Work Text:
It’s a common misconception among the students of the Akademiya that a good work ethic means prioritizing your work above all else. Kaveh himself can admit to falling into this trap of thinking more often than he doesn’t. Even now, he finds the habit hard to shake. A lot of the time, he doesn't even realize the things in his life he’s neglecting in favor of his projects and commissions until it’s too late. And far too often, that thing is Kaveh himself.
And every time, his roommate is there to tell him off.
It would be easier to take the weekly lectures if Alhaitham also struggled with his work-life balance—but of course, even in that regard, Alhaitham is perfect. On the rare occasion that he does get sick, he calls off from work, reads in bed all day, and doesn’t return until he’s completely recovered. He never brings his work home with him either, doesn’t so much as lift a pen on his days off.
Kaveh wishes he could do that, but he also knows he wouldn’t have gotten nearly as far as he has in his career if he didn’t push himself to his limits. It makes it hard to truly regret his actions when he looks at the incredible things he’s managed to achieve.
He has his methods, and Alhaitham has his, and after years of living together, Kaveh has long gotten used to their differences.
Until he comes home one afternoon to the sound of sneezing and sniffling coming from their study.
Kaveh opens the large double doors to find a red nosed and watery eyed Alhaitham hunched over his desk. It’s such an unusual sight, that it takes Kaveh a moment to find his voice. “Alhaitham?”
“Yes?” The groggy croak of a response makes Kaveh wince.
“Why are you working while sick?” he asks. “This isn’t like you.”
“Trust me,” Alhaitham says after clearing his throat. “I would love nothing more than to be taking a sick day today—but unfortunately for me, these documents need to be reviewed, and they need to be reviewed today.”
“Oh?” Kaveh scoffs. “And why is that?”
Alhaitham rubs his temples. “Because,” he states flatly. “They need to be sent to the Office of Foreign Affairs, and that can only be done on the fourth Wednesday of every month, so if I don’t finish them today, then I won’t be able to submit them until next month, and by then the license will have expired—and if it expires before we can submit them, we’ll have to wait an entire three more months to get a new license approved since they only grant them quarterly.”
He recites the words like a rehearsed speech, even more devoid of emotion than his usual lectures. Kaveh is suddenly struck with the thought that maybe Alhaitham’s new job is wearing on him more than either of them had realized.
“So you see,” Alhaitham continues after pausing to clear his throat for a second time, “they need to be reviewed today. Whether I am ill or not makes no difference.”
His lips are pulled into a pout—a ridiculous expression for a man of his stature. Combined with the flush coloring his cheeks, Kaveh can’t help but be endeared.
He’s always been soft for his junior.
He sighs heavily, stepping further into the room. “The pains of bureaucracy, huh?”
Alhaitham makes a noise of affirmation, not looking up from the stack of papers on his desk until the back of Kaveh’s hand makes contact with his forehead.
This close, Kaveh can hear Alhaitham’s sudden intake of breath. His eyelashes flutter when he looks up at him through his bangs.
He doesn’t tell him to remove his hand though, so Kaveh lets it rest there for a few more seconds against Alhaitham’s clammy skin before pulling back. “You’re warm…” he mutters. “I think you might have a fever.”
Alhaitham just nods solemnly, having accepted his fate, and returns to writing. He probably already knows his exact temperature, now that Kaveh thinks about it.
It makes him feel even more useless.
“Can I at least make you some tea?” he offers, after a short while of awkwardly standing there while Alhaitham worked in silence, interrupted only by the occasional sniff or cough.
Alhaitham barely spares him a glance up from his work. “You can do whatever you want.”
Kaveh huffs, but he knows a yes when he hears one, so he leaves for the kitchen.
It only takes a few seconds of staring at their assortment of tea bags for him to decide that none of them will do in this situation.
So Kaveh pulls out a pot from under the stove and lights the smallest burner.
A cup and a half of water goes in, and two scoops of loose black tea.
Kaveh shreds the ginger, grinds some cardamom, and then adds extra cinnamon because he knows Alhaitham likes it.
He waits for a bit, letting it all come to a boil, and decides to heat up some samosas as well.
When Kaveh checks the pot again, the foam has begun to darken—a sign that it’s time to add the milk and sugar.
After that, he waits, and waits, and waits as the foam grows in size, rising even higher than the pot itself.
