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Alhaitham had never had a concrete concept of "home".
He lost it before he ever knew it, in a sense. His parents passed away, their absences so sudden that only his grandmother really knew the shape of that black hole, and she had done a stellar job keeping Alhaitham safe from the pull of its gravity. Home had then been a nice house that he spent so much time inside he really felt out of sorts when leaving it for any length of time, his grandmother's impressive library and the surfeit of knowledge it contained more than enough to make a curious, too-clever boy comfortable. Grandmother was always around. Alhaitham never had to worry about whether she would abruptly leave him, and where to find her, and what she liked.
Even in her final departure, she had made it gentle on him. She left him with a clear will, and he had what he now understood was the tremendous luck to spend a hundred and twenty-six days grappling with the fact that she would soon leave him, leave this world. Alhaitham's last memory of Grandmother had been her smile. Her last words to him was to not worry, to take care of himself, that she would be sure to tell his parents how well he was doing.
The departure from his childhood home and into the prize his failed project with Kaveh had earned him was gentle, too. It was a better opportunity all around. It was closer to the Akademiya, where he had been employed as Scribe. It was adequate in its capacity to satisfy a lone man and his treasure hoard of knowledge. Kaveh's name was on the deed. In the absence of any real keepsake of Alhaitham's first, most painful, and more than likely only love, Alhaitham took on the house meant for both of them.
This was, and still would be to this day, the only instance of surpassing sentimentality Alhaitham had attached to an object. Because an abode was an object to him, worth its hassle only in the grandness of its dimensions and its price measurable in mora and convenience to him. If the house burned down, Alhaitham would miss it because the last thing with his and Kaveh's names together, side by side, would disappear. But the four walls, the ceiling, even the comfortable office and bookshelves... Those could be replaced. His books and records were infinitely more valuable. As long as he could rescue those, he'd be fine.
Getting attached to an object beyond the necessary logical bounds of cost and gains was, to Alhaitham, another fallacy he knew existed in others and didn't bother with, himself. One should take care of his belongings, his tools, his place of living, because these things were scientifically proven to affect his mood and his health. Anything outside of that was wasted sorrow and worry on something that was, ultimately, transient and destructible.
Rationally, Alhaitham knew that. Rationally, he also knew that the old house wasn't actually going anywhere. It couldn't. He already told Kaveh so when he was the one wistful over the thing when they finally found a buyer.
And still. Still, his hand hesitated just slightly where it hovered above the contract. Only briefly, of course. Alhaitham was aware that the quill in his drip would drip ink if he did not put its tip to paper soon. And he duly did so, signing his name with a flourish.
It was silly, this...this chafing– Alhaitham searched his vast mental libraries for the right word. Ah, yes, wistfulness . What was there to miss? It was a house. It had been a home, and had done its purpose. It had even gone far beyond that and been the linchpin upon which Alhaitham and Kaveh reunited. To let it go was not so different from letting go of an old book at a donation drive, knowing he had made good use of it and knowing, too, that someone else would be able to make even better use of it.
Ah, but that was just the thing, wasn't it. Alhaitham had loved every book he let go of. The house, its ownership acquitted from him by the contract sitting on the table in front of him and Kaveh, was no different.
So, yes, Alhaitham all but admitted that he had an attachment to the old house. He also admitted in general that he was capable of growing attached to objects, but his hypocrisy was his own business to dissect and puzzle over later.
He kept himself in the present, at this table inside this home he and Kaveh had outgrown, as Kaveh beside him beamed at the couple sitting across from them. "I hope this place will serve you well," he was saying.
"Thank you," their buyer's wife beamed right back, expression just as bright and sunny as Kaveh's own. The toddler in her lap gurgled and copied her joy, blissfully unknowing of anything save that its mother was happy.
The woman beside her – made older and more care-worn by her sun-bronzed skin and scars dotting her bare, muscular arms, a retired Eremite, her demeanor a natural compliment to her counterpart – leaned forward with her hand outstretched. She was more subdued than her wife, but her face spoke well of her satisfaction. "We will take good care of it," she promised.
Kaveh shook her hand. Alhaitham hesitated for a moment when it was his turn, but indulged the gesture. The ex-mercenary's grip was like clay left out in the sun. Firm, warm.
-
"Where did you find them?" Alhaitham asked Kaveh on the short walk home – to their new home, seven minutes up the street and around a corner.
