Work Text:
There are exactly twelve ways in which Alhaitham refuses to say “I love you.”
One: by choosing a conditional syllogism over a declarative statement.
Two: by reorganizing the furniture so Kaveh doesn’t bruise his shin in the middle of the night anymore.
Three: by annotating Kaveh’s architectural drafts with factual corrections and irritable admiration.
Four through twelve: see attached appendices, cross-referenced with domestic cohabitation records and the rate of tea refills provided unsolicited.
He has calculated the approximate weight of Kaveh’s silence when he’s angry (12.7 minutes, average, before an explosion), the arc length of his sighs (variable depending on melodrama), and the rate at which his voice falters when calling Alhaitham “insufferable” versus “necessary.” All empirical. All observable. All repeatable.
All deeply, tragically stupid.
Because none of it accounts for the fact that when Kaveh curls up on the left side of their ratty shared couch, hair undone and rage forgotten, Alhaitham’s breath slows like it’s been waiting all day just to match his rhythm.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
It starts, as many of their worst moments do, with a thesis draft, four glasses of wine, and Kaveh forgetting to close the bathroom door.
“There is no logical basis,” Kaveh declares, dramatically gesturing with a pen that is definitely not his, “for the assertion that emotional vulnerability is the peak of humanity!”
Alhaitham does not look up. “You are literally writing an entire dissertation on the aesthetics of suffering.”
“Tragedy, you impersonal slab of sandstone,” Kaveh snaps, stabbing a sentence three times with his pen, like it personally offended him. “Tragedy is not the same thing as vulnerability. Tragedy is—”
“An overindulgence in irrationality,” Alhaitham mutters.
Kaveh gasps like he’s been stabbed. “You uncultured monster. Take that back.”
Alhaitham lifts a brow. “Which part? The overindulgence or the irrationality?”
“The entire thing!”
A pause. Then, flat: “No.”
It escalates.
Somewhere between “you wouldn’t know love if it hit you in the face with a dissertation outline” and “you’re one tragedy away from becoming a cautionary tale in someone else’s poetry,” Kaveh ends up standing on the coffee table, shirt halfway untucked, delivering a stirring monologue about emotional sublimity and the power of beauty.
Alhaitham, as always, does not blink.
Because Alhaitham, as always, is documenting.
Not with a pen. Not with a tablet. But with the quiet corner of his mind that has never stopped recording Kaveh.
(Kaveh in sunlight. Kaveh drunk on half a bottle of fruit wine. Kaveh muttering equations in his sleep. Kaveh breathing.)
“So,” Kaveh snaps, now flushed and triumphant atop the coffee table like the world’s angriest flower arrangement. “What say you, Grand Logician of Arrogance?”
Alhaitham sighs and sets his own book down. Slowly. He does not stand. He simply exists with the kind of certainty Kaveh has always found offensive in concept and attractive in practice.
“I say,” Alhaitham begins, “that if A implies B, and A is true, then B must also be true.”
Kaveh blinks. “...What?”
Alhaitham, calmly: “Let A be: Kaveh is irrational. Let B be: I am still fond of him.”
Pause.
Longer pause.
Very long pause.
Kaveh blinks again, like trying to reboot. “You absolute ass. Was that supposed to be a confession?!”
“It’s a syllogism,” Alhaitham says, deadpan.
“IT’S A DISASTER,” Kaveh shrieks, nearly falling off the table. “Who flirts in syllogisms?! Who—who—expresses affection through deductive proofs?!”
“I’m not flirting,” Alhaitham lies.
“Oh really?” Kaveh says, voice dangerously shrill. “Because I’ve seen your annotated critiques of my poetry! No one writes thirty pages of rebuttals unless they’re emotionally compromised!”
Alhaitham considers this. “They were poorly structured.”
“They were love letters in the form of MLA citations!”
“APA.”
“You inhuman cretin!”
Kaveh storms into the kitchen. There is a loud clatter that sounds like moral indignation filtered through ceramic mugs.
Alhaitham does not follow. He simply stares at the ceiling.
He has long suspected that love is a delusion built on chemical foolishness. He has also suspected that he is not immune to it. A shame, really.
(A hypothesis, perhaps.)
They are not dating.
They are simply…cohabitating. In proximity. Frequently.
They share resources. Food. Books. Heated debates. Kaveh’s shampoo.
Alhaitham catalogues the way Kaveh brushes his hair—57 strokes, from tip to root, always with his eyes closed. He has not meant to catalogue this. But his brain files it away like it is a theorem worth studying.
He does not understand how someone can be so beautiful while yelling.
He does not understand how someone can matter this much.
He runs an experiment.
It is simple.
He offers to make tea in the mornings. Without being asked.
Day 1: Kaveh is suspicious.
Day 2: Kaveh drinks it, but makes a snide comment.
Day 3: Kaveh drinks it without comment.
Day 4: Kaveh calls him a bastard and says thank you.
By Day 5, Alhaitham knows. He is screwed.
Kaveh: “Why are you looking at me like that?”
Alhaitham: “Like what?”
Kaveh: “Like I’m a philosophical quandary you’ve been dying to dissect with a scalpel.”
