Archive of Our Own

There are blueprints carved into the creases of Kaveh’s palms, which is to say: he was born to build things that fall apart.

Which is to say: he is perpetually, unapologetically, catastrophically in the act of designing his own heartbreak.

Which is to say: he lives with Alhaitham.

And today, today, he’s going to figure him out. Through schematics. Through structure. Through architectural theory if he must—because that’s all Kaveh has ever really understood, isn’t it? Pillars and thresholds and how things collapse under too much weight. The poetry of things not yet ruined. The calculus of space and light and proximity, or lack thereof.

So here is Kaveh, pencil between his teeth, shirt rumpled from a restless night of trying not to dream about that one time Alhaitham made tea and brushed their fingers together and Kaveh felt it, like a goddamn load-bearing beam giving way.

He is currently drawing something that could be either a villa or a metaphor for the tightness in his chest. It has arches, and sightlines, and a central atrium designed solely to reflect the tragic inevitability of emotional repression. His sketchpad looks like it wants to confess something.

So does he.

But no.

He’s not about to let some logic-worshipping, muscle-brained epistemology goblin win. He’s not about to say something unhinged like “You are the tensile curve in the ribcage of my soul’s foundation.” Even if it’s true. Even if he’s said it into his pillow at least twice. No. He’s an intellectual. He has standards.

Instead, he writes at the top of the page, in careful calligraphy:
“Preliminary Structural Analysis of an Inhabited Personality: Subject A.H.”

This is fine.

He is fine.

He is absolutely not conducting a multi-week emotional autopsy of Alhaitham’s behavior using urban design theory as a stand-in for feelings.

He is, however, calculating the emotional square footage of that sigh Alhaitham made when Kaveh came home drunk last week and declared himself “a paragon of tragic beauty” while Alhaitham very gently moved the wine bottle out of his reach and said “You're not even symmetrical.”

(Symmetrical, Kaveh thinks bitterly. Neither is the Parthenon, and everyone worships that.)

Meanwhile, across the house—no, the shared space (Kaveh has built an entire architectural treatise on the tragedy of “open floor plans” and why emotional boundaries should come with doors)—Alhaitham is reading.

He always is. Reading like it’s a form of breathing. Reading like the words might tell him something the world never could. Reading like Kaveh isn’t there. Like he hasn’t just dropped an entire stack of annotated blueprints on the coffee table titled “Exhibit A: Things Alhaitham Said That Hurt (Vol. 2 of 6).”

“What’s that supposed to be?” Alhaitham asks, flipping a page.

“My thesis,” Kaveh says, straightening. “On you.”

Alhaitham doesn’t even look up. “I didn’t consent to being studied.”

“You didn’t consent to wearing that shirt either, but here we are,” Kaveh mutters, not at all watching the way it stretches across his shoulders.

There’s a beat. A single breath. An interstitial moment in which the walls might give way.
Then:

“Kaveh,” Alhaitham says, voice flatter than a collapsed buttress, “you’ve labeled this diagram ‘The Tragedy of a Shared Kitchen Sink.’”

“It’s a metaphor.”

“It’s a plumbing issue.”

“You are a plumbing issue.”

“Oh, brilliant comeback. Should I write that on your tombstone? Cause of death: failure to develop object permanence about his own melodrama?”

Kaveh squints at him. “Are you flirting with me or trying to gaslight me into therapy?”

“I don’t know,” Alhaitham replies, “you’re the one drawing tragic balconies and calling it a personality test.”

Kaveh gapes. “Those balconies are symbolic of isolation and the unreachable Other!”

“You misspelled ‘load-bearing’ three times.”

“I was weeping at the time!”

And maybe this would be the moment where another man, a less aesthetically-minded, less tragically-golden-locked man might stop and re-evaluate his life.

Kaveh just grabs another pencil and starts sketching. “Fine. New plan. We’re moving into the Gothic period. Emotionally.”

“Of course we are,” Alhaitham says, dry as sandstone.

He doesn’t protest when Kaveh sits down beside him, shoulders nearly touching. Doesn’t even flinch when Kaveh begins muttering about groin vaults and emotional scaffolding.

Which is… suspicious. Concerning. Perhaps even structurally unsound.

Because here’s the thing: Alhaitham isn’t supposed to be understandable. He’s supposed to be a monolith of cold rationale and moral neutrality, not someone who looks vaguely amused when Kaveh’s hands tremble over tracing paper. Not someone who brings him tea at 2am and pretends not to notice the architectural renderings of “A Home Where Someone Stays” scattered across the floor like a confession.

And definitely not someone who says, so casually it might kill him, “Your proportions are getting better.”

“...Excuse me?”

“In the sketches,” Alhaitham adds, flipping another page, “You’re finally letting the ceiling height correspond to the emotional weight.”

Kaveh stares at him. “Are you... are you flirting with me in metric?”

