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It starts with a mild itch in his throat.
There’s nothing odd about it, on principle. Kaveh is used to itchy throats and runny noses, being, quite unfortunately, born with a pollen allergy in the land of Dendro. Generally, medication takes care of the worst of it, but never all of it.
Point is, he’s not worried.
He continues working on blueprints, and he continues quarrelling with investors and engineers about design choices, and he continues shouldering the weight of his debt to Lord Sangemah Bay.
It’s not a pleasant routine, but it’s the routine he deserves. He can’t complain.
It happens when he gets home from a construction site—the building almost finished, not as beautiful as it could have been, but Lord Sangemah Bay has been getting impatient so he’s had to accept some of his ideas being discarded, for once without arguing.
As he walks up to the door, he slides a hand in his back pocket to grab his key.
Nothing.
The other pocket, then.
Front pockets?
Did he really–
“Fuuuck,” he groans, slumping against the door. Mehrak flits around worriedly behind him.
He can’t even blame Al-Haitham for this one. His roommate has been out since the day before, and Kaveh had his key the previous evening.
Although, and the thought begins to rile him up, distracting him from his situation, Al-Haitham does tend to run off with both keys in the morning. On purpose, certainly, because Haitham is not absent-minded like that.
Kaveh sits on the ground, back to the door, and sighs. Mehrak floats down pitifully to hover beside him.
He’ll just have to wait for his roommate to get back. He thanks the Archons that Al-Haitham is supposed to come back that evening and not the next day—although he imagines Lambad would have welcomed him, had he needed it.
The itch in his throat becomes a little more painful, then. He’s been nursing it the entire day, and the day before, but it somehow gets just the smallest bit worse.
Then he’s sneezing—or coughing, he can’t quite tell—, his hand flying to his mouth.
When he moves it away, he notices something in his palm.
A petal.
He barely registers the strangeness of it.
Kaveh brandishes the petal in front of his eyes, the setting sun shining brightly through the thin surface. The light makes its vibrant hues blossom, a kaleidoscope of colours not unlike that of stained glass.
It’s stunning.
His hand itches for his sketchbook.
He takes a moment to berate himself for not having taken it with him that morning. The construction may have been close to being done, but more than once inspiration had struck when he was missing his sketchbook, so he had resolved to bring it with him everywhere.
Somehow, he hasn’t done so that morning.
He allows himself to blame Al-Haitham for his forgetfulness. Not waking up to his roommate’s surprisingly loud morning routine—a routine that consisted of Haitham, hearing aids off, moving around the contents of every drawer and cupboard for Kaveh to painstakingly reorganise later—had been jarring, and disturbing enough to cause oversights like forgetting his key or his sketchbook. Or so he could pretend to believe, regardless.
Kaveh smooths out the petal with a finger as Mehrak peers at it curiously, making sure not to crumple it in his palm. He does not wonder where it came from. It doesn’t matter in the face of what it brings him: inspiration.
Something he’s found himself lacking, forced into project after project that ate at his creativity a little more each time.
The sun sets over Sumeru City, and the petal’s vibrant colours disappear with it, settling into duller hues. Another one finds its way to his palm. In his mind’s eye, the vividness of it remains, and he builds a palace in his head, grander than his magnum opus, tiled in every colour under the sun and adorned with tall stained-glass panes, encased in glistening golden frames.
He idly wonders if any investor would fund such a thing.
Kaveh thinks they would be fools not to.
The petals sit, ironically, rather heavily in his palm. They hold the weight of his frustration just as much as that of his drive, his passion, his ideals.
In that sense, Kaveh is cradling his own heart. There’s nothing heavier than that.
The petals don’t stop coming.
Kaveh is grateful for it, because the first handful had quickly wilted, shrivelling up and losing their hues.
Since then, he has taken to preserving them in resin. Not all of them, of course; only the most beautiful ones.
Kaveh is not too knowledgeable about flowers, Tighnari’s advice on arranging the Palace of Alcazarzaray’s garden being the only education in botany he’s ever received—little more than a crash course, since the Forest Ranger is always so busy with his work in Gandharva Village and the occasional ‘dissemination of information’.
Even then, he can tell they are not all from the same flower. So far, he’s counted four different species. One of them seems somewhat familiar—he thinks he recognises it from a book about an area north-west of the desert. It’s a rather long petal, three-lobed, its warm coral colour fading into greener shades he assumes to be the stem’s.
He likes it. He wishes he could recall the name of it.
For days now, he has been sketching almost non-stop, even on the construction site he’s “supervising”—barely eating, barely sleeping. He’s back to his Alcazarzaray routine—but he knows this time will be worth it. If he can assemble a proper, complete project proposition, he’s sure he can find an investor, without having to rely on the Akademiya’s funding.
Without having to rely on Al-Haitham’s approval.
Regardless, he’s been considering expanding his clientele beyond the borders of Sumeru. He’s heard about the eccentric aristocrats of Fontaine, and while his Fontenais is somewhat lacking, the Light of Kshahrewar—loath as he is to use that title—made the front page of the Steambird several times during the construction of the Palace, which is enough to guarantee any noble looking to employ an architect would think of him first.
He’ll take anyone, so long as he can steer clear from Lord Sangemah Bay, really.
Kaveh is nothing if not used to this routine, and so are his acquaintances, even if they are not aware of the full extent of it. All they know is that his work is his life, so him withdrawing from social events is nothing unexpected, even outside of bigger projects like the Palace.
When he informs his friends he will be avoiding the tavern for a while, to his credit, Tighnari does ask if he’s okay. Cyno stands next to him silently, but his frown makes his displeasure evident.
They know more about his tendencies than his acquaintances, and while Kaveh is grateful for their concern, he only reassures them with platitudes and bids them goodbye.
He hasn’t seen either of them in two weeks now.
Alone in his home office, Kaveh takes a swig of sweet wine and pretends it’s the same.
Of course, Al-Haitham notices.
“You’ve been rather productive lately.”
Kaveh looks up from his sketches to see Al-Haitham standing in the doorway, shoulder leant against its frame.
His tone betrays nothing, but it irritates Kaveh anyway.
“Are you insinuating I’m usually not?”
“Well, no. However,” the other drawls, “I am surprised that you’re not moping around, considering how much you loathe the project you’re working on.”
Kaveh huffs. “I can work on projects I am not fully satisfied with.”
“No, you can’t.”
Al-Haitham’s words leave no room for arguing.
“Well, right now I have to,” Kaveh mutters after a pause. “It’s none of your business anyway.”
Ungrateful Al-Haitham—he refuses to see that Kaveh is tamping down his ideals for him. He may have thrown himself and all he had into the construction of the Palace of Alcazarzaray, but now that he’s relying on someone else, he can’t afford to be so egotistical. The sooner he pays back Lord Sangemah Bay, the sooner he’ll be out of Al-Haitham’s hair.
Al-Haitham says nothing, staring him down from his vantage point. Kaveh can see the judgement in his eyes.
Archons, why did he have to be such an annoying roommate!
The irritation makes the itch in his throat worsen.
“Just,” he says, coughing into his elbow, “leave me alone, okay? I need to work on this.”
A petal falls to the ground, barely hidden from Al-Haitham’s view.
Silence reigns for a second, then–
“Alright.”
For once, the other backs off without retorting anything. He softly closes the door behind him, and Kaveh is alone once again, sketches and petals for sole company.
After what feels like an eternity, he turns around in his chair and reaches down for the one that had flown out of his throat some minutes prior.
He can admit it now, he’s coughing petals. Not an illness he’s ever heard of—he’s quite sure he would remember it, otherwise—, so he assumes it’s some sort of Dendro Elemental affliction, though he has no idea how he could have contracted it.
It’s nothing worse than his usual allergy, regardless. Nothing to worry about.
What matters most is how much inspiration this brings him. It’s an opportunity above all else.
The latest petal is patterned in two shades of purple, one much lighter than the other, and the tip of it is the slightest bit yellow. It would look just like that of a Padisarah, he thinks, if it wasn’t for the shade of violet, which is just a little off.
He has never seen such a petal before. It feels familiar regardless.
In fact, he swears he can see an entire kingdom built from sand and gold, lost to time and strife, in its translucent veins.
The palace in his mind’s eye grows grander still.
Later, as he is frantically colouring a sketch, the door opens soundlessly behind him, quiet steps going unheard beneath the sound of scratching paper. A cup clinks softly against the desk as it is set atop it, warmth emanating from it; a second later, the door closes again, no louder than before.