"Hm? Oh, Nasrin was in one of my lectures at the Akademiya," Kaveh replied. He rubbed at his chin, a nervous tic Alhaitham barely noticed when compared to the visible heart-bleed on Kaveh's entire demeanor. He always had a way of feeling and showing his feelings with his entire being, when there was no reason to hide them. "I can't even imagine how hard it is to raise a child while in school. And Safiya–" the retired mercenary "--had had trouble finding them a good home closer to the Akademiya and the markets for a reasonable sum."
Alhaitham knew why. Kaveh scowled, too, sharing in the sentiment. For all that Lord Kusanali was spearheading effort to mend Sumeru's relationship with the desert folk, discrimination woven into the fabric of their society for so many decades would not be erased so easily even with their Archon's will. Safiya likely encountered higher quotes and more difficult, demanding, or even demeaning sellers for properties that agreed to negotiate with her at all.
At Kaveh's insistence, balanced by Alhaitham's experience with this sort of people thanks to Dehya and Candace – those used to earning their place with hard, honest work; those who would take unfounded gestures of generosity with either suspicion or insult – the house had been sold to the couple at a price slightly below the current market rate. Enough of a discount to ease their finances, but not enough to tip Safiya into the realm of skepticism or injured pride.
Kaveh stretched now, the long and sinewy shape of his body and the glint of his golden hair under the street lamps drawing Alhaitham's attention back to the present, firmly anchoring it. "It's sort of a relief, isn't it," Kaveh mused. "We wouldn't have to hire anyone to take care of it, and it wouldn't just sit there looking empty and sad. I know we're elsewhere now, but still. I don't know if I could bear the sight of it with dark windows and so empty inside."
No, he wouldn't have been able to. Alhaitham knew that too. Kaveh was routinely prey to his own feelings and regrets, usually of the more foolish variety. That was why he hadn't protested when Kaveh mentioned these would-be buyers to him. That was why he'd chosen to tailor the offer of a prime location to this couple who couldn't really afford it, rejecting other, better offers that would pay at or above the market rate. That was why he'd expedited closing the deal.
It wasn't just a matter of selling the house. It was a matter of handing it off to the sort of people Kaveh would be happy thinking of occupying the space they once shared.
It was, like everything Alhaitham had done, for Kaveh. In the obvious and in the oblique. Everything.
The Kaveh of ten, or even eight, months ago would have been unable to even entertain the thought that Alhaitham was doing any of this for him. He would've flinched and stuttered and then been angry, would've thought himself a bother despite it being Alhaitham who chose to expend any extra effort in the indulging of Kaveh's feelings at all.
But that was ten months ago. That was before they knew– no, acknowledged each other in the way they did now.
The now-Kaveh turned and grinned at Alhaitham, his gratitude the light of stars in his red eyes. He leaned closer and pecked Alhaitham's cheek with a kiss. His lips were warm. They left a metaphorical but heart-deep imprint on Alhaitham's skin, like the shape of a lightning strike behind your eyelids after it had already faded from the sky.
"Let's go home," Kaveh said. "I'm hungry. Do you want biryani today? We've got to do something with that chicken you bought."
"The chicken that was forced on me by Auntie on the Right," Alhaitham corrected.
Kaveh scrunched his nose up. "I thought it was an old man who lived to our right."
"Auntie from the old house." She would be Nasrin and Safiya's Auntie on the Right now. Alhaitham could already imagine the doting that old woman would subject their poor toddler to.
Kaveh's mouth formed an 'O' of understanding. Then he huffed a small, amused laugh. "You're so rude. You know her name, don't you? Start using it or it'd get too confusing."
Yes, her name was Ellara. She was actually half Mondstadtian, and she called her father who got her Sumerian mother pregnant with her after a rowdy night at the tavern a man-whore. Alhaitham knew that and a couple other things, and he called her "Auntie" more as a deferrential to her authority than necessarily because he didn't always remember her name (honestly though, he didn't). But explaining all that to Kaveh would take far too much effort on a grumbling stomach.
"I'll be fine. I'm not you," Alhaitham replied blithely instead.
And smirked at the indignant sound Kaveh made at him.
"Besides," he added, "she's likely going to forget about us very soon, now that you're not right there to ask about leaky pipes and missing roof shingles."
"How could you say that? Madame Ellara's sweet, and she's a friend."
"You don't have the allure of a toddler," replied Alhaitham. Then he allowed himself this, because now he could: he reached up and lightly pinched Kaveh's cheek. "Even if you have a baby face. Give up. Auntie won't even remember you by next month."
