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Standing in the doorway his new therapist’s office, Kaveh feels ridiculous for a multitude of reasons. For one thing, the woman in front of him—at least, he assumes she’s an adult—only comes up to his waist. Her face is small and slightly chubby, but her green gaze is piercing. So piercing it’s beginning to make him a little uncomfortable. Secondly, he’s dressed in a wrinkled shirt that may had once been white and equally disheveled pants. He’s always had issues with being chronically late, but of course it had to be today that he slept through all 6 of his alarms. He hadn’t even had time to thoroughly comb his hair, which more resembled a yellow bird’s nest than anything at the moment.
And finally, the real reason Kaveh feels like crawling out of his skin and into the sparkling linoleum floor, is that behind his new therapist stands Alhaitham. Student council Alhaitham. Kaveh wants to scream.
“What are you doing here?” he blurts out.
Alhaitham—stupid, annoying, condescending and rude Alhaitham—just stares at him with an infuriatingly blank expression. It’s one Kaveh is used to seeing, but it never fails to spark a primal rage in him. Something inside the teenager just loves to hate him.
“I had an appointment,” Alhaitham says. Then, because he never misses an opportunity to be a bitch, he adds on, “obviously.”
“Yeah, but—“ Kaveh forces himself to stop. Asking someone why they’re at therapy seems like a huge breach of privacy. Not that a menace like Alhaitham deserves his consideration, but he digresses. Maybe the guy has finally been getting professional help for his antisocial behavior. Or his bad attitude. Or both.
Kaveh yanked out of his musings when the small woman extends a hand to him.
“Hello!” her voice is high pitched and cheery. “My name is Nahida! I’ve been waiting to meet you for you for ages. It’s nice to see the real person behind the description, hehe.”
Okay, the waiting part was creepy. And what did Nahida mean by ‘the person behind the description’? Whose description? Why is his mortal enemy here? What the hell is going on?
Kaveh is really starting to feel the effects of not having coffee that morning. The dull ache in his skull is only adding to his confusion.
“Um, thanks,” he smiles and takes her hand daintily. He doesn’t know what else to do. “It’s nice to finally meet you… too?”
Kaveh glances up experimentally to see if Alhaitham has taken his leave yet, but of course he hasn’t. Social cues don’t appear to be his strong suit. Their eyes catch on each other, red clashing with cool greenish-blue. For a split second, Kaveh swears the boy looks almost embarrassed, but that can’t be right. Someone as shameless as Alhaitham probably doesn’t have the capacity to feel cowed.
The room feels suddenly very silent and very warm. Kaveh can’t tear his eyes away from Alhaitham’s. What the hell is going on?
Nahida clears her throat loudly. “Well,” she says, “as much as I would like to continue chatting with you two out in the hall, I’m afraid your appointment started a minute ago, Kaveh!”
Alhaitham is the first to break eye contact. His neck crackles from the speed at which he turns his head away from Kaveh. “I’m leaving,” he announces abruptly before marching stiffly away down the hall.
“Always a pleasure to see you Alhaitham! Next week, at the usual time, okay?”
Predictably, there is no response. Nahida seems to take his silence as agreement. Humming happily, Nahida turns back around to face Kaveh.
“Enough about him, let’s talk about you! Come in, come in; make yourself comfy. Let’s get to know each other, shall we?”
Kaveh has never felt so excited for a Monday. He wakes up on just the second alarm and races out of the door of the orphanage in record time. He half jogs, half speed walks his way to Teyvat High School, deemed the Akademiya by students because it sounded a lot cooler. It’s easy to locate Tighnari and Cyno, mostly due to the latter’s distinct black and purple hoodie. It has ears on top, for some reason. There’s a lot about Cyno that doesn’t make sense or is just plain weird, like his obsession with card games, but Kaveh has come to love his eccentricities.
His two best friends are sitting at a table across from each other. They always get to school before Kaveh, and he has a sneaking suspicion it’s because they want some alone time together. It’s somewhat of an open secret that they have the hots for each other.
“You will not believe what I saw on Saturday,” Kaveh exclaims, slamming his book bag on top of Tighnari’s Biology homework.
“Hey!” the boy snaps, brushing green bangs out of his face to throw Kaveh a proper glare. “Watch the pages.”
“Yeah,” Cyno agrees. “Watch the cards, too.”
“Whatever,” Kaveh says, throwing himself down next to Cyno, who appears to be playing cards against himself. At this point he knows better than to question it. “Do you want to know the gossip or not?”
“Is it about your new therapist?” Tighnari asks, not looking up from his studying. “Is she weird?”
“Oh, definitely, but that’s not the focus. You’ll never guess who I saw walking out of her office.”
“Alhaitham?” his friends’ voices blend together.
“Yup! Wait, what?” Kaveh looks between them in indignation. “You guys always ruin my surprises. How did you know?”
“Your voice always gets a little pitchier when you’re about to start trash talking him,” Tighnari glances up at him and sniggers. “I call it the ‘raving schoolgirl with a crush’ voice.”
“Excuse me?” Kaveh squawks, waving his arms around in barely contained fury at his friends’ mockery. “I do not have a crush on—“
“Hey Alhaitham,” Cyno says in an unusually chirpy tone because there isn’t a single minute of his life that he isn’t trying to be a nuisance.
Kaveh falls silent. He slowly turns around in his seat, refusing to believe that his luck could be this poor. But of course, since he’s God’s least favorite child, there Alhaitham is in all his glory. That being none, of course.
“Hello,” he says in that stupid droning voice of his. Who gave him the right to have a voice that soothing or arms so… big?! He hates Alhaitham so much.
“Why are you here?” Kaveh grouses, getting an eerie sense of Deja Vu from the events of 2 days ago.
Alhaitham’s eyes slide over to Kaveh where they linger uncomfortably on his hair. After a few seconds of silence, he says, “I’m glad you found a comb before going out this morning.”
Tighnari snorts (the dirty traitor!) and Cyno makes a small noise of amusement. To his credit, Kaveh does an Oscar worthy impression of nonchalance. His smile hides a sea of flames that threaten to flow out of his mouth and completely devour Alhaitham. Stupid, smug, arrogant, annoying—
“I’ll have you know I was in a rush,” Kaveh responds, fighting to keep his voice level.
“Yes, I could tell,” Alhaitham deadpans.
Kaveh clenches his fists to refrain from launching from his seat and strangling him at that very moment. Had Alhaitham not been a Student Council member and, regrettably, Cyno’s acquaintance, he just might have gone through with it. But Kaveh is a good person. He is a good, mature person who will not rise to the bait of any stupid gray haired hater.
He stews in his rage while Alhaitham and Cyno talk about boring shit, like paperwork and meetings for the Student Council. Finally, at long last, Alhaitham says goodbye and stalks off to terrorize another group of unsuspecting high schoolers.
“I hate you both,” Kaveh mutters, “just in case that wasn’t clear.”
“You two would be cute together, if only you stopped bickering,” Cyno murmured unhelpfully.
“And you two would be cute together if you both weren’t terrible people!” Kaveh stands up from the table dramatically, flipping his hair over his shoulder. “I’m going to find Nilou. She’d never sell me out like that.”
“Blah, blah, blah, keep denying it,” Tighnari says as Kaveh struts away. “It doesn’t make us any less right!”
“See you at lunch,” Cyno calls smugly from behind him.
Kaveh really hates his friends.
The next Saturday, Kaveh is actually early to his appointment with Nahida. He’s made sure to dress nicely in a red floral blouse, complete with matching red earrings and immaculately combed hair. It’s not that he’s trying to impress Alhaitham; he would never! No, it’s more like he’s trying to prove a point. He isn’t entirely sure what that point is, but today, he will prove it!
He takes a seat in one of the cushy waiting room chairs. There are only a handful of other patients in the room: a young woman white haired woman in an adorable mini top hat, a brooding young man muttering something about demons under his breath, and a pissed off looking boy in a ridiculously oversized hat who looks to be around the same age as himself. In other words, a bunch of weirdos.
Kaveh had noticed the hat guy during his last visit to the office as well. He’d been in the waiting room when he’d first arrived as well as when he’d left. Was he even there for therapy? Did he just sit here for fun or something? If the boy is still there next week, maybe he’ll try to strike up a conversation. The front desk area is pretty dull after all, and all of the magazines supplied are at least 2 years old.
“Kaveh,” the front desk lady says. Her face is the epitome of disinterested. “You can head down to Ms. Kusanali’s office.”
He obediently shuffles out of the waiting room and down the hall to Nahida’s humble space. Kaveh isn’t entirely surprised when the door opens and he’s face to face with Alhaitham, but he is irritated.
“Hello?” he says when Alhaitham doesn’t say anything. The Student Council secretary’s mouth opens and closes like a goldfish. It’s vaguely worrying. Kaveh hates Alhaitham, but he doesn’t want him to have a stroke or whatever is happening here. “Are you feeling alright?”
“Oh,” Alhaitham blinks twice, and suddenly, his face is back to its usual bland stare. “I’m fine. Nahida told me to apologize for insinuating your hair looked bad last week. It didn’t look that horrible. It looks good now. And it contrasts nicely with your outfit.”
Kaveh has no idea how to respond to this. His face feels strangely warm, and his skin has erupted in millions of tiny goosebumps. He shifts back and forth on his feet and avoids Alhaitham’s intense gaze which seems to be fixated right between his eyes.
“Uh, thanks… I think…” Kaveh mumbles. He miraculously seems to have forgotten the entirety of the Teyvatian language because all he can think is what the actual hell just happened?
Alhaitham nods in that stiff, robotic way he has of doing things before walking down the hall. No, not walking. Fleeing, more like. That stupid gray hair that never seems to sit down on his head wobbles faintly in the distance. It’s kind of cute.
Wait. No. What?
Cute? Did he really just describe Alhaitham as cute?
He must have hit his head and forgotten or something. There is no way in hell that Kaveh just thought of his sworn enemy as cute. This is disgusting. It’s unacceptable. It goes against all known laws of the universe, probably.
Just once is a fluke, twice is a pattern. As long as that word never comes up in relation to Alhaitham again, Kaveh is fine. He is fine. Surely.
He realizes belatedly that Nahida has been speaking to him for who knows how long.
“Kaveh? Are you listening? You seem to have zoned out for a while. Thinking about something? Someone, perhaps?”
The sly look on Nahida’s face is, frankly, unbecoming of a therapist. It also does not match up in the slightest with her cutesy appearance and innocent side ponytail.
“Come in, come in. I want to hear all about them!”
Kaveh, not for the first time under Nahida’s watchful eye, wants to sink into the ground.
Their conversation is nothing short of excruciating. Nahida positively rips into the details of his supposed crush and Kaveh wants to scream and beg her to stop talking, but she’s too cute and well meaning to be frustrated with.
“I’m so curious about how you two know each other!” she tells him while kicking her feet in excitement.
“Nahida,” he says wearily, “aren’t we here to talk about my crippling depression and abandonment issues? Not Alhaitham?”
“Well, yes. And we’ll get to that soon enough! But I like to get to know my patients a little mote before I dive into their trauma! So?”
Her sunshiny smile never fades even as she talks. This woman is truly to peppy for this world. And too nosy, but Kaveh would never say that to her face.
“He’s the Student Council secretary at our school,” Kaveh supplies reluctantly, “but that’s it.”
“Really? You two seem to have some strong feelings for two people who hardly know each other!”
“Strong feelings!?”
“Yes. You talk about each other a lot.”
“I do not!” He sort of does, but Kaveh doesn’t want to think of the ramifications of that right now.
“Alright, alright, I’ll leave it alone,” Nahida says in a way that tells him she will not be leaving it alone. “I just think you guys should talk less about each other and more to each other. You might find something you like! Now, about that depression…”
His therapy session, if you can even call it that, with Nahida stays in the back of his mind the entire rest of the weekend and into Monday. In stark contrast to last week, he trudges to school at record low speeds. The whole walk there, he prays to every god he can think of that Alhaitham will not be there. Please be absent, please be absent—
Unsurprisingly, when Kaveh finds Cyno’s signature hoodie, there is a tall gray haired guy standing right next to their table. Further proof that the universe has it out for him.
Kaveh sighs and resigns himself to his fate. He marches up to the group with a false confidence his public speaking teacher would be proud of. “Hey guys! And Alhaitham.”
If the secretary notices his change in tone, he doesn’t bother pointing it out. “Hello,” he greets flatly, looking anywhere but at Kaveh. Then, not even a millisecond later, says, “I’ll be taking my leave now. You can find me in the library.”
He disappears in the crowd of high schoolers so fast that Kaveh almost thinks he was a mere hallucination. Not that he would ever hallucinate about Alhaitham, of all people! Aha, aha, aha. As if.
“We were just discussing student council stuff,” Cyno throws his hands up in surrender as Kaveh glares murderously at him. “Not everything is a secret plot against you.”
“Plotting against me is all you two ever do,” Kaveh mutters, glaring at the broad back of Alhaitham as he scurries away. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think I’m being replaced by my moodier, more annoying counterpart.”
“You’re so dramatic,” Tighnari groans. “Alhaitham really isn’t as bad as you constantly make him out to be. I don’t understand what you two have against each other! Honestly, you have a lot in common—“
“Now you just sound like my therapist! We do not have anything in common and we will never, ever be friends! It’s just not the natural order of things!”
“That’s a subpar excuse,” Cyno comments passively. "We all know you two are still beefing over your middle school rivalry. I bet you still cry yourself to sleep over coming second place to him in that spelling bee."
Kaveh's jaw drops down so far that it's almost uncomfortable. His friend's assertions are devastatingly accurate. He still remembers the feeling of red hot rage as then eleven-year-old Alhaitham effortlessly spelled subjugated, which was way too on the nose to be a coincidence.
Cyno seems not to notice or care about his state of shock. Turning his attention back to his more beloved friend, Genius Invokation TCG, as he exclaims in a noticeably brighter tone, "I've got you backed into a corner now!"
“You’re such a cheater,” Tighnari grunts before rolling his eight elemental dice halfheartedly, “of course you’d win if your opponent isn’t even paying attention to the game.”
“Constant vigilance, ‘Nari!”
“Could you two stop flirting for two seconds and listen to me?!” Kaveh wails before slamming his face down onto the table with just the right amount of melodrama.
“Save it for the theatre, friend.” Tighnari is apathetic to Kaveh’s suffering as usual.
“Oh, that reminds me!” Cyno finally manages to tear his attention from his one sided game of TCG to look at Kaveh. “Collei is trying out for the school play this year, her therapist recommended it to help with her anxiety. Ironically enough, it's made her super nervous. Rehearsals are today, right? Could you walk her there, just to calm her down? You know how she gets.”
“Asking me favors now? After the disrespect I’ve just been showered in?”
Kaveh is kidding, of course. He would jump into oncoming traffic for Collei, as would anyone else who knew the sweet but timid girl. She’s a breath of fresh air from his otherwise snarky and mischievous friends. Not to mention he hadn’t seen the freshman since the beginning of the school year, just over two months ago.
Cyno knows this as well as he himself does, so he doesn’t press the issue further. Still, Kaveh gets the distinct impression his friends are planning something…
Of course, Kaveh is correct. He is a surprisingly good people reader, but he's also a hopeful idiot who refuses to believe his friends are secretly unhinged schemers with only his worst interests in mind. That idealism is what leads him to the door of the gymnasium a few minutes after school.
"You'll be a great actor," Kaveh cheers as Collei hesitates in front of the building door. "You can do it!"
The girl's red face provides an incredible contrast to her choppy green hair. "You don't have to cheer for me, really! I think I'd feel a lot better if you... came inside with me... quietly, of course!"
He really is incapable of turning down Collei. She's adorable in every single way.
The gymnasium is dimly lit, the only light sources being some orange and red glow sticks taped to the walls. Kaveh suspects their purpose is to add a tense atmosphere to the room but, really, they just look a little ridiculous and a lot tacky. He’s not surprised in the slightest when Yoimiya, the Akademiya’s bubbly theatre technician, greets them at the door and proudly confesses to designing the decorations.
“They look amazing,” Kaveh says sweetly.
“Thanks! You know, that Alhaitham really is my number one hater. He told me the lights looked tacky and ridiculous. He’s always so grumpy. He may be the only person in the entire world to not love glow sticks!”
She pushes two orange lights into his and Collei's hands and ushers them off. Collei says something quietly but Kaveh's mind has been left in the entrance.
Alhaitham? In theatre?