“No,” says Alhaitham. “I’m giving feedback. As requested.”

“That wasn’t feedback.”

There’s a pause. The room creaks. A breeze filters in through the windows like a metaphor they’re both ignoring.

Then:

“Kaveh,” Alhaitham says, too quiet, “do you always turn blueprints into love letters?”

Kaveh opens his mouth. Closes it. Opens it again. Resists the urge to scream, cry, or redesign the nearest window into a cathedral arch just to make a point.

Finally, he says, “No. Only when I think the foundation might actually hold.”

And then, because he is a coward wrapped in chiffon and pride and historical references, he throws his blueprint in the air and yells, “YOU DON’T GET TO SAY THAT WHILE WEARING GRAY SWEATPANTS, YOU MENACE,” and stomps out of the room.

Alhaitham looks down at the sweatpants.

Then at the blueprint.

Then at the space where Kaveh just was, which still smells faintly of desperation, hair oil, and overpriced cologne.

He flips the sketchbook open again.

On the next page, in blocky, impassioned handwriting:

“PROPOSAL: IF I WERE A HOUSE, I’D WANT YOU TO LIVE IN ME.”

Alhaitham very calmly closes the book, gets up, and follows the sound of screaming.

After all, load-bearing walls are only load-bearing if they’re supported on both ends.

And unfortunately, Alhaitham is starting to suspect he might be one of them.

---

The blueprint lands in the sink.

Specifically, the one Kaveh redesigned last week because “the angles didn’t properly reflect the domestic tragedy of modern cohabitation.” It curls like a dying leaf in the basin, stained with soap and something that might be jam. Or shame. Possibly both.

Kaveh is pacing in the hallway, one hand in his hair, the other gesturing wildly to no one, which is fine because the hallway is the most emotionally neutral room in the house and thus designed for mid-level crises. No windows. No witnesses. Only crown molding and regret.

“I can’t believe I said that,” he mutters to the left-hand wall, which he once called “liminal” in a passive-aggressive fight about hallway rugs.

The wall doesn’t respond, which is frankly rude.

“I can’t believe I wrote that,” he corrects. “In ink. On vellum. Do you know how expensive vellum is? It’s the kind of paper you only use when you’re possessed by longing and architectural madness.”

The wall remains stoically blank. Probably siding with Alhaitham. Bastard.

Meanwhile—back in the shared living room, which is now emotionally contaminated beyond all reasonable levels—Alhaitham has not chased him.

Which is worse than chasing him. Because it means he’s thinking.

And when Alhaitham thinks, he concludes things. And when he concludes things, Kaveh is usually the subject of a peer-reviewed dissection that ends with phrases like “delusional aestheticism” and “the semiotic failure of metaphor as interpersonal strategy.”

And Kaveh—Kaveh is not ready to be academically annihilated by a man who keeps all his socks in alphabetical order.

So naturally, he runs a hand through his hair again (for the sixth time in three minutes), mutters, “This is fine,” and lies down dramatically on the floor.

Directly on the tiles. Like a hero. Like a martyr. Like a man who just exposed the load-bearing walls of his heart to a human chalkboard with opinions.

Which is, of course, when Alhaitham appears.

Quiet. Unfairly barefoot. Wearing the sweatpants. Holding the blueprint like it’s just another book. Like it hasn’t rearranged the floorplan of his reality.

“I thought you wanted this back,” he says, voice level.

Kaveh does not look at him. “If you’re here to tell me my romantic metaphors don’t have structural integrity, I will bite you.”

“You already did,” Alhaitham says, walking closer. “Last month. During the wine incident. I still have the dental impressions.”

Kaveh closes his eyes. “I was trying to emphasize a point.”

“You were trying to open a bottle with your teeth.”

“A tragic metaphor for the limits of man’s reach and the cap of human desire,” Kaveh snaps.

“An act of poor judgment,” Alhaitham counters, then stops a meter away. “Which seems to be your specialty.”

“Oh,” Kaveh says, pushing himself up onto his elbows, “and what’s your specialty? Emotional constipation? Selective empathy? Talking to people like we’re already in footnotes of your autobiography?”

There’s a pause.

Alhaitham sets the blueprint down, neatly. “My specialty,” he says, “is not falling apart every time someone tells me the dishes aren’t metaphysical.”

“I never said they weren’t metaphysical! I said they were an act of ritualistic cohabitation warfare!”

“You said I weaponized sponge placement.”

“YOU DO!”

“And you interpreted it as a coded message about rejection.”

“It was!”

“It was literally just a sponge!”

“It was yellow, Alhaitham!”

“Oh for the love of epistemology—”

And that’s it. That’s the thesis defense of their relationship: standing in the hallway, yelling about sponges, using tone alone to justify the emotional architecture of their catastrophes.

Until, suddenly, silence.

Kaveh blinks.

Alhaitham sighs.

