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If [Alhaitham] ever gives you the impression that he doesn't really have a temper, or that he's rigidly logical like a machine, then you just don't know him well enough yet. He definitely has a personality, it's just... too big a personality. Most people wouldn't get it.
“I don’t know how you deal with it,” said Alhaitham, on the third instance that Kaveh declared he was going steady with someone—someone who really likes me this time! according to Kaveh.
“Deal with what? He’s a nice guy.”
“How clingy he is.”
“Clingy?” Kaveh sounded remarkably offended on behalf of a boy he’s known for less than a month.
This was back during their Akademiya days, when Alhaitham’s opinion mattered to Kaveh, but Kaveh hadn’t yet come to the conclusion that all of Alhaitham’s disapprovals should be met with bluster and annoyance and hot air. Alhaitham turned a page backwards, annoyed that he’s lost track of the author’s argument. “He’s always insisting on eating dinner with you. Working on projects with you. Why is he messaging you through the Akasha about getting coffee at night?”
“To get coffee the next day together?!”
“Why does he need to do that. The Akasha system isn’t for small talk.”
“So that we can get brunch?” said Kaveh in disbelief.
Kaveh didn’t need to get brunch. If Kaveh wasn’t off getting brunch—(what a ridiculous meal. Just eat lunch)—Kaveh would immediate default to what he always did, which was hovering over his work desk or looking over Alhaitham’s shoulder or collecting a dozen books in the library, where Alhaitham would know where he was and Alhaitham could hover over his shoulder. Meals should occur whenever Kaveh and Alhaitham need a break from their academic work which may or may not occur during the brunch timeslot so that they can let the conversation drift and eventually return to the subject of their research, not prearranged by some man who likes the idea of brunch. To what? To talk about the weather and how the coffee tastes? To play along at this nothing interaction under the guise that this is somehow a substantial connection? Alhaitham could recite the ins and outs of Kaveh’s recent ideological difference with his advisor. Alhaitham had read the prominent Vahumana scholars who influenced Kaveh’s most recent foray into uses of mosaic and glass. Alhaitham would have something to talk to Kaveh about over brunch, because Alhaitham was actually aware of the person Kaveh was, and Alhaitham didn’t need to rely on the Akasha system to ask for a piece of Kaveh’s time when Alhaitham and Kaveh have naturally, due to their compatible intellectual attraction, intertwined their days at the hip in a way that eschews artificiality in favor of something true.
Brunch.
Whatever expression was on Alhaitham’s face just then, Kaveh just looked hurt. (Later in life, Kaveh will learn to mask these moments of sensitivity with outrage and dismissive handwaves. Only Alhaitham will know how little both of them have changed.) “I thought it was sweet of him that he wanted to spend time with me. If you were dating someone, wouldn’t you want them to—to want to be around you?” Kaveh crossed his arms and laughed nervously. “I mean, who wants to date someone when you always feel like they can’t stand your company?”
“There’s a difference with the way that he does it.” Like he’s possessive, Alhaitham thought, but that allegation was ungrounded even to him. “His attachment to you is excessive.”
“According to who?! You haven’t even dated anyone.”
“Observation and statistical norm.” Then Alhaitham closed his book altogether; it was hopeless trying to keep track of both conversation and textbook. “Kaveh. You’re an independent man with ambitions of your own.” And the most talented scholar of their generation, although Alhaitham didn’t say this, since Kaveh’s face was starting to flush and Alhaitham didn’t want to overwhelm him. “You don’t need some dependent clinging to you and dragging you down.”
“Haitham, you’re blowing this way out of proportion. Just because he enjoys my company doesn’t mean he’s dependent on me.”
“And what’s really the line?” Alhaitham replied. “First he wants to get brunch with you, then he’s emotionally dependent on your wellbeing, then he’s dependent on your presence and your attention. He already wants to be with you at all hours of the day.”
Kaveh started laughing in the way he did when someone had committed a social faux pas and he didn’t know what else to do. “I—okay. I guess I know why you’ve never dated anyone, then?”
Alhaitham’s eyes narrowed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing. Just go back to your book.” Kaveh pulled his quill out of his hair and tapped the nib on the blueprint he’s drafting. “Hey, I know you and I don’t agree on the concept of egoism—” (this was a polite way of saying that Kaveh had always hated the idea with impunity, but restrained his vitriol during the Akademiya days out of respect for Alhaitham) “—but do you really think anyone gets through this life completely independent? If independence is defined by self-sufficiency.”