There is no way in hell.
And of course, because his life is a joke, Alhaitham is standing right in the middle of the gymnasium next to Fischl, of all people! Fischl, the strange but lovable anime kid who carries a thesaurus everywhere she goes and smuggles her pet bird into her English class! The image of the stone faced student council member next to the animated sophomore, no doubt rambling about things no one could care less about, is enough to make Kaveh cackle.
Collei stares at him with a look of concern; perhaps fear. "Are you okay?"
Alhaitham looks up and they make that dreaded eye contact once again. His gaze sends instant shivers down Kaveh's spine, completely disregarding the warm and cramped environment around him. He feels like it's just him and Alhaitham in an empty field of flowers or cute woodland animals or something. His stomach drops into his toes.
"Don't worry about me," he forces out. Alhaitham is turning, fleeing from Kaveh once again. Not on his damn watch. "Go get in line, you don't want to miss your shot! I'll be cheering from the booths."
"You know," Collei smiles shyly, "you can just go chase Alhaitham already. I don't mind. I'll let you know how rehearsals go afterwards."
He cannot seriously be this obvious.
Embarrassment causes a warm flush to cross his face, but a favor is a favor. He wastes no time shoving furiously through the crowd of wannabe actors. Without sparing a look back, he calls out, "Thanks Collei! You are truly the best!"
Alhaitham is fast, but his height and weird looking cowlick prevent him from disappearing completely. The junior opens a side door and tries to slip out, Kaveh's foot stops the door from closing.
"Running away now, are we?" he asks, feigning nonchalance and trying to pretend he's not out of breath from chasing him through the entire gym.
"Stalking people now, are we?" Alhaitham snips. His eyes are so much more intense up close. Like little shining gemstones on a pearly white beach. Like the eyes of a hawk soaring serenely in the eye of a hurricane. Like--
Is he seriously composing sonnets at a time like this?
Kaveh cringes hard and wipes a hand over his face. What has gotten into him over the last few weeks? Ever since that awkward meeting with Alhaitham at the clinic, it was like his mind couldn't stop wandering. Wandering to places he really, really did not need it to go. Especially not with someone as stupid and infuriating as the boy standing before him.
"It's not like I'm following you just for the fun of it! If you hadn't started staring at me from across the room, I wouldn't have come over. Also..." Kaveh smirks deviously. "I didn't know you were a theatre kid."
He laughs boisterously as Alhaitham groans.
"I can have hobbies," he huffs. "I don't just do homework all day."
"Yeah, I'm sure you preserve a solid fourth of your day for book reading and Shakespeare."
"More than a fourth. And we don't do Shakespeare; all the plays are student written."
"I'm sure," Kaveh says dryly. "On or offstage, just can't get over the image of you showing any expression other than boredom and distaste. It's kind of adorable, actually. Someone like you doing something like this."
It is completely silent for one, two, three seconds. Kaveh realizes belatedly what he's just said. He's called Alhaitham cute. Again. One time could be a fluke. But twice? In the span of a week? What does that mean for him?
He glances experimentally at Alhaitham, praying that he's somehow missed his words. But of course he hasn't. The boy is looking pointedly in the opposite direction, but the ear not covered by his headphones speaks louder than anything he could've said. It's a bright, fluorescent, stop sign red. Kaveh turns a similar color.
Finally, Alhaitham mutters lowly, "It's not cute and I am not an actor. I work backstage."
"Oh," Kaveh responds because he doesn't know what else to say.
"Did Tighnari and Cyno send you here with Collei?"
"Yeah."
"They probably wanted me to give you this."
Alhaitham reaches in his pocket with those stupid, toned arms and long elegant fingers. More so than his own, which really pisses him off because he spent hours on this stupid manicure just to look plain next to Alhaitham in his natural radiant beauty.
What.
Kaveh's mind does him a favor and blanks as his acquaintance--sworn enemy, friend, whatever the hell they are--holds out a brochure to him. He hesitantly takes it and for a fraction of a second, their fingertips touch. Kaveh recoils as though he's been burnt as a tingling sensation spreads up the entirety of his arm. He regrets it the second he does. He wants to reach out, take that hand, and never let go.
What?
"What is this?" Kaveh asks dumbly. His vision is swimming. He might actually collapse.
"It's an advertisement for theatre crew. We make sets, costumes, and write scripts. You can join. Or not."
Kaveh can feel Alhaitham looking at his forehead. He wonders if he has zit there or something. The thought makes him feel genuinely sick. He cannot be pimply in front of Alhaitham. He has to look his absolute best for him.
What!?
"I'm going to leave now, my grandmother will be worried about me." the boy shifts from foot to foot in that awkward way of his. "Consider it. Or don’t."
Alhaitham offers a meek, unsure little wave as he departs. He briefly wonders whether he looks as uneasy as he feels. He has a tendency to get a little pale when he thinks too hard about too many things, which he's absolutely doing right now. That doesn't stop him from damn near swooning at the memory of Alhaitham's dumb stupid face the second he's out of sight.
This is absolutely going to be a problem for him.
On the bright side, Kaveh is absolutely going to have some troublesome feelings to dive into with Nahida in therapy today. He has found himself in the sterile waiting room once again, this time directly across from the hat guy. He's incredibly bored and needs a distraction from his thoughts, so he starts talking.
"Hello," he says politely enough. No response.
"Hi..?" he tries again. Again, he is ignored.
Maybe the kid is just deaf? Or extremely hard of hearing? Kaveh refuses to be this annoyed this early on in the day. Especially not on a weekend. He is going to practice patience and kindness like a champion today. He opens his mouth to attempt communication for a third time when the hat guy slams his magazine closed with leagues more force than was required.
"Why," he grits out, "are you talking to me?"
"I'm bored," Kaveh replies honestly. He fights not to show any fear on his face, but this kid is actually freaky. He can't tell if he's genuinely pissed the stranger off or if that's just his resting expression. Judging by his terse tone, it's the prior.
"Can't you see I'm trying to read?" he waves around the book, which is being held upside down, which Kaveh will not acknowledge for his own self preservation.
"I'm... sorry?"
"You should be!" the kid barks. "People these days have no respect! I can't do shit around here without an annoying maggot trying to come up to me! Let's make friends this, let's not be antisocial that--how about let's close our mouths for a moment!"
Kaveh's mouth is hanging wide open in shock. He glances around the waiting room at the numerous other patients, who are all showing various degrees of not giving a flying fuck. Some old guy is muttering about wine and memories or something--maybe he's there for the next Alcoholics Anonymous meeting?--and a new patient, a young woman with long twin tails and soulless eyes, is dozing off in her seat.
At least he no longer has to wonder whether the hat dude is actually receiving therapy.
Suddenly, the door to the waiting room slams open and even the most disassociated patients look up at the interruption.
"Wanderer!" Nahida's voice is stern and commanding. Parental, even. "Quit harassing my patients! Can't you see Kaveh is trying to be polite? He's a very nice kid. Apologize right now!"
Wanderer (what kind of name is that? Kaveh will stick to calling him Hat Guy) withers immediately. He is no longer the angry and aggressive boy from five seconds ago. He's like a well behaved cat slinking away in shame.
"I apologize," he says flatly. "Kaveh."
"It's fine, really," he exclaims. This is unbearably awkward.
Hat Guy turns to Nahida. "He forgave me," he points out. He sounds like a scolded and bitter little kid. It's sort of funny.
Nahida ignores him and turns to Kaveh with a bright smile. "You're a good person for accepting his apology. I promise you he's not so bad, even if he's a little abrasive. He just has severe trust and self esteem issues that cause him to lash out at the world as a coping mechanism! It all started when his parents abandoned him, his only friend died, and he was manipulated into committing a small scale genocide!”
“Oh,” Kaveh says. He feels like this must be an inside joke he’s too unenlightened to understand.
"Anyways," his therapist continues jovially, "it get’s better with time. I'm sure you two will become great friends soon! Just like you and Alhaitham, hm?”
Somehow, Kaveh had failed to notice his classmate standing right there like a shadow behind Nahida. Their eyes meet. He's just as pretty as he was outside the gym. Goddammit!
"Yeah," Alhaitham says, because he lives to torture him. He doesn't look away for even a second, so Kaveh keep up the eye contact as well, because he hates to lose. Their staring contest is interrupted by the loud clearing of Hat Guy's throat.
"Get a room, will you?"
All sympathy Kaveh once had for Hat Guy and his weird, possibly-true-possibly-not background as a war criminal leaves his body at once. He walks into the hallway leading to Nahida's office and Alhaitham goes the opposite way towards the parking lot. He probably drives, because he's perfect like that.
Turns out the saying "out of sight, out of mind" is not true in the slightest.
"I have a crush on Alhaitham," he tells Nahida the second her office door shuts. She takes her sweet time walking to her signature green swing in the corner of the room and settling down. Finally, she laughs. The sound is like little jingle bells.
"I know."
"Well if you know, can't you give me some advice? Please?"
"Weren't you the one who said, 'Aren't we here to talk about my crippling depression and abandonment issues? Not Alhaitham?'"
"But that was so long ago! I'm begging you! How do I make this stop?"
Nahida's jingling laugh and smile fade into nothingness as abruptly as they'd first appeared. "Stop it? Why would you want to do that?"
"It's making my life so much more stressful," Kaveh says, squeezing his eyes shut. Of course now he can feel wetness behind his eyelids. "Plus, I know he doesn't like me. People like Alhaitham don't pay attention to people like me."
"Oh, don't start this! You're a gorgeous young man with a beautiful heart! Besides, all he ever talks about is Kaveh this, Kaveh that. People love you! Who wouldn't?"
"My mom."
"Your mother does love you," Nahida's voice and eyes are sad. She looks, for once, her grown age. Like a woman who has seen too much of the world. "Sometimes people do stupid things when they don't know what else to do. They leave the things and people they care about behind because they're afraid. Just like you."
Kaveh's head snaps up. "How am I like my mother?" he laughs bitterly. "That's the worst thing anyone could ever say to me. I don't want to be like a feeble woman too weak to stay with her own son."
"Then don't be a feeble man too weak to do something about his crush! Emotions aren't bad. Crushes are normal and most people will get them at least a couple of times in their life. Don't run from a boy who obviously cares about you just because the voices in your head tell you he doesn't. You're so much more than those voices."
He doesn't realizing he's crying until Nahida walks from her chair to stand in front of him. She presses a tissue to his cheek which he takes gratefully. "I know your past makes it hard to accept love for and from others," she says gently, "but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try. I think you two can make each other very happy."
"Why is he here, anyway?" Kaveh asks. He knows the question is invasive, and he knows she would never reveal the answer, but his curiosity is eating him alive.
Nahida's eyes soften, but she steps away sternly. "Ask him yourself."
She pulls out a pen and paper from who-knows-where and writes down a string of digits. "This is his number. Your homework for this week is to text him. Just once. Tell him anything."
"I didn't realize therapists gave homework," Kaveh sniffles, accepting the pad of paper from her tiny hand.
"Some don't, but the good ones do," she says, eyes twinkling. "I believe in you. I believe in you like a mother believes in her son. If Alhaitham doesn't come to therapy next week with stars in his eyes, I'll be very angry with you!"
"I'm going to text Alhaitham."
"You know you don't need our permission, right?"
Kaveh, Cyno, and Tighnari are on a three way phone call. He'd just gone through hell and high water to get his fellow orphans away from him long enough to have a private conversation. He loved the kids in his orphanage--how could he not?--but they're more than a bit clingy. To be fair, that's probably the deep seated feelings of abandonment and inadequacy talking, but he digresses.
"Obviously I know that," Kaveh snaps, "I just can't think of what to say and I made the mistake of expecting my best friends to be helpful."
"Send him a pick up line!" Cyno says unhelpfully. His voice comes out glitchy and barely discernible. He lives on the outskirts of Sumeru City, closer to the desert than the rainforest, so calls always go like this. A mix of bickering from Tighnari and Kaveh and random robot static from Cyno's side.
"I am not sending him a pickup line!"
"Oh, are we finally past the denial stage?" Tighnari's voice is annoyingly smug. "Finally ready to admit you've fallen for your archenemy?"
"My therapist made me do it," Kaveh says sullenly.
"I don't blame her. Enemies to lovers is a solid ship dynamic. It's all Collei ever writes about."
"More solid than the Alcor?"
The silence in the call is deafening. Finally, Cyno speaks up. "Get it? Because the Alcor is a ship?"
"Anyways," Tighnari sighs, "why don't you just say hi like a normal person?"
"Because!" Kaveh doesn't really have a good reason why he shouldn't do that, but he refuses to directly admit defeat. "Just... because. Give me something with a little more substance!"
A notification from the group chat pops up on his screen. It's a link to a list of 100 pickup lines that are, according to the article, 'scientifically proven to get you laid in a timely manner'.
"I'm not trying to get laid! For fuck's sake Cyno-"
"Some of these are pretty good," Tighnari says. Kaveh can only see the top of the head as his friend scrolls through the list. "Ooh, this one would work on me: Do you like raisins? How would you feel about a date?"
"I'll make sure to remember that, baby," Cyno's glitchy voice announces. His tone, which is nothing short of positively thirsty, makes Kaveh wants to claw out his eardrums and eat them.
"Of course that'd work on you," he grunts. "You guys are made for each other. I think I'll stick with a hi."
"Glad to help," Tighnari starts to say before being promptly hung up on.
Kaveh stares at his messages app for a good five minutes before finally opening it. It takes him another 10 to type in Alhaitham's number. He stares at the blank spot where words are supposed to go and finds he has absolutely nothing to say. He never thought there'd be a day he was rendered speechless, but here he is.
Kaveh: Hi
Way too disinterested.
Kaveh: Heyyy
Way too slutty.
Kaveh: Helloo
Way too drunk.
Kaveh: Hiya
Ok, he doesn't even know what to think about that last attempt.
He tosses jams his phone deep into his pocket and flings himself onto his bed before kicking his feet like a wrathful schoolgirl. The world is cruel. Maybe he should ask ChatGPT to write him a cool, casual first text message to the guy he is kinda sorta totally into. Yes, he is willing to stoop that low.
Then, suddenly, from the inside of his jacket, he hears a familiar voice. The vibration of it sends a chill through his entire body and he almost passes out from shock and horror alone.
"Hello? Who is this?" the muffled voice of Alhaitham inquires.
Leave it to Kaveh to accidentally pocket-dial his crush. It's so unbelievably unlucky that it's somehow completely believable. He flounders for a long moment before having the presence of mind to fish out his phone. He briefly considers hanging up and trying to bleach the incident from his brain, but he remembers Nahida's words.
God, he hates when his therapists actually push him outside of his comfort zone.
"Hi," he says, voice cracking painfully. "It's me, Kaveh."
There is a long silence on the other end of the line.
"Oh. How did you get my number?" Alhaitham sounds slightly stilted. Kaveh wonders if he's weirded out. No, scratch that, he must be weirded out! Some rando from his school got his number from who knows where, who wouldn't be freaked? He wants to sink into his bedroom floor.
"Uh, Nahida gave it to me," he answers awkwardly. Why the hell would you tell the truth? Who admits to getting someone's number from their therapist, of all people? That might actually be the worst start to a conversation you've ever created. Quickly, he tacks on, "I don't know why she gave me your contact! It's not like we were talking about you or anything, she just said I should befriend more people at the clinic, or something, haha..."
He is so screwed.
If Alhaitham notices his obvious lies, he is kind enough not to point them out. "So... did you need something from me?"
Kaveh scavenges through his brain for a feasible excuse. He comes up empty, so again, he tells the meager truth. "I accidentally called you. Sorry."
"Oh."
Another bout of torturous silence.
"Are you going to hang up?" Alhaitham asks eventually.
Honestly, Kaveh doesn't want to. Despite how painful this conversation has been, Alhaitham's voice sounds deep and nice with his phone speaker held to his ear. It has a bit of raspiness, too; perhaps he just woke up? The thought makes him feel warm and giddy. Talking to his classmate makes him feel warm and giddy. He could stay on call with him forever. Talk to him forever. Be with him forever.
The thought is like a bucket of cold water poured over his head. Kaveh suddenly has an ingenious, or incredibly stupid depending on who you ask, idea.
"One more thing!" he forces the words out at double speed so he doesn't have time to regret them. "I want to join the theatre crew as an artist."