Just when it’s about to break over the rim, Kaveh snaps the stove off. The foam deflates like a sad balloon.
He retrieves the samosas while it cools, arranging them neatly onto a plate, and then strains the tea into a pair of cups on matching saucers.
When Kaveh returns to the study, tray of food and tea in hand, Alhaitham is still hard at work, exactly where he left him.
He accepts his drink with a surprised smile that lets Kaveh know the extra effort was worth it.
The samosas on the other hand, he waves off.
Kaveh frowns. “What? I thought you liked these.”
“I can't get my hands messy right now,” Alhaitham says, gesturing at the stacks of papers on his desk.
“Oh,” Kaveh says dumbly. He probably should have thought about that.
“It's fine. You can have them.”
Kaveh stares at the plate of samosas. Besides the fact that it’s too many for one person, there’s no way he could just sit here eating while Alhaitham works.
A few more seconds pass, Alhaitham huffs and crosses something out on the paper with a long stroke of his pen. The stack of finished reports to his left has only grown by one since Kaveh left to make the tea. “What did you have for lunch today?” he asks.
Alhaitham shakes his head.
Kaveh pulls a chair up to the desk—and sits down next to him.
Alhaitham doesn’t even glance up as Kaveh picks a samosa from the plate and begins tearing off a piece of it. “What are you doing?” he asks, eyes still trained on the report in front of him.
Holding it securely between his first two fingers and his thumb, Kaveh raises the food up to Alhaitham’s mouth. “Here.”
Alhaitham finally looks up, leveling Kaveh with his full attention. He stares at the offered food in his hand, eyes slightly crossed from the proximity. His expression is unreadable.
Kaveh fights down a blush.
The silence stretches awkwardly, each second bringing with it more doubt into Kaveh’s mind. It lasts for so long that he accepts defeat, ready to pull his hand back.
But then Alhaitham moves, grasping Kaveh’s wrist with his right hand to steady it, before carefully leaning forward.
His breath is fever hot, enough to startle Kaveh when it brushes across his fingers. His lips are warm too, and surprisingly soft for someone who has been breathing through his mouth all day.
Kaveh forces himself to shake off the wave of emotions that simple contact brings. He’s glad he’s sitting down.
Alhaitham releases his hand to write something in the margins of a report. He takes a tiny sip of the tea, humming contentedly.
And then, something happens that Kaveh knows none of his friends will ever believe.
Alhaitham parts his lips to form a small, round shape—and looks back at Kaveh expectantly.
Kaveh would laugh if he weren’t so overwhelmed.
He breaks off another piece of food, and this time his hand is stable when he offers it to Alhaitham’s waiting mouth.
The edges of those lips curl up just slightly this time as he accepts it, almost imperceptibly.
Kaveh feeds him the rest of the samosa like this—and then most of the second one as well before Alhaitham begins insisting he’s full.
It’s probably best if he doesn’t eat too much right now anyway, so Kaveh doesn’t push it. He finishes the rest of his food and drink and grabs a napkin to wipe the grease from his hands.
When he looks up, Alhaitham’s eyes are half lidded, the grip on his pen slack. It doesn't look like he’s moved in the past few seconds.
Kaveh decides now might be the time to broach the topic again.
He places a hand on Alhaitham’s shoulder, light as a feather.
Alhaitham still startles, dropping his pen. It drags a messy line off the edge of the paper.
He looks up at Kaveh, teal eyes wide like he forgot he was here.
“Hey…” Kaveh soothes—his hand slides a path down Alhaitham’s back. “I think you should take a break. You’ll make yourself worse if you don’t rest.”
A wrinkle forms between Alhaitham’s brows and Kaveh readies himself for another round of excuses explaining why he can do no such thing.
But instead, when Alhaitham opens his mouth, he pitches forward, overtaken by a sudden coughing fit.
Kaveh stands from his chair, gesturing with an open palm. “See? You are getting worse!”
Alhaitham doesn’t respond—and when Kaveh kneels down to check on him he finds his eyes squinted shut, breath coming out in little puffs while he shivers.
Something about it makes Kaveh soften his voice. “Haitham?”
He gets a hum in response, that sounds more like a groan.
“Are you alright?”
