Chapter Text
By his final year in the Akademiya, Kaveh budgets his schedule more tightly than his parents once budgeted their mora. His classes and the time spent going to and from them. Study hours in the House of Daena. Meals, carefully chosen for the combination of expense and nutritional value.
A visit to Bimarstan every two months to see how his Eleazar is progressing and buy more medicine. Three days of the clearest schedule he can arrange after important exams or deadlines, because he always takes ill at the end of a project. Physical therapy exercises in an effort to counteract the peripheral neuropathy. Rubbing lotions with Nilotpala Lotus oil into his hands, even though there's no solid evidence it will help, because he needs his hands, if nothing else he needs his hands-
Kaveh breathes in and returns his attention to the diagram in front of him. He does not have time to get caught up in trivialities. He does not have time at all.
"You don't need that straightedge. Your lines are perfectly straight."
Kaveh does not need it today. Yesterday he did. Tomorrow he might. But if he doesn't use it every day, people could start asking questions. "I don't see how that's any of your business," he says without looking up from the paper.
"You're that Kshahrewar who has a reputation for refusing to spend time on 'pointless endeavors,'" whoever-it-is says. "That straightedge is slowing you down."
Kaveh, against his better judgment, looks up. Green eyes. Soft silver hair. Muscles for days. "My name is Kaveh," he says, swallowing down desire as quickly as he recognizes it. He only has time to strive toward one thing, and that thing is not a pretty boy.
"Kaveh," the stranger repeats. "I am Alhaitham."
"Wonderful," Kaveh says. "Now, unless you have something interesting to point out, please find someone else to bother."
"You've omitted a step in your description," Alhaitham says. "You did the math correctly, but you did not record your reasoning for calculating the hypotenuse."
Kaveh sighs, because Alhaitham is right. "Thank you."
Alhaitham nods and leaves without another word.
---
Kaveh's dormitory is tiny and cramped, room only large enough for a bed and a dresser. There is no space to exercise and he can't afford anything more expensive without cutting into food or medication. So for his physical therapy, he goes to one of the pavilions surrounding the House of Daena. The House of Daena is quiet anyway because the Akasha makes most physical books obsolete, and the pavilions around it are even more quiet.
Except not today, because Alhaitham is inside his favorite gazebo, arguing with some slim Spantamad scholar.
"The corpse of Durin is readily accessible," Alhaitham is saying. "It is possible to go and examine it firsthand."
"I don't have the funding to leave Sumeru City, much less travel to Mondstadt," the Spantamad scholar replies.
Kaveh sighs. He does not have the time to find a new place, and it's not as if their argument is taking up physical space. He sits down on the opposite side and stretches out his legs in front of him. "What's this about?" he asks.
"Zinat is writing a paper theorizing on the elemental energies surrounding the corpse of Durin on Dragonspine," Alhaitham says.
"He's right," Kaveh says, bending forward to touch his toes. "And if I recall correctly, Lisa Minci submitted a full ley line survey of the area to the Akasha about it two years ago. Your mentors won't be impressed by speculative work when there's already completed research on the topic."
"Lisa Minci? Oh..."
"Yes, oh," Kaveh says, leaning into the stretch.
Alhaitham catches Kaveh's eye. His mouth hasn't changed, but his eyes have lit up with silent laughter. Want tries to rise up through Kaveh's throat, but he swallows it back down.
"I should talk with my mentor," the little scholar says, and scurries away.
"Did Lisa Minci really do a survey of Durin's corpse?" Alhaitham asks.
"Yes," Kaveh replies. He shifts through sitting up to lowering himself onto his back, knees drawn toward his chest, then tilts his hips to the right. "I'm sure it's quite fascinating if you're interested in the subject matter."
"Perhaps." Alhaitham sits down against one of the pillars, far out of the way. It's impossible to tell whether he wants the conversation to continue.
"Friend of yours?" Kaveh asks.
"No," Alhaitham says. Not with disdain. Not spluttering and blushing. Just a simple denial.
"And she's not from your Darshan, I assume," Kaveh says, switching the direction his hips point. "You don't strike me as Spantamad."