"Okay," Alhaitham agrees. There is no real change in his smooth voice, but somehow, Kaveh has the feeling he might be smiling. Maybe he's just delusional, though. "We meet on Tuesdays. Be sure not to miss a meeting, Fischl gets very erratic when it comes to crew absences."
"Okay, I'll talk to you later. Monday, maybe."
"I'll find you."
Kaveh can officially die happy. Those words? Out of Alhaitham's beautiful mouth? He swoons, falling back as silently as possible into a cloud of pillows. Cliche as it may be, he really wishes he had a heart pillow or cute stuffed animal to squeeze right then.
"Ok," he squeaks, trying and failing to keep the elation out of his voice. "Bye, Alhaitham."
"Bye."
The line goes dead. Kaveh comes alive.
"You really made a quick turn around," Tighnari laughs after Kaveh is finished recounting the events of that fateful evening. "One second you hate him, the next he has you swooning."
"Don't judge me!" Kaveh rocks back in forth at their signature bench. "You know I'm unstable!"
"I'm happy for you, Kaveh," Cyno says earnestly. "You seem so much sunnier these days."
"I agree, you're practically glowing. Maybe a bit of Alhaitham's snark is good for the soul."
It's moments like these when Kaveh can remind himself fully why Tighnari and Cyno are his ride or dies. They are annoying, two faced schemers, but they can be thoughtful and sweet when they want to be. Or maybe he's just in a sentimental mood.
"Thanks guys," he gushes. "I love you so much; have I said that recently? Well, I should have. I'm gonna start saying that every day as an affirmation to myself and to the world. Group hug!"
"Okay, that's too far," Tighnari says, but still allows Kaveh to pull him and Cyno into an embrace. Sometimes he forget just how short his best friends are. Occasionally, he gets the urge to pick one of them up and toss them in the air, just to see how light they really are. The thought makes him smile evilly, but he knows Tighnari especially would kill him for it.
"Am I interrupting something?" Alhaitham sounds vaguely amused.
Kaveh practically dumps his friends from his arms and whips around at record speed to face him. Somehow, Alhaitham looks more attractive than usual. Maybe he's done something to his hair? The white at the tips of his bangs seems to stand out a little more today. His skin seems a bit more sparkly. Is he hallucinating of is the secretary actually radiating?
When he doesn't speak, Cyno does. "You've made him crazy."
"That is not true!" Kaveh takes back all of the nice things he'd just thought about him. "Don't listen to anything they say. I'm just excited for theatre tomorrow, that's all."
"That's not the only thing he's excited for," Tighnari snickers, then coughs as Kaveh jams his elbow as hard as he can into his stomach.
Alhaitham's mouth twitches like he's trying not to laugh.
"Moving on," Kaveh says loudly to drown out the painfully unsubtle laughs of his company. "Did you need something from me?"
"Yes and no," Alhaitham's face returns from mildly amused to its usual blank expression. "I said I'd find you today so I did. Also," he digs in his back pocket and pulls out a sleek greenish-blue phone, "Fischl asked me to add you to the theatre group chat. Can you give me your phone?"
Hypnotized by his eyes, Kaveh would've done anything for him at that point. He passes over his phone and watches long fingers skillfully type in a string of digits. For a treacherous moment, he wonders...
No. This is not that kind of fanfiction.
He must've gone red because Alhaitham is looking at him strangely. "Are you listening to me?"
"Oh, yeah," he shoots back absently. This causes another wave of laughter from Cyno and Tighnari. He is going to murder them.
Since he obviously was not paying attention, Alhaitham repeats himself. "Can you add Collei's number? I don't have it."
Collei's name has peaked Cyno's interest in their conversation beyond laughing at Kaveh's awkwardness.
"Did she get in the play?" he demands in that intense way he gets whenever the freshman is brought up.
"Yes. I'm not sure what role, though. They'll be posted outside the gym by tomorrow if you're interested.
Cyno pulls out his phone and types furiously, no doubt setting a reminder to check the casting list the moment he gets to school. Collei is everyone's little sister, but she's especially close to Cyno and Tighnari. He isn't entirely sure why that is; it's related to her past, something none of them like to discuss. Still, it doesn't take a genius to know how close the three of them are. Kaveh feels like they have a relationship similar to that which he has with the kids at his orphanage. They may not be family by blood, but they love each other more than any of their blood relatives ever had.
The suddenly bleak thought causes him to shake his head forcefully. He is not going to get sad and existential at the very beginning of the school day. Besides, he still has Tuesday’s theatre meet to look forward to.
He waves goodbye to the back of Alhaitham's head. Sometime during his brain fog, the boy had begun to walk away.
Somehow, when Tuesday comes, Collei is the picture of calm. She's smiling eagerly as they wait outside the empty classroom for the rest of the club members to show up. Meanwhile, Kaveh is having a level 10 crisis. He's sweaty and even without a mirror, he knows his skin is either ghost white or just-recently-slapped red. It's genuinely embarrassing, especially considering that he was the one who chose this for himself. Surprise, surprise; he's never been a good decision maker.
“Are you feeling okay?” Collei asks and he can’t decide if she’s being sincere or subtly poking fun at his crisis. “There’s always Thursday, I’m sure Fischl won’t mind.”
Kaveh places his face in his hands. “She absolutely will. She might even sic that stupid bird on me.”
“Oz doesn’t attack people! I think.”
Their conversation halts as another weird theater kid joins them at the classroom door. To Kaveh’s horror, it’s another person from the dreaded therapy waiting room. The girl with the white hair and blue cat, who looked a few years too old to be in high school, shoots Collei and him a confident smile.
“Hello, my loyal subjects!”
Gods above, he already hates her.
“Hi,” he responds politely, “I’m Kaveh and this is Collei.”
“Hey,” Collei squeaks.
“My illustrious and awe inspiring name is Furina de Fontaine! Pleased to meet you!”
Kaveh gets the distinct feeling this girl is overcompensating tremendously for something. Alas, he’s not callous enough to say that to her face. But the temptation is definitely there.
He’s saved from responding by a large group of club members rounding the hallway corner. Among them is Alhaitham, who seems to tower over everyone around him, which annoys Kaveh. They’re about the same height, and yet the stupid secretary has such a domineering presence. Attractive, even, if he’s being completely honest with himself. The more openly Kaveh thinks about his, well, crush on him, the more his very soul withers.
Why did he think this was a good idea again?
But then Alhaitham sees him, and he does that little half smile he seems to save just for situations like these, and Kaveh’s resolve dissipates. He is a weak, weak man.
He holds Collei’s hand as the classroom door is unlocked and the club meeting begins. Fischl monologues for what must be hours about theatre etiquette and some other stuff Kaveh didn’t bother paying attention to. He’s too busy trying to avoid making awkward eye contact with Alhaitham from across the room. Maybe it’s wishful thinking, but he feels like the boy has been staring at him.
He subconsciously smooths out the wrinkles on his jacket, just in case his hunch was correct.
“Okay,” Yoimiya cuts into Fischl’s loud and empty speech, effectively ending the club members’ collective misery. “Enough about boring stuff like rules, we’re here to put on a show! I think it’s time we think about what production we want to do this year.”
“Ooh,” Furina waves her hand in the air over excitedly, “we should put on a gritty and drama-packed tragedy!”
Venti, a boy who seems constantly tipsy, boos her suggestion loudly. “We did that last year! We should do a fun musical instead! Sad stuff is so boring.”
“You’re boring!” Furina shouts dramatically. “Musicals are so basic and uninventive, just like you!”
“If I wanted a tragedy,” Venti starts, “I’d ask about your last three senior years-“
Collei looks on the brink of fainting, her peaceful demeanor wrecked by the chaos and aggression of their new club mates. Her hand is slick with sweat inside of Kaveh’s, which she is gripping like her very life depends on it.
“Theatre humans, please!” Fischl’s slams a hand down on a desk at the front of the room. The loud impact brings silence down on the formerly chaotic classroom. “A bit of bickering in the name of a good production is one thing, but you two are taking this entirely too far!”
Furina and Venti both sigh in unison. Despite getting along like fire and water, they somehow seem to be on the same wavelength.
Sort of like him and Alhaitham.
Like he’s been summoned by Kaveh’s thoughts, Alhaitham clears his throat loudly. Everyone turns their attention to him because, again, pretty face with an intense presence.
“I think we should do a romance,” he says coolly. “We haven’t done one in years. It can be tragic with lots of random song and dance numbers; that’s how they all are, right? Problem solved.”
“Yes! Star-crossed lovers who both dramatically kill themselves in the end, how messy!” Furina cries with way too much enthusiasm for the subject matter.
“That’s just Romeo and Juliet,” Venti rolls his eyes but doesn’t disagree.
“Well,” Fischl inserts herself into the discussion once again, “is everyone in agreement with Alhaitham’s idea…?”
No one raises any objections, so Fischl writes ‘tragic love story musical’ on the board in bold, red font before circling it three times. She rattles on a bit more about how the script needed to be revolutionary and original before finally freeing the group thirty minutes after the meet was supposed to end.
Collei’s face is frozen in fear as Kaveh leads her out the classroom. “I didn’t expect so much yelling,” she comments lowly.
“With this cast of characters, I’m not surprised,” Kaveh laments. “Still, it could be worse.”
“The initial brainstorming stage is typically most chaotic.”
Kaveh nearly leaps out of his skin as Alhaitham speaks. His voice is infuriatingly smooth as always and his breath is warm on his neck. Does this kid have no knowledge of personal space?
He takes a large step forwards, away from Alhaitham, and whips around to face him. Collei looks equally shocked.
“You’re so quiet,” she whimpers. “How long have you been listening to us?”
“Not so long,” Alhaitham tells them shamelessly. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but we leave the same direction.”
“Oh, really?” Kaveh fights to regain his composure and keep the tremor out of his voice. Now’s the time to be cool, calm, and collected like the kickass junior he is.
“Yes, my grandmother’s house is about a half hour’s walk away. I live a block away from the orphanage near here.”
Kaveh nearly does a full on double take. “Seriously? You live next to the House of the Hearth?”
Alhaitham looks at him strangely. “Yes? Is there something wrong with that?”
“No, it’s just…”
He glances down at Collei who shoots him a worried look. She, like Cyno and Tighnari, knows that Kaveh is an orphan at the House. But does he want Alhaitham to know that as well?
The problem isn’t necessarily that he’s ashamed of his lack of parents. Being an orphan has been his reality since he was eight years old. His age has doubled since then, and it’s not like his parents are too much of a sensitive subject anymore either. Deep down, he knows Alhaitham wouldn’t judge him for something as dumb as not having a mom or dad, but…
He thinks of what Nahida would say. Probably some cheesy anecdote about honesty being the best policy or being true to yourself at all times. Cheesy or not, imaginary Nahida is right. He bites the bullet.
“I live there,” he says quickly. He focuses on placing one foot in front of the other and keeping his gaze straight ahead of him. Irrationally, he’s still scared of Alhaitham’s response.
“Oh,” the boy’s voice is as even and monotone as ever. “Okay.”
And Alhaitham doesn’t bring it up again. The three of them walk in silence for the next few blocks before Collei and him need to take a different turn.
“I’ll text you,” Alhaitham says to Kaveh as he turns to leave. “Also, I don’t care about your parents or lack thereof. My mom and dad died a when I was a kid, so I don’t find it weird at all.”
The words might’ve sounded dismissive coming from anyone else’s lips, but Kaveh is beginning to understand Alhaitham. He was honest, never beat around the metaphorical bush, and he’s shit at comforting people. But awkward as he is, he tries his best. It’s endearing. No, it’s really freaking cute.
Kaveh goes bright red and Collei beams, no doubt thinking of what she’s gonna say to Cyno and Tighnari about this. Right now, he can’t bring himself to care.
His voice comes out a lot softer than he’d intended. “Thanks, Alhaitham. Bye.”
Kaveh thinks about his words the entire rest of the way home. Collei allows him silence for him to mull over his thoughts, but the smile on her face is louder than anything she could’ve said.
When the weekend finally arrives, Kaveh practically skips into the therapy waiting room. Yes, he's running late, and yes, the room is as bleak and boring as ever, but not even unimaginative cream colored walls and stale air can dampen his mood.
Then he sees Alhaitham. His heart rate immediately doubles and his head goes empty, save for a few thoughts: Curse you, Nahida. The conniving little gremlin must've changed his appointment time. He loves her so much.
The boy looks up from his book, because of course he's reading, and his expression relaxes the moment he sees Kaveh. He isn't sure how to feel about that look. It makes him feel warm and fuzzy and also like he wants to rip his skin off--in a good way. He's all too aware of Hat Guy staring at the two of them from across the waiting room. He doesn't even have to look at him to feel the look of disgust on his face.
Turns out his type is awkward men who are good at spelling. It's not ideal, but he's too elated over Alhaitham's presence to care about what this says about him.
"Hey," he says, embarrassingly breathless.
"Hi," Alhaitham’s voice is perfectly even, but somehow, Kaveh can feel a distinct sense of warmth in his tone.
"Gross," Hat Guy sniggers. Kaveh turns around and stares daggers into his very soul. Wisely, the little shit falls silent.
At that very moment, an overworked looking girl with a long blue... Mullet? Ponytail? What even is that? While Kaveh was trying to figure out what was going on with her hair, the secretary must've called Alhaitham out for his appointment. He sadly watches him leave, not thrilled about the prospect of being alone with Hat Guy for an extended period of time.
Sure enough, the little guy opens his big mouth the moment the door shuts. "Are you two courting each other? This is so embarrassing to watch."
"Shut up," Kaveh slumps down into his seat, "like you could do any better."
"Muttering hello and staring dumbly into someone's eyes doesn't take special talent."
This is his final straw. He points right into Hat Guy's smug face and, in his most condescending tone, says, "How old are you, little boy? Someone who looks like they still think girls have cooties shouldn't be lecturing me on romance."
"Excuse me?" the boy bristles and sits up straighter in his seat. "I'm way older than you and all these other ugly clueless mortals."
"Oh, so you're young and delusional? What a catch. Who are you trying to fool anyway? You look twelve at best."
"I'll kill y--"
The secretary from earlier sighs from behind her desk. "Please," she grumbles, "no murder in the building... Our patients have enough trauma as is..."
Hat Guy, who had been yelling just a moment ago, resets his voice to a quiet drawl. The switch up is so fast is almost disconcerting. "All I'm saying is that you two are annoying. How long do you have to make sex eyes at each other before one of you makes a coherent move?"
Sex eyes? Seriously, how old is this kid?
"I will make a move when the time comes," he huffs, "not that it's any of your business."
"Nahida says I'm not nosy, I'm curious," Hat Guy responds with an air of superiority that makes Kaveh want to fling him out the nearest window. "Besides, I snuck into your medical records; now I know everything about your sad, pathetic life."
His jaw drops. So much for patient confidentiality. "That has to be some kind of lawsuit."
"Probably, but you're a dirt poor orphan with zero connections or motivation to do anything in life, so I'm not too worried about it."
"You're genuinely awful."
"Thanks."
They lapse into a surprisingly peaceful silence for a few minutes. Kaveh stares out the window and Hat Guy busies himself with kicking the table in front of his chair. It is endearingly juvenile.
"Do you even have therapy here?" he asks once he's bored to the point of no return. It causes him a great deal of shame to realize that Hat Guy's stupid antics entertain him.
"Nope," he says and does not elaborate.
"You probably should get on that, then. You need it."
Hat Guy rolls his eyes. "Do you not see the irony in that?"
Kaveh does, but he will never acknowledge it. "Why are you just allowed to hang out here if you're not even a patient? Is this your idea of a good time?"
"Nahida makes me."
"What, is she your mom or something?"
His eye twitches almost imperceptibly. An wide smile of pure glee spreads over Kaveh's face. This is too good to be true. He laughs out loud as Hat Guy scowls and sinks deeper into his chair.
"Oh, I see how it is."
"Shut up," the boy growls.
"No need to be ashamed," Kaveh's vision is beginning to swim with tears of mirth. "You've got a bad case of mommy issues, and that's okay!"
"Shut up!"
Hat Guy elbows Kaveh from across his armrest, and it hurts a surprising amount. The pain sobers him and he stops snickering. Tranquility descends upon the deserted room again. He hadn't even noticed that it was just him and Hat Guy there. His company isn't half bad, actually... or maybe he's just desperate.
Finally, the kid speaks. "I do not have mommy issues."
"Sure."