Alhaitham: “A scalpel would be inefficient. You require a full dissertation.”
Kaveh: “I swear to the Archons, if this is about love being quantifiable again—”
Alhaitham: “You are quantifiable. You leave your shoes in the exact same crooked angle every evening. You hum when you’re happy. You’ve reread the same book of poetry eight times this month, despite claiming it’s mediocre. You bite your lip when you’re lying, and you never remember to water the plant I bought for you, even though you thanked me profusely and said it was thoughtful.”
Kaveh: “I—!”
Alhaitham: “So, yes. Quantifiable.”
Kaveh, breathless: “You— you pay too much attention.”
Alhaitham: “I do.”
And that’s the problem, isn’t it?
Alhaitham thinks affection is best left unsaid. But affection does not listen. It leaks. It bleeds out in action and observation and cups of lukewarm tea at 7:36am.
He has made a career out of analyzing things. But Kaveh is not a problem to be solved.
He is an axiom.
And Alhaitham is not ready to admit that he believes in anything without proof.
---
There are, as it turns out, twelve ways in which Kaveh also refuses to say “I love you.”
One: by never admitting he noticed when Alhaitham started making his tea precisely how he likes it.
Two: by writing “STOP LOOKING AT ME LIKE THAT” in the margins of his own drafts, when no one else is reading them.
Three: by accusing Alhaitham of being a heartless bastard while flinching like he cares what the answer is.
Four through twelve involve heavy sighing, emotional repression, poetic insults, hair flips, throwing things, sulking, and vague threats of moving out.
He doesn’t. Of course he doesn’t.
He just paces dramatically, leaves brochures for single-bedroom apartments lying strategically around the living room, and slams cupboards like they’ve personally betrayed him.
Alhaitham, to his credit, catalogs all of this with anthropological fascination and zero coping mechanisms.
Which brings us to—
The Letter Incident
The letter begins, as all disasters do, with the words: “This is not a confession.”
And yet, it is three thousand words long.
Kaveh has accidentally written a confession while trying to win an argument he started three days ago about whether affection requires articulation. (He claimed yes. Alhaitham, of course, disagreed. Verbally. Eloquently. Smugly.)
And so, Kaveh, naturally, had to write a rebuttal.
The problem is—
Well.
The problem is, he began it with every intention of being intellectual about it. Philosophical. Detached.
But somewhere between the phrase “Love is not an equation you solve, it is a tension you endure,” and the sentence “When I hear your footsteps at the door, my nervous system rewires itself out of spite,” the tone becomes…
Suspiciously emotional.
Tragically poetic.
Worryingly sincere.
He rereads it in horror.
Kaveh: “Oh no.”
The letter: still exists.
Kaveh: “No no no no no—”
He throws it in the garbage.
Then he panics and takes it out of the garbage.
Then he lights a candle and stands dramatically by the window with it, like a poetic martyr.
Then he gets ash on his shirt and drops it on the floor and stomps it out.
Then—
Alhaitham walks in.
Silence.
Ash. Scorched paper. A singed sock.
“…Do I want to know?” Alhaitham asks, monotone.
“You—!” Kaveh starts, then flails. “You—! You don’t even knock!”
“This is the living room.”
“I was—this is a private ritual, Alhaitham!”
“You are literally burning things on the rug.”
“I AM PROCESSING EMOTIONS THROUGH SYMBOLIC ACTS!”
Alhaitham surveys the scene with the cold precision of a man judging a historical reenactment gone wrong. “You’ve set your bibliography on fire.”
Kaveh hisses.
“Is this about the tea again?” Alhaitham asks mildly.
“NO.”
Alhaitham lifts an eyebrow.
“…Yes,” Kaveh mutters.
Alhaitham opens his mouth. Closes it.
Because here’s the thing.
He knows. Alhaitham knows that whatever Kaveh just tried to burn was probably emotional, dramatic, and deeply humiliating. He knows Kaveh feels things too loudly for his own peace of mind. He knows the tea, the letters, the slammed doors, the footnotes, the poems, the long silences, and the way Kaveh stares at the stars when he thinks no one’s looking—
He knows.
But he’s still a coward.
So instead of asking, instead of staying, instead of saying anything at all—
He just says: “You left the kettle on.”
And walks away.
Kaveh, three hours later, enters Alhaitham’s study with the kind of volcanic fury normally reserved for climate catastrophes and literary adaptations gone wrong.
“You,” he says, “are a walking contradiction.”
Alhaitham does not look up from his desk. “That’s not a very precise accusation.”
“You analyze everything,” Kaveh spits. “And you can’t even analyze your own feelings?”
“That assumes I have them.”
“YOU WROTE A TWENTY-SIX PAGE ANALYSIS OF MY SHOEPRINTS.”
“They kept appearing in my workspace.”
“They were damp! From rain! That is not a pattern of psychological intimacy, that is a side effect of WEATHER.”
Alhaitham leans back. “You’re yelling again.”
“BECAUSE YOU KEEP—!” Kaveh breaks off. Breathes. Sways slightly from the force of his own anger.