“Kaveh,” he says, softer now, almost like a draft slipping under a door, “why do you keep trying to build explanations for me?”

Kaveh opens his mouth. Then closes it.

Then says, very quietly, “Because you won’t give me any.”

The air stills.

“You won’t say what you’re thinking. You won’t tell me what you want. You act like you exist in a vacuum-sealed thesis and everything else is a footnote. So I draw you. I label the blueprints. I name the trusses. I theorize. Because at least then, I’m allowed to interpret you.”

Alhaitham doesn’t speak.

Kaveh pushes onward. He’s already bleeding from the rebar of this admission, might as well finish the damn beam.

“And because—because if I build you into something I understand, then maybe I don’t have to admit—”

He stops.

Alhaitham raises an eyebrow.

“—admit what?”

“Nothing,” Kaveh blurts. “Shut up.”

“No. Say it.”

“I will not!”

“I’m not moving.”

“You’re not my supervisor!”

“I’m not your anything.”

And that—that stops the earth. That cracks the foundation. That’s the phrase that echoes down the hallway like a wrecking ball made of unsaid things.

Kaveh laughs. It sounds like it hurts. “That’s the problem, isn’t it.”

They’re quiet again.

There’s a tension in the air now that feels like it belongs on a blueprint. A note scrawled in the margin: Here be risk. Here be ruin. Here be revelation.

And then, because silence is worse than death, Kaveh says:

“I could draft the perfect home, you know. Vaulted ceilings. Passive light. An atrium for plants and overreactions. A central staircase to dramatize my daily descent into chaos. And still, it wouldn’t matter.”

Alhaitham tilts his head. “Why not?”

“Because if you won’t stay in it,” Kaveh says, almost whispering, “then it’s just a building. Not a home.”

Alhaitham looks at him for a very, very long time.

Then:

“You’re ridiculous.”

“Thank you.”

“And overwrought.”

“Tragically.”

“And possibly mentally unwell.”

“Exquisitely.”

“And—” Alhaitham takes one step closer “—you misspelled ‘cantilever’ on page four.”

Kaveh gasps. “I was crying!”

Alhaitham’s lips twitch. “Apparently.”

Another step.

“You are so—so emotionally barren, I could use you as a quarry.”

“And yet you insist on living with me.”

“I like ruins. They’re poetic.”

Another step.

“I’m going to rebuild you from scratch one day,” Kaveh murmurs, dizzy with something he won’t name.

“I’d like to see you try,” Alhaitham says, close enough now that Kaveh can see the smirk hiding behind his thesis voice.

“Fine,” Kaveh breathes. “Blueprint me.”

Alhaitham leans in. His voice drops to a whisper. “You’d fall apart before the foundation dried.”

“I am the foundation,” Kaveh hisses.

And then they’re standing there. Eye to eye. Blueprint to blueprint. Thesis to disaster. Breath to breath.

Still not kissing.

Of course not.

Because that would be structurally reckless.

Because denial is the strongest material known to man.

Because even now, even here, especially now and here, they are both busy calculating escape routes they never intend to use.

Still.

The air is thick with the promise of proximity. The tension of things not quite broken.

And somewhere, deep in the metaphorical floorboards of Kaveh’s skull, a little voice whispers:
this is how it starts.

With half-sentences.

With almosts.

With emotional scaffolding too delicate to touch.

And with a man who still hasn’t said he feels anything at all.

Not yet.

But the plans are drawn.

And Kaveh never builds something he doesn’t secretly hope will last.

Even if it means sharing a kitchen sink with the metaphorical equivalent of a goddamn earthquake in a library sweater.

They don’t move.

They don’t kiss.

They are still not kissing.

This is, objectively, the worst decision of Kaveh’s architectural career.

Worse than the Waterfall Bathtub Incident™. Worse than the Free-Standing Balcony Catastrophe. Worse than letting Alhaitham install the bookshelf in the kitchen, which is currently leaning at a 45-degree angle of judgment, because “books belong where people fear to read.”

They are standing—no, inhabiting space—exactly one point six meters apart. Kaveh knows because he designed a whole draft titled: “Minimum Safe Distance for Emotional Stability in a Shared Living Environment.” It involved algebra. And heartache. And a scale model made of sugar cubes that melted when Alhaitham opened a window.

“You’re staring,” Alhaitham says.

“I’m observing,” Kaveh lies.

“You’re evaluating structural integrity.”

“I’m wondering if you’re capable of human warmth.”

Alhaitham crosses his arms. “And?”

Kaveh scowls. “The results are inconclusive. I’ll need another test.”

Alhaitham quirks a brow. “Kiss me, then.”

“Excuse me?”

“Scientific method,” Alhaitham says, voice criminally flat. “Observe. Hypothesize. Experiment. Conclude.”

“You can’t just—hypothesize—kissing! That’s not a replicable metric!”

“Why not?”