Kaveh turned his head. For the briefest of moments, his lips kissed Alhaitham's fingers.
Then he sank his teeth into the meat of Alhaitham's palm.
...A not entirely undeserving retaliation.
-
Kaveh might not have the gravitational pull of warbling babies on the elderly, but he wasn't without his – as Alhaitham aptly put – allure.
Their new home stood on a corner, so they had three adjacent neighbors instead of just two on each side. Within a month of moving in, Alhaitham opened the door to their home to the sight of unfamiliar shoes.
For a moment he stood there and experienced his irritation threefold. Firstly that there were visitors in their home at all, after the tiring day he had at the Akademiya. Secondly, he didn't recognize the shoes, meaning whoever was in here wouldn't be someone Alhaitham knew well enough to have memorized their silhouette and appearance. Thirdly, Kaveh had designed their ground floor to be very open, without many walls, so the moment Alhaitham came in, three heads immediately turned to him.
"And here comes the man himself," an elderly gentleman guffawed. He made a sweeping gesture at Alhaitham with a wrinkled hand, his grin bright but with the added effect of making his face into an eerie approximation of bunched up bedsheets.
The other invader, a more tame-looking young woman with mousy brown hair and a smile that looked a lot like Kaveh's whenever he wasn't sure about something but was bound by societal expectations not to show it, kept her trespass contained to a nod of greeting.
And then there was Kaveh himself. He looked at Alhaitham with a smile also, but his eyes said, Mind your fucking manners.
"Kavi was telling us all about you," said Invader Number One enthusiastically. He turned his whole body in the chair to face Alhaitham, who idly judged him to be the sort who'd dominate an entire conversation not with his presence but his talkativeness. There was a keenness to his eyes, however, that belied the image of a jolly old loudmouth. Also, Kavi ? "My, my, they sure grow up fast. It was like yesterday that you were making my star student run late to my lectures because you kept arguing with him in the hall."
"Whatever the subject was about, I'm certain we shared the burden of enthusiasm," Alhaitham replied smoothly, taking his shoes off and going into the house. He was hungry, he was tired, and he was actively weighing the chances of Kaveh making him eat under-seasoned rice pilaf if he scared his guests off. "You must be a professor, sir?"
Invader Number One laughed again. A few goblets sitting on a nearby shelf trembled. "Was. Decided to wash my hands of the lot after Kavi graduated. It wasn't like he needed my guidance anymore."
"You didn't have to move all the way to Fontaine, though, Professor," Kaveh interjected. There was genuine fondness in his voice. Alhaitham fought the urge to frown. Accursed Kaveh and his ever-incessant need to be nice. "With how slow the mail was, I sometimes wondered if you even got them at all."
His old professor hmphed, rubbing his chin. "Maybe I did. You've got to get talking about your projects again, son, so I know what I did or didn't miss."
"Kaveh," Alhaitham interjected, patience now gone. "What do you want for dinner?"
The young woman spoke up for the first time. She grabbed Kaveh's professor's arm and said, "Let's head out too, Dad. We have to make it back before Aunt Bekha finishes with dinner or she'd be livid."
Professor Invader sighed, but nodded and arduously raised himself out of the chair. Kaveh was immediately on his feet as well, and together with the old man's daughter, helped him to the door.
It was a very long and involved process, which Alhaitham was not party to because he went to hang up his cloak and then went into the kitchen to start looking around for suitable ingredients for dinner. He did listen in for a few words, realized they were pointless rehashes of Kaveh's old accomplishments and Professor Invader's glory days as a Ksharewar researcher, and tuned out.
Finally, finally, the door closed. Blissful silence descended.
Alhaitham was washing his hands at the kitchen faucet when Kaveh appeared next to him.
"Could it have killed you to be less rude to guests?" he chided him, though he did not sound very annoyed
"You looked like you needed rescue," Alhaitham answered.
"I was doing fine by myself, thanks. Professor Ashwan could be talkative, but he always meant well and he did help me a lot when I first began as a student."
I still don’t want him in our house. And why does he call you "Kavi" when even I don't get to do that? Alhaitham wanted to say. He said instead, "Though clearly he didn't have important enough things to say, if you skipped his class to keep arguing with me."
Kaveh rolled his eyes and threw up his hands in defeat.
They got to cooking in the sort of silence that relaxed minute by minute, like a muscle drawn taught now permitted the chance to rest. Alhaitham took off his headphones and set them aside, and halfway into measuring the spices, he heard the telltale humming from Kaveh as he idly recited some tune he'd heard at the tavern.