With what looks like a great deal of effort, Alhaitham meets his gaze. His face is pulled into a grimace and his eyes unfocused. “I’m fine,” he mumbles. “Just cold.”
“Oh… Do you want a blanket?” Kaveh probably should have gotten him one ages ago, he thinks guiltily.
A nod.
“Okay.” Kaveh stands. “I’ll be right back.”
It only takes a minute for him to return, a pile of blankets stacked high in his arms.
But the sight that greets him when he enters the study this time makes him stop short.
Alhaitham has gone from hunched over to completely slumped onto the surface of his desk, head resting on his folded arms.
Kaveh approaches quietly, draping a blanket over the slowly shifting muscles of his back and then crouching down in front of him. He gently brushes those gray bangs up with his palm, wanting to check his temperature again—and finds Alhaitham sound asleep.
Alhaitham wakes with a gasp, that his head immediately punishes him for. It feels as if someone is pounding on his skull, and his throat is as dry as the Sumeru Desert sand. Groggily, he reaches for the glass of water on his bedside table, downing half of it in one go before he notices the pair of tiny painkiller pills lying on a napkin next to it. Alhaitham hastily downs those as well.
He doesn’t know how he got into his bedroom, or when he even fell asleep, but it must have been a while ago, judging by the darkness outside his window.
He stares at his ceiling for a minute, lamenting the current state of his immune system, before the day’s events come flooding back to his mind and have him jolting out of bed in a panic. He stumbles out into the hall, slamming the door to the study open with a loud clatter.
Inside the room, Kaveh jumps, head whipping around to stare at him with wide eyes, but Alhaitham isn’t looking at him. His attention is trained on the desk in the back—completely devoid of papers.
For a second, he thinks he’s having a sickness induced dream. “What—”
Before Alhaitham can even finish his question, Kaveh is stepping in front of the desk, holding up his hands in a placating manner. “Look. Don’t get mad—but I submitted them.”
A beat of silence passes, and then— “You did what ?!”
Kaveh crosses his arms. “You were asleep and—”
“You should have woken me up!”
“You were sick! You’re still sick, Alhaitham, look at you!” he gestures.
Alhaitham resists the urge to groan in frustration, afraid of hurting his already sore throat. Instead, he glares. “I was going to finish them. You didn’t need to do that.”
“What? Do you not trust my judgment?”
“You know that’s not it. You’re the only person I know who can rival me on an academic level.”
Kaveh rolls his eyes. “Of course you would praise yourself while giving me a compliment.”
“I mean it though. Your intellectual skills are not the issue here.”
“Then what?” Kaveh prods. “What's the issue?”
Alhaitham is quiet for a long moment, gaze wavering in and out of focus as he stares at Kaveh’s face.
What is the issue?
He hadn’t lied earlier. Kaveh is as smart as he is stubborn. Even outside the field of architecture, Alhaitham has seen how he can pick apart a paper on any subject and glean all the necessary information from it to achieve his goals.
He has no doubt that Kaveh’s assessment of the reports was just as thorough and comprehensive as his own would have been.
Alhaitham realizes the feeling gnawing at his conscience right now is guilt.
Kaveh has managed to do for Alhaitham what Alhaitham had failed to do for him—to lighten the load of his work.
The sudden ache in his heart is far worse than that in his fever sore muscles.
Alhaitham doesn’t know what to say. He feels inebriated—the sickness addling his cognition like alcohol. The words slip out on their own.
“How’s your ankle?”
Kaveh freezes, clearly thrown off by the sudden change in topic. “It’s fine, Alhaitham. It’s been fine for weeks.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure, but—why are you bringing this up now?”
Alhaitham doesn’t have a proper answer for that, certainly not one that makes logical sense. “I just… Our conversation that night… Left you upset, and—”
“Haitham,” Kaveh cuts him off again, gaze softening. He reaches a hand up and Alhaitham expects him to check his fever again—but instead, Kaveh ruffles his hair. “You worry too much,” he tells him, which is not something Alhaitham ever thought he’d hear about himself.
“I think I worry a normal amount, actually,” he can’t help but say.
Kaveh chuckles, eyes crinkling in the corners. “Of course you think that. Now please, rest—you still have a fever.”
Alhaitham wants to refuse again, but he finds he has no arguments left. And so he lets himself get guided back to bed, Kaveh’s hand a soothing presence between his shoulder blades.