“Why not?” said Alhaitham.
“Well,” said Kaveh, and hesitated. “Even if it were possible. Wouldn’t it be. Lonely?”
Kaveh had a sideways, half-collapsed way of smiling when he said that, like he couldn’t quite make some critical infrastructure of his expression maintain its integrity. “I don’t know what you mean,” said Alhaitham. And he really hadn’t known what he meant; he didn’t lie about this. But instead of clarifying his point, Kaveh had just twirled his quill between his fingers and turned away, so that all Alhaitham could see was the tilted curve of his neck.
*
These days, Alhaitham reminds himself that Kaveh does not owe him the details of everything Kaveh does with his time. If, at one point in their lives, their conversations were so constant and sincere and essential to each of their own developments as scholars and people, this does not mean that Alhaitham and Kaveh can ever return to that time again. Certain wounds can heal, but can never be undone; trust could be rebuilt, but not made whole. He knew this when he offered to allow Kaveh to live in his home, Alhaitham tells himself. He turns over the letter that Kaveh had dropped and forgotten by the door, refolds it and places it back into its envelope, and tells himself that it’s not any of his business if Kaveh takes out another hundred thousand mora of personal loans.
Let alone the hundreds of millions of mora that Kaveh still owes to Dori. Let alone the fact that Kaveh did not pay Alhaitham rent this last month, or the previous. Let alone—and Alhaitham takes a long sip of the coffee that Kaveh had made for him that morning with specialty-blend beans that Kaveh had bought with his own money—let alone the fact that when Alhaitham opens their pantry, Kaveh’s side of the shelf has half a bag of rice, some year-old spices that he never threw away, two fresh bottles of unopened wine, and nothing else.
Alhaitham puts the cup of coffee down and resists the urge to pinch his nose. He does not have a headache. Having a headache and pinching his nose just seems like the sort of thing that he would like to do right now, if only out of sheer irritation.
He’d told Kaveh not to float his latest project with his own money. Or to do the guest lecture free of charge. Or to take his client from last year out to dinner and treat her because she was down on her luck.
It’s the weekend, which are the days that Kaveh is busiest and the days that Alhaitham has religiously guarded as sacred space away from his desk job, so he is free to grab his keys and head straight to the market to pick up as many groceries as he can carry. He knows the things that Kaveh likes: Fruit, cream, cheese, anything rich, most baked goods. Not too much sugar.
Alhaitham does not like the marketplace, which is loud and full of people who are extremely extroverted and are willing to gouge anyone who’s too shy to stand up for themselves. Alhaitham is neither too shy but neither does he enjoy haggling, so the end result is that he’s too stubborn to simply pay an exorbitant price (someone in their household has to have common sense about money) but also becomes increasingly terse the longer he spends there, until he’s unhappy and so is everyone who has to do business with him. He returns home in a sour mood and promptly dumps everything on the kitchen counter without putting any of it away.
The errand is easier when Kaveh can interact with the shopkeepers and Alhaitham can simply refuse to pay the price if it’s too much, but this is difficult to do when Kaveh doesn’t have enough money for his own groceries. Kaveh, for someone who continues to destroy his own wallet from the inside out, does not like it when Alhaitham waives his rent or buys his groceries. Alhaitham does not waive his rent anymore; Alhaitham just says nothing about it until Kaveh is convinced that Alhaitham has forgotten about it, and then Alhaitham waits until he’s convinced that Kaveh’s forgotten about it. Inevitably, Alhaitham just buys enough food for both of them and pretends to dislike half the foods he’s bought until Kaveh eats it. Kaveh does, however, continue to rack up a tab at the bar and adamantly maintain that he will pay it off, only to not have the money at the end of the month.
Alhaitham looks out the window and wonders if there’s any quiet place in Sumeru that is not exhausting nor loud nor full of other people to manage. He would become one of those sages who sequesters himself in the pursuit of wisdom deep in the forest, but he likes his modern creature comforts such as having a roof, a mattress, and real cookware. He should become one of those people who never seems to leave the library, except then Kaveh would come after him for that too, saying man cannot live on books alone—as if man can live off other people’s happiness, either.