"That's not all. As the not-son of a therapist," he continues with a glare, "you obviously have problems with commitment. Which is pitiful, but that's beside the point. You are never going pursue that dumb nerd because you're a little bitch, obviously."
"Ouch," Kaveh gripes. It hurts more because he knows it's true, and the truth is agonizing because it's coming from Hat Guy's holier-than-thou mouth. Then, because he has a pride to protect, he adds on, "Did you steal this speech from your mom?"
"Shut up. Quit making googly eyes like a dumbass and do something with your life for a change." Hat Guy reclines in his seat and places his stubby legs on the table. "That's my motivational speech for the day."
Sadly, he's right. Even sadder is that Kaveh knows it. He's heard variations of this exact speech a thousand times and the more he hears it the more he hates it. Yes, he's avoidant, and yes, he's a coward, but he'd really appreciate it if people stopped calling him on his shit every ten minutes. At the same time, he does want to be with Alhaitham, for better or for worse. He wants to spend more time with him, at the very least.
Then, because Kaveh is an impulsive idiot, he says something idiotic. "Do you like anybody?"
"I hate humanity," Hat Guy shoots back. He's a good liar, but Kaveh is a good lie detector.
"I bet you do," he says, "but maybe you hate whoever you're thinking about slightly less than the rest of the population?"
"Not possible."
"Oh really?" Kaveh leans across his chair to get up close and personal with the boy. "I'll make you a deal. If you tell your crush you like them by the end of the month and show me you did with proof, I'll ask out Alhaitham."
"Yeah?" his voice is flat, but Kaveh doesn't miss the way his eyebrows raise slightly. "And what would I get out of that? I'm curious about your goofy little romance, but I'm not that curious. Also, you don't even know that I actually like someone. You made that plot up in your head."
Kaveh turns his chin up haughtily. "I can't prove it, but that doesn't mean I don't know. I'm not stupid."
"News to me."
"Shut up. Going back your other point, you'd get the satisfaction of watching me make a fool of myself. If I did ask him out, I'd do it right here in the middle of this lobby, no matter who's watching. I swear."
Hat Guy's eyebrow arches impossibly higher. "So, even if I invited the entirety of Gandharva Ville here, you'd do it?"
Kaveh is beginning to get a little scared. Making a deal with a vindictive psychopath isn't really a great idea. Actually, nothing about about this bet screams good idea. He still has time to turn back, but truthfully, he's always been a bit of an adrenaline junkie.
"Yes."
His company throws his head back and cackles. "Wow, you're stupid. I like stupid people. They make me feel smart."
Hat Guy extends his comically small hand and Kaveh takes it in his far bigger one. They shake on it. He officially has three weeks to freak out over his bad decision making and spiral while he waits to see if Hat Guy delivers on his end of the deal. Somehow, he gets the feeling that the boy absolutely will, if only just to see his downfall.
To be fair, he would probably do the same.
The door of the waiting room swings open and Alhaitham strides out. Kaveh bravely avoids eye contact. It been barely thirty seconds since the handshake and he's already starting to feel the sting of regret.
"Kaveh, you can see Ms. Nahida now," the secretary calls out.
At least he knows he'll have a lot to unpack this appointment.
Monday went by quickly. Kaveh had already called his best friends on Saturday night after therapy to tell them about his bet with Hat Guy. Naturally, they'd laughed at him.
"I love you Kaveh," Tighnari had said, "and you're a really smart student. But sometimes, you do things that really make me question your intellect."
He couldn't even be mad at that. After all, the entire situation could've been prevented had he kept his mouth shut and actually used his brain for a moment. If he did that, his life would be a lot more peaceful, but he thinks that Alhaitham might be worth the risk. Maybe.
Speaking of Alhaitham, it's Tuesday now.
"Humans, heed me!" Fischl smacks the whiteboard with a long pointer stick. The force from the blow causes a loud bang that silences the theatre club. "Last meeting, we decided on a gritty, drama filled musical about love."
"And suicide," Furina adds from the back of the classroom.
Fischl sighs. Kaveh thinks that making someone that eccentric exasperated has to be some kind of achievement. "Yes, fine, they can kill themselves in the end, but that's not the focus right now.
"Since we want this to be an original production, we're going to need someone to write the script for it. Now, I know this is a big responsibility, but I believe that it can be done! We are going to make history with the Akademiya's first fully student-written musical!"
"But it's not the first," Venti interrupts.
"No one cares, Venti, jeez." The club leader turns to the whiteboard and scrawls out 'WRITER' with a dramatic flourish. "Now, who wants to write this musical?"
No one moves.
"Ahem!" Fischl's eyes dance around the room judgmentally as she places her hands on her hips. "I said, WHO WANTS TO WRITE THIS MUSICAL!?"
Her tone leaves no room for argument. Slowly, a tentative hand reaches into the air. Kaveh turns to see who it belongs to, and realizes it's Alhaitham. Of course a linguistics nerd (affectionate) like him would be a play writer.
She writes his name on the board. "Perfect! Thanks, Alhaitham. But writing an entire play is not easy. Therefore," her voice turns from sweet to wrathful, "one of your fellow theatre kids needs to stop being a pussy and help you!"
Alhaitham turns around in his seat and makes direct eye contact with Kaveh. "Can you write?" he says. It doesn't really sound like a question--it's more like a demand. Spend time with me, Kaveh. Let's romantically write a script in the darkness of my bedroom at two in the morning. Let's cuddle under a cozy blanket while you impress me with your poetic, flowery handwriting. Let's gaze lovingly into each other's eyes as we tell the tale of two kids falling in love and then jumping off a bridge in their uncontrollable grief.
Collei nudges him out of his daydream. "Are you going to answer?" she hisses in his ear.
Right. Maybe he's getting a little ahead of himself. He's a romantic at heart; he really can't help it.
"Oh, yeah," he says. "Definitely. Just tell me where and when you want to write."
Please say your house, please say your house, please...
"We can do it at my house." Kaveh inwardly jumps for joy. He forces himself to keep his expression level. "Any day of the week that works for you."
"Okay," he smiles wider than he really ought to. "How about tomorrow night?"
"Works for me." Alhaitham returns his grin and turns back around in his seat. His next words are quieter, so much so that he thinks he must be mishearing them. "It's a date."
Kaveh's brain short circuits. Collei lets out an small squeak next to him and kicks his leg as though saying, 'You heard that, right?'
Gods bless her. She really is a sweet girl.
Kaveh flops face down onto Tighnari's bed and screams. His friend, perched on the edge of his mattress, pats his back sympathetically. "It's alright, let it out."
"I never thought Alhaitham would be so forward," Cyno says as he spins absentmindedly in a chair. "He really said that?"
The trio have reconvened at Tighnari's house. After the events of the theatre meeting, Kaveh needed a safe space to have a breakdown. Since he didn't want to disturb the kids at his orphanage, he'd begged his friends to let him come over. Tighnari had agreed to let him crash at his place, so now here he is.
In all honesty, it's kind of difficult to have a crisis in a place as peaceful as Gandharva Ville.
Still, Kaveh is no quitter. "Yes! He did!"
"That's cute," Cyno stops spinning. "Why are you complaining again?"
"Cyno, have some tact!" Tighnari throws a pillow across the room, nailing him in the face with frightening accuracy. "He's clearly not ready to confront his emotions."
The pillow gets thrown back with far less impressive aim. "It's not my fault he has bad decision making skills. Besides, he's gonna have to confront them in less than three weeks. I'm thinking ahead!"
"Don't jinx it!" Kaveh retracts his face from the mattress to scowl at his friends. "And stop talking about me like I'm not right here!"
"He is right though," Tighnari picks up the pillow, which is lying right beside his foot, and smacks him with it. "You're can't play cat and mouse forever. Besides, this has all but confirmed he likes you. What is there to whine about?"
"It's just... weird! It's all fine and good to have a stupid crush, but now that it actually feels attainable?" Kaveh shakes his head aggressively. "It's way too much and way too fast!"
That's part of it, at least. He refuses to acknowledge the subtext of his argument. He doesn't want to look the unspoken words--or rather, fear--in the eyes. He doesn't want to be a fearful fool who runs from commitment, but maybe... that's just who he is? Maybe cowardice runs through his veins. Maybe this is the fate of everyone in his family; to die alone. Not by circumstance, but rather by choice. Maybe he was fucked from the very beginning.
"You're getting that spacey look again," Cyno's voice, unusually soft, tugs him out from his spiral. "Everything alright?"
Kaveh doesn't realize tears have been brimming in his eyes until Tighnari hands him a tissue box. "Thanks," he mutters forlornly. He hates feeling useless.
"No boy is worth crying over." Tighnari places his hands on his hips. He can sense a lecture coming. "Not me, not Cyno, and certainly not Alhaitham. If you really don't want to be with him, fine, but if that's what you really want, you wouldn't be sobbing over it.
"You have a history of running away from your problems. You are extremely closed off. Do you know how much of a chore it was to become friends with you when we first met? It was like you constantly had a filter on around us. You're always pushing people away like your life depends on it, and maybe you think it does. But lucky for you, Cyno and I like your dumb ass enough to stick around. A lot of people like you, but you don't want to let them.
"Now, Alhaitham is a bit of a cunt, but he's a genuine person and he wouldn't say something was a date if he didn't want it to be. I think you two would be good for each other. It's your decision what you do with that information in the end, but I think we both know what the right one is.
"You deserve to be happy as much as anyone else, Kaveh. Just because one person left you a long, long time ago doesn't mean everyone will. And if Alhaitham breaks your heart, which he won't, Cyno and I will gladly break his face. Understood?"
"You sound just like my therapist," Kaveh says weakly.
"That's not agreement!"
"Okay, okay!" he wipes his face with the soggy tissue and tosses it into the bin. "I'll try. I'll go on a date. With Alhaitham. Tomorrow." Gods, he can't believe he still has the capacity to blush over that in his sorry state.
"That's the spirit," Cyno says. "I'm sure you'll knock him dead."
He manages a laugh. Not at the shitty pun, but at his friend's absurdly bad comedic timing and horrible delivery. And just how ridiculous the situation is as a whole. "Was that a ghost joke?"
"Yes. Did you like it?"
"I should be getting paid to hang out with you two," Tighnari sighs. "It really is a full time job."
"We should have a sleepover," Cyno suggests. "I brought cards."
"Of course you did," Tighnari gripes. "I'm beginning to think you love them more than me."
"It's close."
"You two are almost as dysfunctional as me," Kaveh smiles. They always know how to make him feel better. Tomorrow's date is suddenly looking far less daunting. "I'm down for a sleepover, though."
Despite his friends' comforting words, Kaveh feels absolutely sick.
Alhaitham's home is a lot, well, homier than he'd expected it to be. The house is small and quaint, surrounded by a sea of bushes and flowers that even Tighnari would be impressed by. A tiny, carefully placed white fence walls off rows of sprouts. Despite being best friends with a plant lover, he has no idea what they're supposed to be.
Kaveh takes a deep breath and smooths out a nonexistent crinkle in his shirt. Gods, when is the last time he's felt this self conscious?
Swallowing the urge to turn around and grab a boat to Fontaine, he knocks lightly on the door. No response. He feels simultaneously relieved and annoyed. He sighs, paces around, wipes his sweaty hands on his pants, and sighs again. He really should just go home. For some reason, though, his arm acts by itself and knocks once more. Hard. This time, a light flickers on somewhere inside the house.
There's shuffling from behind the door. Kaveh feels slightly woozy. He closes his eyes, and when he opens them, there stands--well, certainly not the person he'd been expecting.
Instead, an old woman with long silver hair (just a few shades lighter than Alhaitham's, his mind supplies unhelpfully), smiles at him. He thinks she'd be just a few inches shorter than him if she was standing up straight.
"Hello dear," she says. Her voice is sweet and a bit gravelly. "You must be here for my Alhaitham? Come in, come in!"
Alhaitham's grandmother ushers him through the foyer and into the kitchen. The inside of the house is as warm and bright as the outside; the potted plants littered around every room remind him of Gandharva Ville. Adding to the comfy feel, dozens of books laying around create a feeling of organized chaos.
Kaveh decides he likes this place.
"It's so nice to finally meet you, Kaveh! I've heard so many great things about you from my grandson." She stoops down to the oven and retrieves a large pan of cookies. "Have as many as you'd like, honey. Alhaitham should be down here in a few minutes."
Truthfully, he feels a bit bad about helping himself to her food, but Kaveh is getting the feeling she wouldn't allow him to not eat any. He takes a cookie.
"Thank you, Mrs...?"
"You can just call me Grandma."
Kaveh has never had a grandma. Even the word itself feels heavy and foreign on his tongue. Still, he doesn't want to be rude, so he smiles and thanks her properly.
"Alhaitham tells me you're an artist," Mrs--no--Grandma tells him, "is that true?"
Sure. He supposes that, in the loosest sense of the word, he is an artist. But he hasn't exactly created anything worthwhile recently. Other people tell him he's good, but he's pretty sure those same people would tell him a messy crayon landscape with a corner sun is a masterpiece too, as long as he'd been the one to create it.
"Yeah, I guess so," is what he says out loud, because even he wouldn't overshare that much on a first meeting.
"That's wonderful! I always wanted to be an artist when I was growing up."
This piques his interest. "Do you still draw?"
"Oh gods, no!" Grandma laughs a slightly wheezy, certified grandmother laugh. "I was awful. Still am. Not one person in my family has a single artistic bone in their body. I'd say they're more the, scholarly type, if you will."
Kaveh agrees with her there. He can't imagine Alhaitham drawing anything, just like he can't imagine Alhaitham sitting down and writing a sappy musical for the world's least talented theatre club. I mean... really?
He opens his mouth to reply, but is interrupted by someone clearing their throat in the doorway. Kaveh knows who it is before he's even finished turning around.
"Well don't just stand there," Grandma chides. "Come have a cookie."
Alhaitham inclines his head slightly in defeat and slinks over to a row of cabinets. He takes out an antique looking plate and a fork, then returns to the cookie tray and picks one up with said fork. It is weird.
"You eat cookies with a fork?" he asks.
"I don't like the crumbly texture," he says matter of factly, like Kaveh is the ignorant one here. His bored tone leaves no room for questioning, so he just accepts it.
His grandmother hums idly. Thank the gods she's there, he thinks, or this would be a lot more awkward. Then, as though hearing his prayer, she says, "Well, I will leave you boys to it."
Once again, Kaveh finds himself thinking he must've offended the universe in his past life. There is no other feasible explanation for his chronically bad luck.
The moment she hobbles out the room, Alhaitham stands up from his chair.
"Follow me."
He doesn't have any other options, so Kaveh is led through the living room and up a small flight of stairs. Alhaitham enters the first room in a hallway of three doors.
Kaveh has to blink a few times to adjust to the dim lighting in his bedroom. Similarly to downstairs, books and bookshelves take up most of the relatively small space. His bed is neatly done and the room is fairly clean. Still...
"Don't you ever want to decorate your room? You know, make it look like someone actually lived here?"
Alhaitham sits down in the floor. He picks up a two notebooks and tosses one at him, along with a pen. "It does look like someone lives here. Namely, me, and the only things I need are books and clothes."
Kaveh sits beside him, but not too close, and sets down the book and pen. "Boring! If I had a bedroom all to myself, I'd make it look so amazing. Like it came straight from the pages of an interior design magazine."
"I don't doubt that."
"You know, considering this is a date," he stops to cringe at the way his voice cracks on the word, "you're being very dry."
Alhaitham stops whatever he was writing and looks up at him through his eyelashes. "You're right. Sorry. You make me nervous is all."
Kaveh is making him nervous? That cannot be true.
"Well, you make me nervous too, so..."
They stare at each other for a moment. Alhaitham exhales quickly as though trying to hold in a snicker. The sound causes a crack in Kaveh's composure and he giggles stupidly. Then they're both laughing, even though nothing is really funny.
"I should actually start writing, now," Alhaitham finally says after their laughter has faded.
"About that..." he goes red with embarrassment. "I'm not really a great writer. I'm not sure how much help I'll be."
"I know that. I said 'I', not we. I only invited you because playwriting is boring and I wanted to spend time with you."
Kaveh nearly passes out right there where he sits. Instead, he digs his fingers into the meat of his thigh to ground himself. He will not faint on Alhaitham's bedroom floor, he will not faint on Alhaitham's bedroom floor...
"Uh," he blinks hard and fast until his vision stops swimming, "I am very entertaining."