He looks—winded. Raw.
Like someone who doesn’t want to admit he wants something. Like someone who’s already admitted it, by accident, in the way he softens when Alhaitham reaches past him. In the way his voice catches around certain silences. In the way he hasn’t moved out.
Kaveh exhales. “I hate you.”
Alhaitham: “I know.”
Kaveh: “I hate the way you make everything make sense.”
Alhaitham: “I don’t make people make sense. That’s your mistake.”
“I hate that you make tea without asking.”
Alhaitham tilts his head. “Then stop drinking it.”
Kaveh flushes. “I won’t.”
Alhaitham shrugs.
Kaveh: “I hate your logic. I hate your calm. I hate that I know the exact sound of your heartbeat through a wall.”
Alhaitham pauses.
Very quietly, he says: “...That’s not measurable.”
“I DON’T CARE.”
Silence.
A heartbeat.
Alhaitham says, voice low, “I can’t give you what you want.”
Kaveh’s throat works. “What makes you think I want anything?”
“Statistical likelihood.”
“You are a bastard.”
“Yes.”
Kaveh turns. Fumes. Paces. Picks up a pillow from the couch and hurls it at Alhaitham’s head.
It hits. Softly. Pathetically.
Alhaitham doesn’t dodge.
Kaveh glares. “You didn’t even block it.”
“I deserved it.”
“You—!” Kaveh chokes. “You insufferable—intellectual—hot piece of granite logic—”
Pause.
“…Hot?” Alhaitham says, blinking.
“SHUT UP.”
Kaveh flees the room.
Alhaitham stares at the door for exactly 48 seconds.
Then picks up the pillow.
And stares at it like it’s suddenly a variable he failed to factor in.
It is not love.
Of course it isn’t.
It’s proximity. And habit. And frustration. And how Kaveh mutters architectural metaphors in his sleep. And how Alhaitham opens windows five minutes before Kaveh says he’s hot. And how their toothbrushes keep inching closer together, week by week.
And the way Alhaitham touches the spine of Kaveh’s books when he thinks no one’s watching.
And the way Kaveh rewrites his lines so Alhaitham will read them again.
And how neither of them has said anything.
It’s not love.
It’s a hypothesis.
It’s a disaster.
It’s a pillow to the face and an almost-confession burned on the rug.
It’s—
Well.
It’s going horribly.
---
It begins with a spreadsheet.
Not that this is new. Alhaitham has an entire folder—private, encrypted, unnervingly organized—dedicated to observational data regarding his cohabitant. Kaveh Emotional Variance Vol. 1 sits nestled between Kaveh Sighs (Updated) and Kaveh Staring Out Window Duration Chart Final FINALREAL. (He will delete the extra ‘final’ when he feels emotionally prepared. He is not.)
But this time—it’s different. This time, Alhaitham isn’t just logging behaviors. This time, he is attempting to assign cause to effect.
He titles the file:
“Independent Variables Influencing Emotional Disruption in Subject K.”
He has absolutely no self-awareness.
Correlating the data, he finds:
If he sighs within 3.2 meters of Kaveh, Kaveh glares.
If he sighs while looking at Kaveh, Kaveh accuses him of moral depravity.
If he sighs while reading Kaveh’s drafts, Kaveh retreats to the balcony and mutters things like “insufferable,” “cold-blooded,” and “my heart is not an academic journal.”
Alhaitham writes, in Column D:
“Possible conclusion: Subject K interprets neutral exhalations as attacks on artistic identity.”
He feels very accomplished.
He closes the file. Opens another. A blank one. Stares at it. Writes:
“Subject K: Thesis of Affection?”
Then erases it.
Then rewrites it.
Then slams the lid of the laptop shut like it personally betrayed him.
Meanwhile, Kaveh is in the living room yelling at a decorative vase.
This is not metaphor.
“I designed you,” Kaveh hisses at the vase, arms crossed, wild-haired and vaguely wine-scented. “You are symmetrical. You are aesthetic. You have purpose. Why can’t I be like that?”
The vase does not respond.
“I mean, is it so hard,” Kaveh continues, voice rising, “to be as well-balanced as a porcelain container?! At least you don’t lose your mind over eye contact and tea and logical syllogisms that sound like emotional war crimes—!”
Alhaitham walks in. Stops. Stares.
“Are you arguing with the vase?”
“It’s called projecting,” Kaveh snaps. “Look it up.”
“I have. Several times. The results remain inconclusive.”
Kaveh narrows his eyes. “Are you okay? You look like you’ve been emotionally constipated for two hours.”
“I was calculating.”
“Oh, that explains the stench of repression.”
Alhaitham sighs.
Kaveh flinches.
Alhaitham notices. Processes. Frowns.
“Do you—interpret that as criticism?”
Kaveh stares. “Do I—are you—what?”
“The sigh. Is it…offensive?”
Kaveh opens his mouth. Closes it. Looks like he might combust. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’ve been logging your reactions to my behavior.”
“You—you what?!”
Alhaitham opens the folder. Turns it toward him.
Kaveh sees the spreadsheet.