And when Kaveh puts down his pastels, he says nothing as he downs its contents. Not the coffee he needed, but the soothing tea he craved. Kashmiri Kahwa—the kind his mother used to give him to make sure he stayed healthy.
He doesn’t think about Al-Haitham.
His throat itches all the more for it.
In hindsight, maybe, just maybe, he should have taken the fact that he was coughing up flowers more seriously.
To his credit, Kaveh had looked it up in the House of Daena. He was never a fan of the Akasha, but now that it is gone, he finds it could have been useful in this predicament, as it would have saved him hours of browsing the high shelves of Teyvat's largest library.
He’d searched through the entirety of the Amurta section, then the Spantamad section, and even asked around, but nothing even remotely close had come up.
The book he’d skimmed about Elemental afflictions had gone into the potential effects of Dendro on the human body, but it was made clear from the introduction of the chapter that Dendro alone would have little to no tangible effect—symptoms similar to those of an allergy like Kaveh’s at most—, and only an Elemental reaction would cause actual trouble: mild burns made more severe, seizures caused by mere static electricity…
It had actually somewhat scared him—what if his allergy was enough to trigger a Dendro reaction?!—but he figured that if it could happen, it would have by now.
In any case, he had not gotten anywhere on his quest to find out more about his condition. Kaveh’s first instinct would have been to consult Tighnari, but he knows his friend is rather busy with training new Forest Rangers, including little Collei, recently cured from Eleazar and still struggling with limb coordination. He doesn’t want to bother him with something so mild.
Well, mild it had been, but perhaps the term is not exactly accurate anymore.
Kaveh’s throat feels like it is scratched raw from the showers of petals pouring out of his throat, their frequency increasing every single day. Once, he swears he can taste blood—and when he checks the handful of petals that land in his palm, the copper red that stains them is proof enough. After that, clean petals become a rarity.
His coughing fits are progressively becoming harder to hide, and he’s been feeling somewhat feverish for a couple of days as well. Painkillers are of no help—and he can’t take too many, because while he knows Al-Haitham is aware that something is up, he also knows that his roommate, hands-off though he tends to be, would feel the need to intervene if he took proper notice.
All the more reason to keep this whole thing to himself. Even someone as annoying, frustrating, enraging as Al-Haitham deserves to live his life unhindered by his problems. Unlike with his numerous applications for funding, Kaveh feels he shouldn’t bother the Acting Grand Sage with something so trivial.
He’s already leeching off of him on a daily basis. There’s no reason to add to his roommate’s—admittedly well-hidden—worries.
In any case, Kaveh is no longer required on the construction site he had been spending his days at, and the only reason he has to leave the house anymore is the upcoming inauguration of the building.
That means he’s confined to Al-Haitham’s apartment.
Of course, he could go out during the day, but he doesn’t, simply because he’s taken to spending every hour on sketches and blueprints. He barely leaves his office anymore, and if needed he throws the heaps of petals gathered in the bin from the window and into the bushes below.
Flowers are biodegradable. It’s fine.
But the point is, he has no need to go out, and many reasons not to, so he doesn’t. The never-ending flow of petals fuels his drive—although most of them come out too bloody to be of any use anymore—, alongside the many mugs of coffee, now empty, that litter his desk.
It comes as no surprise, then, that Al-Haitham would confront him about it eventually.
The other stops him as he retreats to his room, coffee in hand. Kaveh’s heart catches in his throat, alongside a handful of petals he does his best to suppress, as Al-Haitham tells him he should rest.
“You look worse than usual,” is what he says.
And if he gasps in offence and smacks his roommate’s shoulder, ignoring the building itch in his throat, it’s not what Kaveh hears.
He’s grateful, really, that Al-Haitham cares. He doesn’t show it in a traditional way, but Kaveh feels that he would have a much harder time accepting his hospitality, his rough kindness, if it was any more overt.
He suspects Al-Haitham would call the thought stupid. Finding the other’s maddening behaviour reassuring is incomprehensible at best, and frankly foolish at worst.
It doesn’t stop him from being appreciative.
(He didn’t know, then, just how meticulously crafted Al-Haitham’s attitude towards him was.)
The coughs are expected now. Kaveh can just about guess when they’re about to come, even before he feels anything. More often than not—or rather, every single time—they occur when his thoughts stray towards Al-Haitham.
When his roommate gets up in the morning, making the usual racket.
When Kaveh exits his office to fetch some food and he’s quietly reading some book or other in his room, his hearing aids off but the door open.
(The door is always open.)
When he comes home in the evening, keys jingling as he sets them on the sill in the doorway, usually pretty late but never late enough that Kaveh is not awake.
When Kaveh is engrossed in his sketches and turns to see a cup of tea has appeared on his desk, not requested but nonetheless needed.
When Kaveh stands in front of the home he’s been locked out of for hours, hands empty and heart full, as his roommate saunters to the door, taunting him with his own key.
There’s something to be said about it all. Kaveh wouldn’t know what.
On one such occasion, as he’s reminiscing, a tingling feeling begins to climb up his throat; before long the sensation turns into pain, and the feeling becomes a vine covered in thorns that fights its way out of his mouth, tearing his oral mucosa as it pours out.
It hurts. It really fucking hurts.
He coughs out thorns and blood alike, barely managing not to choke on the vine he does his best to remove from his throat, the skin of his hands pierced and sliced as he grabs onto it and pulls.
Soon, it’s done, and he sits frozen in front of the bloodied vine, his hands and mouth just as red.
He feels something tighten around his lungs.
For the first time, it’s not inspiration that he feels when he looks, dazed, at the thing that tore its way out of his body.
It’s dread.
(He gets over it quickly enough, though. He can’t let something like this get to him—it’ll go away, and he’ll look back at the whole thing and laugh. Seriously, coughing up flowers? That sounds like a circus act, not a medical condition.)
Obviously, he doesn’t control his coughing fits, but he still feels angry at himself when one happens right as Al-Haitham gets home—unexpectedly, way earlier than usual—, before he had the chance to remove his hearing aids.
Kaveh tries to stifle his coughs, he does, but it’s too late, because when he is wearing his hearing aids no sound will escape his roommate’s notice and in the next moment Al-Haitham is knocking on his office door, thankfully locked, and he tries to say ‘go away, Haitham, I’m working’ but he starts coughing again before he can get a single word out and now Al-Haitham is picking his lock (how does he even know how to do that?) and Kaveh is scrambling to hide the flowers—whole, by now—that tear themselves from his throat, sticky with fresh blood, but it’s no use because there’s just too many and Al-Haitham already barged in, looming over Kaveh with too-sharp eyes that flit over the flowers on his desk and on the floor, his face, that linger over his lips that he knows to be cut open and bloodied.
Neither of them say anything for a moment. Al-Haitham merely crosses his arms, his eyes never leaving him. He swears the other’s jaw will break if he clenches it any harder.
Kaveh’s lungs sting. He ignores the feeling.
He sees in his roommate’s gaze that he’s searching for something in his eyes; he has no idea what it is, but instinctively he knows Al-Haitham won’t find it.
Kaveh also knows that the other is endlessly patient, when he wants to be—therefore that patience is a courtesy rarely, if ever, extended to him. But he has nothing to say to his roommate, who’s not entitled to private information like whatever is happening to him (and he doesn’t trust himself not to cough bloody flowers all over the other if he opens his mouth right now), so he expects this silent standstill could last for a very long time.
And so he runs.
He’s barely made it past the door and into the living room when Al-Haitham catches his wrist.
(He didn’t expect to get as far as he did, truth be told.)
“Kaveh. What is going on.”
“Nothing you need to worry about,” Kaveh spits out, throat tight.
He tries to wrench his wrist free from Al-Haitham’s hold, but he holds strong, and all Kaveh manages to do is prompt the other to grip harder.
“You were coughing blood—how is that nothing?”
“Not blood,” Kaveh corrects before he can think better of it, vindicated to catch Al-Haitham lacking. “Flowers. The blood is an addition.”
The other blinks at him. He remains silent for a minute, staring straight into Kaveh’s eyes; his grip doesn’t let up. For a moment, he wonders if perhaps Al-Haitham doesn’t believe him, but soon enough he speaks again.
“You do realise how that’s worse, right.”
A frustrated sigh escapes from Kaveh’s bloodied lips. He should’ve kept that to himself.
“I’m getting Tighnari.”
"Wh– Haitham, no, leave him alone, he's busy!"
In the same breath, he finally manages to free himself from Al-Haitham’s hold and push him away, keeping him at bay with both arms outstretched.
"Just let me take care of this, alright?" he says with another exasperated sigh. "I've been handling it just fine."