Alhaitham smiles again as he writes. How had he not noticed that the boy had a dimple? It's very cute. Way too cute. He needs to distract himself before he does something he'll regret.
"What's the plot gonna be?"
"I don't have much to work with; teen love and a dramatic suicide twist-ending are painfully generic and overdone concepts. Plus, I'm not much of a romantic. I'm planning on plagiarizing Romeo and Juliet."
Kaveh's jaw drops. "A member of the student council? Committing a crime?" he pokes knocks Alhaitham's shoulder lightly with his own. "Way to set a bad example."
The boy nudges him back playfully, albeit with a bit more force. "I doubt any of them have even read the book. Most kids at our school use English as a free period."
To be fair, that is true. Kaveh is one of those kids. "I mean, if you think you'll get away with it. I just never took you for the thieving type."
"It's not like I'm pulling quotes from the book, just the basic idea. Besides, I'm a fan of working smarter, not harder."
"Sure, ‘Haitham.” The nickname slips out before Kaveh can stop himself. He pretends not to feel him stiffen. “Whatever helps you sleep."
They lapse into a methodical silence. The dry scratching of pen moving across the paper and his own slow breaths provide a soothing atmosphere. Kaveh’s eyelids begin to droop, but he'd rather fall into a coma than fall asleep on his first technical date with Alhaitham.
To keep himself occupied, he leans into the boy's broad shoulder and squints at his writing. The words are evenly spaced and ever so slightly slanted to the right. It bears eerie resemblance to a font of some sort.
That isn't what stands out to him though. Kaveh presses further into his body in order to point at a misspelled word near the bottom of the page. Alhaitham's minuscule mistake fills him with irrational glee.
"Isn't theatre spelled with an r-e, not an e-r?"
Alhaitham's pen stutters in place for a moment before resuming unsteadily. "It can be spelled either way. It depends on the dialect you're using."
"Theatre feels much more romantic to look at."
"It's a word. Words can't be romantic."
Kaveh laughs. "Not with that attitude they can't. You take everything so literally."
Alhaitham ducks his head. He isn't sure if the pink tint on his cheeks is a trick of the light, or... maybe Kaveh really does make him nervous?
The thought makes him unfairly giddy.
"That's just how I am," Alhaitham says flatly. Or rather, he says in a valiant attempt at sounding unbothered. "Similes and metaphors have never made much sense to me."
He pauses for a moment, trying to piece his thoughts together. Alhaitham continues writing, but a little slower, as though giving him time to think. For some reason, Kaveh finds it endearing.
"Theatre," he starts slowly, "sounds like it's written in large, swooping red cursive, covered in roses and multicolored polka dots. Or something."
"That's way too specific." Alhaitham screws up his face in confusion. "Do you spend a lot of time thinking about the imaginary appearances of words?"
Kaveh sniffs indignantly. "I'm an artist!" Sort of. "Finding beauty in nothing is what we do."
"Sure."
Alhaitham rolls his eyes not-so-subtly and Kaveh scowls at him. "Fine. What does 'theatre' look like to you, then?"
"Like 7 letters on a page, which is exactly what it is."
It's a pointless argument and they both know it. But Kaveh believes there's beauty in everything, including playful jabs and stupid conversations that go nowhere. If his friends new he spent his first date sitting on the floor and arguing over spelling, they'd flay him.
Kaveh likes the idea of keeping this evening just between him and Alhaitham.
His string of thoughts is eventually severed. "What time does your orphanage want you back? It's getting late."
"That desperate to kick me out?"
He jests, but when he looks up, Alhaitham's expression is dead serious. "I didn't mean it like that. You can stay however long you want, my grandmother won't mind."
The thought is appealing, but unfortunately unrealistic. Despite Father not really caring when he leaves or returns, he knows his siblings would be worried for him. The last thing he needs is a swarm of children sobbing over his absence.
Kaveh glances at the clock. It's a few minutes past 8, which means he's been at Alhaitham's residence for just over an hour. It feels like it's been no time at all. He sighs.
"I should probably be going right about now, actually."
He's certain he isn't imagining the shadow of disappointment that crosses Alhaitham's perfect face. Kaveh wants to hug him. No, that's not right--he wants to kiss that tiny frown off his lips forever. His chest tightens with embarrassing levels of sap.
"Okay," Alhaitham stands up and closes his notebook. By the time Kaveh closes his eyes, his expression has evened out again. "Let me walk you out. My grandmother will want to send you some cookies to go."
"Right," he says, trailing the boy back down his wooden stairs. "Will you be okay finishing the writing all by yourself?"
He lets the fact that Alhaitham hadn't really gotten much done that night go unsaid. He's certain he doesn't need Kaveh to fill in the blanks.
"I work well alone. After you," Alhaitham tells him, allowing Kaveh to enter the kitchen where Grandma sits first. It makes him feel a bit princely, which is awkward in a pleasant, fluttery way. "Besides, you were more distracting than anything. I'll have the script done by next week so you can start working on the backgrounds."
"Alhaitham, darling, have you offered him some more cookies? There's lots left," the old woman chides once their conversation lapses.
Her grandson shoots Kaveh an unamused look as though saying, 'See what I put up with 24-7?' There's affection in his eyes, though, and it doesn't take a scholar to figure out they love each other dearly. In a way, he's jealous of their bond.
What wouldn't he give for a grandmother, or any mother at all?
He forces his inner turmoil down for the moment and thanks Grandma. Kaveh shovels four cookies into his bag, then a fifth at the woman's disapproving gaze. She finally nods and pats his head lovingly, the same way one might pet a stray dog. Or a grandchild, possibly. It fills his chest with warmth.
"Thank you," he smiles. "It means a lot."
"No problem, dear," Grandma says. She tucks the pan, now emptied of sweets, under the sink and returns his grin. "You're always welcome here, Kaveh. As a loved one of Alhaitham's, or as family of mine."
"Grandmother," Alhaitham chokes out. His shoulders fly to his ears self consciously.
Kaveh flushes next to him, but can't bring himself to feel humiliated when the word family makes him feel so fucking happy. Is it pathetic to feel so connected to a woman you just met? He wishes there was someone he could ask, but those are the kinds of thoughts you have to keep firmly inside your head.
She blinks innocently. "Have I said something wrong?"
Alhaitham opens his mouth, glances sideways at him, and closes it. "No, Grandmother. I'll walk him out."
Grandma smiles slyly. "If that's the case, stay safe on your walk home, dear."
As promised, Alhaitham walks him out the front door and to the sidewalk. They both stand there awkwardly. Neither one of them seems to want to leave first. Finally, Kaveh breaks the standoff.
"Thanks for having me. It was fun."
"It's no problem." Kaveh watches as Alhaitham shuffles his feet. It seems to be something of a nervous habit of his. "I enjoyed your company as well."
They look at each other for another few seconds. Kaveh already misses leaning against his large arm and leaning over his shoulder. He already misses the faint smell of clean laundry and smokey cologne. He wants badly to hug him goodbye.
"Can I hug you?" he blurts out. He immediately kicks himself for sounding (and acting) stupid.
Alhaitham seems taken aback. He blinks three times in a single second and glances nervously around. "Um..."
"We don't have to! It was just... uh..." Kaveh's mind blanks. He's beginning to sweat. He can't hug Alhaitham with clammy hands for fuck's sake! "I don't know. Sorry--"
His apology is cut short by thick arms enveloping him. Alhaitham is just about his height, maybe a half an inch taller, so they do an awkward little dance of trying to figure out whose arms are going on top. Eventually, Kaveh just settles for looping his arms under Alhaitham's. He can't comfortably tip his head up or down, so he just sort of looks over his shoulder at the street behind.
The hug is, in every since of the word, horrible and traumatic. Or rather, it should be, but Kaveh can't help but feel happy about it anyways. They pull apart and share a smile of pure delirium.
"Bye," Kaveh murmurs. He watches Alhaitham wave stupidly, turn around, and scurry back inside his house. The second the door closes and his crush is nowhere to be found in the front window, he turns around and books it down the street. He needs to call Cyno and Tighnari. No, what he needs is to lie down and scream until his voice disappears into smoke.
Really, he needs a fucking drink. Too bad he's a minor who really can't afford to go to jail right now.
It's Saturday, which means getting up early and hauling himself to Nahida's office. He's gotten virtually no sleep since his date (?) with Alhaitham. Every time he closes his eyes, the entire evening plays out from behind his eyelids like a shitty romcom. In other words, Kaveh is a mess.
Still, he knows Nahida would rip into him if he skipped therapy without a decent reason. Groaning, he scrapes himself out of bed and stumbles into the orphanage foyer. Kids anywhere from toddlers to teenagers older than himself linger around the room. Smaller children play with toy cars and shriek louder than they really ought to this early in the morning.
The moment he sets foot in the room, the other orphans hug his legs and beg him to play. Despite already being ten minutes late, Kaveh allows himself to be delayed. They are too adorable to ignore. After five minutes of hide and seek, he races out the front door and down the street. If he sprints all the way downtown, he can probably get there in time.
Kaveh is a pretty decent runner if he says so himself, and still by the time he bangs into the silent waiting room, he's completely out of breath. Hat Guy scrutinizes him with a scrunched nose and a scowl.
"Someone's late."
"Leave me alone!" he flops down beside the boy and pulls a bottled water from his bag. "it wasn't entirely my fault. Did I miss my appointment?"
"You should have, but Nahida is too nice to bail on you. Anyway," Hat Guy raises a finger to silence him before he even gets the chance to interrupt, "I don't care about that and neither should you. Remember our bet?"
Kaveh's stomach drops to his toes. "Uh... yes. Any updates?"
Hat Guy smiles. It's not a pleasant expression. It's sinister, the kind of smile that a serial killer might wear before painting his victim's apartment red.
He does not like the direction this conversation is going.
Instead of answering his question, Hat Guy asks, "Do you know Lumine?"
The name rings a bell. Kaveh is pretty sure he's heard of her at the very least; a mute blonde girl who switches schools like he switches hair clips is sort of hard to miss. That's not even mentioning the twin and the parrot, which he's fairly sure is called Paimon or something similar.
Considering all of that... "What kind of question--? Of course I've heard of her!"
Hat Guy rolls his eyes with more condescension than his little body should be able to hold. "That's not what I asked, stupid. Everyone's heard of her, but not many actually know her."
Kaveh doesn't like to admit defeat. He also doesn't like the way Hat Guy is beating around the bush. "Fine, I don't know her. Your point being?"
"As per our bet," he makes a face like he's sucked on a lemon, "I asked her on a date."
Kaveh, who had been halfway through a sip of water, spews it across the table. A tall white haired man, who is delicately holding a glass of water like its his newborn baby, gives him a dirty look.
"Wait," he sputters, scrunching helplessly at his now damp shirt, "what?!"
"I'm not saying it again," Hat Guy folds his arms haughtily. "And no need to look so skeptical."
"I'm sorry," he says, unable to keep the incredulousness from his voice, "but I need some proof. I literally cannot believe what you're saying to me right now. You, a short scrub, and her, a globe trotting social media star? Actually, no, I'm not sorry. I have the right to call bullshit. This entire story screams bullshit."
Hat Guy rolls his eyes. "Call bullshit all you want. I always come prepared, unlike you."
The boy digs his phone out of his pocket and types in a string of numbers to unlock it. He opens the messages app and shoves his device into Kaveh's stunned face.
His expression only becomes more pained as he reads.
"You call that a confession!?" With every blue bubble, Kaveh's finger digs harder into the cracked screen. His eyebrow is actually beginning to tweak with distress. "This is so unromantic that it hurts! I don't hate you as much as most people, upside down smiley face emoji? And she just accepted that? YOU DIDN'T EVEN ACTUALLY ASK HER OUT!"
"She knows what I mean."
"I don't... I can't even... I mean, like--what? The fuck?" Kaveh pinches his forehead so hard that his nails leave crescent shaped indents on his skin. He really needs to start paying more attention to Nahida when she prattles on about coping strategies and soothing breathing patterns. Not that he feels they'd do much right now, when he feels on the verge of an actual breakdown.
This may be his final straw.
Hat Guy's face looks impossibly smug as he slowly hands him back his phone. With a devilish grin, he interrupts Kaveh's inward spiral into the depths of despair.
"Like I said; I like stupid people. And according to you, even if I invited the entirety of Gandharva Ville, you'd ask out your dumb little crush right in the middle of the waiting room."
Kaveh's smile strains nervously. "I did say that, didn't I?"
"Luckily," Hat Guy says in a voice too sugary to possibly be sincere, "I'm feeling merciful today, so I didn't invite the entire neighborhood."
"I love you." Kaveh goes boneless, slumping down onto the coffee table in front of them. For once the little psycho has given him something to be grateful for. The last thing he needs today is the bitter taste of humiliation.
"Ew." Hat Guy wrinkles his nose. "It's not mutual. Anyway, kindness has a price, so that will be twenty dollars, thanks."
Kaveh sits up. "Okay. Never mind. You're still as much of a cunt as you were before."
The boy cackles--it's the happiest Kaveh has ever seen him look--as he pulls out his wallet and reluctantly passes him a bill. Just then, the waiting room door opens, and the man of the hour steps into the room.
Alhaitham looks more beautiful today. He isn't sure if that's his rapidly disintegrating mental state and hormones speaking or if his skin really is giving off a bright, silvery hue. Sadly, Hat Guy's blue eyes boring into his skull prevent him from fully enjoying the view before him.
He sighs. As always, Kaveh has made terrible choices that successfully ended up screwing him over in the longterm. Still, he did agree to the bet and Hat Guy did go through with his end of the bargain.
Nahida had told him not to run from the people he loves anymore. She'd reminded him to be brave. Tighnari and Cyno had forced him into promising that he'd put himself first and be happy.
Alhaitham makes him pretty damn happy.
Kaveh stands up from the uncomfortable plastic chair he'd been sitting in and clears his throat. Even Hat Guy looks surprised that he's actually doing this, though not as surprised as Kaveh himself. When the entire waiting room's eyes are on him, including Nahida standing behind Alhaitham in the doorway, he speaks.
"Alhaitham," he says, as loudly and as steadily as his racing heart and dry mouth can manage, "I would like to take this opportunity to profess my," he cringes, "very slight tiny crush on you," he tries to block out Hat Guy's incredulous sniggers from behind him, "today, which is... um. I forgot the date." This is physically painful now. "Anyway. While I still haven't forgiven you for beating me in that spelling bee in 6th grade, which I know you remember, I now realize that you are not so bad." God, this is too reminiscent of Hat Guy's fucking texts to Lumine that he'd just been agonizing over. Actually, this is worse. "By which I mean you're a really kind guy even if you show it in questionable ways, and not only that, but you're also attractive, smart, and funny, not in a ha-ha funny way but in a unintentionally witty kind of humorous way, which is a good thing because Cyno is ha-ha funny and he makes me want to claw my eyes out with a blunt spoon." This is not going the way it needs to be going. He needs to reel his rambling back into a coherent point. "So, what I mean to say is that I like you, not in a friendly way, but in a very, very gay way, and I'd like to take you out on an actual date. Not a sort of date, but like... you know. Romantic. What do you say?"
The entire waiting room is silent. It's not silent like people are too emotional or moved to speak, but more like everyone is too stunned to make a noise. They're probably all suffering an extreme case of secondhand embarrassment as well, which... Good. They deserve to feel a fraction of the mortification Kaveh is experiencing right now.
He finally summons the courage to look at Alhaitham, whose gaze he'd been carefully avoiding until now. He's gone bright red from his neck to the tips of his ears. It fills Kaveh with a strange sort of satisfaction.
"Uh-m," Alhaitham stutters. Alhaitham never stutters. As though just recalling how to form and sound out words, he opens and closes his mouth several times. It seems he's finally been rendered speechless. Finally, after an agonizingly long second, he gathers himself and continues. "Er. Yes. I agree."
Kaveh is too happy to reflect on the fact that he just gave the worst most sappy speech of his entire life in front of a crowd of strangers who are no doubt judging him immensely. He's too delighted to care that people can hear him when he lets out a humiliating squeak of elation. He's too goddamn happy.
Nahida, who has somehow appeared next to him, nudges him in the thigh. "I think you should skip our appointment today," she whispers with a sweet smile. "There are more important things."
Kaveh doesn't need to be told twice. He grabs Alhaitham's hand and tugs him out of the building, not even pausing to thank his therapist or tell her goodbye. He'll make up for his rudeness later. But right now, he has more important matters to attend to.