Alhaitham is in the middle of pulling out half the wires on his headphones and modifying the noise-canceling hardware when Kaveh comes home, announced first by the scratch of the keys at the lock and then the jangling noise of his keys being thrown to some location where Kaveh will inevitably be unable to find it when he next attempts to frantically leave the house at exactly three minutes before his next appointment. “I’m back!” Kaveh yells, apparently at the top of his lungs, and Alhaitham resists the urge to just stand up and leave for his bedroom, where he’s put enough soundproofing gear around the cracks of his door and along his walls, all in an attempt to have a space where he doesn’t have to put up with the sharp noises that, at the end of a tedious and trying workday, seems to be the last straw that breaks his patience. “Haitham, I literally just cleaned this kitchen this morning,” Kaveh’s voice says very loudly. “There’s stuff everywhere! Screws? Drills? You have a work desk for that sort of thing! And why is there enough food in here to feed half the Akademiya?”
Kaveh truly has a way of being in exactly the wrong place at the wrong time, and doing so at a decibel that’s exactly too high. Alhaitham doesn’t like bills and finances any better than Kaveh does—in fact, it was Kaveh who liked numbers during school, not Alhaitham—why does he have to worry about Kaveh’s increasing debt to the point that Kaveh can’t feed himself? Can’t Kaveh add stress to Alhaitham’s life at some time other than when Alhaitham is already stressed about Kaveh’s bills that Kaveh can’t pay?
Alhaitham’s curt tone of voice isn’t fake. “A coworker’s roommate finished her degree and is moving out. There was a lot of food left over, so she brought it to work and asked if anyone wanted to take it.”
Kaveh’s eyes are fixed on the little jar of dates the way that he stares at food when he’s forgotten to eat for too long. “I don’t particularly want them,” Alhaitham says, feigning interest in his headphones.
“Then why did you take them?”
“It was perfectly good food being offered for free. Frugality is a mindset, Kaveh,” says Alhaitham. Kaveh gives him a sour look. “You should cook with them or they’ll get thrown away.”
“Really? Well—that would be so wasteful to throw it away. We really can’t let the food go to waste. Or, I suppose that if it’s technically a roommate’s old food being redistributed, it should be taken to a food pantry—“
“There’s dairy products that won’t keep well in a pantry,” says Alhaitham quickly.
Kaveh sighs, like it’s a huge burden that he’s taking on to have enough to eat. “Okay. Fine.” A pause. “But we really should at least take the bread to the food pantry.”
Alhaitham should have chosen a different cover story, is what. “The bread will get moldy if it’s left on the shelf. Just use the bread for something tonight.”
“Putting me to work in the kitchen?” Kaveh says with an unimpressed look. “Is that what this is? You just want me to cook your dinner for you while you sit on your ass and refuse to even help wash up afterwards?”
Kaveh doesn’t like it when Alhaitham cooks for him. He seems to think that just because he’s living in Alhaitham’s home, Kaveh should be a good guest and do more than his fair share of house chores. Which Alhaitham thinks could be a great deal for the both of them, being a person who’d always hated cleaning his room as a child, but why does Kaveh have to complain about it at the same time? Why can’t Alhaitham just do the house chores if Kaveh is going to complain every time he puts something on the kitchen counter? Does Kaveh feel bad if Alhaitham does housework, or doesn’t he? “You know me,” says Alhaitham slowly, and looks up to see Kaveh tying an apron tight around the small of his waist. Kaveh looks back over his shoulder, as if to check that Alhaitham is watching. “I only do anything if it suits my interests,” says Alhaitham.
Kaveh scoffs. He tucks his hair behind his ear. Fiddles with his sleeves to roll them up and expose the long, lean muscle of his forearms. Looks back to make sure that Alhaitham is still watching and turns away just as quickly. “I don’t know how you took care of this house without me,” he says to the stove, and pulls out a pot from under the counter.
Thank gods—Kaveh is usually quiet while he cooks. “If you’re going to make me cook, then I’m going to make something that I like!” Kaveh announces halfway through making a soup to go with the variety of other dishes he’s got in varying stages of preparation, as if Alhaitham didn’t already know this. And it’s always enjoyable to watch Kaveh work, whether it’s drafting blueprints or giving lectures or guiding someone through a process or just cooking. Kaveh is a person who does work, and does it well, and does it with everything he has. By comparison, Alhaitham thinks as he returns to his headphones, Alhaitham is just a person who fills out forms and collects a paycheck. But the idealism of a world that prizes hard work doesn’t always match up to its reality, which is a world where certain jobs pay more than other entirely regardless of the worth of that job’s function or its difficulty.