He means it. His roommate aside, no one has noticed anything too amiss—and he's not dead or dying.
"Just fine?" Al-Haitham repeats, eyes widening the slightest bit. "Kaveh, even if I ignore the flowers—which I can't—, you're coughing up blood!"
From small wounds on the inside of his cheeks, Kaveh reckons, torn by the fine, spiralling thorns that pour out of his throat every now and again. Nothing to worry about, past the terror he felt the first time it happened, but he knows the other won't budge no matter what he says, so he keeps his bleeding mouth shut and stares.
"That's cause enough for concern," Al-Haitham continues. "You can't will away something like this. I don't know what it is," and the way his face scrunches up suggests he would rather not be admitting such a thing, "but it's obviously some sort of condition, a serious one at that. One you've let go undiagnosed and untreated. Tighnari is knowledgeable about medicine and plants alike—he'll have insight the Akademiya lacks."
Kaveh's arms fall to his sides, and after a few moments he walks away to sink into the sofa, head turned away from his roommate's disapproving gaze.
"It's nothing," he reiterates, but this time he's not sure he means it. He can't bear to look at Al-Haitham—the other merely standing in the same room as him is making his throat tingle painfully, but he suppresses the building coughing fit.
Then, he feels the sofa dip next to him, and while he does not turn around he can feel Al-Haitham's warmth beside him.
In the next second, before he can even think to suppress them, thorns clamber their way from his lungs to his mouth, and his throat smoulders with the bloom of a thousand petals.
It's glorious.
It's indescribably painful.
Kaveh doubles over in agony, then, and it feels like he's coughing out his lungs whole, and Haitham's hands are on him and pulling his hair back gently and patting his back and Kaveh knows he's trying to help but he's making it so much worse, somehow, and he has to halfheartedly push the other away, get his too-warm hands off him, for the coughing to stop.
Al-Haitham lets him do so, his hands folding over his thighs. He always struggles to know where to put them, Kaveh recalls. It's cute. He quashes the thought before it can take root.
It takes him a bit to pull himself together, and another minute to gather the strength to look back at Al-Haitham properly.
The other hasn’t moved, but when he sees that Kaveh is fine—fine as can be, anyway—, he gets up to gather the flowers strewn about on the sofa and the floor, graciously not mentioning the bloodstains on his sofa that will be a pain to scrub out, and throws them unceremoniously out the window.
They’d had the same idea. Kaveh doesn’t know how he feels about that, but his lungs seize anyway.
Al-Haitham goes around the couch, out of view, and Kaveh can hear drawers being opened and the tap being turned on. After a moment, the other comes back with a damp cloth and, sat next to him again, he gently holds his chin and wipes the blood off the lower half of his face.
Kaveh suspects he’s either blushing furiously or sickly pale. Or both. His face feels hot regardless.
He would object, but he doesn’t have the strength to, so he remains silent as Al-Haitham inspects the skin from his lips, now clean but that he knows to still be torn.
It’s a foolish thought, but he wishes his roommate wasn’t so nice.
Al-Haitham lets go of his chin, gaze leaving his mouth to meet his; the blank look on his face does little to hide the frustration and worry Kaveh knows to be simmering behind his eyes. Shame claws up his throat instead of thorns.
As terrible an Acting Grand Sage Al-Haitham is to him, always making applying for funds much harder than it needs to be, Kaveh can’t just monopolise his time and energy like this. He has work to do—and if not, he deserves to relax when he gets home, instead of being forced to take care of a roommate he doesn’t even like all that much.
That’s the main problem, really.
Kaveh’s presence in Al-Haitham’s life, in his home, is a net negative; obviously he wouldn’t like him– worse than that, he’s not even worthy of his patience, deemed too annoying to be more than tolerated.
He knows he wouldn’t be living here if Al-Haitham wanted him out; but he also knows his roommate is, his awful personality notwithstanding, too kind for his own good—so long as he can justify his kindness through some sort of purposely skewed logical reasoning.
That’s how he’d been convinced to move in, convinced to stay. Not persuaded, but convinced, because when Al-Haitham speaks what comes out always seems like sound logic.
Kaveh likes Al-Haitham’s roundabout kindness, but he knows the other has been extending it towards him out of some feeling of obligation, as an old friend. The truth of their relationship lies not in their living situation, but in the way Al-Haitham is constantly criticising him; his general dislike of Kaveh, at least, he doesn’t feel obligated to stifle.
He doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
He remembers the day Al-Haitham found him, homeless and penniless and, as a whole, at the lowest point of his life. He can understand that seeing a former friend so completely down on his luck would elicit some pity, a desire to help.
He wishes Al-Haitham had been as emotionless as he pretends to be—that way he wouldn’t be regretting his impulsive decision, or resenting Kaveh for it. He chained himself to dead weight, and now that weight is tracking petals and blood all over his carpet.
Anyone would be frustrated with a roommate like Kaveh. Even with his instinctive contrarian nature when it comes to Al-Haitham, he has to admit, he would not be any more pleasant towards himself than his roommate if he was in his place.
Suddenly, Kaveh feels a light tap on his shoulder, coming from the other side of the sofa instead of in front of him, and when he looks up his eyes meet Al-Haitham’s (when had he gotten up again?) as a plate is pushed into his hands.
His gaze falls onto slices of Zaytun peach and baklava, huddled together to fit on the small plate. He must’ve blanked out for a while. As soon as he looks away from Al-Haitham, the other walks off, cape swaying; he hadn’t even had time to take it off since he came home, because of all of Kaveh’s nonsense.
And yet he’s still fucking wasting time looking after him.
Kaveh’s eyes sting almost as much as his lungs.
He hears the front door open and close; for a moment he wonders if that was it, the last of Al-Haitham’s misplaced kindness, but the thought dies before it can truly form—if he wanted Kaveh gone, he would’ve thrown him out instead of leaving.
Kaveh munches on peach slices as he waits for the inevitable moment the other will come back. The potential eviction, effective immediately, he forces himself to prepare for. He doesn’t have the strength to get up and pack his stuff, yet; he hopes Al-Haitham will give him some time to do so, once he comes back. At the same time, he can’t help but think that's another kindness he doesn’t deserve.
The door opens again, and each of Al-Haitham’s steps sound like thunder as he makes his way back towards the sofa. Kaveh doesn’t say anything as the other stands before him, arms crossed and face carefully blank—save for the twitch of an eyebrow.
“I sent a Dusk Bird over to Gandharva Village. Tighnari should be here in a bit.”
Kaveh blinks, then sighs. Of fucking course Al-Haitham wouldn’t give up on him, even though at this point he really should. “If it bothers you that much, I can just go live somewhere else. I’m sorry about the sofa and the carpet,” he adds quietly.
There’s not much more he can offer, except for more apologies—should he manage to actually get them out.
He knows he should, but gods, Al-Haitham makes it so difficult to want to apologise to him!
The other’s frown deepens. “Do you seriously believe I would kick you out when you’re sick? Because you’re sick?” He sighs, and if Kaveh didn’t know any better he’d say he sounds dejected. “I genuinely don’t understand what I’ve done to make you feel as though I would.”
“It’s nothing you’ve done,” Kaveh rushes to correct, “or said, even. I just…”
I feel like I’m taking advantage of you.
Because as insufferable as you can be, you have been nothing but kind to me, and you’re still too kind to prioritise yourself when I’m little more than a thorn in your side.
You can't stand me but you can’t gather the strength to do something about it, and I wish you would.
The thought makes Kaveh double over, but he manages to not cough up blood all over the furniture this time.
His arm is raised to keep Al-Haitham at bay before he even realises the other had come closer.
“Okay,” Kaveh mutters in frustration. “Okay, I’ll see Tighnari. But fuck off till then.”
Al-Haitham doesn’t even argue. He only looks into Kaveh’s eyes, an unreadable expression on his face, before glancing down, seemingly nodding to himself.
He takes a deep breath, but Kaveh can see the tension hasn’t quite left his frame. “I’ll wait outside,” he finally says, eyes still downcast.
Kaveh looks away when he goes out the door. He hopes Al-Haitham didn’t spare him a glance when he walked out.
He knows he definitely did.
If Tighnari wasn’t supposed to come over, Kaveh would have cried, then. But he has a guest coming, and he has to look presentable.
So he gets up, walks to the bathroom mirror, checks for any blood on his face, on his clothes, brushes his hair, does his makeup—he really needs to go buy more concealer—and looks at himself.
He looks fine.
He doesn’t know what Al-Haitham sees that worries him.
Kaveh sits back on the sofa and waits.
“What the hell is this.”