Sees the timestamps. The bar graphs. The labels like “Kaveh eye-roll to silence ratio during argument #6,714” and “Butter knife clatter frequency when aggravated (Thursday evenings only).”
“…You are actually insane.”
“It’s for my own understanding,” Alhaitham says, as if that helps.
Kaveh’s voice cracks: “You logged my sigh velocity?”
“You emit them with startling variation.”
“You—I—do you understand what this looks like?!”
“A well-structured data set?”
“A CRY FOR HELP.”
Alhaitham blinks. “I wasn’t aware I was the one crying.”
“You’re about to be!” Kaveh yells, then storms out.
Alhaitham stares after him, very still.
Then very softly, to no one: “But I didn’t mean it as criticism.”
---
That night, Kaveh doesn’t come back to the bedroom.
He doesn’t sleep on the couch, either. Or on the balcony, or in the hallway, or even in the bathtub, which he once did out of sheer spite (and a poorly phrased comment about interior acoustics).
No.
He’s just—gone.
And Alhaitham sits in the dark living room for a very long time, watching the tea go cold.
Kaveh returns the next morning with eye bags and mystery crumbs on his shirt.
He slams the door.
He does not speak.
Alhaitham, who did not sleep either, says nothing.
Not because he doesn’t have anything to say, but because if he opens his mouth he might feel something.
Instead, he gets up. Makes tea.
Pours Kaveh’s first. Slides it across the counter.
Kaveh, bleary-eyed, accepts it without comment.
They sit in silence. Sip. It is awkward.
Kaveh breaks first. Always.
“I had a nightmare,” he says, abrupt.
Alhaitham pauses. “What kind?”
Kaveh stares at the cup. “I dreamed you turned me into a chart.”
Alhaitham blinks. “…Did I at least format it correctly?”
“Oh my god.”
Kaveh puts down the cup. Clutches his temples.
“I cannot do this anymore. I am a human person, Alhaitham! I am not a spreadsheet, I am not a theory, I am not a quantifiable set of behaviors you get to label with footnotes and then pretend they don’t mean anything!”
“I never said they didn’t mean anything.”
“You never said they did.”
There it is.
The thesis statement neither of them has written.
Alhaitham swallows. The mug in his hands is warm. It feels like the only warm thing in the room.
“You are the most difficult variable I have ever encountered,” he says, voice flat.
Kaveh laughs. Not nicely.
“Is that supposed to be romantic?”
“It’s the truth.”
“Oh well then, let me throw myself into your analytical arms, you emotionally illiterate robot—!”
“I do feel things, Kaveh.”
“Name one!”
Alhaitham opens his mouth.
Closes it.
Kaveh folds his arms. “Exactly.”
“I just don’t say them.”
“Then how am I supposed to know?!”
Alhaitham looks at him.
Really looks at him.
Then—he gets up. Walks to the bookshelf. Pulls out a slim notebook. Hands it to him.
Kaveh opens it.
Sees:
Observations of Kaveh’s laughter.
Diagrams of his hand movements when passionate.
Notes on the cadence of his voice when he’s lying.
Comments like “this metaphor is beautiful” and “he cried during this poem; I think it meant something to him” and “I wish he knew how often I think about the way he exists in the world.”
Silence.
Very soft.
Very long.
Kaveh says, quietly, “You wrote a thesis on me.”
“I did.”
“You annotated my life.”
“I couldn’t help it.”
He is bracing for impact. For yelling. For another pillow.
Instead—
Kaveh sits.
Tucks his knees up.
And cries.
Very softly.
Very stupidly.
Alhaitham stares in horror.
“…Is this—? Did I—Is this a crisis?!”
“No,” Kaveh mutters through his hands. “It’s just—just—I didn’t know.”
“I annotated everything.”
“You never said it.”
“I thought it was obvious.”
“It wasn’t.”
“Oh.”
Silence again.
Kaveh sniffles. “You’re still a bastard.”
“Yes.”
“But I think I might—”
“No,” Alhaitham cuts him off. “Not yet.”
Kaveh looks up, blinking.
Alhaitham’s voice is low. Controlled.
“I haven’t finished the thesis.”
Pause.
Then:
“You unbelievable nerd,” Kaveh whispers, almost lovingly.
Alhaitham shrugs.
Kaveh curls tighter into himself.
Neither of them say it.
Of course they don’t.
They’ll get there.
Probably.
Eventually.
With citations.
---
They are not speaking.
This is not unusual.
Alhaitham thrives in silence, and Kaveh weaponizes it.
What is unusual, however, is the very specific texture of the silence this time. It’s not the kind that suggests cohabitation between civil academic rivals. Nor is it the kind that settles after a heated but ultimately meaningless argument about shelving methodologies, or what qualifies as “adequate” architecture.
No.
This is an existential silence.
A silence with parentheses.
A silence with footnotes.
A silence that is clearly—clearly—fighting the urge to monologue.
Which is why it lasts approximately six and a half hours.
Until Kaveh explodes.
“YOU CAN’T JUST HAND ME A JOURNAL OF OBSESSIVE NOTES ABOUT MY LIFE AND THEN—THEN GO BACK TO YOUR STUPID QUIET ‘I HAVE NO EMOTIONS’ ROUTINE LIKE YOU DIDN’T JUST—!”