By the time Alhaitham realizes that Kaveh has stopped cooking, Kaveh is standing in the middle of the kitchen staring down at something. “Kaveh,” says Alhaitham, and Kaveh stiffens and looks guiltily over his shoulder. He isn’t quite fast enough to hide the letter—with the notification of his increased debt.
If Alhaitham hadn’t read the letter beforehand, he would have no idea what it was. “The food will burn,” says Alhaitham, instead of asking what the letter was or why Kaveh was trying to hide it. Kaveh makes a noise and pulls the pan off the fire with the scream of metal pan on metal grate.
With the food mostly done and unburnt, Kaveh is quiet as Alhaitham takes bits of food from here and there. Alhaitham’s not actually especially hungry, and he’s worried about getting oil or crumbs in his headphones. All of this food can be saved and eaten at a later date now that it’s been prepared. Eventually Kaveh takes off the apron. He doesn’t get a plate. He just sits there and watches Alhaitham pick at the food and twist screws into place.
“Can I help you?” Alhaitham asks.
“You read the letter,” says Kaveh.
Alhaitham looks up. This is the wrong move. If he’d had no idea what the letter contained, he would have said, Don’t flatter yourself in thinking I care to read your mail, without even bothering to lift his head. Kaveh’s eyes are huge and round.
“I did,” he says, because he doesn’t have a choice.
Kaveh buries his forehead in one hand and swears under his breath. “I forgot to put it away. I forgot to take it with me. And of course you, nosy as you are—”
“It was lying in plain sight,” says Alhaitham. “It would have been harder not to read it by accident.”
Kaveh’s eyes narrow.
“And if you feel the need to hide it—”
“I don’t need you to lecture me on these things,” Kaveh interrupts.
“—so even you understand that the way you’ve treated your money is indefensible—"
“So what’s all this food?” Kaveh says. “Contributions to a charity case?”
“I told you I got the food from a coworker.”
“So if I go to the marketplace and ask, nobody will say that you were there around three hours ago, purchasing a ton of food you almost never eat on a day that you almost never do your grocery shopping?”
It’s too late to try to change tactics. Alhaitham will just have to remember to lie a bit closer to the truth next time. “Is it a crime for me to purchase groceries?”
“Don’t act like I’m stupid, Haitham. I can take care of my own groceries. I have a check coming in by the end of this week, and I’m perfectly capable of upkeeping my half of the household finances.”
A check that’ll get bled dry instantly between Kaveh’s debt to Dori, his newest debt as detailed in this letter, his bar tab, his late rental payments, the repairs that Kaveh’s been meaning to make to Mehrak, his monthly alcohol purchase, maybe some stray cat he meets on the side of the road who needs a visit to the vet. “Perhaps I wanted food,” says Alhaitham.
Kaveh’s face is red with barely suppressed fury. “No, don’t worry about lying to spare my feelings. We’re just roommates, and I pay my half and stay on my half of the house and eat the food that I’ve marked as mine, as you do the same. I’m well aware of how you think of people who cling to others, helpless and dependent and time-consuming and annoying.”
Alhaitham’s lip curls. He puts down his spoon. “Only your pride thinks that.”
“It’s not prideful to not want your pity!”
“Then stop needing it,” says Alhaitham shortly.
*
Now, in retrospect, and when he’s not in the moment itself, Alhaitham can admit that this was probably not the best thing that he could have said. Perhaps, possibly, there were better ways he could have worded that. It was, speculatively, not a constructive remark. Perchance he could have just not said anything, even.
More nights than not, Kaveh will fall asleep in the sitting room, sometimes drunk, sometimes only smelling of alcohol and not very drunk at all, sometimes just tired and covered in pencil marks and graphite. Kaveh gets lonely easily. For someone who’s gone through so many years without family, and then experienced a series of shallow friendships, and then found Alhaitham, and then proceeded to have another stretch of years building only work relationships and business portfolios, Kaveh does not choose to do anything alone if he can help it. He had spent the first few months of living at Alhaitham’s house almost living in the sitting room where it was more likely for Alhaitham to come by and strike up a conversation with him, and he would fall asleep there, too, where it was more likely that Alhaitham might happen to sit on the daybed alongside him and fall asleep next to him with a book open on his chest.
That night, Kaveh actually shuts himself in his bedroom and closes the door. Fine, then. Alhaitham goes back to his own bedroom and shuts his door, too.
Finally, some peace and quiet.