Tighnari stands in front of the kitchen table, upon which are piled heaps of bloodied, half dried flowers. The contents of Kaveh’s office bin.
“Flowers.”
“Yeah, no shit,” Tighnari looks up at Kaveh, perplexed. “Why is there blood on them though?”
Kaveh clears his throat. “I… coughed them up?”
The other stares at him blankly.
“I told Haitham it wasn’t a big deal, but he insisted. He shouldn’t have sent for you,” Kaveh says apologetically. “Just… go back to Gandharva Ville.”
At this, Tighnari pinches the bridge of his nose, his ears twitching, and lets out a very frustrated groan.
“You and Al-Haitham’s general antics aside, you can’t tell me you coughing up flowers ‘isn’t a big deal’ just because you want to disagree with him!” he snaps. “Flowers shouldn’t grow inside your body, and coughing up blood is always a bad sign anyway.”
“He said the same thing,” Kaveh begrudgingly admits. “But I’m not an idiot, it’s just… I didn't want to waste your time. God knows you don’t have a lot of it for yourself.”
The other makes a dismissive motion with a hand. “Whether something is a waste of my time is for me to decide.” He looks down at the flowers. “You coughed up all of these?”
“Not just these. I threw out most of them,” Kaveh adds.
Tighnari looks as though he wants to punt him.
“You coughed out that many and yet you genuinely think this isn’t a concern?”
His tone stops Kaveh from nodding as he first intended. Instead, he finds himself looking down in shame.
“How long has this been going on?”
Kaveh counts. “A couple of months.”
“Is this why you stopped going to the tavern?” Tighnari’s voice is a little more gentle, perhaps more professional, then.
“Kind of.” At first it was because he wanted to work on sketches. Then it got too bad for him to trust he could suppress it for an entire evening, especially if he got drunk and started ranting about Al-Haitham—his usual pastime.
“Alright.” Tighnari is silent for a moment. Then he adds, “I’ve never heard of anything like this before.”
Kaveh’s stomach sinks. “Never?”
Tighnari shakes his head, ears drooping. “I’m sorry. I could ask around, but…”
“It’s fine,” he says with as much energy and optimism as he can muster. “I’ll go to the House of Daena. I’m sure I’ll find something.”
The other’s ears perk up at this. “Oh, you haven’t been? In that case, I think you should try your luck there, yes. Even if it’s not a condition I’m familiar with, you’ll definitely find a paper or two about it.”
Tighnari apologises, then, saying he has to go back to Gandharva Ville if he’s not needed, and wishes him luck.
“Let me know what you find,” he requests, and Kaveh doesn’t have the heart to tell him the truth.
He’s grateful Tighnari doesn’t notice his shaking.
Kaveh steps outside to wave him off, forcing himself to smile as he does. He feels Al-Haitham’s eyes on him, but he doesn’t acknowledge him; as soon as Tighnari is out of sight, Kaveh goes back in, cleans up the kitchen table and doesn’t glance back as the front door closes behind his roommate.
He doesn’t think about Al-Haitham.
On the topic of his condition, though, Kaveh will admit he feels infinitely more worried knowing that Tighnari can’t help.
But he has another idea.
"Thank you for meeting with me on such short notice, Rani Kusanali."
"Please, call me Nahida."
"Nahida," Kaveh corrects himself. He didn't think he'd ever be on a first name basis with the Dendro Archon, but he also never thought he'd live with Al-Haitham, so perhaps this is not the strangest thing to happen to him. "I'm not keeping you away from any important duty, am I?"
While he knew that she was his best bet to figure out how to cure his condition, he had been reluctant to ask because of this. He had reasoned that for centuries the Sages had managed Sumeru without much input from their Archon, but still—if Tighnari’s schedule is that packed in Gandharva Ville, he can’t imagine how busy an active Archon must be.
"On the contrary! I'm, ah, taking a vacation at the moment. Exploring Sumeru. My Sages insisted," Nahida says bashfully, hands wrapped around a cup of Harra tea—the Caravan Ribat's speciality.
Kaveh has heard about this from Al-Haitham. The Traveller had been made the Dendro Archon’s First Sage for curing the land of the Withering, and some Inazuman guy had been granted the title of Second Sage for… reasons he was not privy to.
Regardless, since she was not in the city, Kaveh had travelled to the Caravan Ribat to meet with her. He can afford to; it’s not like he's working, right now. His condition causes him too much pain for him to sketch anything of quality anymore.
He tries not to think about it.
"But even if that had not been the case,” she continues, “please don't worry about my duties—I'm always happy to help! I hope I can be of service."
Kaveh gulps down his own tea. The whole thing is suddenly much more embarrassing than he had imagined.
Yet the Dendro Archon only looks at him with a gentle smile, waiting for him to explain the reason behind this informal audience. It does help him relax a little.
"Well, uh, I was wondering if you could help with identifying a condition?"
"A medical condition? That you yourself are suffering from?" Kaveh nods. "I'm not sure I'm the best person to give you a diagnosis... Have you tried talking to that Forest Ranger, Tighnari?"
A sigh. "Begrudgingly, yes. He couldn't say. As in, I have very... peculiar symptoms,” he adds, “symptoms he's never seen, not common ones that could indicate several things."
Nahida hums. "How curious. I could look in the Irminsul for you," she offers. Kaveh is not sure what that means, but he nods expectantly anyway. "Could you describe these symptoms?"
"Uh, well..." he trails off, a hand on his neck. "I've been... coughing flowers?"
Nahida cocks her head to the side. "Are you asking me?"
"Ah– no, it's just, it feels silly when I describe it..."
"Don't worry about it!" Nahida smiles at Kaveh before bringing her cup to her lips. He’s thankful she doesn’t comment on it. “Let me think…”
Her eyes unfocus as she stares into space, deep in thought; before long, she blinks, and it's as though the world itself snapped back into place.
"That doesn't ring any bells," she says apologetically. "I suppose I will have to look that up in the Irminsul. These are very specific symptoms though, and something similar has surely come up before, so I'm fairly confident I'll find something."
Kaveh frowns slightly. "What does that mean?"
Nahida clears her throat before explaining. "Essentially, the Irminsul is a database that contains all of Teyvat's data—the land's memories, if you will. It's not unlike the Akasha System,” she adds, “except the Irminsul automatically records everything in the world, without needing information to be entered into it like the Akademiya used to do on Jnagarbha Day. If such a condition has cropped up before, the Irminsul will know."
"I... see," he says slowly. "I think I get it.” He doesn’t. “But what did you mean by 'something similar has surely come up before'?"
"Ah, that..." Nahida trails off as she considers the question. "I wouldn't say so about the rest of Teyvat, at least not on the same scale, but Sumeru runs on a samsara," she explains, making a circling motion with a finger. "Things repeat. There's nothing new under the sun—at least not here. It would be nigh impossible for you to be the first to experience this."
Kaveh grimaces. "That doesn't mean there's a cure."
"It doesn't," Nahida concedes, "but I will do everything in my power to find one."
She reaches over the table to hold Kaveh's hands, and when she beams at him he can't help but believe she can do it.
"Okay. I'll... leave it to you, then. Thank you, Nahida."
The smile she gives him then is the brightest thing he's ever seen.
Since Tighnari’s visit, and Kaveh’s trip to the Caravan Ribat the next day to consult Sumeru’s Archon, neither he nor Al-Haitham has brought up his condition.
At first, Kaveh had found it odd, that the other had not even asked what Tighnari had said; but in hindsight he supposes it makes sense. Surely he had deduced that the Forest Ranger leaving so quickly meant nothing good.
But even then, he hadn’t tried to stop Kaveh from travelling to the Wall of Samiel, only taunting him into bringing much more water than he would surely need for the trip.
(He had needed all of it.)
Perhaps Al-Haitham had given up on helping him, and had decided to give him a break until he got better.
Or died.
Perhaps Al-Haitham had given up on him full stop.
Kaveh is prone to depressive episodes, yes, but he is also prone to intense denial. He knows this. Even then, at this point, he’s had to admit two things to himself, lest he be wilfully dishonest with himself:
1. He’s dying.
It’s kind of funny, as realisations go.
In truth, Kaveh had known all along that coughing flowers, thorns and blood for months is not something one could come back from naturally.
Beyond that, there’s a weight on his chest, now, almost all the time, that presses down on his lungs and makes him see stars when his breathing stops for a minute too long. His body feels too weak to go out, as well—more than once, Al-Haitham has had to carry him to his room, when his legs gave up on him.
It’s immensely frustrating.
