Work Text:
In retrospect, Kaveh should have realized something was wrong when Alhaitham was late for work yesterday morning.
Despite the man’s deep and unadulterated loathing for getting out of bed, Alhaitham woke at a startlingly punctual and regular hour, his entire morning routine meticulously measured out so he could get every single minute of sleep he could spare. Not, Kaveh always noted, that he needed more sleep–Alhaitham went to bed early and fell asleep almost the second his body hit the mattress. Whatever the case, Alhaitham was never late to work, clocking in at 9 o’clock on the dot to a long day of avoiding being locatable by anyone in the Akademiya whatsoever.
But yesterday morning, Alhaitham had stumbled out of bed nearly thirty minutes after he should have left, forgot to drink his coffee and barely touched his breakfast. Kaveh had, at the time, been affronted at the breakfast
he’d
put effort into making being just dumped into the sink on the plate, and had only in passing noted it was strange, given they were foods Alhaitham normally ate without reservation.
Alarm bells did not start sounding in Kaveh’s head until that evening. It wasn’t strange for Alhaitham to be home before him. It wasn’t even strange for him to have dozed off on the divan instead of reading his chosen book.
It
was
strange for his earpieces to be off, set carelessly on the table, and his hair to be sticking to him with sweat. Stranger still, for him to not even stir when Kaveh slammed the door shut, grumbling to himself and Mehrak about his current round of clients.
“Alhaitham? Hey, don’t just sleep the evening away, it’s your turn to make dinner for once…Hey! Alhaitham?”
The man hadn’t responded beyond a faint grunt, and when Kaveh had approached, he found that Alhaitham was drenched in sweat, eyes screwed tightly shut and breathing in slow, painful breaths. Worse yet, he was clammy to the touch, and turned into Kaveh’s palm as though seeking something cool.
Naturally, Kaveh had panicked a little bit.
If anyone had asked, Kaveh would have defended himself by pointing out he had not seen Alhaitham get sick in over
ten years
, and would not in a hundred years believed Alhaitham would try to go to
work
while ill. And it isn’t as though this was a common cold–Alhaitham shivered and trembled, voice gone, barely awake, his temperature soaring, leaving Kaveh with no option but to dunk him in a cold bath and send Mehrak with a hastily scrawled note to the Bimarstan for help.
When the doctor had gently suggested that Alhaitham could be moved to the Bimarstan for observation, Alhaitham
had
awoken and very sharply declined. Since he had seemed inclined to use his Vision to reinforce his ‘no’, the doctor and Kaveh had agreed to treat him at home, leaving Kaveh with a pile of medicines, a strict warning to ignore Alhaitham’s wishes if his fever climbed higher, and a growing headache.
Kaveh hadn’t slept particularly well last night.
It wasn’t that Alhaitham was a terrible patient. No, in fact, he was rather quiet, and that was the problem. Laid in his bed, barely moving and breathing painfully, Alhaitham looked terribly small and fragile–something that frightened Kaveh very badly. And so he waited, patiently changing the cool clothes on Alhaitham’s forehead and mopping away the sweat, forcing him to drink water and thin broth with his medicines, and almost obsessively checking his fever.
By now, his fever had not broken, but had stopped climbing, and Alhaitham’s breathing didn’t sound quite so hard-won. Kaveh stared at him, worried about what would happen if he did not have his eyes on the man, and sighed before he went to go make a slightly more substantial breakfast of porridge and cold herbal tea.
In truth, Kaveh knew that this fever was unlikely to kill Alhaitham. The man was ridiculously healthy, and would almost certainly bounce back ludicrously fast, and be his normal ornery self within the week. Kaveh knew all of that, and knew he was being ridiculous.
He also knew, better than most people on this side of the Wall, how fragile life was. Death did not care how healthy someone had been, or how young, or how fair it was, when it came to call.
If he burnt the first attempt at breakfast, Alhaitham was still in bed and wouldn’t notice Kaveh having to scour the dishes.
He was awake, when Kaveh brought in a tray–porridge, water, and a warm drink that was less tea and more hot honey and lemon juice–but his eyes were unfocused, fuzzy and droopy in a way that made him look perpetually sleepy, and Alhaitham squinted as the door opened.
“...
Jadda
?”
Kaveh swore his heart might have stopped at that moment. He kicked the broken pieces of it aside and set the tray over Alhaitham’s lap with an unnecessarily aggressive clatter, and glared back at him.
