Chapter Text
His illness is a misplacement. A miscalculated angle. A deformity of the intangible substance that fills his flesh: his personality.
As a trained artisan, Kaveh knows the importance of processes: oxidation and preparation of materials, the flocculation and drying times of clay, the hours of harsh fire that what once came from the ground must endure to become art.
Therefore, he is also painfully aware that he, as a person, was a failure in the process. He wasn’t carefully kneaded to prevent excess air; he wasn’t revisited again and again to ensure the surface of his being was smooth. He was misplaced, left to crack.
And yet, people said he possessed “An artist’s analytical eye,” after seeing his works and architectural feats. The same eye that stared back at him in the mirror. Garnet smoke seeing the invisible parts of him: uneven, crooked, hollowed out, poor in material. Gloomy and empty.
Desires burned like acid in his ribcage, melting every coherent thought.
I want to be pretty.
I want to be right.
I want to be told that I’m good.
I want to be told I’m okay.
I want to stop feeling like this.
I want to be loved.
And yet, they felt like empty wishes.
So he stopped looking at his soul and naked body in the copper mirror of the shared bathroom. He dressed and adorned himself. He tinted his face flushed and golden, braiding his blond strands and framing his features with the loose ends.
“No food for me today.” He thought, punishing himself as if he could actually affort more than a cup of coffee.
He grabbed his suitcase, but just as he was about to walk through the door, an ebony envelope slid under it. Gold-stained fingertips picked it up, the bloody seal reading Eviction Notice, which he quickly tore in two.
The fragments stuck to his damp palms. For a moment, anger rose in his throat like bile. Then shame crushed it flat. He pressed his lips together, holding both feelings at once until neither made sense.
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“I’m just staying until I can find a place that won’t ask for my credit records or anything like that,” he told Alhaitham as he ate breakfast in his house for the first time (and this month). He had brought a bunch of fresh fruit and vegetables from Natlan as a thank-you gift for his ex—now current—roommate.
He remembered those times with solace: the semester when his own senior roommate left and his junior took his place. At first, they didn’t get along at all—long discussions about where to place objects, loud noises from both parties. Months passed, and Kaveh discovered that a relationship could be built through banter and silly fights.
Those were the times when he felt someone actually liked him, not just his image. The times when life seemed to have meaning.
He liked Alhaitham, this rational, non-conforming being. Like a clinically controlled wild animal. Strong and fiery, calculating and logical—everything Kaveh wasn’t. And Kaveh might never admit it, but he was jealous. Jealous of him, who was admired for both his body and mind—not a mask. Who didn’t care what people thought, who never hesitated to reject demands or sink beneath critics’ voices.
Alhaitham was free. Free to be selfish, harsh, and unapologetic.
And Kaveh craved that emerald shine in his soul, drawn to it as flowers follow sunlight. Needy, yearning for the sublime feeling he’d once had during their Akademiya years.
But he never had the courage to say it. Not even drunk on wood-flavored wine could he confess something as raw as: “I am enamoured of your whole being, Alhaitham.”
How could he? Alhaitham might not be perfect, but Kaveh had known since adolescence about the malformation of his own self. He carried eye bags carved by sleepless nights spent wondering how anyone could love a disfigured person like him, who fooled others into believing in his greatness as an architect and artist.
Chasing Alhaitham was like chasing the sun.
So they graduated, and Alhaitham becam noe a pleasant yet bitter memory of days when Kaveh had actually felt like a real person.
Until today.
And until that night.
He didn’t remember much of that night. The night he reunited with Alhaitham. The night that sealed his fate in his junior’s spare room. A night when he was thrown out of his apartment, his possessions sold to pay a fraction of his debts, and his fragmented self drowned in liquor.
He only remembered walking out of the tavern, his heated skin clashing with the fresh leafy wind of Sumeru City. Then—blank. Until he woke up on Alhaitham’s couch, the scent of coffee and incense filling the book-lined residence.
A couple of days later, he was settled in. The spare room was now Kaveh’s, and the liquor budget was now rent money.
“No one in their right mind would rent to a man neck-deep in debt with the nation’s biggest loan shark,” Alhaitham said in his flat tone, taking a bite of a strange blue berry.
Kaveh knew it was true. That’s why it stung. His cheeks flushed with heat, and before he could stop himself, he bit back:
“And yet, here I am, aren’t I?”
The words were too sharp, and already regret burned in his stomach. What if Alhaitham threw him out right now? What if this was it?
Alhaitham paused. For a second, his lips parted as if to argue. Instead, he slid the bowl of fruit closer to Kaveh’s side.
“Eat,” he said simply.
Kaveh stared at the fruit. His chest clenched, torn between gratitude and fury. Was it care, or pity? He hated that he couldn’t tell.
“Rules are the same as years ago: no perfumes, no smoking, no loud noises when I’m home, and definitely no more than one bottle of wine in the house,” Alhaitham continued, reciting as if from a document. Unnerving in its precision. “I’ll be going. Try to work on the rent, dear senior.”
The door shut. Kaveh grumbled, anger blooming in his chest. But sadness soon followed, seeping through the cracks of irritation as a thought surfaced:
We aren’t students anymore. It’s only a matter of time before he sees the ugliness inside me and abandons me like everyone else.