Each time that Al-Haitham leaves, as soon as the front door closes, Kaveh coughs his lungs out into the bin. When his roommate is home—which he has been more than usual—, he does so as quietly as possible, so as not to catch his attention, now that he keeps his hearing aids on at all times at home. Somehow it works.
Soon after his trip to the Caravan Ribat, he’d started coughing leaves.
Flowers, stems—in the form of thorns—and now leaves. The beginning of his end, he knows. Or perhaps the end of his end, if he’s being honest.
2. He’s ill because of his feelings for Al-Haitham.
This one had been harder to acknowledge, for some reason. Kaveh had come to the conclusion that his condition was made worse by Al-Haitham, but on a night when he was by himself, a bunch of bloodied leaves for sole company, he had thought about it.
In the end, he’d had to admit it. Whatever his condition is, it reacts badly to Al-Haitham because Kaveh has feelings for him. Of the romantic kind.
Kaveh is nothing if not a fool, after all.
It’s somewhat irritating, though, that his feelings for his roommate literally make him sick. Al-Haitham can’t help causing him suffering, he supposes, even in things he has no voluntary hand in.
The thought makes him almost more miserable than the illness itself.
Oddly enough, Al-Haitham doesn’t seem that concerned about his condition anymore—at least not to the same extent as when he first found out. Kaveh tries to tell himself it’s not because he’ll be rid of him soon, and reasons the other probably doesn’t know how bad it is anyway.
He wonders if he heard from Rani Kusanali or one of her Sages that he had consulted her. Perhaps that’s why he’s calmer—because he knows there are news to expect for the Dendro Archon.
Much like with Tighnari, Kaveh doesn’t have the heart to tell him he’s too far gone. He thinks he can say with certainty, now, that whoever suffered from the same condition in the past—previous iterations of his own story, within the samsara—didn’t survive it.
Al-Haitham still helps Kaveh without him asking, even when he explicitly refuses it—as he usually does when he’s sick; and yet, he seems more inclined to leave him be than usual.
Kaveh can see it frustrates him, to have to take care of him when he’s so busy. To have to take care of him at all.
He can’t muster up the energy to feel as guilty as he should.
(He doesn’t see how Al-Haitham’s hands still when they reach for him, how he clenches them before putting them away. He doesn’t see how hard Al-Haitham tries to give him space—to ‘fuck off’, as Kaveh had requested—, helpless as he feels, so he can have the smallest bit of reprieve from his illness, without the additional stress of his—perhaps overbearing—presence.
He can’t see it, and Al-Haitham will die before he brings it up.)
On the other hand, Kaveh hasn’t heard back from Rani Kusanali since his audience with her. He expects looking up information in the Irminsul, however that may work, most likely takes time, and he’s grateful she’s helping him at all.
Even then he can’t help but think that at this point, the help is wasted on him. If it takes any longer, Kaveh won’t get to hear of her findings.
Assuming she finds anything.
Kaveh wants to trust the Dendro Archon, he does; and yet he has to face that the flow of time is faster than her, and each night he lies awake wondering when it will finally catch up with him.
One such night, he thinks, for the first time, that his debt to Lord Sangemah Bay has not yet been repaid. Kaveh prays for her to let it die with him.
But the mere thought of leaving any unfinished business behind scares him.
He wishes he could get his affairs in order. Remove his belongings from Al-Haitham’s house before he dies, so his soon-to-be former roommate doesn’t have to after he’s gone. Go to the tavern with everyone one last time and rant about him until morning comes. See his mother again.
He doesn’t know anyone else who has been in contact with her since she moved to Fontaine. Who will tell her?
Will she ever know?
Kaveh hopes she won’t; if he has any say in it, his last breath will not disturb the waters of Fontaine.
He shall die quietly—like his father before him, in the boundless expanse of Al-Sahra—, as though he had never been there in the first place.
(He will have to practice, though—because right now, his sobs are not quiet at all.)
It feels like an eternity before Rani Kusanali comes to see him.
In truth, it has only been a week or so. During that time, both Tighnari and Cyno—informed by his husband, most likely—have visited him, once each. Kaveh knows how busy they are, and tells them they should focus on their duties instead.
Tighnari berates him for saying so, then makes him a cup of tea.
(Kaveh’s hands shake too much to handle boiling water, now.)
As for Cyno, he ignores Kaveh’s words, then spends the day telling him the worst jokes he has ever heard while they play Genius Invokation TCG.
Kaveh would never say it, but he’s immensely grateful for their presence. He can barely look at Al-Haitham now—the mere sight of him makes it impossible to breathe—, and he can’t leave the house, either.
Kaveh would never say it, because he knows that if he did both would come see him more often, duties be damned.
He’ll die anyway. He would rather not take so much space in his friends’ lives—let them live, and let him go.
An acquaintance from Rtawahist once compared him to a star, in reference to his title of ‘Light of Kshahrewar’. At the time, he had disliked the comparison, and awkwardly laughed it off.
Now he sees the aptness of it. Like a star, his death is slow; like a star, he dies—he has been dead, before anyone could notice, and when he is finally snuffed out, it will just be one less white dot in the sky—too far away to touch, too far gone to help, and wiped out without a trace.
The sky will simply be a little emptier.
In the meantime, he shall not bring Tighnari and Cyno any closer to a dead star—lest they see its demise too early.
Gods, how he’ll miss them.
When Rani Kusanali comes, Kaveh is not ready for it. He is not ready for guests, he is not ready for social interaction, he is not ready for revelations.
He is not ready to know he will die.
He is not ready to be told he has been dead since he coughed up the first petal, since he began living with Al-Haitham, since he met Haitham at all.
Rani Kusanali, much like death, comes anyway.
“We apologise for the intrusion,” she says as she walks in, a young Inazuman man Kaveh recognises as Rani Kusanali’s Second Sage in tow. “And I’ve told you to call me Nahida!”
Kaveh does not get to ask why the man the Dendro Archon introduces as ‘Hat Guy’ is here before said Hat Guy makes himself comfortable on his sofa.
“So you’re the one puking flowers?” he asks, both arms behind his head. “That’s gross.”
Kaveh glares at him. Had he been aware such an annoying asshole would be coming along, he would not have opened the door—even to Rani Kusa– Nahida.
“Be more respectful, will you?” she sighs next to him. “Please forgive him. He is not used to human interaction.”
She ignores Hat Guy’s offended “Hey!!” as she sits on the other side of the sofa. Kaveh takes the one across from them.
“Hat Guy here has helped me look through the data in the Irminsul,” she explains. “He insisted on coming, and since he helped I thought it fair for me to allow it.”
Kaveh almost wishes she hadn’t, but he has made many wishes recently, and if he wants the important ones to be granted he should not be too greedy. He chooses to seethe internally instead.
“I just had to see the poor sod with roots in his lungs,” Hat Guy snickers. “How are you even alive?”
I ask myself that every day, he thinks, but does not dignify the taunt with a response.
Nahida elbows him. Hat Guy’s pained grunt is music to his ears.
“Anyway,” she continues, “as expected, the Irminsul contained information about your condition. I’m sorry that it took so long.”
Kaveh’s breath catches. He can feel his heartbeat pick up in his chest, beneath his cursed lungs.
“The related data was… difficult to find,” she explains. “Or rather, it was not where I first thought to look. I explained the samsara to you, yes?”
Kaveh nods.
“I looked through the Irminsul’s memories of Sumeruan citizens from times past—at first from the forest, considering the nature of your affliction, then from the desert—, but found nothing. Then my Sage here”—at that, Hat Guy scoffs—“suggested that Nabu Malikata may have something to do with it.”
“Goddess of Flowers and all that,” Hat Guy says. “It’s obvious when you think about it.”
Kaveh blinks. “Okay, you lost me at ‘memories of Sumeruan citizens’. What kind of data were you looking through, exactly?”
“Ah, apologies,” Nahida scratches her cheek. “It is kind of difficult to understand without having seen it—or, well, experienced it. The Irminsul records the life of every person from Teyvat, from birth to death. Not their thoughts, but their actions, their relationships… what has been visible, essentially. Every word said, every step taken, has been seen by the Irminsul. I can access that information.”
“… Alright…”
He does not get it, at least not as much as he would like, but it sounds like Divine Knowledge, and he supposes there’s a reason why such knowledge makes people go insane. He reasons he’s not meant to be able to understand in the first place.
“Who cares?” Hat Guy groans. “That’s not relevant. Point is, we found data about someone with pretty much the same disease in the past.”
Kaveh’s eyes dart from Nahida to Hat Guy and back again. “Is that good news?”