"Sorry I didn't warn you about them," Kaveh said soon after that, when the butter chicken was marinating. "I know you dislike having people over without warning. Professor Ashwan caught me coming back from the market and it was hard to get away."
"Maybe he should've been a driyosh for Vahumana instead of leaving the Akademiya," Alhaitham replied, accepting the sentiment and deflecting it before it could make him too warm inside. "The man seems to have a talent at weaseling into places he wasn't meant to be. Ruins-delving could've been an exciting career turn for him."
A foot lightly kicked at Alhaitham's calf. "Don't be a brat."
Alhaitham turned, raising an eyebrow. "Hm? I thought you like me that way."
"You wish!" Kaveh huffed, but then chuckled. His shoulders shook with his mirth, and he squeezed his eyes shut as he did it, his mouth curving, just the hint of teeth.
That mouth was warm and tasted of sweet tea on Alhaitham's when he kissed him. It gasped, it begged, when Alhaitham pressed Kaveh to the kitchen counter and let his hands do what he'd been thinking of the whole day.
They ate dinner late that night. Neither of them were upset about it.
Their mutual good mood was only slightly soured when Kaveh murmured to Alhaitham much later that night, when they were already in bed, "Professor Ashwan moved in with his daughter. He's next door to us."
Fuck , thought Alhaitham. Then he went to sleep.
-
New Neighbor Two, as Alhaitham shall now commence calling them, was an artist.
Where Professor Ashwan and his daughter lived immediately across the street from Alhaitham and Kaveh, Neighbor Number Two lived adjacent. They were one of four or five people sharing the one tall building, paying rent to some mysterious landlord-y entity Alhaitham didn't care to look for.
They had orange hair and wild brown eyes. Freckles. Also a foreigner. Not from Fontaine, though. "Maybe Mondstadt," Kaveh told Alhaitham over breakfast one morning, nose scrunched in thought. "There's something off about their accent. They acted nervous when I asked them about it, though, so I didn't push."
"Maybe they're a leftover Fatui spy," Alhaitham replied, half-jokingly.
"Don't talk ill of people you scarcely know."
Three weeks later, as Alhaitham raised his glowing glass sword for an overhead swing that would decapitate the Fatui Skirmisher in front of him, the fool was struck by a moment of inspiration and shouted, "Wait!"
Alhaitham paused, his mind registering the familiar voice. The Skirmisher, to their credit, didn't try to put a bullet into his stomach but rather waved their hands frantically in front of them. Then they pulled off their hat.
Wild brown eyes set in a frazzled, freckled face stared up at Alhaitham, pleading. "Mister Kaveh-Housemate," they said pitifully. "Please don't kill me. I'm sorry. I was left behind after– after we were told we'd be pulling back, and I don't have any jobs or papers to apply for jobs and I'm running out of money to pay rent. It's the only reason I was dealing with those Eremites. I swear. Please. Mister Kaveh would be really sad if something happens to me, don't you think?"
Alhaitham let his glass sword disintegrate. But he reached out, curled his fingers around the Fatui's throat, and dragged them to their feet until their face was very close to his. "Keep his name out of your mouth," he said calmly. "If any harm is ever to befall him and I have even the slightest reason to suspect your involvement, I will kill you ."
Fatui Artist nodded frantically. Alhaitham let them go, and they crumbled to their knees and crawled backwards from him, terrified.
A few paces behind, Hat Guy laughed. It did not sound very pleasant. "You're getting soft," he said. But he did not pursue when Fatui Artist (Neighbor Number Two) turned and ran.
Three weeks later, Kaveh told Alhaitham he'd helped Neighbor Number Two get a job, and they’d be making regular long-term trips to Caravan Ribat for it. He had apparently agreed to help them keep their house plants alive.
Alhaitham had Cyno investigate the legitimacy of the job, as well as Neighbor Number Two's movements. Everything checked out. It seemed Neighbor Number Two was being honest when they said they were just trying to get by.
Kaveh ended up killing two of the three houseplants he'd agreed to look after due to his own chaotic schedule. He baked Neighbor Number Two a tray of sweets as an apology, and was given a very old and very well-loved recipe book full of Snezhnayan fares in return.
The dishes Kaveh made thanks to it were a good reprieve from their usual, limited dinners. The recipe book itself was also an interesting window into a particular dialect from its region of origin in the mysterious, snow-covered country. Alhaitham decided to let Fatui Artist continue their stay.