He gets to almost one in the morning before he goes back into the sitting room. He half expects Kaveh to be more sleepless than him; it would be just like Kaveh to be kept awake by whatever immense emotion he’s feeling at any time and to toss and turn until he has to go to the kitchen and fix himself some hot chocolate or milky tea to calm down over. But Kaveh isn’t there either. The house is remarkably empty despite the fact that it’s still full of Kaveh’s things on the coffee table, all the counters wiped clean in ways that Alhaitham would have never done, a pile of mail with Kaveh’s name on it by the doorway.
Maybe Kaveh is just too angry to admit that he’s upset. This is very typical of him—a fact that Alhaitham knows in the abstract sense, since Kaveh, despite being a person whose emotions are about as easily restrained as summer floods, has withheld from Alhaitham the right to inquire as to these matters ever since their falling out all those years ago. So perhaps Kaveh is in his bedroom seething through his tears, flushed and shaking with the effort of making no noise. In which case, Alhaitham should perhaps leave him to his privacy, which seems to be so clearly what Kaveh and Kaveh’s pride desires.
Anyway, Alhaitham knocks on his bedroom door ten minutes later. “Kaveh,” he whispers through the door.
No answer. The door, however, is unlocked, and not even latched properly, so it slides open on its own. Alhaitham thinks this can be plausibly called an accident. “Kaveh?” Alhaitham whispers again.
“Haitham?” says Kaveh. In the dark, Alhaitham can’t see anything of his face, and Kaveh just sounds bewildered. “What are you doing still up?”
“You weren’t in the sitting room.”
“I’m not nocturnal every night. I have a real sleeping schedule sometimes.”
“Really? Why haven’t I seen it?”
For some reason, this earns a very long extended silence in response. “You always had a really horrible sense of humor,” says Kaveh’s voice.
“I only say what I’ve observed. There’s really no need to start having a sleeping schedule now, is there?”
There’s a deep sigh. “I suppose that now that you’ve come into my bedroom and woken me up, I might as well make some tea. For the insomnia, which seems to have been induced by my roommate, but insomnia nonetheless. Do you want any?”
“Why would I need tea?”
Kaveh doesn’t look happy, precisely, but he does make tea, and he even makes enough for both of them, which is the sort of considerate thing that Kaveh is always extending to everyone and is not indicative of anything about Alhaitham in particular. The second the tea is done, Kaveh collapses on the daybed with a throw blanket and one of the pillows, draping his head over the back with a sigh. There’s bags under his eyes so deep that Alhaitham can see them even with only the light from the kitchen. Alhaitham settles into his usual corner with a book that he won’t read. After a moment, Kaveh turns his head to look at Alhaitham.
“I cooked the food,” he tells Alhaitham.
“You did.”
“So maybe it’s not the same as purchasing it, but I did help.”
“You did.”
Kaveh’s expression is tight at the corners of his eyes, but he doesn’t explain himself. He pulls the throw blanket up over himself and shoves a pillow behind his neck. “I haven’t forgotten about the money that I owe you. I’ll get it to you soon.”
“Of course,” says Alhaitham quietly.
When Kaveh finally falls asleep, he passes out in a horrific position that Alhaitham is sure will give him a cramp in his neck for days. He gently pushes Kaveh into a better position; it’s not his fault that Kaveh is heavy, and that Kaveh has always been a clingy sleeper and that Kaveh may not be fully unconscious, and that Kaveh wraps an arm around Alhaitham’s neck as he tries to lower Kaveh onto the daybed’s mattress. For a single moment, Alhaitham’s nose is buried against Kaveh’s neck, Kaveh’s arm heavy around his neck. The weight drags him down and pulls Alhaitham’s palm to the curve of Kaveh’s waist, then to the smooth stretch of skin between shoulderblades. Kaveh’s weight rests in the palm of his hand, Alhaitham’s shoulders only just barely strong enough under Kaveh’s grip. Asleep, Kaveh breathes out. Alhaitham breathes in.
Then he lowers Kaveh down to the pillow. He puts the blanket over him, high up to keep his shoulders covered. Kaveh’s tea is untouched and growing cold, and Kaveh will surely be upset in the morning to see it still sitting there. For now, Kaveh is fast asleep in the sitting room, still with his earrings and hairclips still in, and Alhaitham shakes his head even as he turns off the lights. In the dark, Alhaitham unclips each of Kaveh’s hair pins one by one, wondering to himself how Kaveh did anything before him.