Work Text:
The house is exquisite. A jewel of a thing cradled safely within the emerald tangle of a garden, all dappled in perfect afternoon sun; a faberge egg come to life. A perfect world in the palm of his hand.
Someone calls his name from within—someone he’s been missing—and so he goes.
The front door is made of athel wood, lacquered and polished to a gleam, just as he remembers in the work scope. He uses the key to open the door, the mane of the cartoon lion on the keychain spinning merrily as if it recognizes its purpose and is pleased to serve it.
He takes off his shoes by the entrance and sees the house slippers. They’re an absurd shade of mauve, a trendy color that served no one’s complexion two seasons ago, but were given as a gift from a client and kept—despite their ugliness—for their softness, warmth, and sentimentality. These details were beyond his notice once, but he is a guest here. He wants to stay a little longer, and so he makes his observations, steps into one slipper and then the other, and walks into the foyer.
He has never been here, in this particular formation of the house, but he knows the way; he always knows the way. He turns down one hallway, then another. Opens another door. Climbs one set of stairs and crosses a canyon. Finds his way across a hall of mirrors. Walks across a field of stars. Takes his time going down a spiral staircase that loops in on itself endlessly as though he is walking backwards through time itself.
There are pictures hung on the walls, photos of happier, simpler times, sometimes blurry, focusing on random objects within the frame in the way that memory works.
A bowl of apples. A quill. The tilt of a smile. The corner of a book. A stitch of silk upon a cushion. The shadow of a dimple. The way light filters through a window, prismatic. The gleam of a ring as it arcs across the study.
And all the while, that voice calls to him as if it’s just in the other room.
None of it is made to frighten him, and so he does not feel fear.
He reaches the kitchen, where someone stands with their back to him. His hair is kissed by the last light of day, in all the places his lips used to trace.
“Finally!” There’s a smile in his voice as the knife hits the cutting board rhythmically. “I had to start dinner without you.”
He approaches, draping his cloak over the back of one of the overpriced designer kitchen chairs. He wraps his arms around him, he who sets the knife down and turns around to embrace him back.
“What’s going on with you?” He asks, laughing, warm breath puffing against the crook of his neck and shoulder. “Was work really so awful you had to find comfort in your hideous slippers?”
It wasn’t awful. He just wanted to come home.
“They’re your hideous slippers. Just because you foisted them onto me out of a misguided sense of sentimentality doesn’t make them mine.”
He feels the body in his arms shake with mirth.
“It’s not good for you to be working all the time, you know. There’s more to life than being really, really good at your job.”
He thinks: that’s the pot calling the kettle black.
He thinks: this conversation has happened before.
“After this assignment, why don’t we both take a sabbatical and leave the city for a while?”
Where could they go?
Something bubbles on the stove.
He thinks: he should change the subject, ask what’s for dinner.
“I haven’t seen the sea in a long time, and you promised to take me. Remember?”
No, they can’t go to the sea.
Sand isn’t good building material; any child could tell you that.
“You can bury me there.”
The sunlight begins to splinter.
Ah. He remembers now.
Eyes like pomegranate seeds meet his gaze. They glow and glow until they begin to burn, uncomplicated joy in his comprehension at last.
He thinks: it wasn’t supposed to end this way.
He thinks: I’m sorry.
They both reach for the knife.
--
The Akasha Terminal beeps gently, ejecting him into wakefulness.
Alhaitham opens his eyes, and feels nothing. But then, he has always been a deep and easy sleeper.
He raises his hand, examines the front and back, and sees no warm blood slaking itself across his fingers. He reaches into his pants pocket; feels for the edges of the lion keychain.
“So you’ve deigned to rejoin the land of the living at last.”
He turns his head to see Tighnari seated by his bedside, cast in the soft halo of the bedside lamp. The Chemist doesn’t spare him a glance, flipping mildly through the pages of a medical journal. Only the twitch of his ear gives away any sense of irritation.
“Just because you have access to my laboratory doesn’t mean I grant you blanket permission to try my experimental compounds, especially without supervision.” The admonishment is delivered in an even, straightforward tone; if he had been one of Tighnari’s medical residents, he could imagine considering quitting altogether. As it is, he just sits up, ignoring the crick in his neck. “You’re lucky I came back to grab something—that compound could have had you bleeding out of every orifice if the dosage was off.”
“Did you tell Cyno?”
“I’m not in the habit of keeping secrets from him.” Tighnari leverages him a look so flat that Alhaitham knows he hasn’t said anything. “If you do it again, I won’t be responsible for the consequences.”
Alhaitham nods, which they both know is as close to an apology as Tighnari will get. He wants to keep what he experienced in the dream to himself,
“I saw him.”
“Did you.” Tighnari sounds unsurprised. Alhaitham has the feeling he’s being humored.
“He was cooking dinner.”
That elicits a minor reaction. Tighnari primly places a post-it note into his journal to mark it, and turns his attention to Alhaitham fully. “That’s strange—he never cooked dinner.”
He never tried to stab Alhaitham through the chest with a kitchen knife, either.
“He knew he was dead.”