(Kaveh was never told about Fatui Artist. He'd taken quite a liking to them, and Alhaitham knew that revealing the truth would likely make him that much more forgiving of them. Yes, Kaveh was like that. Soft hearted, kind to a fault, and it pained Alhaitham to think he'd choose to like someone else in spite of what they might be should that trust be turned against him at some point.)
-
Neighbor Number Three was Alhaitham's favorite, because she was never there.
Only Kaveh had seen her. He said she was Liyuean, some sort of reclusive writer, and he helped her carry groceries back from the market once. She had four cats, who were the only proofs of her presence Alhaitham was subjected to at any given time.
There was a black one, which Kaveh said was named Ming. There was an orange one, named Miyu. There was a calico one that was more fat than cat , who would sit at the second-floor window to Neighbor Number Three's two-storey house. Alhaitham didn't catch its name. The last feline, an imperious creature with pure white fur and the only one Alhaitham had really seen roaming around, often came to visit them in their small courtyard.
He often caught her dozing in the shadow of the thin-bodied but leafy low tree that hung over the fountain Kaveh had installed there, one paw lazily batting at the specks of light dancing on the water's glittering surface. She was a bold creature who barely acknowledged him when he came to join her at the table Kaveh had set out on the ratio with his books, and the one time Kaveh himself had tried to approach, she immediately bolted. That creature's coordination was amazing, considering she was so obviously blind.
"Yue," he called after her mournfully.
"Did Neighbor Number Three tell you its name?" Alhaitham asked, curious. He didn't particularly care who they shared the street with, nor what they looked like, nor what they did, but after the incident with Fatui Artist, he wasn't entirely uncaring either.
"Her name is Yun Ling," Kaveh sighed at him. "Not that you'd care. Yes, she told me about them. In fact, it was the only thing she really talked a lot about. She's from Liyue, but it seems her aunt who lived here in Sumeru left her quite the inheritance in the will. Yun Ling came here to get away from her hectic life in Liyue, and to refresh her mind after a bad writer's block. We connected well, obviously."
Alhaitham did not see this obviousness Kaveh was referring to. Kaveh was not, even at his lowest and most drained, the kind of "artist" who would move a world away to refresh his mind or inspiration or anything such. That which set Kaveh apart from every artist and even every architect in the whole of Sumeru was his tenacity. His creativity and innovative, razor-sharp mind had an unshakable foundation in the hard, precise mathematical logic of his devoted craft. Kaveh bullied his way through his problems, clawed back his creativity from art blocks by going back to the basics and puzzling it out, not by running away.
Yes, he had a need for outside inspirations and thinking, and often. That, too, was a pillar of Kaveh's great strength. But the thing that made him great, the gleam of stars and constellations in him that had held Alhaitham captive from the moment they first met, was that he possessed the discipline to rotate his own roadblocks in his mind and find a way out of it. Always.
But these were sentiments too dear and too raw for Alhaitham to speak into words that wouldn't embarrass them, so he instead settled with, "You wouldn't need to move half the world away to find a new way around whatever's got you in a bind."
Kaveh frowned at him, but the edge of it was very soft. He nudged Alhaitham with an elbow as he poured more chilled tea into his cup. "Are you incapable of giving a compliment without someone else's imperfection being the collateral?"
Alhaitham took the teacup and studied Kaveh over its lip. "Since you imply yourself to be such a savant of compliments over me, let's hear it. I want a compliment."
"Wouldn't want your head to get any bigger than it is," Kaveh replied wryly. But he took the chair opposite of Alhaitham, and because they were out in their yard, the sunlight caught so brilliantly on his gold-spun hair, on his gleaming red eyes, on his lopsided grin that made Alhaitham's breath catch in his throat. "You are one of the most intelligent people I've ever met, Alhaitham, here in the land of wisdom. Sometimes, when it suits your fickle mood, you're even kind."
It took Alhaitham an embarrassingly long time to wrestle control back from his own heart. He pretended to sip at the tea – perfectly brewed, semi-sweet, to complement the fruits Kaveh had brought it with – while his composure rebuilt itself. "I thought the demonstration was for a compliment without collateral damage of someone else's flaw. You rather ungenerously imply that I'm not always kind, senior."
Kaveh chuckled, and Alhaitham ached to kiss him, to bury his face into the hollow of that slender, jeweled neck. "Fine, fine. You're you, Alhaitham. Isn't that flattery enough?"
