaveh was not an equation.
Not some intellectual curiosity for Alhaitham to analyze and dissect and reduce to logic.
Not some hypothesis to be proven or disproven.
Not some theory to be confirmed.
He was a person.
A human disaster of contradictions and emotions and poor financial decisions.
And he wanted Alhaitham to be an idiot about this.
Just once.
Just this.
Because if Alhaitham was an idiot about this—
Then Kaveh wouldn’t be the only one falling apart.
But Alhaitham was not an idiot.
Which meant Kaveh was screwed.
Because he had no plan.
He had no clever rebuttal.
He had no strategy for counterattack.
All he had was Alhaitham’s hands on him, steady and sure, like they were always meant to be there.
And that—
That was the real problem, wasn’t it?
Not the kissing.
Not the losing.
Not even the obnoxious, infuriating, all-consuming reality that Alhaitham was enjoying every second of this.
No.
The real problem was that Kaveh liked it.
Too much.
Far too much.
The kind of too much that made him want to rewrite his entire goddamn thesis, because clearly, he had miscalculated something deeply, profoundly fundamental about his own existence.
Because Alhaitham shouldn’t feel like this.
Shouldn’t feel like something he needed.
Like something he’d been waiting for.
Like something he couldn’t bear to lose.
And yet—
Yet here he was, trembling under Alhaitham’s hands, breath caught between a curse and a prayer, utterly, irrevocably, irreversibly ruined.
Because this was it.
This was what losing to Alhaitham really meant.
Not some petty academic rivalry.
Not some insufferable intellectual debate.
Not some long-winded argument about the artistic merits of form versus function.
No.
This.
This was the loss.
Because Alhaitham wasn’t proving a point.
He wasn’t conducting an experiment.
He wasn’t playing a game.
He was just—
He was just here.
And he had been waiting.
Waiting for Kaveh to catch up.
Waiting for Kaveh to stop running.
Waiting for Kaveh to finally, finally understand.
That this wasn’t about winning.
Or about losing.
It was about choosing.
And Kaveh had already chosen.
A long, long time ago.
He just hadn’t admitted it yet.
He exhaled, shaky, uneven.
And when Alhaitham finally pulled back, just enough for Kaveh to see his face, Kaveh hated that he looked—
Looked like he’d known all along.
“Kaveh,” Alhaitham murmured, and—
Gods.
Gods, that was the worst part, wasn’t it?
The way he said his name.
Soft, certain.
Like he wasn’t just saying it.
Like he was keeping it.
Like he’d always meant to.
And Kaveh should argue.
Should protest.
Should deny it, deflect it, dismiss it.
But instead—
Instead, he just—
Just—
“I hate you,” Kaveh whispered again, weak, defeated.
And Alhaitham, steady, unwavering—
“I know.”
A pause.
A breath.
A heartbeat.
Then, with infuriating certainty:
“But you’re wrong.”
And Kaveh—
Kaveh, who was tired of arguing, tired of running, tired of losing, tired of pretending—
Kaveh just closed his eyes.
And finally, finally—
He let himself fall.