“I never claimed I had no emotions,” Alhaitham says without looking up from his book.
“YOU IMPLIED IT!”
“I structured it.”
Kaveh makes a sound so guttural and wounded it belongs in a dissertation on tragic mythological figures.
“I am so close,” he snarls, “to packing my things, Alhaitham.”
Alhaitham flips a page. “The only box you own is currently being used as a footrest.”
“I CAN FIND OTHERS!”
“Statistically improbable. You’ve procrastinated on your packing for twelve consecutive threats of departure.”
“THIRTEEN, YOU—YOU DATA GREMLIN!”
Pause.
Then, softer: “That last one doesn’t count because you made me tea.”
“I always make you tea.”
“EXACTLY!”
Kaveh storms into the bedroom.
Comes back out with a tape measure.
“I am measuring how much space your emotional repression is taking up in this apartment.”
“You’ll need a larger unit of measurement.”
“Oh my ARCHONS—”
Kaveh throws a throw pillow at him.
Alhaitham catches it.
This, somehow, only makes it worse.
The thing is, they’re both wrong.
Kaveh says he wants Alhaitham to say it. Out loud. Clearly.
But what he wants—really—what he aches for in his bones—is something even Alhaitham can’t quantify.
He wants certainty.
Not just in syllogisms.
Not just in notes written in margins.
He wants to be able to look at the way Alhaitham stands in the kitchen, slicing an apple with horrifying precision, and know—not guess, not infer, not annotate—that he is loved.
And Alhaitham—
Alhaitham wants the opposite.
He wants to guess.
He wants the uncertainty of love to be beautiful and terrifying, and he hates that it is. He wants Kaveh to keep yelling, keep accusing, keep throwing things, because it means he hasn’t left.
He wants the margins.
Because he doesn’t trust what’s written in the middle.
Because what if he says it and it breaks?
What if the syllogism is flawed?
What if the proof does not hold?
One evening, it finally breaks.
“I’ve made a chart,” Alhaitham says.
Kaveh stares at him. “Oh no.”
“It outlines every instance in which you’ve exhibited behavior consistent with romantic reciprocation.”
“Please stop.”
“There are columns for intensity, duration, and context. I cross-referenced with weather patterns to rule out barometric emotional bias.”
Kaveh takes a breath.
Lets it out.
Takes another.
Then says, very quietly: “Why are you like this.”
“I need to understand.”
“Do you?”
Alhaitham blinks.
“I—yes.”
“Then understand this, you emotionally devastated thesaurus: I have been throwing myself at you for months. MONTHS. I have cried. I have shouted. I have passive-aggressively reorganized your books in ways that SCREAM notice me! and you—you wrote a bar graph about my breathing habits?!”
Alhaitham pauses.
“There were patterns.”
Kaveh screams into a throw pillow.
Then throws it at him. Again.
“STOP GRAPHING MY LOVE, YOU ABSOLUTE MORON!”
“I am not graphing your love.”
“Oh, praise Celestia, thank the gods—”
“I’m graphing mine.”
Kaveh goes very still.
The pillow falls to the floor.
“You—what?”
Alhaitham finally looks up.
And for once, for once, he isn’t hiding behind logic.
He is bare. Breathless.
“I don’t know how to say it,” he admits.
Kaveh blinks. Once. Twice.
“Then don’t.”
Alhaitham freezes.
Kaveh takes a step closer. And another. Until they are inches apart.
“Don’t say it. Just—be it.”
“I don’t know how.”
“I know.”
And then, because this is them—because of course it is—
Kaveh kisses him like a question he already knows the answer to.
And Alhaitham responds like a hypothesis he’s finally willing to test.
They break apart after a moment. Alhaitham’s hand is curled in Kaveh’s hair. Kaveh’s breath is trembling.
“I still don’t have the right words,” Alhaitham murmurs.
Kaveh rolls his eyes. “Fine. Try a syllogism.”
Alhaitham considers it.
“If all affections I feel are expressed in acts of observation,” he says, voice low, “and if I have devoted countless hours to observing you… then it follows that—”
“That you love me?” Kaveh interrupts, grinning despite himself.
“That I can’t stop.”
Silence.
Then Kaveh smiles.
Not a grin.
Not a smirk.
Something quiet. Something full.
“You idiot.”
“Yes.”
They don’t say anything else for a while.
There’s nothing left to deny.
Not yet.
But almost.
Almost.
---
It is, without question, the worst idea either of them has ever had.
Which is saying something, because between them they’ve:
Argued over the architectural ethics of a building shaped like a cube for five hours straight.
Tried to hang a bookshelf without anchoring it and ended up buried under six rare manuscripts and a floor lamp.
Attempted a shared grocery run during peak weekend hours (which ended in two citations, a collapsed fruit display, and Alhaitham banned from saying the word “price-per-kilo” for the rest of the month).
Kissed.
Which, yes. Yes, that happened.
And now they are pretending it didn’t.
Because, of course, they are both emotionally repressed cowards.