Once they're decently far from the building and Kaveh is certain they're alone, he turns to Alhaitham. He feels that once familiar shyness from that second first meeting creep back up his spine. "Sorry for... well, that. It was bad."
Alhaitham's nose twitches a little, and he is not ashamed to find it cute. "I agree."
Kaveh drops his head in surrender. "I know. I normally wouldn't do anything so bold but," he rolls his eyes, "it was a bet."
"Confessing to me was a bet?" Alhaitham's eyebrow arches. He immediately backtracks, stumbling over his words in haste.
"No! Everything I said was true! The bet was that I had to tell you in front of everyone. It's kind of a long story, actually."
The boy's broad shoulders shrug a little in relief. Like a breath Alhaitham hadn't even known he'd been holding. "Oh. Well, that's good, then."
"We should go somewhere fun," Kaveh suggests. He can't bear to stand this still for any longer. His entire body itches like its covered in fire ants or something similarly horrible. "An actual first date should be fun. Also I need to forget about this afternoon as soon as possible."
"There's nowhere interesting around here," Alhaitham says dryly. "Unless you plan on trekking out to the desert. I heard they have a better view of the stars. Less light pollution."
Kaveh has heard that as well. His father liked to bring him outside into his backyard and point out strings of light, with individuals stars like letters and constellations like words. He, too, was fascinated by the desert and its infinitely clear sky. He, too, packed his bags and promised to come back with pictures and memories.
Filthy liar.
And yet the only filth in that house that day had been the stupid kid who'd encouraged him. No, not encouraged--begged him. He used to love the lights.
Kaveh used to close his eyes and dream of stars. Now, he closes his eyes and sees the only light he'd ever truly loved fading alone in the dark, covered by a sea of sand and stardust.
He doesn't say any of that. He refuses to be sucked back into this mindless spiral on what's supposed to be a happy day. Kaveh is a boy who has both everything and nothing at all. Alhaitham says something he can't hear or read on his rapidly blurring lips.
He should've stayed in fucking therapy.
"Actually," he forces a smile, "I need to go home. Right now."
Alhaitham doesn't look upset like he ought to. Instead, his eyes merely squint in concern. "Are you okay? You were spacing out."
Spacing out? Funny, considering. Or maybe it's really not, because the burn in his tear ducts is intensifying by the second.
"I'm--" Kaveh wants to say fine, but his throat constricts. He shouldn't lie. He shouldn't run. But the world is closing in on him, squeezing his chest and suffocating him with dust. His teeth grit over specks of sand that shouldn't be here, because he's in the fucking rainforest and there is no fucking sand. He knows that, but he also knows that he's going to die here in the desert and that he would deserve it. He squeezes his eyes shut or open but he can't really tell because it's so fucking dark and he couldn't see if he tried.
Someone is calling to him. "Dad?"
The voice continues. It's too loud and too quiet, failing to cut through the whirlwind of sand and dust and death. His father, sinking into the sand and scrutinizing him. Looking at his miserable excuse for a son. Dying alone. He is going to die alone. Will his mother ever know? Would she even care? Would he have a funeral and if so would anyone even come?
He thinks he's crying. He doesn't know. Someone is crouching in front of him. At some point he must've sank to the floor.
"Kaveh. Kaveh. Whatever you're seeing isn't real."
The stars above him seem real.
"I'm Alhaitham. You know me. You're in Sumeru City."
His father's corpse, just barely peeking from beneath waves and waves of dust seems real.
"You're in a play. You're supposed to be doing the backdrops next week. You're going to go home and be okay."
Alhaitham.
He seems real as well.
The sandstorm dies as quickly as it had picked up. His father is no longer there. He's been dead for nearly ten years. But Kaveh is alive. He feels like shit, and still, he's crouched on the sidewalk eliciting strange looks from strange people and he is fucking alive.
Kaveh's had panic attacks before. Considering the ones he had right after his father's death, this one doesn't even rank in the top ten most horrible. Still, he stays on the pavement for another minute with his eyes firmly shut, trying to focus on breathing and living.
He opens his eyes. Alhaitham is sitting across from him. He is fiddling with his own fingers as though unsure of what to do.
"You'd be a good therapist," Kaveh says. Strangely enough, the words feel truthful on his tongue. Despite being dry and unexpressive and completely disinterested in humanity, Alhaitham is kind. He understands more than he should. He reads people with the same ease with which he flips through his books, and yet Kaveh never feels judged under his hawklike gaze.
Alhaitham frowns. "No."
For some reason, Kaveh laughs. It wasn't a joke or particularly amusing but he needs something to laugh at. "You totally would, though. Help me up."
Alhaitham stands, dusts his hands of the grit from the asphalt with a grimace, and takes Kaveh's hands. He tugs him to his feet like he weighs nothing at all.
He quickly turns and begins walking back toward the clinic. Kaveh follows him. "Where are you going?"
"I'm taking you home. Like you asked me to."
Kaveh's heart squeezes with something he can't quite place. If his mind was a color, it'd be a muddy grayish brown; every single emotion mixed together into an ugly blob. "Sorry. This is a horrible start to dating. I promise I'm not this unstable everyday." he tries to laugh but it comes out crooked and wrong. "I wouldn't blame you if you didn't want to be with me anymore, though."
Alhaitham stops in his tracks. "Don't put words in my mouth."
He stops with him. He's never heard Alhaitham so mad. "Huh? But--"
"But nothing. Kaveh, we met at a fucking therapist's office! You're clearly not the only one with issues here." He runs a hand through his hair and sighs. "There's no shame in having a panic attack, which I assume is what happened to you just now. It's not something you can control and it doesn't make you any less of a person. Not to me and not to anyone else with half a brain."
Despite knowing the irritation bubbling in his stomach is both irrational and undeserved on Alhaitham's part, Kaveh can't stop the way his voice raises. "I think it's perfectly reasonable to think you'd want to date a well adjusted person. And you and me, we're... it's not the same."
"Not the same?" Alhaitham turns back to him, heat in his gaze. "You don't even know why I'm in there. You don't know anything at all."
"Just look at me and look at you! You're in student council, you're smart and attractive, you have a future! You live with your grandma who loves you--"
"I live with my grandma because my parents are dead."
"But at least you have a fucking family!" Kaveh regrets the words the moment they leave his mouth. He wishes he could turn back time and think before he fucking spoke, but he's Kaveh, and he makes shit decisions on the daily. He forces himself to continue. "You don't know how good you have it. We both have dead parents, but I live in an underfunded orphanage and you live in a quaint little cottage with someone who loves you."
Alhaitham's face has gone dreadfully blank. "Fine. Maybe I don't know how good I have it, but at least I don't spend my entire life throwing an eternal pity party for myself."
The words cut deep and poisonous. They hurt so bad because it is true. Kaveh slowly begins backing away from Alhaitham. He can't bear to look him in the eyes. "Excuse me?"
He scrubs a hand over his face. "I'm not saying this to hurt you, Kaveh. I'm not trying to make you feel bad. I'm saying it because it's true and because I care about you--"
"No!" All the anger in Kaveh has long since left him. Now, he's running purely on hurt and desperation. "Don't you dare lie to me! Do you think this is fucking funny?"
"Kaveh--"
"SHUT UP!"
"I don't--"
"FUCK YOU!" his throat feels raw and scratchy from the scream. He storms away from Alhaitham in the opposite direction despite knowing that it won't lead him home. He doesn't care, or more accurately, he won't allow himself to.
Alhaitham doesn't follow him. Kaveh can't tell if the realization makes him happy or sad, or something else entirely.
He won't care.
He wanders the streets of Sumeru City. He considers calling Tighnari or Cyno but ultimately decides against it. He shouldn't burden them with his problems; hasn't he done that enough the last few weeks?
He never should have made that bet. He never should've agreed to join the theatre club. He wants so badly to never show up to that classroom again, never be forced to look Alhaitham in the eye again, but the thought of Collei's inevitable disappointment sobers him.
Even he is not so selfish.
The sun sets. At some point he comes to his senses and stumbles his way to a bus stop. He waits there in the cold evening. Red and purple eventually fade to black and, by the time the bus finally arrives, his only light is provided by a clear white moon.
He looks up at the traitorous balls of light. He looks up at the stars twinkling above him, an image of hope, and laughs.
"What's funny, kid?" the bus driver snaps in a gruff voice as Kaveh boards the bus. He is old and pale with a scraggly beard and mustache.
"Nothing." Kaveh takes a seat. There's only one other person onboard, a woman with ashy looking skin in a maroon veil. She doesn't pay him any mind, merely continuing to gaze out the window.
Despite all social indicators to stop there--no one on this bus gives a shit about him--he continues. "Do you know how to read the stars?"
"Now why the hell would I know that? I'm a bus driver not a damn scholar."
Kaveh does not let this dissuade him. "Every person is assigned a constellation depending on the positions of several planets at the time of their birth. Seeing your constellation is supposed to be a sign of good luck." He smiles. There is nothing behind it. "But I don't feel lucky at all."
He gets no response. It doesn't matter. He takes after the lady across from him an gazes out the window. Eventually, Paridasea disappears behind rows of buildings. Lucky his ass.
He is so far from home--he laughs bitterly to himself as he thinks it--that when the bus driver reaches the end of his route, he has no clue where he is. He considers asking the old man how to get back to Gandharva Ville, but his irritated look silences the question before it even gets a chance to bloom. So he finds a bench and resigns himself to a night completely alone in an unfamiliar place.
Oh well. It's not the first time, and it certainly won't be the last.
Kaveh considers himself pretty unlucky. That's why he isn't especially surprised he didn't get murdered or kidnapped during the night. Still, the rough shaking of his shoulders makes him yelp in surprise and terror.
"Stay back!" he yelps, the exhaustion punched out of his body as he springs from the bench.
His assailant is not a masked stranger. In fact, they're--yes, two of them--people he knows.
"Tighnari? Cyno?"
His friends stand before him, both looking equally unimpressed. The sky is still dark behind their figures and the air is just as cold as he remembers falling asleep to. Not much time had passed at all, it seems.
"Care to explain," Tighnari grits out, "why you are sleeping on a bench in the middle of the night instead of in your bed which, might I add, is miles and miles away from here?"
He is seething, that much Kaveh knows. And rightfully so. Guilt gnaws at his chest.
"I'm sorry. Me and Alhaitham--"
"Save it!" his friend's voice is sharp and brittle. "We already know. Alhaitham was the one who called me rambling about how you had a falling out and then you disappeared into the city. Imagine how terrified I felt when I tracked your location and found you in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the fucking night! What the hell were you thinking?"
Kaveh drops his head. Shame weighs heavily on him, cementing his feet to the floor and his eyes low. "I don't know. I guess I wasn't. I just wanted to disappear."
"That's--!" Tighnari takes a deep breath and lets it out while Cyno looks on in concern. "That's not okay, Kaveh. Running away is not the answer to your problems."
And he knows. He knows, he knows, he knows, and yet he's ran all his life. Nahida has told him this, and now his very best friends. What more should it take? How many more times does he have to make bad decisions and regret them to get his life together?
Tighnari opens his mouth, no doubt to tear into him once more, but Cyno places a hand on his shoulder. "We're glad you're alright, Kaveh. Both of us. He's angry with you because he's worried. You're very reckless."
He knows that too. A tear falls down his cheek. "I told him how I felt. We were supposed to go on a date. And I ruined it like I always do."
Tighnari sighs with his whole body, his prior tension loosening into sadness. "That's not true."
"But it is!" Kaveh wipes his tears furiously. He is sick of crying. "Everyone I love ends up hating me and then leaving me. What is it about me that makes me so easy to leave behind?"
"Even if that were true, which it isn't," Tighnari says, "nothing you could ever do would make Cyno and I leave you. Nothing. Even if you ran away again, we'd come find you because that's what friends are for."
Cyno extends his hand to Kaveh for him to take. He does, and allows him to pull him off the bench and into his arms. He stands there, hunching awkwardly to hug Cyno who is not a very comforting hugger. But the thought behind it is enough to make tears spring into his eyes again.
"I want to go home," he whispers.
Cyno nods. "Good."
Kaveh wakes up in Tighnari's bed. The bed is intricately made even after being slept in, because he's neat in an almost supernatural way like that. It's comforting.
Judging by how high the sun is in the sky, he must've slept until noon. He rolls out of bed, still wearing his clothes from last night, and walks downstairs. Tighnari's parents are predictably gone, but Cyno and him are sitting on the couch. Their conversation halts as he enters the room. He smiles awkwardly.
"Hi."
"Well, what are you waiting for?" Tighnari side eyes him with intention. "Sit down. Collei made pita pockets."
"You got Collei in on this?"
Cyno nods and gets that same horrible look on his face the way he does whenever he's about to tell a "joke".
"Yup. She Col-laid the food out for you before she left. Get it? Because--"
"I cannot deal with you today. You," Tighnari jabs a finger at Kaveh, "sit down. And as for you..." he rolls his eyes in Cyno's direction. "Just shut up."
He's more irritable than usual, but Kaveh supposes that's warranted. He has no clue how late it was when they'd showed up to retrieve him, nor does he remember the walk (ride?) to Tighnari's house.
He's afraid to ask.
They do as told for a few minutes, eating their pita pockets in silence. Collei is godly at making them. They taste like happiness in a bread wrap. Then, Cyno opens his mouth.
"Alhaitham showed up this morning."
The food dies on his tastebuds. "What?"
Tighnari sighs. He's been doing that a lot more, lately. "Yes, no need to sound so surprised. Did you completely miss the part where we told you he helped us find you last night? Or did your ears shut off the second we mentioned his name?"
Cyno knows better than to argue with him when he's in a mood like this. Nevertheless, he shoots Kaveh a sympathetic look. "He asked how you were. I told him he could ask you himself."
Kaveh picks up a napkin and wipes at his hands roughly. "Why the hell would you tell him that?"
"Because," Tighnari grits out, "you need to face your problems for once."
That's fair. Despite that, he feels himself bristle. It's all too reminiscent of the anger that caused this predicament in the first place. He reminds himself that these are his friends and that they're angry out of worry. The anger dissipates.
"Okay," he says, and nothing else.
"Maybe at the next theatre club meeting. You're not quitting, are you?" Cyno asks.
"No." It's the truth. All three of them seem to know it, too. There's a beat of solidarity between them. Then, somewhat predictably:
"Genius Invokation TCG?"
Tighnari sighs. It doesn't sound as irritated this time; closer to normal. "Are you asking us or telling us?"
Cyno just stares at him. They all know the answer.
All things considered, life isn't horrible. Kaveh doesn't see Alhaitham all day at school on Monday which, while not abnormal, definitely feels targeted considering the less than ideal circumstance. Still, he presses on through the day.
He gets a call from Nahida after school requesting him to come see her on Wednesday. He agrees, because even he isn't so blind not to see that his mental health has been slipping. He tries hard not to think about how she knew, or rather who told her he'd been having a hard time.
(He absolutely knows. He will not admit that though.)
Overall, nothing too horrible. Then comes Tuesday.
The moment Kaveh wakes up he feels like shit. Tighnari had sternly told him to call them whenever he needed to, so he dials his number. Before his friend has even greeted him, he say, "I can't face him today. I will die."
There is a brief silence on the other end. Then, "You'll live."
Kaveh huffs. "You're supposed to be the wise one with good advice! Tighnari, please!"
"I'm not wise, I just have idiots for friends. Just apologize to him, it's that easy. And if he says something bitchy then Cyno and I will break his knees."
"Please don't." Gods, he's gone soft.
"So you still care about him after all." He can hear the smirk in Tighnari's voice. "Besides, we won't have to do that since he is not going to be mean about it. I promise you. He was really distraught after you left."
Kaveh lets the words hang in the air for a moment. Distraught, huh? "Okay. Thank you. I'll see you at school."
That he does. He sits at their usual table and busies himself with catastrophizing and picking red nail polish off piece by piece. It satisfies his need, temporarily, to rip his skin off and hide under it.
Still, the day comes and goes, and eventually, Collei finds him. He's been hiding in a random hallway for the last five minutes trying to make up a valid excuse for why he couldn't attend theatre club but Collei is sharp. Maybe too much for her own (read: his own) good.
She looks at him pacing in circles and smiles sympathetically. "Nervous?"
He looks back with a breathy laugh. "How much do you know?"
"Maybe more than I should. I don't mean to pry," she fiddles with her hands in a similar fashion to how Alhaitham had, "but Cyno and Tighnari told me practically everything. I'm sorry about your breakup."