Nahida hesitates, frowning. “We… are not certain about that part. You see, the one who once suffered from a similar affliction to yours is… very different from you. So are the circumstances.”
“Stop beating around the bush!” Hat Guy barks, arms crossed. “I’ll tell it to you straight. Whatever is happening to you,” he gestures at Kaveh, “only ever happened to a God.”
… Huh?
“I’m sorry?”
He can see Nahida’s mouth moving as she most likely tries to clarify her Sage’s words—but he can’t hear a word of her explanation, her voice lost amid the sound of his heartbeat and a growing ringing in his ears.
Eventually, she realises he is not listening and stops talking. Hat Guy watches him blankly as, an eternity later, he comes back to his senses.
So that’s what they meant by it having something to do with the Goddess of Flowers, then.
It takes him a moment to find the words. “… And… How did they cure it?”
If Nahida says ‘with their divine powers’ he is going to lose it.
He had thought he had made peace with the fact that he was dying, but he hadn’t, he really hadn’t, and in truth he knew this; because Nahida had given him hope—yet now if she was not offering to cure him of his affliction, then it meant she could not do so.
It is Hat Guy who answers him. “They didn’t.”
He must see something on Kaveh’s face, then, perhaps something like hope, because he rolls his eyes and adds, “not because the disease went away, mind you. In simple terms, he was in love with the Goddess of Flowers, that love was not reciprocated, and so he got sick. Only reason it ever went away is because the Goddess died. He suffered from that illness for several decades, though. Perks of being a God,” he grumbles.
Nahida nods. “I did not think to look through data pertaining to Gods because you aren’t one. But the fact that this illness has only appeared once, and affected a God, means the ‘you’ from the previous samsara was a God.”
Kaveh’s eyes widen. This means he had once been… “King Deshret?”
“I thought so, at first. But I have reason to believe that rather, you may be the Goddess of Flowers reincarnated.”
Gods? Reincarnation?
This is all far, far too much for him to comprehend on a good day—let alone in his current state. He can feel a panic attack coming.
Kaveh’s hand flies to his chest. Alongside his frantic heartbeat, his breathing is becoming erratic—thankfully, though, he has no urge to cough.
“I’m stabilising your condition,” Nahida explains. “I can’t cure you, though.” At that, her eyes flick downward, a contrite look on her face.
Kaveh breathes in slowly. Next to Nahida, Hat Guy has the decency to look away.
“Okay. Okay, I’m… fine.” I will be. I have to be. “Please… keep going.”
“Alright. So as I was saying, I believe your illness is related to Nabu Malikata, even though King Deshret is the one who developed symptoms like yours. I’m not certain why—I remember close to nothing about either of them—but I assume it has to do with King Deshret’s interpretation of Nabu Malikata’s feelings. He believed she did not love him,” and doesn’t that sound familiar, “so his body began to crystallise that belief—as though she was physically causing him pain, tearing apart his insides with her flowers.
“The Goddess of Flowers was most definitely capable of such a curse, and perhaps she did inflict it on King Deshret, but it could also be that he projected it onto her. How can I explain it… Imagine two objects, object A and object B, with object A applying pressure onto object B until it makes object B activate a mechanism that hits object A. It makes object B—in this case Nabu Malikata—technically responsible, but only because of the projected force of object A onto it—that’s King Deshret. This projected responsibility then sticks with the Goddess of Flowers through reincarnation—that’s you.”
That analogy was wholly incomprehensible to him, but he thinks he understood the main point: King Deshret believed the Goddess of Flowers to have cursed him, and therefore the projected ‘ability to curse’ was transmitted to him. Because he’s Nabu Malikata reincarnated. Right.
“But for it to manifest in you rather than King Deshret…” she pauses. “I can’t help but think perhaps it has to do with your perception of the situation being very different from his. In Deshret’s case, he felt he was being hurt by Nabu Malikata. But here, it seems more like… you’re punishing yourself.”
“He seems like the type,” Hat Guy pipes up. “Self-sacrificing, always feeling guilty or like a waste of space…”
Wow. Is Kaveh really getting psychoanalysed by some Inazuman kid?
Although, he may be right. It does sound like him. He imagines King Deshret—or even the Goddess of Flowers—never doubted themselves so.
From Nabu Malikata, ‘Goddess of Flowers’, ‘Queen of All Oases’, ‘Mistress of the Orchard’, to just Kaveh. What a disgrace.
Nahida only needs to whisper something to her Sage for him to slump back into the sofa, scowling like a chastised child.
“Anyway,” she clears her throat, and she looks so young, all of a sudden, that it makes him almost dizzy. She smiles at him before continuing. “Unfortunately, as my Sage has pointed out, King Deshret suffered for many decades, and was only cured when Nabu Malikata died. Looking at the facts, then, there are two outcomes: either the disease takes your life, or the one causing it dies.”
“Wasn’t the point of your explanation that I am the one making myself ill?”
“You are,” she confirms. “I meant the source of your illness. The one who caused you to curse yourself so.”
Hat Guy scoffs. “It’s that insufferable prick, isn’t it? Al-Haitham?”
Kaveh’s hands begin to shake. He tries to will them to be still, to suppress the ever-growing feeling of shock and dread clawing up his throat—somehow worse than the petals and the thorns. He fails to do either.
“I don’t want Al-Haitham to die.”
He would die before he let that happen.
Or, rather, he was going to die before he let that happen.
Nahida glances down, biting her lip as Hat Guy cheers—“Called it!”
When she meets his eye again, there’s a resigned look in her eyes, but also–
Hope?
“As I said, according to the facts,” she reiterates, “there are only these two outcomes. But I have a theory.”
Kaveh’s mouth is dry. “I’m listening.”
“King Deshret’s curse and yours are both born from the belief that your love is unrequited. Is that correct?”
He nods.
He cannot speak for King Deshret, but he at least—he knows Al-Haitham does not see him that way.
It’s only natural. He’s a burden, and a leech, and he’s been taking advantage of Haitham for so long he had started to believe his presence and banter and friendship made up for it but it never did, it never could have.
How could he love him, when he is as poisonous to Haitham as his illness is to him?
Could one love the flowers growing in their lungs, taking up more and more space, taking everything until it also takes their last breath?
“That is only a belief, though, isn’t it?” Nahida continues. “King Deshret was not cursed because Nabu Malikata did not love him, but because he thought she did not. Has Al-Haitham ever told you your love is unrequited?”
“He doesn’t need to.”
Nahida’s eyes bore into him. “Has he ever told you your love is unrequited?” she repeats.
“… No, he has not.”
Hat Guy rolls his eyes.
Nahida’s eyes brighten at the admission. “Then,” she says excitedly, “it’s entirely possible that if you stopped believing your feelings to be unrequited, the curse would be lifted on its own!”
“The power of the subconscious. Go figure,” Hat Guy scoffs. “It’s worth trying, if you don’t want to die.”
Kaveh does not like what he’s implying. “What is?”
“Telling him you love him, you imbecile.”
“Language,” Nahida chides, but she does not disagree with his words. In fact, she adds, “I do believe that would be the best course of action, though.”
“And what do you have to lose, anyway?” Hat Guy says. “Either you die a miserable wreck of a man without saying anything, or he rejects you and you die just as pathetically…”
“… or he feels the same and your illness will go away.”
Their logic is sound. Except that…
“I would rather die than tell him.”
Nahida’s eyes widen at the admission. At her side, Hat Guy scowls.
“Listen, fucker,” he bares his teeth at Kaveh, “we searched for a cure for your stupid illness for days, we have a potential solution for you, and you blow us off without even trying? Do you have any respect for other people’s time? For your Archon’s time?”
“I understand your sentiment,” Nahida says sadly. “But tell me—is there anyone left that loves Al-Haitham, besides you?”
The question catches him off-guard. “Of course! We have friends!”
“But do they love him like you do? Who will he have when you go?”
Kaveh thinks of their mutual friends, Tighnari and Cyno. They would be there for Haitham… Wouldn’t they? Though perhaps they would comfort each other, first, before considering him.
And the Traveller… Ever on the move, long gone from Sumeru. Haitham couldn’t count on them on such short notice. He couldn’t even send a letter to them.
For the first time, Kaveh realises Al-Haitham has little else than him.
“He deserves to know someone loves him, don’t you think?”
He clenches his fists in his lap. “He wouldn’t want someone like me to love him.”
“If he has no one,” Hat Guy interjects, the brim of his hat obscuring his eyes, “he will take whatever he can get and be grateful for it. Trust me on that.”