Kaveh wakes up the morning after The Incident (capital T, capital I) fully prepared to bask in the warmth of romantic consequences.
He is not prepared to find Alhaitham making breakfast with surgical silence and zero acknowledgment of the night before.
Not a glance. Not a smirk. Not even the smug little huff Alhaitham sometimes makes when he knows Kaveh’s just woken up with sleep-creased cheeks and probable drool.
Just—
Eggs.
Perfectly cooked.
Poached. With basil.
Kaveh sits at the counter in stunned silence, waiting for the awkwardness to evaporate under the weight of shared intellectual heat.
It does not.
Alhaitham pours tea. Slides the cup toward him. Clears his throat.
“Your notes on the Jinn architecture myth were misaligned with the original Sumeru script,” he says evenly. “I corrected them.”
Kaveh stares.
“You made me eggs.”
“I always make eggs.”
“You kissed me last night.”
“I don’t recall that being part of the morning routine.”
Kaveh’s mouth drops open.
“OH. OH, I see. You’re just going to gaslight me out of our ENTIRE romantic climax.”
“I’m not gaslighting you,” Alhaitham says blandly. “I’m compartmentalizing.”
Kaveh throws a basil leaf at him.
It drifts. Pathetically. Onto the floor.
Alhaitham eyes it with quiet disappointment.
“Truly,” he says, “a devastating assault.”
“I hate you,” Kaveh whispers.
Alhaitham sips his tea.
Kaveh huffs.
They eat breakfast in silence.
They don’t talk about it for three days.
Three days of high academic tension, emotional purgatory, and small, catastrophic domestic events like:
Kaveh dropping a spoon and Alhaitham catching it mid-air with terrifying reflexes and holding it out with a little twitch of his fingers that says I notice you and nothing else.
Alhaitham knocking into Kaveh’s shoulder in the hallway and saying “excuse me” in a tone so soft Kaveh thinks about it for forty minutes.
Kaveh reorganizing Alhaitham’s annotated bibliographies alphabetically and lying on the couch with a pillow over his face after he realizes what that means.
Meanwhile, Alhaitham—
Alhaitham is having a breakdown.
In his own way.
Which is to say, silently, privately, in folders.
It happens on the fourth day, at precisely 2:41 p.m., when Kaveh—high on rage and mid-procrastination spiral—decides to snoop.
Not out of malice. No. Never. Only righteous academic curiosity.
(And also because Alhaitham is being weird and infuriating and confusingly hot when ignoring him.)
So.
He cracks the encryption on Alhaitham’s private folder.
He opens it.
And he sees it.
K Laughter Frequency
Kaveh Lip Quiver Analysis FINAL
K Coffeecup Holding Styles Vol. 3
K Breath Patterns during Argument.
Kaveh’s soul leaves his body.
“WHAT THE FUC—”
There’s also a document titled simply:
If He Leaves.
Kaveh stares at it like it might bite him.
He opens it.
It’s…a checklist.
Give him the plant.
Leave the bookshelf notes behind.
Rewrite that one critique so he knows I didn’t mean it.
Make sure he remembers the tea.
The last one:
Don’t make it harder than it already is.
Kaveh sits down.
Very slowly.
The paper slips from his grasp.
Alhaitham walks in.
Sees the folder.
Freezes.
“…You weren’t supposed to see that.”
Kaveh doesn’t speak.
“Or any of it,” Alhaitham adds, somehow sounding calmer than he feels.
Kaveh turns to him, shaking. Furious. Devastated.
“You—planned for me to leave?”
“I accounted for the possibility,” Alhaitham says. Carefully. Like he’s tiptoeing across his own fear.
“Why?”
“Because you always threaten to.”
Kaveh stares at him.
“Because,” Alhaitham continues, quietly, “I didn’t think I’d be allowed to keep you.”
The silence that follows is not quiet.
It is deafening.
Kaveh’s breath catches.
“You…” he starts, but doesn’t finish.
Alhaitham looks at the floor.
“It’s not that I don’t feel things. I just…catalog them. Instead of naming them. Because if I name them, they become real. And if they’re real, they can be taken away.”
Kaveh whispers: “You’re the dumbest genius I’ve ever met.”
“Yes.”
“And this is the most deranged thing anyone has ever done for love.”
“It’s still incomplete.”
“OF COURSE IT IS—”
Kaveh throws himself at him.
Not like a kiss.
More like a furious tackle.
Alhaitham goes down with a grunt, blinking up at a wild-haired architect who looks half-devastated, half-ready to combust, and 100% about to commit several crimes of affection.
“You—imbecile,” Kaveh mutters, shaking. “You disaster. I don’t want a checklist. I want you.”
“I’ve…been here the whole time.”
“Yes, but like, emotionally. Not just as a bar graph, you emotionally constipated demigod of bad communication.”
Alhaitham lets out a laugh. An actual laugh.
Kaveh stares.
“…Did you just—did you just laugh?”
“I do it occasionally.”
“No. You don't. You vibrate at a frequency only dogs can hear and occasionally scoff. That was—an actual laugh.”
“I’ve graphed that too.”