Alhaitham pretended to think about it. Then he set down the tea, got up, and indulged his wanting. And oh, bliss, when Kaveh leaned into his kiss, when he gasped and then sighed into him, content.
"You can always work a little harder," Alhaitham murmured into Kaveh's neck, the skin so warm, his pulse thrumming. "Call me yours."
"And you make fun of me for being the romantic," Kaveh chided him. He gasped again, the sound more desperate and hungrier, when Alhaitham nipped at his neck. "Fine! Mine. My precocious, insufferable–"
Alhaitham claimed his mouth. The sun was warm against his back, but it was not as warm as the inside of his ribcage where his heart rested, so close to Kaveh's.
-
Auntie Ellara smiled her secret, all-wise, close-mouthed smile as she poured tea for Alhaitham and served him a plate of sweets. Mondstadtian cookies and biscuits, Alhaitham noted. Probably another care package from her "man-whore" father.
"How are you settling into the new house?" she asked him, breezy. They were seated on her porch, and Alhaitham could see Nasrin's toddler waving his hands around in the window right next to him. Once, that window had looked into Kaveh's studio-slash-bedroom. Now it was just as colorful, but in a different way, the ruckus of it a new sort of lively.
"We have far too many neighbors," said Alhaitham to Auntie Ellara, who he had since decided was the best neighbor there was. "One of them was Kaveh's old professor, and the man took great pains to intrude on our peace."
"You should find his old thesis and needle him about it. The bits where his defense was weak. That'd chase him right out," replied Ellara, her eyes glinting so dangerously. Yes, best neighbor indeed.
Although there was still the question of whether Kaveh was going to make him eat under-seasoned chicken for dinner for making his old professor self-conscious. An interesting, weighty conundrum. Alhaitham would have to consider that against the gain of being able to take his lover wherever he wanted in their house without some nosy old bastard knocking at the door asking for time Alhaitham didn't want Kaveh to have to afford him.
"Thank you for your advice," he told Ellara gravely, who gave him an equally grave nod in response. Then he changed the subject. "How's your new neighbors?"
"Oh, they're just darling. Dear Safiya can fix anything we need her to help with. She's too sweet, always saying she doesn't need thanks. Joke's on her; we leave the produce and dairy goods when Nasrin gets home, and she always carries them in. And their baby boy–" Ellara sighed, the first pause in her gushing.
It was downhill from there. Alhaitham drank one cup of tea, then two, then three, then tuned her out. He nodded along agreeably as the old auntie told him everything under the sun while he polished off her plate of fruits.
It took hours, probably. It was hours Alhaitham did not need to look out his window furtively to see if Professor Invader or Fatui Artist were around to cause mayhem, so he didn't mind. And at last, when the reason he was entertaining Auntie Ellara finally showed up, the glint of gold and red coming down the street–
Alhaitham looked up, and Ellara fell quiet. Smiling wryly, she followed his eyes to Kaveh's silhouette approaching them. He lifted a hand to wave, and Alhaitham stood.
"Thank you for your time," he told Ellara with every ounce of sincerity.
"Yes, yes. Come again next time. Remember the thesis strategy!" She waved him off, smiling.
Kaveh greeted Alhaitham with raised eyebrows when he walked up to join him. "You? Socialize ? Sumeru's due for freak weather this month, eh?" he said in amusement.
"I want to be there with you when we walk past Professor Invader's porch," Alhaitham replied. "So you won't fall into that man's evil trap of social niceties and invite him into our house."
Kaveh rolled his eyes. "Would you give it a rest? He barely stayed ten minutes last time he was there."
"Which begs the question why we bother to let him in at all. He could've wasted no time instead of the whole ten minutes," Alhaitham countered.
They continued their idle bickering until they were at their door. Alhaitham's strategy, as always, worked. Kaveh was too focused on their argument to notice Professor Invader on his porch trying to flag him down. A click of the lock later and Alhaitham had successfully hustled them both into the safety of their home.
His cloak came off next, as did Kaveh's, and with it seemingly all the troubles they had both borne during the day. They hung them up on the wall near their door. Their keys went onto the specially-made hooks next to those, and Kaveh leaned forward to kiss Alhaitham who was already waiting for it, arms coming to rest around his slim waist.
"Welcome home," Kaveh murmured, the fluttering of his lashes the barest caress on Alhaitham's cheek, their foreheads pressed together.
"Welcome home," Alhaitham echoed.
He felt Kaveh smile, felt his giddiness and relief as a physical tremble between their bodies. He repeated to himself, relieved and content, Home .