Kaveh flails. “Because emotion isn’t quantifiable! You can’t reduce interpersonal intimacy to a double-blind trial!”

“You just tried to assign emotional load values to my sighs last week.”

“THAT WAS DIFFERENT. I WAS IN A SENSITIVE MOOD.”

“You were drunk and accusing my posture of gaslighting you.”

“Your spine is condescending!”

“It’s a spine.”

“Well, it’s rude.”

Alhaitham does not respond.

He just looks at Kaveh the way a man might examine the weak point of a vaulted ceiling—like if he pressed just right, it would all come down.

Kaveh hates him. Not in the traditional sense, of course. Not in a kill you and salt your soil way. More like a sit on your lap and argue about Foucault until someone cries kind of hate.

(He’s not sure who cries. Statistically, it’s a coin flip.)

“Say something,” Kaveh demands, arms crossed now too, defensive, dramatic, a full gothic arch of accusation.

Alhaitham tilts his head. “I’m thinking.”

“That’s worse.”

“You’re exhausting.”

“I’m a cathedral of emotional complexity!”

“You’re a poorly ventilated amphitheater of projection.”

“I am structurally divine!”

“You’re an open-floor plan in denial.”

“Oh my gods,” Kaveh hisses, turning around in an architecturally significant twirl, “I should’ve moved out when you called Schopenhauer ‘emotionally redundant.’”

Alhaitham doesn’t rise to the bait.

He rarely does.

He just watches.

Like Kaveh is a living case study in unsound masonry.

Like he’s waiting to see what cracks next.

Kaveh wishes it weren’t always him.

Because here’s the problem:

He can build anything. Give him broken pieces, and he’ll mosaic the damn thing into something beautiful. But Alhaitham? Alhaitham doesn’t give him pieces. He gives him edges. Blank planes. Non-permeable surfaces. Entire blank walls of man with no door.

And Kaveh?

Kaveh always wants in.

He exhales. “This is stupid.”

“Agreed.”

“You’re impossible.”

“So are you.”

“This house doesn’t have enough emotional insulation.”

“I offered to soundproof your bedroom.”

“Emotionally, Alhaitham.”

“I fail to see how that’s my responsibility.”

Kaveh groans. “Of course you do! Because you’re a walking monument to unprocessed affection! You haven’t emotionally developed since academia first cursed you with that tragic undercut!”

“My undercut is immaculate.”

“Your undercut is a cry for help.”

Alhaitham steps forward.

It’s subtle. But deadly. Like a support beam shifting mid-earthquake.

Kaveh doesn’t move.

He can’t.

He’s rooted to the tile. Braced like a column waiting for its architect to give it purpose.

“You,” Alhaitham says, so low it barely registers on the frequency spectrum, “talk a lot about structure. But none of it keeps you upright.”

Kaveh swallows.

Hard.

“Excuse me?”

“You build theories. Draft heartbreak. Design metaphors until you drown in them. But you don’t hold anything up.”

“That’s because—because you won’t let me.”

Alhaitham’s eyes narrow. “What is it you’re trying to hold up, Kaveh?”

Kaveh opens his mouth.

Closes it.

Swears. Opens it again.

“I—”

He freezes.

Blueprint error. Emotional render failure. Neural system overheating. Please restart your heart.

“Nothing,” he says.

Coward.

But Alhaitham doesn’t press.

He never does.

Just stands there, cool and composed and entirely too fond of silence.

Until he says, “We need a new bookshelf.”

Kaveh blinks. “That’s your follow-up?”

“You broke the last one.”

“I broke it in a moment of poetic rage!”

“You weaponized Rousseau.”

“I used him as an emotional projectile!”

Alhaitham sighs. Picks up the blueprint from earlier. Smooths the edge.

“I’m going to the Bazaar,” he says.

“For what?”

“For wood. Or therapy. Whichever’s cheaper.”

Kaveh wants to scream. Or cry. Or kiss him until he forgets how vowels work.

Instead he says, “Fine. Get oak. Not pine. Pine warps under pressure.”

Alhaitham glances at him.

“I know,” he says.

And then he’s gone.

Just like that.

Leaving Kaveh alone with the echo of a thousand unsaid things and the smell of sweatpants and saffron and the kind of silence you can build a mausoleum around.

He looks at the blueprint.

It’s wrinkled. Annotated. There’s a new note in the margin. Not his handwriting.

“Revision suggestion: Maybe it is a home.”

Kaveh slams the door of his bedroom so hard the ceiling shakes.

He’s already halfway through redesigning the entire house by the time the door clicks again.

This time, the notes aren’t in his handwriting either.

But the new drawing?

Two figures. Holding up a roofbeam together.

Labeled, in painfully straight lines:

“Mutual Structural Support. (Draft Only.)”

And that, Kaveh thinks—

That might be the closest Alhaitham has ever come to saying “stay.”