“I will strangle you with my own research grant.”
Alhaitham just smiles.
For the first time, he doesn’t quantify it.
---
Denial, as it turns out, is not a one-time event. It is a shared lifestyle.
After the spreadsheet, the accidental confession, the emotional collapse, and Kaveh sitting on top of Alhaitham with murder in his eyes and love in his teeth, they reach a mutual, unspoken decision:
They are not talking about it.
Ever.
Again.
And it goes great.
(That is a lie.)
The morning after their emotional implosion, Alhaitham wakes up early, as he always does, and makes tea for Kaveh, as he always does.
He pours the cup, sets it in Kaveh’s usual spot, and very gently rearranges the spoon. He does not think about the way Kaveh curled into his chest last night, sobbing into his shoulder. He does not think about the breath that stuttered against his collarbone when Alhaitham whispered, without pretense, “I didn’t think I’d get to keep you.”
He does not think about any of that.
Instead, he thinks: The sugar spoon is half a centimeter too far left.
And fixes it.
Kaveh wakes up and enters the kitchen like a man bracing for spiritual war.
He sees the tea.
Sees the spoon.
Sits.
Takes a sip.
And says, very neutrally: “You’re still a bastard.”
Alhaitham doesn’t look up. “And you’re still barefoot in the kitchen. I warned you about the tile.”
“You’re emotionally constipated.”
“You’ve used that insult seven times this week.”
“It never stops being true.”
They sit in silence. Sip.
It’s going terribly.
They make it two days before they start fighting about the dishes.
Which isn’t about the dishes. Obviously.
“Why do you always leave the soap with the cap open?” Kaveh snaps, wielding a dishrag like a weaponized moral compass. “You KNOW that lets the moisture in and messes with the viscosity!”
“Why do you wash every cup like it’s a ritual cleansing?” Alhaitham responds, dryly. “You spend thirty seconds just contemplating the sponge.”
“Because I care, you utilitarian menace!”
“You care about soap.”
“I care about doing things with intention!”
Pause. Dangerous.
Alhaitham’s voice sharpens.
“And I don’t?”
Kaveh freezes.
“Not about me,” he says, too fast, too quiet.
The silence that follows is chilling.
And then—because this is how they function, how they survive—
Alhaitham picks up the dishrag.
And hands it to Kaveh.
Gently.
Their fingers brush.
“Then let’s do the dishes together,” he says, quietly.
Which is, of course, a metaphor.
They both pretend it isn’t.
Later, Kaveh sits on the couch, flopped dramatically over one arm like a tragic widow in an opera no one asked for. He is rereading one of Alhaitham’s books, if “rereading” is defined as flicking through it aggressively and sighing whenever the margins don’t contain comments about him.
“You stopped annotating your copy of On Aesthetic Integrity,” he says aloud, without preamble.
“I finished analyzing it,” Alhaitham replies from across the room, without looking up.
“You stopped annotating after page 172.”
“I didn’t need to finish.”
“There’s an entire section on romantic idealism in architecture that you skipped.”
Alhaitham sets his pen down. Finally looks at him.
“…Are we still talking about the book?”
Kaveh flips a page like it personally wounded him. “NO. OBVIOUSLY NOT.”
Alhaitham stands.
Walks over.
Takes the book out of Kaveh’s hands.
Sets it down.
And sits beside him.
They do not look at each other.
Kaveh breathes in. Loudly.
“You can’t just keep doing this,” he mutters.
“Doing what?”
“Skirting around it. Every time something real happens, you run back into your spreadsheets like a damn turtle.”
“I am not a turtle.”
“You emotionally are.”
“Your metaphors are increasingly zoological.”
“You don’t get to critique my metaphors when you filed your feelings under miscellaneous annotations!”
“That was only the first draft.”
Kaveh finally turns to him. “What are we doing, Haitham?”
Alhaitham blinks.
“You’ve made graphs. You’ve written proofs. You’ve quantified my laugh like it’s an academic variable, and I let you. I kissed you, and I cried on your shoulder, and now we’re sitting here pretending nothing ever happened, because what? Because feelings aren’t verifiable? Because you think it’s safer to suffer in silence than risk being wrong?”
“…Yes,” Alhaitham says.
And then: “But I don’t want to be silent anymore.”
That’s when Kaveh freezes.
Because for all the fury, for all the arguments, he didn’t expect that.
Alhaitham breathes, slow and deliberate. The way he does before opening a rare book, or saying something that will ruin Kaveh’s thesis with five words.
He says:
“If a truth exists, and if that truth is proven by repetition, and if your presence in my life has brought me consistent peace, fascination, and an observable increase in serotonin…”
Pause.
“Then it must be true.”
Kaveh blinks.
“That you love me?” he whispers.
Alhaitham swallows.
“I’m still working on the formal definition,” he says. “But yes.”
Kaveh laughs.
It’s soft. Crooked. A little bit broken.
Then he leans his head against Alhaitham’s shoulder.
“You’re a disaster,” he whispers.
“I’ve been aware.”
“And I hate you.”
“I’ve graphed that too.”
Kaveh laughs again.