"It was hardly a breakup," Kaveh says. "We were barely even together."
"But you're upset." Collei picks at the rolls of bandages around her wrist. "So I'm sorry anyway."
Some people are too good for this world. Too purely kind to live in such a mean spirited world. Collei is one of those people. Sometimes after talking to her, Kaveh feels dazed. Sort of like he's looked at the sun for too long.
"It can't be helped," he answers in lieu of sobbing and throwing his arms around her. A bit of crying is alright, but the corners of his eyes have begun to sting from the consistent salt of his tears and the constant wiping away. That burning sensation is no fucking joke. "I'm going to try and apologize to him today."
"Good for you," she says and Kaveh knows that she means it. He feels suddenly a little lighter. "Ready to go?"
"Of course."
They link arms and walk together across the campus and into the theatre club classroom. Nothing changes as they enter, but Kaveh feels prickly and uncomfortable all the less. So much for feeling lighter.
Then he sees him. Alhaitham. Their eyes meet, but the contact no longer feels magical. His chest flutters, but Kaveh would not call it butterflies. More like a crowd of wasps tearing apart a woodland creature in his small intestine.
He is not an actor. He does not fake ignorance or a smile or anything. He waves meekly. Alhaitham does not wave back.
The sharp sting of rejection drags him down. He nearly storms out right then and there, but when he sees Collei's look of concern, steels himself. Kaveh wholly deserved that cold shoulder. You could even say he had it coming.
Fischl begins talking which Kaveh takes as his cue to zone out completely. He stares at the grooves on his desk and thinks about Alhaitham. Gods, he thinks it should be illegal for one person to take up so much space in his mind.
Every thought seems to circle back to him. He can't stop remembering that train wreck of a first date. He can't stop hearing all the horrible ignorant shit he said to Alhaitham in misplaced anger.
It was wrong. He was wrong about so many things. And, for better or for worse, Kaveh needs him to know.
But how?
Despite how it may appear, he is exceptionally aware of his flaws. Some might even say he is too focused on them. Kaveh has never been great at delivering apologies. The words always seem to get lodged deep inside his throat before even a single sentence can fully form. It's not that he can't recognize when he's wrong. It's the outward admission, the guilt that seeds inside hi chest every time he makes a mistake he knows he can never truly rectify.
It's a guilt he's known nearly all his life.
Kaveh is so fucking eager. He wants to live to see the day that therapy works. He wants to feel satisfied for once in his life. He wants Nahida not to look at him as yet another basket case. he is ready.
"Ahem! The prinzessin is speaking!" Fischl glares at him from under her scrappy golden bangs.
"Oh," he says, shaking his head to center himself. Now is not the time to become lost in his thoughts. "Could you repeat yourself?"
The club leader rolls her eyes. Her bird, Oz, looks at him with distaste. Kaveh didn't think that birds could look judgmental, but it seems he was incorrect once again.
"I said that I need you to start painting sets! Today, ideally. We want the backdrops finished as soon as possible now that the script is fully written. Also, that brings me to my next point." Fischl thwacks her pointer stick onto the whiteboard forcefully. "Auditions for character roles will begin next meeting! Be there or bring disgrace upon your families."
Venti snickers. "You realize you're saying this to a room full of orphans, right?"
Fischl ignores him. "You're all free to leave, save for the tech crew."
Kaveh has to hold in a grunt. Curse Alhaitham for being a writer.
Then, speak of the devil--"I'm sorry, Fischl. I need to leave early today."
Alhaitham is already standing and picking up his bag before the girl has a chance to refute him. Without a single look back, he brushes out the door along with a stream of other students. Collei, despite having every incentive to return home, stays beside him.
"You look green," she whispers. "I'm sure no one would mind if you went home early."
Kaveh shakes his head and grimaces that he was so obvious. "It's fine. There's still work to be done. It's late, though; you should go home."
"I'm not leaving you here alone." The words are too quick. They don't even sound like something Collei would actually say via her own will. He squeezes his eyes shut and suppresses the growing irritation between his brows.
"Did Cyno and Tighnari tell me to be my bodyguard?" The way she tenses tells Kaveh all he needs to know. "I'm not going to run if you look away for five minutes."
"I know that!" Collei shrugs a little helplessly, green waves brushing over her shoulders. "But I promised them."
Kaveh is well aware there's no convincing her to go behind Cyno and Tighnari's backs. They're close, sure, but she and him don't have half the bond they do.
"Fine," he says, adjusting a red hair clip to channel his frustration from his lungs to his fingers. "Get comfortable, then. I'm not leaving for a while."
"That's alright." Collei sits down beside him and pulls out a tiny green doll and matching crochet needles. "I have time to spare. Also, Cyno said he'd give us a ride home if we need one."
Once Kaveh is given the paints and brushes, a wave of calm washes over him. Hunched over messy cardboard cutouts and large sheets of paper, he feels like himself again. He paints deep into the evening until the school janitor knocks on the classroom door and demands they leave before 7.
"I can't believe you said you're not an artist," Collei says as they leave the building, her with a noticeable pep in her step. The stars are out again. "Those props looked amazing!"
"Thanks," Kaveh returns her sunny smile. "Your doll came out well, too."
"Really? I made it for my friend, Amber!" her expression glazes over as though recalling a dream and her cheeks flush pink. "She lives all the way in Monstadt so it'll take a while to mail to her. That's why I had to finish it as soon as possible!"
He decides to be merciful and ignore the way she stumbles over her words. Young love.
As Collei had promised, Cyno is waiting for them in the school parking lot. Kaveh tunes out their conversation and stares out the window, watching houses and sky blend together into one large smear of color.
Eventually, the car stops. "Kaveh," Cyno says, "we're here."
He looks at the orphanage. It is small and cramped and filled with an unshakeable air of sadness. It's the last place he wants to go but he's badgered his friends enough. Until he's 18, this is all he has. Just two years until he's free or, depending on how you see it, utterly abandoned.
Kaveh keeps his thoughts to himself. He steps out of the car and waves as cheerily as possible to his friends before they pull away into the night.
The House is dark and silent when he enters. It's past curfew for the younger kids and the older teens like himself don't want to enact Father Arlechinno's wrath by waking the children. She is incredibly scary when it comes to her "children".
Silently, Kaveh weaves his way through piles of discarded toys and up the long flight of stairs to his, and several other orphans', room. He lies down in his bed. Despite being under three different blankets, he feels impossibly cold.
The next day is the same as the one before. He somehow manages to drag himself out of his depression rut enough to attend classes and head to Nahida's after school. Kaveh has been dreading this appointment.
The waiting room is actually empty this time; not even Hat Guy is there to bother him. As much as he hates to admit it, he's begun to soften toward the little bastard. Without someone to bicker with, Kaveh only feels more alone.
Nahida calls him back to her office herself. The typical blue haired secretary isn't there today either. The slight inconsistencies with his usual routine are beginning to unsettle Kaveh.
"So," Nahida says as they settle in their respective bean bag chairs. "How's life for you?"
It all feels a lot more formal than usual. His therapist's face isn't carefree like usual, but a little sad and withdrawn. He wonders if his own low mood is becoming contagious.
"It is," Kaveh responds in lieu of an actual answer. He's too tired to put up with Nahida's prodding questions and little notes on her stupid clipboard. What could she possibly be writing, anyway? It's been ten seconds!
"I heard you and Alhaitham had a fallout."
Kaveh can at least appreciate that she got straight to the point.
"I guess you can call it that," he murmurs, twisting and untwisting a strand of golden hair between his fingers. "Did he tell you about it?"
Nahida swings her legs and hums in admission. "Yes. But I'd like to hear your perspective on things as well. It's not good to get information only from one source, which I'm sure you know."
He doesn't know that he'd be a better source than Alhaitham in any way shape or form, but he doesn't have it in him to refute her. Kaveh breathes deeply through his nose then puffs out a sigh.
"Fine." He closes his eyes so he doesn't have to see Nahida's reaction to his words. If he saw even an ounce of judgement on her face, it might just break him. "I had a... panic attack, I guess. Al--he said something about stars and the desert or whatever and I just--"
Kaveh's breath catches in his throat. Nahida places a small hand on his knee which, due to her stubby arms, causes her to lean in closer.
"Take a moment," she instructs him. Her voice is soothing, like a rush of cool water on a parched throat. "I know this must be hard for you to relive. It's good that you're even willing to talk about it."
He closes his eyes and counts down from ten. His heart doesn't stop beating harshly against his ribcage, but it feels a bit more bearable. Kaveh opens his eyes and continues.
"He was so nice to me. You don't even understand. He helped me snap out of it and I yelled at him for it. I said something about... I don't even remember what I said. But he looked so upset so I know it must've been horrible. Which is just so fucking typical of me."
Nahida nods slowly in understanding. "I see. How do you think Alhaitham feels about all this?"
Is she deliberately rubbing salt in a fresh wound? Kaveh clenches his fists and stares at the ceiling. "He hates me. And if he doesn't, he should."
"I really don't think that's true."
"Everyone keeps telling me that!" Kaveh stands up suddenly from the chair and begins to pace wildly around the room. "And I know you're probably right! But it doesn't matter how many times people tell me I'm wrong or how many different ways. My brain just doesn't want me to be happy, it's like--I don't know--looking through a fogged up mirror!
"I know the truth. It's staring me in the face. He told me himself. He said he doesn't hate me. He said he still cares about me. But I can't believe him, and now he's ignoring me and I feel like absolute crap every single day and all I can think about is how much I want to die."
Kaveh stops pacing and drops his head back onto hi shoulders. "None of what I'm saying even makes sense. Sorry for getting so worked up."
He looks back at Nahida who is still sitting, face screwed into an expression of great upset. When she doesn't say anything, he takes her silence as invitation to sit back down. Finally, after careful consideration, she speaks.
"I understand what it's like to be a prisoner of your own mind. It's like happiness is so tangible, and yet so far away, right?" she smiles at him. "I view it as... Hm. What's a fun metaphor?"
Kaveh shrugs. Nahida doesn't seem to mind his non commitment.
"Alright, then let's say for simplicity's sake that we're birds, our minds are cages, and happiness is the sky. We can look up at the sky, we desire to be in it, but we're locked in these cages. But the thing is it's not impossible to escape. Whether it feels this way or not," she taps her head with her index finger, "we have power over our thoughts. These birdcages are of our own creation.
"But just as we put up these walls, we can take them down. You're very smart, Kaveh. So self aware. You have an understanding of yourself that not many people, especially not those your age, possess. You may be a trapped little bird, but you are not helpless.
"You said it yourself. You know Alhaitham doesn't hate you and you're aware he'll forgive you. You just don't feel as though you deserve it. You hate yourself, Kaveh, and you feel that everyone else should too. But sometimes, when we look in that fogged up mirror, we don't see the full picture. We are so blinded by what we think we see that we don't notice what's right in front of us.
"You and I are so alike. We both are so critical on ourselves. We see our reflections and think that we should be stronger, better, smarter. We are always looking for something to improve and, in moderation, that's okay. But self improvement also means recognizing the ways we are already succeeding.
"You are kinder and more resilient than you believe. I won't deny that you've made many mistakes, but you always try to fix them. Your friends and peers adore you because you see the best in everyone... Everyone but yourself.
"Kaveh, you are just as human as anyone else. You deserve to be sad and mad and frustrated but, more than anything, you deserve to be happy. I know that, Alhaitham knows that, and so does your mom and dad. Because you were a kid. You still are a kid. So please, Kaveh, forgive yourself. If not for you, do it for me. I hate to see you like this."
It does not feel like a magical weight lifts off his chest. It doesn't feel like happiness or pride or freedom. Her words are nothing more than words; they don't have the power to fix all that's wrong in his life.
They can't find his mother or bring his father back from the dead or undo all he'd said to Alhaitham that day. But they do give him hope. A tiny spark of recognition that tells him she's right.
The realization that he really, truly, genuinely believes her.
Kind and resilient and intelligent. Thoughtful and caring and endlessly kind. Always helping others. Loved.
Kaveh is all those things and more.
"I can do it," he manages to sputter through tears. He isn't sure when Nahida embraced him or he embraced her, but they're wrapped in a tight snotty hug. He doesn't mind. "I can do it all."
She grins at him, that telltale twinkle back in her eyes. "I believe you."
When Kaveh returns to the waiting room to leave, Hat Guy is back in his usual spot. Without hesitation, he lifts him from his chair and hugs him.
"What. The. Hell," Hat Guy grits out, fists clenching by his sides. He is too happy to care about his impending doom by the boy's hands.
"I like myself," he whispers breathily, more to himself than to anyone in particular.
Kaveh can feel his friend's (yes, it's official, no take-backs) eyes roll even from over his shoulder. "You might be the only one. Now put me down."
He does. Hat Guy glares at him, but the lack of real malice doesn't go unnoticed by him. They really are friends.
Then Hat Guy sighs. It's very out of character for him. "Did that stupid gray kid upset you? I saw him storming around here before you came. If he did, I'll gladly break his legs."
"Aw," Kaveh smirks. "So you do care."
"Forget I asked," he huffs, tilting his head up toward the ceiling. "Just don't let someone so dumb looking break your heart. That's all."
Kaveh could kiss him. Actually, no, he would not ever do that. He still isn't entirely convinced Hat Guy is over the age of 12. Still, he leaves the building with a pep in his step. He is about to deliver the greatest apology in all his life, even if it kills him.
That's how Kaveh, Cyno, Collei all end up huddled together in Tighnari's bedroom at 1 in the morning on a school night. Is that wise? No, but sometimes sacrifices must be made for the greater good.
Tighnari sips coffee like a zombie, very clearly fighting back a yawn. "Gods, Kaveh, is all this really necessary?"
He nods hard enough to shake the sleepiness from his brain. "Yes. Besides, weren't you the one who said I could call you whenever?"
"Yes, but I meant in the case of an actual emergency, not more boy drama!"
Despite looking on the brink of sleep or death (with teenagers it very well could be both), Cyno manages to be just as unhelpful as ever. "That's funny, 'Nari. Because they're both in theatre? Good one."
Tighnari groans loudly and falls back into his pillows. Collei giggles. Kaveh rolls his eyes.
"Now is not the time for jokes, Cyno," he chides. "This is serious! Understand?"
His friend nods but Kaveh can already see the gears in his head turning to make a joke out of his statement. He decides he just won't give Cyno the time to speak anymore. He retrieves his English notebook, which is practically empty, and a pencil from his backpack.
In large letters, he scrawls on a title. Project Alhaitham.
"Seriously? Project Alhaitham? We are not the Matrix."
"Don't be a hater, Tighnari," Kaveh shoots back. "You're right though. This is bigger than the Matrix. This is life and death."
Collei takes pity on him. She presses her palms together and places her elbows on her knees. It seems to be her version of a game face. "He's right! Let's take this seriously and do our best!"
Because Collei has both of his friends under her thumb, that's all it takes for them to sit up straight and at least pretend to listen.
"Thank you," Kaveh says, more to her than them. "Now that I have audience participation, I've already begun to draft a plan. I obviously need the help of you three to do it. So before I go any further... Is everyone ready and willing to scheme with me?"
"You're making this sound way more evil than it needs to be," Tighnari critiques. "Also, you couldn't have asked that before you showed up at my house uninvited?"
"I'll take that as agreement," Kaveh cuts in. "Cyno? Collei?"
"I love scheming!" The freshman cheers with far more energy than she needs this late at night. He appreciates the enthusiasm, though.
He looks to Cyno whose face is grim and unexpressive. "If Collei loves it so do I," he adds on flatly.
Okay, so they might not be thrilled, but they did agree. Kaveh grins. "Excellent! If that's the case, let me fill you guys in."
It takes them over an hour to add to and refine his initial plan, but finally, the stage has been set. They need to arrive at school early the next day and, since it's already deep into the night, Tighnari concedes and lets all three of them stay the night.
Kaveh twists and turns for what feels like hours after the rest of friends have fallen asleep. Every time he closes his eyes, that fucking notebook seems to spread across his vision, a brutal reminder of the chaos about to unfold the next day.
The plan is semi complicated, but not impossible to pull off. Besides, in his opinion, the risk is more than worth the reward. He falls asleep with nervous butterflies in his stomach.
Stage one of their plan is by far the most difficult. The four of them enter the school the very second the gates open at 6:15. School starts in over two hours and no one in their right mind would be this early, so they feel relatively secure.