"Strictly speaking, I am not yet affiliated with a Darshan," Alhaitham says. "This is my first semester."
"But you're working toward Haravatat, aren't you?" Kaveh asks.
"Yes," Alhaitham replies, and this time he sounds quietly pleased. Or perhaps quietly smug.
Kaveh risks a glance up. Definitely smug.
For a brief, fleeting moment, Kaveh imagines a world in which he could kiss the smug tilt off a pretty boy's lips. It wouldn't have to be Alhaitham, but he wouldn't mind if it was.
"You do strike me as the type of person who thinks Haravatat is the pinnacle of academic achievement," Kaveh says.
"It's certainly superior to the Kshahrewar," Alhaitham says.
"You're intentionally provoking me, and I won't fall for it." Kaveh straightens his hips and plants his feet on the ground, then lifts his hips and holds the pose. But then he continues: "The Haravatat are the smallest Darshan for a reason. They've forgotten that knowledge is useless without any practical application."
"There are plenty of practical applications for the fields studied by the Haravatat," Alhaitham replies. "Might I remind you that linguistics falls under its purview? Are you suggesting that there is no practical application to understanding another language?"
Kaveh smiles. "Vahumana could absorb all of that without anyone noticing. Many of those courses are already shared between Darshans."
Their back-and-forth extends so long that Kaveh doesn't quite finish his physical therapy regimen before the Akasha beeps in his ear to notify him that it's time to go back to his dorm and study. He pauses right in the midst of an argument about runes that he doesn't even believe, sighing. "I've got to leave," he says with genuine regret. The part of him that cares quite a bit more than he would like that Alhaitham is attractive continues, "I come here for exercises most days, if you'd like to pick this up again later."
Alhaitham nods, but doesn't say anything. Kaveh resigns himself to the rest of their meetings being coincidence-
-until the next day, when he arrives at the gazebo to find Alhaitham already there, book spread across his lap.
"So as I was saying yesterday," Alhaitham says. "If we couldn't decode the runic structure used by the followers of King Deshret, we wouldn't know-"
By the week before midterms, more days than not, Alhaitham will join Kaveh at the pavilion. Sometimes he joins Kaveh in his exercises. Sometimes he reads books from the library or does homework. Most often, they fight over trivial, silly things, and Kaveh is very nearly late to his next engagement.
Alhaitham makes it so easy for Kaveh to forget that he's running out of time.
---
Kaveh sits at Bimarstan, waiting for his turn. They're always running late on appointments. He tries not to let himself get angry about it. If someone before him needed more care than could have been anticipated, that's not anyone's fault.
He spends the wait studying with the Akasha. There's a grand structure under the Mausoleum of King Deshret. It hasn't been thoroughly explored due to the dangers presented inside, but translations and preliminary studies suggest it could cover much of the Hypostyle Desert. It's incredible that they had the technique to build structures that were so large and extended so far under the sand. And it's a shame that those techniques are lost. Though perhaps some of the writings of King Deshret's followers might have preserved something...
Fifteen minutes later, when an Amurta intern calls Kaveh's name, he realizes he's studying rune structures.
The examination passes quickly. The intern, a light-skinned man with prominent fox ears, watches quietly as the real doctor studies the scaling on Kaveh's thighs.
"This patch of skin is dead," the doctor says, frowning. "And there's infection here. Tighnari, look at this." She pries gently at a black scale. Something brown and foul-smelling oozes out from under it. "This is what it looks like when a patch of Eleazar starts to necrose. At this stage, however, we would expect most of the surrounding tissue to remain viable. Bring me the menthol balm. Ten percent concentration."
They're not talking to Kaveh anymore, so he doesn't have to listen. He can just take this in. Process.
He's been as fortunate as a person born with Eleazar can be up until now, he supposes, but his luck was bound to start running out eventually. Assuming the most typical trajectory of the disease, once tissue starts to decompose, he can expect to live about four more years. The numbness will get worse. He will begin to experience paralysis and pain.
But four years. Even if he can only work through three of them. It's enough. He has the time, as long as he doesn't waste it, to leave something behind.