Tighnari’s ears twitch, but he says nothing, lips thinning into a look of concern.
“I think he wants me to join him.”
Thwack!
Alhaitham barely resists flinching as the medical journal hits the edge of the nightstand. Tighnari stands up, folding his arms and looking properly cross. His tail swishes back and forth, agitated.
“He is dead, as you’ve acknowledged, in every way that matters; he doesn’t want you to do anything. It’s your own subconscious failing to process your feelings on the matter and turning against you because that’s the only direction those liminal thoughts can go. Your dreams are lying to you, and you above all know we can’t afford to lose you to that madness. You don’t need dreams, Alhaitham—you need rest, and natural dreams, and therapy. I’m revoking your access to my cabinets after all; you can come clean to Cyno if you want to get them back. Good night.”
A part of Alhaitham wants to be petty—it must be easy for Tighnari to take the moral high ground. But looking at the situation objectively, he was the one who acted irrationally, so he says nothing.
The last thing he wants is to have to deal with Cyno.
--
Nahida likes to tell stories. Here is one she will never tell:
Once upon a time, a golden-haired little boy lived with his best friend, a silver-plumed bird, in a peaceful village far away from the hustle and bustle of the big city. The boy was very clever as far as little boys go, and as far as birds go the bird could be considered quite wise.
“What is it like to fly so high up?” asked the boy.
“I can see the whole village,” said the bird, “and all the trees and rivers surrounding it. I can see the big city, and the curve of the earth, and the firmament all around it.”
“But how does it feel?”
“I feel the sweet wind speaking to me through my feathers, and the warm glow of the sun on my face.”
“Is it lonely up there without me?” asked the boy. “I cannot fly like you.”
“I am not lonely, for I know that when I come back to earth, you are always waiting for me.”
But the boy was not satisfied by this. “Birds can do everything that humans can. You keep me company on my walks and when I work the field, but I cannot keep you company.”
“That cannot be helped. Humans don’t have wings and they cannot taste the tailwinds to know where to go.”
“If I could fly, would you take me with you?”
“Of course, but humans cannot fly.”
“I will be the first.”
The boy went to his workshop and began to dream. For a moon’s worth of days and nights, he toiled away, for he was a very clever little boy.
One day, he presented the bird with the most magnificent pair of wings. They were made with bones carved from the lightest wood and feathers in every color imaginable, sewn painstakingly from scraps of delicate silk. He strapped them onto his shoulders and wrists with thongs of steady leather, and when he raised his arms he looked very much like a bird, indeed.
The bird and the boy went to the big city together, and climbed the tallest tree with his beautiful wings.
“Where should we go?” asked the boy, when they reached the top. The air was very clear, and the wind was very sweet. The bird looked around.
“We can go anywhere you would like, I suppose.”
“But I can come with you?”
“Yes, we will go together.”
And the boy smiled brightly as he closed his eyes, spread out his arms, and leapt.
--
“I don’t like it when you tell that story.” Kaveh grouses, rolling away from Alhaitham, wiggling around as he looks for a relatively dry spot on the bed. “You never tell it right, the boy always seems like an idiot.”
Alhaitham reaches over to pull him back, amused at the resulting squawk and scramble. “I tell it the way it was written. Now settle.”
“I’ve never settled for anything in my life.” Kaveh sniffs, the tips of his ears turning red nonetheless as he stills. Alhaitham resists the urge to lean over and bite the delicate curve of his ear. Kaveh divested of all his adornments is always a sight to behold, and he wants to preserve the image a bit longer before he adds his own touch.
“I know, and it’ll be the death of you one day.”
Kaveh pokes him once, and then again, clearly needling for a tussle. “You know I could have you arrested for declaring intent to commit murder.”
Alhaitham chuckles, wrapping his arms around him tighter, refusing to give into the obvious provocation. “Is this your way of trying to give me a compliment?”
“I think this is your way of trying to give yourself a compliment.” Kaveh does settle then, curling his arms around Alhaitham’s waist and giving his ass a sly yet appreciative squeeze, which completely undermines whatever facile argument he was trying to make.
“You should stick to building palaces rather than rhetorical arguments, Mister Architect.”
Alhaitham pulls the blanket over them and Kaveh practically purrs, snuggling luxuriously into the warmth like the hedonist he is.
“And with pillowtalk like yours, it’s a wonder you ever make it out of dreams alive.”
--
What Alhaitham never told Kaveh was that he never told him the story exactly as written.
As written in the book of fables left to him by his grandmother, the boy leapt from the highest bough of the tallest tree in the city and perished.
The city wasn’t like the village; they had long since paved over the soft, rich loam with roads of marble and pavilions of gold, and so there was no earth to cradle him when he hit the ground.
When the boy said that he would be the first to fly, the bird should have said, “I don’t need you to fly.”
The bird should have said, “I will stay on earth with you.”
The bird should have said, “A bird in the hand is worth more than a dead boy.”
It might have been a lie, but the bird did not yet know that even the wisest of its kind will still only ever be just a bird.
--
What Alhaitham never asked Kaveh was: how would you have told the story?