So of course, Kaveh immediately begins rewriting the entire theory of cohabitation again.

Subsection A:
It’s not love.

Subsection B:
But gods, it’s load-bearing.

---

By 3:07 AM, Kaveh has re-redesigned the floor plan of the house fourteen separate times.

Each version gets progressively more unhinged:

Design A: Adds walls between every existing room. No open concepts. No temptation. No shared space. Also includes an isolation tower for “Alhaitham’s Cold, Godless Rationality” and an automated voice that screams “Personal boundaries are not emotional barriers!” whenever Alhaitham walks past.

Design B: The opposite. Open floor plan. No walls. No privacy. No secrets. Just vulnerability and vaulted ceilings. Sunlight everywhere. Kaveh cries while drawing it, muttering “Let the walls come down, metaphorically and otherwise,” into his cup of hibiscus tea (with three sugars and a shot of denial).

Design C: Two houses split by a trench. Connected only by a drawbridge that retracts when either party is emotionally unavailable. Which is always.

Design D: Has no floor. Just falling.

And then—

Design E: Kaveh doesn’t even label it. He draws it with his eyes closed. He draws it from memory.

It is the original home. But everything is softer. The walls curve gently, like a question not yet asked. There’s a shared reading alcove. A kitchen bench that fits two people. A blanket left out, not because someone forgot it, but because someone knew the other would be cold.

There’s a note in the corner.

It says: “No renovations necessary.”

Kaveh throws his drafting pencil across the room and screams into a pillow.

Alhaitham, from the other room, doesn’t react.

Which is fine.

Kaveh wasn’t doing it for attention. He was doing it for emotional release, thank you very much.

He’s not even thinking about him. Not at all. Not in the way he’s memorized the number of pages Alhaitham turns in an hour. Not in the way he keeps noticing how the morning light makes his hair look like half-finished calligraphy. Not in the way his voice is a blueprint for composure.

Nope.

This is just normal roommate behavior.

Normal, bitter, architecturally coded, platonic loathing.

Which is why Kaveh, at 3:26 AM, does the most reckless thing he’s ever done:

He sneaks into Alhaitham’s room like a tragic antihero in an opera. (With very good hair.)

The door creaks.

The room is dark. The window is cracked open, letting in the scent of rain and bad decisions. Alhaitham is asleep—on his back, of course, like someone who has never known fear or pillow preference. His chest rises and falls with steady, infuriating control.

Kaveh stares.

Then stares harder.

Then whispers, with all the passion of a man who has redesigned his own heartbreak in cross-section:

“I bet your emotional repression has its own zip code.”

Alhaitham, somehow, does not awaken. Probably because his subconscious has noise-canceling settings. Probably because he’s already dreaming about footnotes and solitude and a world without kitchen sponges.

Kaveh moves closer.

Just to observe.

For research.

Not because he wants to see the way Alhaitham’s face looks in sleep—unfurrowed, unguarded, undone.

Not because he wants to trace the shape of his collarbone and label it “Fault line: active.”

He leans in.

He whispers: “I could fix you. Architecturally.”

Behind him, the bed creaks.

Alhaitham, still entirely unconscious, says in a perfectly normal voice:

“You’re standing on a pressure point in the floorboards. Three centimeters forward and the whole room echoes.”

Kaveh screams.

There is a flailing of limbs. A tangle of limbs. A dramatic trip over a very unoffending chair. The blueprint of chaos is complete.

Alhaitham sits up.

Kaveh, tangled in a curtain, yells, “HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN AWAKE?”

Alhaitham blinks. “Define ‘awake.’”

“Cognizant!”

“Oh.” A pause. “Since ‘zip code.’”

“You monster.”

“You broke into my room.”

“I was conducting a study!”

“You were monologuing over my sleep form like a villain in an architecture-themed soap opera.”

Kaveh stands, noble despite the curtain. “Well maybe if you weren’t the human embodiment of an uninspected foundation, I wouldn’t have to resort to—guerilla schematics!”

“Guerilla schematics,” Alhaitham repeats.

“Yes!”

“Is that what you call creeping into my room to whisper building code violations into my ear?”

“It’s called insightful critique.”

There is silence.

It lasts a full ten seconds.

Then—

“Did you mean it?” Alhaitham says, voice lower now. “What you wrote. About the blueprint. About home.”

Kaveh falters.

He looks at the floor. The ceiling. The curtain he’s still half-wearing.

Then, very softly: “I mean everything I design.”

Alhaitham nods.

Kaveh doesn’t breathe.

Then Alhaitham adds, “That explains the theatrical mezzanine in the living room.”

Kaveh throws the curtain at him.

“THIS IS WHY NO ONE INVITES YOU TO THE SYMPHONY.”

Alhaitham catches it. “You hate the symphony.”

“I love the symphony!”

“You cried during the overture and declared the acoustics ‘emotionally manipulative.’”