Doesn’t move.
And neither of them says anything for a long, long time.
They’re getting closer.
Neither of them has admitted it properly.
But love, it turns out, doesn’t always need a proof.
Sometimes it’s just the space between a breath and a confession.
And the way Alhaitham places the spoon exactly right.
And the way Kaveh doesn’t leave.
Even when he says he will.
---
It begins, as all major turning points in their relationship do, with an argument about cereal.
“This is not cereal,” Kaveh says, holding the box like it’s personally offended the integrity of breakfast.
“It is. It has grain,” Alhaitham replies, flipping a page of his book without looking up. “Grain implies cereal.”
“It’s pellets, Alhaitham. It’s livestock feed disguised as nutrition. It looks like someone ground up disappointment and compacted it into sadness clusters.”
“It has twenty-six essential vitamins.”
“It tastes like betrayal.”
“You eat it every morning.”
“BECAUSE I THOUGHT I DESERVED PAIN!”
Alhaitham lowers the book. Stares at him.
“You’ve been willingly eating cereal you hated for months?”
Kaveh slams the box on the table. “I didn’t want to be high-maintenance!”
“You cried because I re-shelved your poetry volumes alphabetically.”
“That was justified! You separated the thematic arcs!”
Pause.
Long, stupid pause.
Then: “We’re doing it again,” Kaveh mutters, pressing a hand to his forehead.
“Fighting?”
“Not talking about the thing.”
“What thing.”
“THE thing.”
Alhaitham stares at him.
Kaveh flops dramatically into a chair, all long limbs and wounded aesthetic.
“You know, I used to think I just wanted you to say it. Just once. Just once, clearly. No metaphors. No graphs. No footnotes. Just a real, human, emotionally present expression of affection.” He sighs. “But now I think I might explode if you do say it. Because then I’ll owe you one back and you’ll never let me live it down.”
“…That’s correct.”
“I hate you.”
“I’ve calculated that your declarations of hatred directly correlate with acts of intimacy.”
“I will end you.”
Alhaitham folds the corner of his page, sets the book down.
And then, quietly, sincerely:
“I want to say it.”
Kaveh stares.
Alhaitham stands. Walks to the counter. Pours tea. Comes back. Places it before Kaveh with such gentleness it hurts.
“Would you listen,” Alhaitham says, “if I did?”
Kaveh’s voice falters. “I’d kill you if you didn’t.”
Alhaitham nods.
Then inhales.
Then says:
“If I were to define affection as consistent concern for another’s well-being, and if love were to be understood as a heightened form of that concern, then—”
“Haitham.”
Alhaitham pauses. Looks up.
Kaveh meets his gaze.
Voice very soft.
“Say it like a person. Just once.”
Another pause.
And then—Alhaitham does something terrifying. He lets go.
All of it.
All the equations. The proofs. The syllogisms. The structures that once made him feel safe.
He breathes out, and says, simply:
“I love you.”
Kaveh goes still.
For a moment, the world rearranges itself.
And then Kaveh stands.
Walks up to him.
And says, with all the elegance of a man about to throw himself off a building:
“Well. You’re lucky, because I loved you first.”
Alhaitham stares. “That’s—debatable.”
Kaveh squints. “I have receipts.”
“You do not have receipts.”
“I left a love letter in your books four months ago. You annotated it like a critique.”
“It was structurally unsound.”
“IT WAS A METAPHOR!”
“It was confusing.”
“You’re confusing!”
“You’re loud.”
“You’re in love with me!”
“You say that like it’s not obvious.”
“Oh my god,” Kaveh gasps. “You’re insufferable.”
“You’re beautiful.”
“Shut up!”
And then he kisses him.
They knock over the cereal.
Neither notices.
Somewhere between their third kiss and Kaveh threatening to bite him if he ever tries to organize his sock drawer by shade again, they collapse onto the couch.
Kaveh’s hair is in Alhaitham’s mouth.
Alhaitham’s shirt is somehow unbuttoned.
Kaveh, breathless, mutters:
“Are you going to update your little spreadsheet now?”
“…I got rid of it.”
Kaveh sits up. “You what?!”
Alhaitham shrugs. “Didn’t need it anymore.”
“But—Haitham! That data was months in the making! That was my laugh frequency!”
“I don’t need to measure it.”
“Why not?”
Alhaitham turns to him.
Smiles.
Soft. Uncalculated.
“Because I can hear it.”
Kaveh stares.
And then tackles him back onto the couch.
They do the dishes together that night.
They burn the cereal box in the sink as a symbolic act of emotional renewal.
Kaveh cries again, briefly, because he finds a sticky note in one of his books that says, simply:
“You. Always you.”
(He later learns Alhaitham rewrote all his critical annotations into compliments and hid them in footnotes.)
They kiss in the kitchen.
And the living room.
And halfway through organizing the bookshelf, Kaveh says:
“I’m not done being emotionally dramatic, you know.”
Alhaitham replies:
“I’ve scheduled for that between 7 and 9pm daily.”
Kaveh laughs.
Alhaitham graphs nothing.
Because some things don’t need proving.
Some things just are.