Cyno infiltrates the art room (he's a little too skilled at picking locks, Kaveh thinks) while Tighnari and Collei go off to beg one of the school custodians to block off the hallway that leads to the theatre club room for the morning.
As for Kaveh? His heart races with guilt and anxiety as he swipes a ring of keys from a table behind a drowsy janitor. He wishes he had time to wait for the classroom to open organically, but he doesn't. The moment Kaveh enters the clubroom, he begins to rearrange the rows of tables and chairs.
The classroom is a mess, which is no surprise since it's somewhat of a leftover area. While most other rooms are occupied by other classes during the day, the theatre room is used solely for afterschool activities. To be fair, it does give Kaveh the advantage of not having to worry about anyone stumbling upon their "surprise" before school lets out.
He nearly leaps out of his skin as Cyno appears behind him. "I have the supplies," he says as Kaveh yelps.
"Silent but deadly much?" He gratefully accepts the cans of paint and pails of brushes as Cyno lays out the large white piece of paper.
"Sorry," he responds, not sounding sorry at all. "Also, I tried to find a bigger piece of paper, but this was all I could get. Plus I heard the custodian coming so I had to get out quick."
"It's a miracle you managed to escape while hauling all this. Thanks!"
His friend lapses into silence beside Kaveh as they continue moving desks. Once the area in the center of the room is clear, They lay out the paper. It really is huge. It covers about two thirds of the cleared floorspace.
"Great find," Kaveh breathes.
Suddenly, Collei and Tighnari appear in the doorway.
"You really ought to lock this," Tighnari quips as he closes the door and draws down the window shades. "I could've been Alhaitham."
"Right, sorry." Kaveh glances up from his work organizing paint cans momentarily. "Did you manage to get the hall blocked off?"
Collei bounces excitedly on her heels, answering for the boy. "Of course we did! Tighnari is very persuasive."
"Aw, thanks."
"Excellent work, team!" Kaveh high fives them, which feels cringy but also well earned. Besides, he feels the need to hype himself up for the second part of their plan: The sign itself.
With the cans of paint now fully organized into different colors, Kaveh gets to work. His friends eventually leave--it's becoming closer to the start of school hours--but he stays behind and continues laboring.
He doesn't enjoy painting all that much. Truthfully, Kaveh's always been more of a pen or pencil type of person. But he feels that blacks and grays can't convey his message as well as the assortment of brightly colored paints at his disposal.
Just as the five minute warning bell rings, Kaveh sweeps his brush off the banner for the last time. Step two of Project Alhaitham is finished. TO ALHAITHAM, the paper reads in elegantly swirled red cursive, I'M SORRY FOR ALL I'VE SAID AND DONE. PLEASE DON'T RUN AWAY. I WANT TO APOLOGIZE IN PERSON.
Not as romantic as he would've liked, but it is what it is. Besides, he's begun to realize that traditional romance may be a little overrated, anyway.
His phone vibrates in his back pocket with a text from the group chat.
Cyno: Are you done yet? Tighnari says he'll flay you if you're late.
He smiles despite himself. Some things never change.
Kaveh: I just finished! Is stage 3 in the works?
Cyno: Yes, everything's ready. The only thing we're waiting on is Alhaitham.
Collei: By the end of today, I'm sure you two will be together again!
At least, that was how things were supposed to go. But Alhaitham doesn't show up in the morning, or in student council, or in theatre or after school. Kaveh tries to ask around, fighting back the burning frustration in his throat when everyone tells him the same thing: They don't have a clue.
He stays back after school, tugging down the banner from where he'd hung it and taking back the bundle of flowers he'd had Tighnari put together for him.
"I'm sorry it didn't work out," Tighnari tells him, rubbing the back of his neck. "It was a really good idea."
"I guess," Kaveh mutters, crumbling the large paper he'd spent an hour on into a large ball. He chucks it into the nearest recycling bin without even a glance back. If he takes his gaze off the floor, he knows the tears he's been holding back all day will fall.
"It's weird," his friend says. Tighnari pulls the banner back out from the trash and hands it back to him. "Alhaitham hardly ever misses school, even when he's sick."
Kaveh shoves the wad into his jacket pocket and, somewhat begrudgingly, agrees. The irritation that had scalded his throat and eyes has now faded into a dull ache of worry. "Maybe I should text him."
"I agree. It's not the fairytale reuniting you'd imagine but... Well. I don't know. It just feels off."
He pulls out his phone and taps on Alhaitham's contact. It still has the default profile. He realizes belatedly that he doesn't have even a single picture of the boy. Granted, they were never truly together, but it still makes him wonder what could've been.
No. Not what could've been, what will be. He hasn't given up just yet.
Kaveh: You missed school. Is everything okay?
To his surprise, the receipt changes from delivered to read in only a few seconds. Not even half a minute later, Alhaitham's response appears on the interface.
Alhaitham: No. Can you come to this address?
Alhaitham: Sorry to ask this of you, especially considering the last few weeks, but I'd rather discuss this in person.
He taps on the hyperlink and the map app opens. Kaveh has to suppress a gasp as a picture of a hospital fills his screen. His heart sinks into his stomach and puddles under his feet as he holds out his phone.
Tighnari squints at the screen, mouth twisting downwards with worry. "Seriously?"
"Yeah. How quickly can you get me to the Gandharva Ville Hospital?"
"Depends on how many traffic laws you're okay with me breaking," he says dryly.
Kaveh stands up. He cradles the bouquet of flowers in one arm and slings his backpack over the other shoulder. "In that case, I think ten minutes is a good estimate."
His friend really wasn't kidding when he talked about breaking traffic laws. By the time Tighnari pulls into the hospital parking lot, Kaveh feels a headache coming on from the whiplash. Still, there's no time to waste.
He practically launches himself out of the vehicle, not bothering to thank Tighnari for the ride. "I'll text you," he calls over his shoulder as he races across the lot and into the building.
After begging the receptionist to let him visit as a friend of a patient, he climbs four flights of stairs in record time. Kaveh shifts from foot to foot as he waits for someone, anyone, to answer his knocks on the patient room door.
He hears footsteps and then sees who they belong to. Alhaitham doesn't look anything like the guy Kaveh knew just a few days ago. His hair, typically fluffy and rich in color lays flat and greasy. He is pale with startlingly dark bags under his eyes. Those, at least, have stayed somewhat the same.
"Hey--" he begins to say, but is cut off by Alhaitham wrapping him in a tight embrace. The roses, now crushed and slightly wilted, drop to the floor with a dull thud. The hug is too constricting to be comfortable for Kaveh, but he endures the squeeze and reciprocates it as best he can.
"I'm so happy to see you," Alhaitham whispers, his face and breath brushing against his shoulder.
Kaveh squeezes his eyes shut to stop the impending overflow of emotion. "You have no idea."
Alhaitham doesn't stop holding him so he doesn't let go either. That's when he hears the boy sniffle and feels the dampness of tears soak into his sweatshirt.
"It's my grandmother," he says. His voice is impossibly quiet. "You've probably figured that out already. She is terminally ill. She is supposed to die in a year or so but... I'm thinking she might not have even that long."
Kaveh's heart constricts. It is suddenly hard to breathe, hard to stand. "I am so, so sorry."
"You don't have to be." Alhaitham pulls away suddenly and his eyes seem to finally take in the full picture, from Kaveh's disheveled appearance to the flowers splayed across the floor. "You brought roses?"
"I meant to apologize to you today at school," he explains softly. "For everything I said the other day, about your family and whatnot. It was wrong. And I am truly sorry, especially now that your grandma is... Well. Sick."
"I forgive you. And I understand. Since Grandmother was diagnosed, I haven't felt like myself. More irritable, I guess."
They look at each other. Right now, in this soap-smelling hallway, they are just two boys. One an orphan since childhood and the other at risk of becoming one. One lonely while surrounded by people and the other clinging onto their only family. Two boys who have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
"Is her illness why you're going to therapy? To cope with the inevitable?" It feels invasive, even to Kaveh, but Alhaitham doesn't look any more or less upset at the question.
"Yes," he glances away and sighs. "I've known for months now."
"That's fucked."
"I agree."
Another beat of solidarity passes between them. Kaveh suddenly gets an idea. He scoops up the flowers, tries to force the pink and purple petals back into shape. Once they look somewhat presentable, he presses the bouquet into his arms.
"Let's take a walk."
Alhaitham doesn't argue. He allows Kaveh to take his hand and lead him down the stairs and out into the hospital courtyard. It is quiet and isolated out there. Peaceful.
"When I got these flowers," he leans his head onto Alhaitham's shoulder, "I made sure they all meant exactly the right things. I even checked with Tighnari."
"Oh?" he still sounds sad, but at least he sounds sad and entertained. "And what might those meanings be?"
"Guess." Kaveh grins at Alhaitham who looks at him blankly in return.
"I don't know a single thing about plants, besides the actual science behind them."
"Alright, alright. I'll go easy on you. This burgundy symbolizes devotion, the lighter pink is appreciation, and the white is supposed to mean new love."
"What of the green?" Alhaitham stares down into the petals. A singular green rose peeks out from the sea of pinks and whites. It sticks out awfully from the rest, but in this case, Kaveh can put the aesthetic appeal of the gift to one side.
"It means good news and new beginnings. And while your grandmother ending up in the hospital isn't good news, it's still the beginning of a new type of future. One that's maybe good or maybe bad. I guess that all depends on you. But I believe you'll get somewhere great someday because you seem like the kind of guy who'd end up rich and famous and influential."
"Maybe I don't want to be rich. Maybe I just want to live a boring, insignificant office job."
"If accounting is what makes you happy," Kaveh smiles, nudging him with his elbow. "I'll be there with you all the way. No matter what you do, that green rose means that even when your grandmother eventually passes, you won't be alone."
Alhaitham tosses him a sideways look. "Did Nahida happen to give you an inspirational speech today?"
"Close." Kaveh stands, tugging him up alongside him. "Now, let's find some light. It's cold sitting here in the dark all the time."
Unsurprisingly, when night falls, Alhaitham chooses to stay in the hospital with his grandmother. "If she dies tonight," he'd told him grimly, "I'd like her not to be alone in her final moments." He can understand that. What wouldn't he give to have laid beside his dad that fateful night?
Kaveh wants to stay as well, but a sour faced nurse insists overnight visits are for direct relatives only and that he needs to return home to his own relatives. He considers telling her about his own family drama just to make her feel bad, but eventually chooses the high road and leaves with only one last smile toward Alhaitham.
A month had passed since that day spent at the hospital when Kaveh got the call. Alhaitham was not in hysterics when he picked up the phone; he's never been the type to freak out, even in a dire situation. His voice was eerily calm as he told Kaveh the news.
"She died this morning," Alhaitham had said.
It'd been just shy of 7 am. That hadn't stopped Kaveh from catching a bus to the hospital to hold his boyfriend--yes, boyfriend--as he stared off into space.
Kaveh knows all about grief. He knows that it's like an unpredictable ocean, sometimes allowing you to peacefully drift for weeks, then some days, send a wave the size of a mountain dumping over your head. He wasn't surprised when the day his grandmother died Alhaitham was calm as a statue built from stone and then, three days later, cried so hard he vomited in the orphanage bathroom as Kaveh patted his back and told him it would eventually feel okay.
Sometimes he felt like a traitor saying that. He wondered if he had any right to say that things got better when he'd been battling the same guilt for over half his life. But maybe there is truth in those platitudes, because these days, life feels a little more bearable for Kaveh.
The theatre production, which had once seemed like a far off dream, was to become a reality in just three weeks. The clubroom is hotter and more humid these days as summer inches nearer and nearer. Soon, Kaveh will be 17. Soon, it will have been just over three months since Alhaitham's grandmother died.
Collei is stretched across three seats in the clubroom, fanning herself with the script she's supposed to be practicing with. Alhaitham doesn't typically attend these meetings anymore, a fact Fischl loves to complain about, but Kaveh has vowed to keep it a secret that he's typically in therapy at this time of day.
"I can't believe this is really happening," Collei chirps in Kaveh's direction. He nods eagerly.
"Right? Our first original school play, with my amazing backgrounds? I love it!"
Days tick by and Kaveh makes sure to invite every person he possibly can to see the show. He hands a ticket to Nahida, who pounces on him in a bear hug, tells Hat Guy to show up (but forces him to pay for his and Lumine's own seats), and of course demands Tighnari and Cyno be there.
He really didn't need to do that since Collei will be performing and they wouldn't miss that for the world, but it's the thought that counts, right?
He's so committed to being the club's own person advertiser that he passes out flyers for the play to all the randoms in the therapy waiting room. Yes, that does include the depressed secretary and the middle aged water enthusiast.
And then suddenly, somehow, it's time.
"Kaveh, you're going to make us all late." Alhaitham taps his foot impatiently. Kaveh groans.
"I wouldn't be taking so much time if you'd just tell me whether the blue or red goes better with this shirt!"
"I already told you they both look perfectly fine."
"I don't want to be fine, I want to be stunning!" Kaveh stalks over to his boyfriend and holds the jackets, as well as the earrings he's wearing with them, centimeters from his nose. "Now. Blue? Or red?"
"Fine, okay, red." Alhaitham rolls his eyes so hard they seem to get stuck for a moment at the height of their rotation. "Is the feather in your hair purposeful, or...?"
"Um, obviously. All rich people wear feathers."
Alhaitham doesn't even dignify that with a response. Instead, he takes Kaveh's hand in his--a luxury he still isn't quite used to even after all this time--and tugs him down the orphanage stairs.
The small children ooh and ahh at them as they pass. Some make obnoxious kissing noises, so Kaveh sticks his tongue out at the little gremlins playfully.
"Take lots of videos!" a squeaky voice demands to a chorus of "YEAH!"s from the other kids.
"Of course, of course," Kaveh says, blowing the crowd of toddlers a collective kiss before being dragged out to the car.
Tighnari gives them a scrutinizing look before starting the car. "Look who's last as usual."
"Cut me some slack," Kaveh whines. "C'mon, I can't even be left alone on my own opening night?"
Cyno and Tighnari, along with Collei's 'friend' Amber who'd traveled all the way from Monstadt City to watch her perform, are already in the car. They look like they have been for quite some time but Kaveh refuses to acknowledge his chronic lateness. Not on a night like this.
They race off into the evening, Amber turning on a playlist of bubbly music that would typically annoy Kaveh but feels suitable in the moment. It sounds like... happiness. And huddled up next to Alhaitham, who is not so subtly cringing at the booming beat, surrounded by laughter from all directions?
It's the happiest he's ever been.
Upon entering the packed gymnasium, Collei, Alhaitham and him have to fight through the crowds to get backstage. When they get there, the chaos only seems to increase.
Furina is doing vocal scales despite there not being any singing roles, Venti is drinking heavily from what he claims to be a soda bottle, Fischl is flapping her arms around angrily at some club members in a way very reminiscent to her pet bird Oz, and Yoimiya is playing with fire.
Kaveh and Alhaitham share a look in the dimly lit room and smirk at their shared thought: It's good to see that some people will just never be normal.
Collei rushes off to get into costume and Alhaitham wanders into the tech area. Kaveh peeks out from behind the curtains and smiles. Hat Guy looking unimpressed to a pretty, buff blonde girl in a flowing white dress. They make a cute, if unconventional, couple. Nahida appears to be third wheeling from beside them. Somehow, the therapist manages to see Kaveh even from where he's hidden behind the velvet curtains. She waves.
Kaveh never thought he could feel so happy. He never thought he could be with the boy of his dreams. He never thought he could feel okay again. But this sunshiny feeling rising in his chests every second he looks into the audience, seeing friends--no, family--from the world over? It tells him he'll be alright. He waves back.
"Kaveh?" Alhaitham's familiar touch lingers light on his waist as the curtains swish shut. "Come on, we need you helping with sets."
"Okay, okay. You're so bossy these days." Kaveh leans into his boyfriend, pressing a kiss to his cheek. Watching his face go pink, even in the shoddy lighting, is one of his new favorite activities.
"Shut up," Alhaitham grumbles.
Kaveh just smiles and follows him back into the wings. He has no idea where life will lead him next year, or the year after that. He has no idea if this happiness will end up being as fleeting as it's always been. The thought scares him a little, he has to admit.
But then again. He's a junior in high school. He was abandoned by his mother and his father is dead. So if he can feel this light, this blissful, under these circumstances?
Damn. Maybe there's hope for him after all.