“BECAUSE THEY WERE!”

“Kaveh.”

“What?”

“You’re still in my room.”

Kaveh crosses his arms. “Well maybe I live here now. Maybe this is my interpersonal annex. My emotional crawlspace. My—my denial bunker!”

“You’re unbelievable.”

“You’re emotionally illiterate.”

“You just used the phrase ‘denial bunker’ with a straight face.”

“It’s structurally sound!”

They stare at each other.

Lightning flashes in the distance.

Somewhere, a very tired architect in the recesses of Kaveh’s soul scribbles “Exhibit F: This Is Not Foreplay” and promptly sets the paper on fire.

Still.

Neither of them moves.

Neither of them leaves.

Kaveh breathes.

Alhaitham watches him.

And in the silence between blueprints and bickering, between thesis and tantrum, something shifts.

A slow, seismic shift. Like tectonic plates brushing hands for the first time.

“Kaveh,” Alhaitham says, voice like a blueprint half-erased, “If I were a structure—”

“You’d be brutalist.”

“I’d be patient.”

“…That’s worse.”

“And if I were patient,” he continues, “Would you ever stay long enough to see how the building settles?”

Kaveh’s mouth opens.

Then closes.

Then opens again.

Then, in a voice that is too raw to be sarcastic, too quiet to be theatrical, he says:

“…Maybe I already have.”

They don’t kiss.

Of course they don’t.

But Kaveh doesn’t leave the room.

And Alhaitham doesn’t ask him to.

They fall asleep side by side, blueprint and contradiction.

---

Kaveh wakes up to a crisis.

Which is honestly not unusual. Most mornings involve some kind of crisis—hair, deadlines, misplaced renderings, Alhaitham’s continued existence within a five-meter radius—but this one feels structurally distinct. The crisis today is spatial, which is to say:

He has awoken in the same bed as his nemesis.

And worse—worse!—his forehead is touching Alhaitham’s shoulder.

There is no God. There is only thermal proximity and the faint scent of cedar shampoo and moral decay.

Kaveh, architect of his own suffering, does not move. That would be an admission of consciousness. And if he is not conscious, then he cannot be blamed for accidentally pressing his knee against Alhaitham’s thigh. Which is also warm. And unjustifiably sturdy.

He stares at the ceiling instead.

Which he also designed.

And which is now taunting him, because he knows those wooden beams symbolize emotional repression (subtext: his). He’s going to have to re-render the entire layout of this house just to recover from the symbolism of this morning.

He tries to summon the voice of reason. Unfortunately, the only voice in his head is Alhaitham’s, saying something like “architectural metaphors aren’t a replacement for therapy.”

So Kaveh, logical creature that he is, flops dramatically away from Alhaitham, slams his own pillow over his face, and screams into it.

Behind him, Alhaitham hums.

And then—

“Good morning.”

Kaveh dies.

Not outwardly. That would be too convenient. No, he dies inwardly, like an ancient city buried under emotional debris and the weight of his own internal screaming.

“Nothing about this is good,” he mutters, peeling himself upright with the grace of a man attempting to dismantle a chandelier made of his own denial.

Alhaitham is already sitting up, already wearing a fresh shirt (neutral-toned, because of course he is), already sipping his tea like this is Tuesday and not the precise moment the walls of Jericho collapsed under the weight of his proximity.

“I take it you’re regretting your unsanctioned psychological excavation,” he says without looking up from his mug.

Kaveh, bleary and betrayed by the softness of his own voice, huffs. “I was sleeping peacefully before someone radiated stoic intimacy into the sheets.”

“That’s your fault for being the kind of person who turns shared air into a romance novella.”

Kaveh scowls. “You let me stay.”

“I didn’t say you could narrate it.”

“It’s not my fault my subconscious is emotionally fluent.”

“It is your fault you talk in your sleep.”

Kaveh freezes. “What did I say.”

“Something about trusses and emotional risk load.”

“Oh my gods—”

“And,” Alhaitham adds mildly, “you said my eyes were ‘hazardously symmetrical.’”

Kaveh claps a hand over his mouth like that might contain the blast radius of his own vulnerability.

“Don’t worry,” Alhaitham deadpans. “I’ll report you to the Aesthetics Board.”

“You’re the worst.”

“You broke into my room last night.”

“I brought emotional clarity!”

“You brought blueprints.”

Kaveh hurls a pillow at him.

Alhaitham catches it one-handed, unfazed. Then stands.

Kaveh, who had absolutely not noticed the way his shirt clings to his back as he stretches, turns away with a theatrical noise of disdain.

“Ugh. Fine. Let’s just never speak of it again.”

“Fine.”

“I’m serious.”

“I assumed as much.”

“It never happened.”

“Of course.”

“I wasn’t here.”

“Who?”

“Exactly.”

Pause.

Beat.