“You don’t know h–”
“No, I don’t know that asshole, and I don’t want to!” he shouts, standing up. “But I’ve seen him through the Irminsul! And I know he’s the type of guy that can’t let go of the past, that takes in an old, former friend who’s down on his luck, that fucking builds his life around a guy he swears he can’t see eye to eye with! Do you think no one can see the notes you leave each other on the bulletin boards in the city? That no one sees you at the tavern, at the Akademiya, in the street? Do you think he would ever be seen with someone he doesn’t approve of, let alone hates?”
Nahida urges Hat Guy to calm down, tugging at his sleeves, but he continues anyway, although his tone loses in harshness.
“He only has three actual friends, two of which are married to one another. No one else knows him. He would not reject the only one telling him they love him despite his many shortcomings and numerous flaws. Especially if that’s you. It’s so obvious from the outside that skimming through your data in the Irminsul was enough to get the idea. And you,” he jabs his finger in Kaveh’s face, “are much, much more blind than an architect can afford to be.”
Kaveh can only blink at him.
Nahida pulls at Hat Guy’s sleeve again, and this time it works; he sits back down, crossing his arms.
“I would not have phrased it like that, but I agree with him,” she says. “You should tell him, Kaveh.”
Kaveh looks down. His eyes sting—he curses himself for putting on kohl this morning, because now it will smear everywhere and look terrible. The thought is grounding, but his head is still swimming.
First, Gods and reincarnation, and now– his only chance to survive his self-inflicted curse is to tell Al-Haitham he loves him?
Even his worst nightmares have never been so distressing.
“I’ll do it.”
It’s barely a whisper, so low he thinks they may not have heard it, but when he glances up, Nahida is smiling at him gently. Even Hat Guy looks less irritated.
Once he has walked them back to the entrance, Kaveh slumps to the ground, back against the front door.
Now that the Dendro Archon is no longer stabilising his condition, the curse hits him like a Sumpter Beast.
Kaveh doesn’t think about the pain, the discomfort, as empties his lungs on the floor. He wipes the blood with his sleeve to the best of his ability—it doesn’t matter, he knows, because Al-Haitham will clean it when he gets home. Without a word, of course; it has been a few weeks now since the walls of this house have seen banter, let alone arguing, between the two inhabitants.
He chuckles through a mouthful of petals and blood. Should he keep his promise to Rani Kusanali, they will, for one moment, be back to their old habits.
The white fabric stains red, but it’s not like he will wear this shirt many more times. He crawls back to the couch and, as he so often does these days, he waits.
He wastes time he does not have waiting, yet when Al-Haitham arrives, he wastes more still by not telling him.
As expected, Haitham does not comment on the blood. He cooks dinner, helps Kaveh to the table, then to the shower—wipes his bloodstained mouth gently, as he so often does these days—, then to his bed. Kaveh clings to him more than usual, more than he ought to, more than he would consciously allow himself to. He barely notices it himself, but it’s self-evident that his roommate does.
Though as expected, Haitham does not comment on that, either.
Kaveh goes to bed and weeps. He weeps, because it has now been divinely ordained that his last conversation with his friend, his roommate, his love, shall be one that will kill him.
(And Al-Haitham is not stupid, by any measure; he will know, when he rejects Kaveh and he dies at his feet, that he was responsible for it.
Above all else, Kaveh wishes he will forgive himself for it.)
Morning comes and Kaveh is, once again, not ready.
Today is Al-Haitham’s day off. There will be no waiting, no changing his mind once he decides to go through with this—because the moment Haitham realises that Kaveh has something to say to him, he will not let it go until he has gotten every single word out. It’s a relentless, single-minded approach that works wonders on criminals, he’s certain—he has heard about his roommate’s stunt with Divine Knowledge Capsules and contraband groups in Port Ormos, then in Sumeru City himself.
Not from any sort of rumour, mind you (Al-Haitham insists far too much on calling himself a ‘feeble scholar’ for such rumours to circulate; and it’s not so much because people believe him that there are none, but because they fear him too much to feed any), but from the Traveller, the only one that tells him things nowadays.
Well, that would tell him things when they were around. It can’t have been more than half a year since they last saw each other, but with the whole curse business, it feels like a lifetime ago.
He imagines Al-Haitham misses them too, even if he would never say it outright. That’s as good a conversation starter as any.
Kaveh drags himself out of bed and into Haitham’s doorway. Immediately, his throat begins to itch, and his chest tightens—but then he realises that, though he is about to be in Al-Haitham’s direct presence, his symptoms are incredibly mild.
A thought—two, in fact—erupt from a corner of his mind.
You have my blessing. Please keep your promise—I would like to have tea with you again.
The other almost covers the end of the first, as though it is particularly impatient:
Don’t chicken out, jackass!
Kaveh chuffs, throws a quick prayer Nahida’s way, and hopes his gratitude reaches her (and Hat Guy). The warm feeling in his chest suggests it has.
Seeing the surprise on his roommate’s face does wonders to improve his mood; he supposes it was so unexpected for him to come in instead of remaining in the living room that Haitham actually had to look up from his book to confirm it.
“The door was open,” he says. Way to state the obvious, but if Haitham merely left it open out of habit and would rather be left alone, then–
“Yes, I left it open on purpose. You know this.” Al-Haitham closes his book, laying it flat on his bedside table. “I just did not expect you to… take me up on it.” He glances up. “Do you wish to talk?”
His voice is so devoid of… half-feigned contempt, mockery, and sarcasm, all words Kaveh has come to associate with him, that he almost loses the plot before the conversation has even started. Even in the past weeks, Haitham has never been so… cordial. Not exactly closed-off, but subdued.
It scares him.
“Well… I was just wondering, have you… heard anything from the Traveller? And Paimon?”
Good job, Kaveh, very smooth! No hesitation at all!
Aaand Haitham is not convinced. Great.
“I heard news of them arriving in Fontaine recently,” he says evenly, eyes narrowed. “I do believe I told you as much when I received their letter, though. What’s really on your mind?”
A nervous smile splits his face. It’s paper thin, and he is, as always, well aware that he’s an open book to Al-Haitham. But you miss every shot you don’t take, so…
“Nothing! I really was just wondering. I’ll leave you to it, then!”
Kaveh goes to exit the room, like a coward, when a hand grips his wrist.
Once again, he’s in the doorway of his room, Haitham staring him down—and once again, he’s running.
From what?
Haitham’s hand loosens, but he doesn’t register it over the all-encompassing feel of his own thoughts, spiralling, leading him somewhere he’s not quite sure he is ready to go.
But that’s the thing, isn’t it? Kaveh is never ready for anything.
He’s not running from Al-Haitham. What is there to run from? A rejection he expects, that he has made his peace with, that he will take if only to honour his promise to his Archon, who so kindly urged him to? No, Kaveh has been waiting for the other shoe to drop for months, for years, in fact, and the fact that it hasn’t yet has not tricked him into believing it would not.
He is not afraid of being rejected, because he has been prepared for it since the moment he first took a step in this house.
No, he’s afraid that Haitham won’t reject him.
And what a pathetic thought that is! Him, craving rejection? Has he not been spurned enough in his life, by Haitham himself?
Can’t he have one good thing? Can’t he allow himself to have one, miserable, good thing?!
Is he so afraid of vulnerability that he would rather die than open up to the person he trusts the most?!
“Kaveh.”
Haitham’s voice cuts through his thoughts like a cold blade kissing his skin. It almost makes him jump.
But he doesn’t.
“What?”
“Look at me, will you?”
Kaveh’s poor attempt at yet another smile wobbles pitifully on his lips.
“Don’t you have a book to get back to?”
“Kaveh, please!”
And oh, if he felt strong enough to have this conversation before, he sure doesn’t now; the utter desperation in Haitham’s voice could rend his heart in two. It takes everything he has—and once again he thanks Nahida for keeping the curse at bay, because otherwise he would not have been able to—to not fall to the floor and cry.
Haitham’s hand is still wrapped loosely around his wrist. His grip is so slight, Kaveh knows instinctively that he could break free with the smallest movement. He doesn’t.
The sharp voice of a youth interrupts his thoughts once more, and for an instant the rest of the world goes quiet.
You scared?
Yes. Gods, yes.
Do it scared, then.
Kaveh turns to face Haitham properly for the first time in days, in weeks, in years. Since he has moved in with him.
Perhaps he had never truly looked him in the eye at all before this moment.
“You’re not coughing. Are you cured? Did Rani Kusanali do this? Why did you not tell me yesterday?”
His concern is palpable, and Kaveh allows himself to be grateful for it.