“Are you cooked entirely in there? It’s just me, Alhaitham.” Alhaitham blinked owlishly at the tray in his lap, ran a finger over the spoon, but did not eat anything, simply stared. Kaveh huffed again, already hooking his ankle around the legs of the chair he’d dragged in last night, and grabbed for the spoon.
“...I don’t like porridge,” Alhaitham said slowly, the mulishness of it dyed in how drowsy and out of it he sounded. Kaveh snorted, and brandished the spoon.
“You’ll like taking the medicine on an empty stomach less. Now open your mouth.” Kaveh moved the spoon towards Alhaitham aggressively, and scowled when Alhaitham did not obey the command. In fact, all Alhaitham did was stare at the tray, eyes still a little wide, as though he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing.
Maybe it was because Alhaitham was so wide-eyed, eyes glassy and feverish, that Kaveh caught it as it happened–the subtle shimmering of moisture in those hazy eyes before a tear slipped free, leaving a shining track down the man’s cheek. Kaveh froze, frantically trying to remember the last time he’d seen Alhaitham cry, and panicked upon the answer being a resounding “never”.
“What–”
“It’s the same,” Alhaitham whispered, still staring down at the bowl of porridge he wasn’t eating. “It’s exactly the same smell as when she made it.”
Kaveh did not need to ask who had made a weak porridge with a hint of cardamom and cinnamon atop it to try and entice the incredibly picky scribe into eating it. There was really only one person it could have been, and the heavy lump in Kaveh’s throat prevented him from speaking the obvious. Alhaitham looked up at him, still half-delirious with fever, eyes still wet and shimmering with tears, with a sort of awed sense of wonder. As though Kaveh held the answers to questions Alhaitham had never known to ask.
“How did you make it the same?”
“...It just came naturally,” Kaveh managed after a moment of uselessly working his throat. And it was the truth–he had picked out the details of who Alhaitham was to make this. Picked up the spices he liked best to try and trick him into feeding his tired body, just the same way he knew without asking which of the blankets that sat in a basket next to the couches were Alhaitham’s favorites and which were permanently banished to the bottom of the bin for some textural crime or another. Just the same way as he knew which was Alhaitham’s favorite pen and favorite ink and favorite seller to buy scrap papers from. Just the same way he knew Alhaitham’s hands better than his own, and knew when to leave a salve out to soothe aching joints and weary bones.
It made Kaveh’s chest ache and his eyes burn, to think that there was no one in the space between him and Alhaitham’s grandmother who had loved Alhaitham enough for the
knowing
to seep into their very skin.
Instead of crying, he huffed, and brandished the spoon at Alhaitham once more with a practiced scowl. “
Eat
, Alhaitham, the mysteries of the universe can wait.”
“...They will wait for no one and nothing.”
“And your body will not keep up with them like this, so treat it right before rejoining the marathon. Are you the one always on about maintaining proper care of oneself, you fool?”
There was a flicker of something almost a smile on Alhaitham’s face, before he leaned over to finally eat the mouthful of porridge and immediately grimaced at the texture. It took another twenty minutes of harassment and cajoling to get him to eat a third of the bowl, and by then, Alhaitham had sunk back into his pillows, eyes barely open but still glistening with tears, too tired out to keep protesting.
Kaveh only forced him upright enough to shove medicines down his throat, and then let him sink back into the pillows. Alhaitham only spoke up again when Kaveh tried to pick up the tray to carry out.
“You’re leaving?”
“I’m putting the dishes away, Alhaitham, so you don’t turn over and drape yourself in lukewarm tea and cold porridge later.”
“...Don’t leave me.”
“You impossible–
listen
.” Kaveh batted away Alhaitham’s hand where it had grasped the hem of his shirt, and leaned down to look into his irascible, bratty
problem’s
eyes. “I will come
back
, so you can merrily pass your sick onto me, just let me take these to the
sink
, Alhaitham.”
“You’ll come back?”
“I’ll come back. Is that not what I just said?”
Alhaitham stared at him, bleary and thoughtful, and smiled. It was the smile that would kill Kaveh, he thought, one day he wouldn’t be able to defend against that slow, syrupy-sweet curve of Alhaitham’s lips that escaped him when he was unguarded. Someday he’d bear the brunt of it and have to admit all the things they never spoke about.
Someday sounded a lot like today in the right circumstances.
“Thank you,” Alhaitham murmured, and let his eyes close as he finally drifted back into sleep.
Kaveh did the dishes with a smile on his face, despite everything.