Silence, except for the gentle gurgle of the coffee machine and the architectural moaning of unfulfilled yearning.

Ten minutes later, they’re in the kitchen. Existing.

Coexisting.

Not speaking. Not looking.

Except when they are.

Alhaitham sips his coffee. Kaveh stares at the mug. It is the worst mug in the house: simple, grey, not even a funny quote on it.

Kaveh, who has an entire curated collection of beautiful cups, does not understand how a person can drink feelings from something so emotionally barren.

“I’m buying new mugs,” he says abruptly.

Alhaitham raises a brow. “Why?”

“Because yours make me question the meaning of aesthetic life.”

“They’re functional.”

“They’re depressing.”

“They hold liquid. That’s all that matters.”

“I bet if someone gave you a cup that said ‘World’s Most Emotionally Avoidant Roommate’ you wouldn’t even flinch.”

“I’d use it,” Alhaitham replies, “because unlike some people, I don’t let ceramic dictate my emotional state.”

Kaveh narrows his eyes. “You let nothing dictate your emotional state.”

“Incorrect. You do. Constantly.”

Kaveh flinches.

Alhaitham doesn’t blink.

Neither of them breathe.

Somewhere, a spoon clinks against ceramic like a gun cocking in a romantic tragedy.

“Take it back,” Kaveh whispers.

“Make me,” Alhaitham says, just above a murmur.

Kaveh’s chair screeches back.

Alhaitham doesn’t move.

And then, because the tension is tectonic and they are both cracked glass pretending to be polished steel—

Kaveh turns on his heel, grabs his sketchbook from the kitchen counter, and shoves it into Alhaitham’s chest.

“Here,” he snaps. “Exhibit G. Just take it. I don’t care anymore.”

Alhaitham catches it. Flips it open and reads.

Kaveh tries not to watch. Tries not to notice the soft furrow of his brow, the way his eyes scan like blueprints and betray nothing. Tries not to hope.

Finally, Alhaitham says:

“‘Design for a Shared Living Space: Functional, Fluid, Flawed. Structure to be revisited pending tenant feedback.’”

He looks up.

“And what, exactly, is this meant to be?”

Kaveh glares. “It’s a floor plan of my emotional availability, you cardboard bookcase!”

Alhaitham stares at him.

Then—

“That explains the spiral staircase.”

“It symbolizes regression!”

Alhaitham nods, flipping to the next page. “You’ve labeled the dining area ‘zone of confrontation.’”

“Because I can’t sit across from you without monologuing.”

“This is projection.”

Kaveh crosses his arms. “Everything is projection. Some of us just have the artistic decency to acknowledge it.”

Alhaitham closes the sketchbook.

Sets it on the counter.

And says, so quietly it might shatter steel:

“Would you design something with me?”

Kaveh blinks. “What?”

Alhaitham doesn’t repeat himself. Just waits.

Like a man laying down a foundation.

Like a man who’s done calculating risk and is finally—finally—ready to build something.

“I…” Kaveh’s throat works. “I don’t do collaborative projects.”

“I know.”

“I argue. I overthink. I draw tragic domes over arguments and call them aesthetic.”

“I know.”

“I sabotage blueprints before the walls even go up.”

“I know.”

Silence.

Then—

“Okay,” Kaveh says.

Very softly.

“Okay.”

And then the coffee machine hisses.

And the sunlight cuts through the window just right.

And Kaveh, standing barefoot in a kitchen that still smells like espresso and ego, dares to think:

Maybe we’re not finished yet.

Maybe we’re just in the preliminary phase.

Maybe I’m not the only one who wants this to stand.

He looks at Alhaitham, who, for once, is not reading. Not writing or analyzing.

Waiting. Like a man who has chosen to stay in the blueprint.

For now.

For today.

And maybe—

Maybe tomorrow.

By 8:42 a.m., the agreement has already been misinterpreted eight different ways.

Kaveh, pacing like a man haunted by both aesthetics and his own mouth, has mentally redesigned the living room six times in as many minutes.

“‘Would you design something with me,’” he mutters, dragging his hand through his hair. “‘Design,’ he says. Design what, Alhaitham? A house? A metaphor? A shared closet system?”

He freezes. Gasps.

“Wait—what if he meant closet system?!”

He turns dramatically toward the table, where Alhaitham is… doing a crossword. In pen. While drinking his second cup of black coffee and wearing those glasses, which Kaveh refuses to acknowledge as anything other than an instrument of war.

“How can you be doing a crossword at a time like this?” Kaveh snaps, gesturing wildly like a conductor mid-symphony breakdown.

Alhaitham does not look up. “Because it is morning. And I have a brain.”

“Do you not realize the emotional implications of what you just said?”

“I realize that six across is ‘hubris.’”

“STOP SPEAKING IN POETIC FORESHADOWING.”

Alhaitham calmly writes hubris in sharp, perfect strokes.