He thinks of Hat Guy, who allows himself to exist, to take up space in a stranger’s house, to take what he wants. Kaveh is not like that, and he does not wish to be; but perhaps there’s a lesson in that, that maybe he should allow himself to be, without having to make himself scarce, as tiny as possible, so he can weep when people don’t mind that he’s gone and berate himself— ‘I told you so! I told you so!’
Maybe the lesson is that even an asshole like Hat Guy wants him to exist.
Then what about Haitham?
What does he want from Kaveh?
“What do you want from me?”
Al-Haitham frowns. “Kaveh, I–”
“I mean this literally. What do you want from me? What do you want that involves me?”
Rent? That one’s obvious. Although his roommate is fairly flexible about the payment of said rent, considering his debt.
Company, friendship? … Would Haitham really miss him, if he was gone? In normal circumstances, they fight more often than not, and as individuals they are fairly independent. Would Haitham even notice the difference?
Hat Guy remains silent, but Kaveh thinks he can guess his answer to that—although he wonders which insult he would add.
Kaveh can’t think of much else.
“You. I want you for you, not for anything you can provide.”
Kaveh freezes.
“Does our relationship have to be transactional? Have I made you believe that is how I see things between us?” Haitham looks down. He was never good with eye contact. “I apologise. I never meant to make you think I wanted anything from you. Besides rent, of course,” he adds, face serious, and it’s so Haitham that Kaveh bursts into laughter.
He hadn’t laughed since the first petal.
Kaveh had thought the flowers divine, but he had been so, so wrong—what’s divine is this, standing with Al-Haitham as he tries to talk about feelings and immediately falls back into their old habits.
He wipes a tear from his eye and looks up. Haitham is watching him as though he has never seen him before.
“I love you.”
It comes easily, much more easily than he would have ever thought possible; but for the first time in forever his heart is light, and he thinks that if Haitham were to reject him and he died right there, he would die happy.
The other’s face is… frankly, painful to look at. His expression is blank, but his eyes—Archons above, Haitham has never looked so devastated.
“Is this your way of saying goodbye?” he whispers.
Kaveh smiles wistfully. “Probably.”
“What do you mean, probably?!” Haitham whisper-shouts. He knows the other is angry, confused—but that he doesn’t want to disrupt this moment, either.
Something about it feels sacred. Kaveh relishes in it.
“I spoke with Rani Kusanali,” he answers softly. “Apparently, I made myself ill—don’t interrupt, please. According to her, I cursed myself because I have feelings for you, and you don’t. So my unrequited feelings will kill me.”
Haitham stares into his eyes. He knows his roommate is only half-there; he’s taking in the explanation, analysing it, looking for a loophole.
“Your unrequited feelings?”
Kaveh glances down. “That’s what I said.”
Al-Haitham blinks, and he’s back, and oh, he’s fuming. “Did you listen to a word I said earlier? I said I wanted you, you imbecile! What do you think that meant?!”
… Huh?
“… Haitham, what–”
“Have you seriously been killing yourself over your unrequited feelings for me? Unrequited? Are you dull?!”
Kaveh can’t recall ever seeing Haitham this pissed. But also–
Oh, he’s… incredibly sad, isn’t he?
“I’m sorry,” he says, and he doesn’t quite know what he’s apologising for.
Haitham seizes him by the front of his shirt and pulls him so close their noses are almost touching. “Now’s not the time. How do we lift the curse?”
“I– I don’t know,” he stammers, “I didn’t think I’d get this far–”
“You thought you would tell me and what, die in my arms once I rejected you? Was that the plan?”
Rani Kusanali’s plan, technically, though she and Hat Guy had had much more faith in it than he. “Yes.”
At that, Al-Haitham takes a deep breath, before letting out the heaviest sigh Kaveh has ever heard. He presses his forehead to Kaveh’s, so gently he thinks he might pass out from the mere tenderness of it, and lets go of his shirt, opting instead to hold onto both his hands.
“It was a terrible plan.”
Kaveh hopes Nahida has not heard that.
“Would you rather I had not said a word to you?”
“I wish,” Haitham says with finality, rubbing the back of Kaveh’s hands with both thumbs, “you had told me before you cursed yourself in the first place.”
In the end, it is not rejection, or fear, or Haitham’s anger that breaks him; it’s the wistful, tentative smile on his lips that does him in.
Kaveh bawls his eyes out on the other’s shoulder for a long while. That will definitely stain his shirt; but once more, perhaps for the last time, Haitham lets it go without commenting.
Yet it’s not because this is their last conversation; it’s simply because their shared life is on the cusp of coming back to normal. And who would Kaveh and Al-Haitham be, without their constant arguing?
Oh, Kaveh can’t wait for their next fight.
“Also, Rani Kusanali says we’re the reincarnations of King Deshret and the Goddess of Flowers.”
“… What?”
Somehow, some-fucking-how, it’s Hat Guy that gets to them first.
“Congrats on not dying,” he drawls, smirking at Kaveh as he lounges on the sofa, in what he seems to have claimed as ‘his’ spot. “Sucks for you that you’re stuck with this bastard though!”
Haitham’s response is swift and without mercy. “Get out of my house.”
“Make me, fucker!”
Five minutes later, the sofa has been upended, the carpet is enjoying Kaveh’s tea, and tealess Kaveh stands in the doorway with Nahida, who just arrived, watching Haitham and Hat Guy fistfight outside.
Al-Haitham says something that he can’t hear from the doorway, but his opponent’s answering “Using Elemental energy isn’t cheating!” is loud enough. Kaveh snickers as his partner punches Hat Guy square in the face.
“Come on, don’t fight…!” Nahida pleads. “This is a joyous occasion!”
“He provoked me.” — “He pissed me off!”
Nahida sighs next to him. “Just let them be,” he says, patting her shoulder. “I owe you a cup of tea, I believe.”
The Dendro Archon, Rani Kusanali, his friend, beams at him. “Please.”
Eventually, things settle down; Hat Guy and Haitham sit on opposite sofas, glaring at each other all the while. Nahida is sat next to her Sage and Kaveh beside his partner. As for Tighnari and Cyno, who would be glaring at Haitham himself if his usual rival wasn’t already occupied, they've claimed the remaining sofa, up against the wall.
They talk, and argue, and Cyno teaches Nahida how to play Genius Invokation TCG as Hat Guy pretends not to be listening.
They’re all here for Kaveh. They’re all here because they love Kaveh, albeit in different ways.
What a fool he had been—unrequited love? Really? How could he ever have believed that?
And when in the middle of the afternoon, the Fontaine-bound Traveller and Paimon themselves barge in, the first ruffling his hair and the second flying around excitedly alongside Mehrak, he almost breaks down into tears.
They fetch a chair for the Traveller, and some biscuits for Paimon, and listen to them tell stories of their adventures in the Land of Hydro.
And when the Traveller belatedly takes out a bouquet of flowers from God-knows-where to give to Kaveh and Al-Haitham—“this may be insensitive, but I wasn’t sure what to bring, so…”—, the sight of bound, trimmed, clean flowers feels so jarring he does not know what to say.
For a moment, he expects his chest to tighten, his lungs to seize. But they only make him want to sneeze.
Pollen allergy, his brain supplies. Gods, he’d almost forgotten about it. It makes him want to laugh, but he would seem deranged for it, and he doesn’t want to worry Haitham.
He inspects the flowers more closely. As he suspected, they’re unfamiliar. “All native species from Fontaine,” the Traveller explains, “hand-picked by Paimon and I.”
“Thank you,” Haitham says for the both of them. “They’re lovely.”
And if he lifts them up, in the warmth of the sunset, the light that shines through them is stunning, and the colours are vibrant; just as they had been within the first petal, and the ones after.
It’s stunning, but when he looks at his friends, cheering Cyno and Hat Guy on as they face off in a duel of cards, he thinks that in comparison it’s really mediocre.
Nothing worth dying for. He truly had been a fool.
He scraps the plans in his mind, those that speak of a grand palace with exquisite stained-glass windows, with colourful roof tiles and gold accents.
For now, he has friends over. Work will have to wait.
His partner glances at him inquisitively.
“I’m good,” he reassures the other. “Just thinking.”
“Of course,” Haitham nods. “Take your time, I know how rare that is for you.”
“Hey!!”
And it is not the flowers, not inspiration, not the thought of his magnum opus, but Haitham’s smirk, the mirth in his eyes, and the laughter of his friends, all around him, that bring a smile to his own face.
And Kaveh may never have been the most devoted believer, but as he sits there, surrounded by his loved ones—and Hat Guy—, he wonders at how blessed he is to have them.
His chest has never felt lighter.