This is why it had to be Kshahrewar. This is why it had to be architecture. Getting research published can take decades. But a building can go up in just a few short years.
The doctor numbs his thigh and debrides the dead tissue. Kaveh watches. He refuses to let himself be squeamish about this. He agrees to move from appointments every two months to every month as his thigh gets bandaged.
Then he walks back to the Akademiya and does not think about it. He does not have time to think about it.
---
Perhaps it is the stress of knowing that after this round of exams, the only thing between Kaveh and graduation will be his thesis. Perhaps it's the more concrete knowledge of his lifespan. Perhaps he's weaker after the infection in his thigh.
Whatever it is, he wakes up in the morning of his first exam with an entirely numb left arm and a pounding headache, and knows it is going to be a bad day.
It could have had the decency to wait until after exams like usual.
Kaveh drags himself out of bed, forces some water down his throat, and stumbles to his exam.
He does fine on his exam, of course. He would have to be far more ill than this to forget how to do trigonometry.
He should go back to his dorm and go to bed. He should rest.
But he is too ill to swallow down the part of him that wants things he will never have, and so he makes his way out to the pavilion.
"Ah, you're here," Alhaitham says. "If- Kaveh?"
Kaveh leans against a column. "Go on," he says. "I'm listening."
"You look like something chewed you up and spat you out."
Kaveh rolls his eyes, which he regrets because it makes the ache behind his eyes spike. "I know I'm not at my most attractive when I don't put my hair up, but it's exam week. Allowances must be made."
A cool hand rests against his forehead. "Senior," Alhaitham says, having somehow managed to cross the distance between them between one blink and another. "You have a fever."
Alhaitham has never touched him before. Kaveh doesn't think anyone other than his doctor has touched him in years, except by accident. Certainly not so gently.
"It's exam week," Kaveh says helplessly. He has to pull away. He has to. He just can't summon the will.
Alhaitham, for once, does not argue with him. Of course, that's only because he doesn't need to. "Come on," he says, instead. He shifts to stand at Kaveh's left and wraps an arm around his waist.
Kaveh wishes that Alhaitham had chosen his right, so he could feel it more. Nothing to be done about it.
Alhaitham walks them to his dorm room, one of the expensive ones close to the main entrance of the Akademiya. Either he came from money, or he has a really impressive scholarship. The room has its own attached bathroom, a desk and a closet in addition to the bed and dresser, a rug on the floor.
"Sit on the bed," Alhaitham says.
And Kaveh is so tired that he obeys.
"I have another exam after lunch," he mumbles, staring down in disbelief as Alhaitham removes one of his shoes, and then the other.
"Then you can rest until lunch," Alhaitham says. "Lay down, Kaveh."
"Are you sure?" Kaveh asks.
"Yes," Alhaitham says, pushing Kaveh down.
Kaveh doesn't resist. He just sets an alarm in his Akasha terminal and closes his eyes.
The next few days are a blur of illness. Kaveh goes to his exams, and somehow Alhaitham is always there to pick him up afterward and tug him back to his dorm. When he has the energy, he studies, but much of the time he just sleeps. Alhaitham keeps offering him food, but he doesn't feel like eating and keeps refusing.
"Is there anything you think you can eat, Kaveh?" Alhaitham asks. "Anything at all?"
On the border of delirium with one exam to go, Kaveh answers honestly and without thought. "Kulfi," he mumbles. "Rose kulfi. No pistachios."
"Really?" Alhaitham asks skeptically.
"Mhm," Kaveh replies.
Alhaitham rests his hand against Kaveh's forehead again. "Fine," he says.
The next time that Kaveh wakes enough to sit up, Alhaitham shoves a bowl into his hands. Slightly melted rose kulfi, with no pistachios.
Kaveh is sure he'll regret this later. But right now...
The part of him that wants and wants and wants is quiet and still, curled up in his chest with satisfaction. The part of him that scrambles to make the most of every instant is quiet, too, the way it often is around Alhaitham.
This is something that he can't hold on to, but he's glad for this moment. He's glad he gets to know how this feels.