Kaveh watches the ink dry like it’s a moral insult.

“I need to clarify,” he announces, spinning back around. “For the sake of architectural intent and legal record. When you said ‘would you design something with me,’ were you—” he swallows, “—implying a mutual… cohabitation project?”

Alhaitham glances up. “That would depend on how many bathrooms you demand.”

Kaveh chokes.

“Because I’m not sharing one,” Alhaitham continues, turning the page. “You keep your serums on the toothbrush holder.”

“They’re hydrating tonics, and you never even brush at night!”

“Because your existential screeching keeps me awake.”

“I’M VIBRATING WITH ARTISTRY.”

“You’re vibrating with poor financial decisions.”

Kaveh shrieks, flings himself over the back of the couch, and rolls dramatically onto the rug, which he immediately begins critiquing aloud.

“This shag texture represents my mental instability. This color—soulless beige—is an insult to warmth and narrative cohesion. And this indentation—this unspeakable indentation right here—”

“That’s from your ass,” Alhaitham mutters, circling ten across: “truth.”

“I hope the gods smite you in alphabetical order,” Kaveh hisses from the floor. “I hope your bookshelves collapse under the weight of your own superiority.”

“They won’t. I anchor them to the studs.”

“Oh my gods, you are the stud.”

Silence.

Horrifying, echoing silence.

Kaveh freezes. Clutches the rug like it might save him from himself.

Alhaitham sets his pen down with infuriating gentleness.

“You want to rephrase that?”

“No,” Kaveh whispers, mortified.

“You want to say it again?”

“No—”

“You want to print it on a mug?”

“I—” Kaveh gulps. “Would consider it.”

Alhaitham hums.

It’s the kind of hum that sounds like calculation. Like the crunch of numbers and boundaries and possibilities.

Kaveh has never wanted to punch him and kiss him in such equal measure.

Instead, he clutches a throw pillow and screams into it.

“You’re derailing my entire thesis,” he mutters.

“Good,” Alhaitham replies smoothly. “Your thesis was structurally unsound.”

“Oh yeah? Well your heart’s a windowless room.”

“And yet you keep breaking in.”

Kaveh throws the pillow.

This time it hits. Square in the chest. Alhaitham doesn’t even flinch.

Instead, he picks it up, smooths it out, and says, “Fine. Let’s test it.”

Kaveh pauses. “Test what.”

“Our compatibility.”

Kaveh blinks. “In what sense.”

“Architectural,” Alhaitham says.

But the air thickens.

Heavy. Dense. Loaded like a wall that’s borne too much already.

“I see,” Kaveh says, with a voice that tries and fails to be steady. “An… empirical experiment.”

Alhaitham nods.

“Parameters?”

“One room. One afternoon. One hypothetical project.”

Kaveh gulps. “That’s… very limiting.”

“That’s how hypotheses work.”

Kaveh squints. “And if we fail?”

“We blame the blueprint.”

“And if we succeed?”

“Then we revisit the zoning laws.”

Kaveh’s breath hitches.

“…Okay,” he says. “Okay. One room. One project.”

Alhaitham stands. “Then get dressed.”

Kaveh blinks. “Right now?”

“It’s a controlled environment,” Alhaitham says, already moving toward the door. “And I’ve already booked the studio.”

“Studio?!”

“For drafting.”

“Oh my gods—”

“Don’t be late.”

“I’m going to haunt you.”

“Unlikely,” Alhaitham calls back. “You’re too loud to be a ghost.”

---

By 11:00 AM, they are in a shared drafting space, sitting three feet apart, facing a blank canvas the size of a shared future.

Kaveh is sweating.

Alhaitham is not.

Kaveh is trying not to think about how their chairs match.

Or how the table between them is a metaphor.

Or how the metaphor is wearing headphones.

“So,” Kaveh says, “what are we designing.”

“You choose,” Alhaitham says.

“I’m going to choose something stupid out of spite.”

“I’m counting on it.”

Kaveh glares.

Then says, “Fine. Let’s design a public library.”

“Why.”

“Because it’s filled with silent yearning and uncomfortable chairs.”

Alhaitham blinks. “You’re projecting again.”

“I am the projection.”

They sketch in silence.

Except not silence.

Because every breath is a footstep toward something neither of them has named. Because every pencil line is tension. Every note in the margin is an admission.

Kaveh writes: “Main entry: 4 meters, vaulted.”

Alhaitham scribbles below it: “Excessive. Reduce to 2.5. Dramatic flair can be absorbed in atrium design.”

Kaveh writes: “The atrium IS the drama.”

Alhaitham crosses it out. Adds: “You’re not the client. Control yourself.”

Kaveh narrows his eyes. Leans in. Their shoulders brush. Electricity.

Alhaitham does not flinch.

Kaveh does.

“You’re enjoying this,” Kaveh murmurs.

“I enjoy all forms of intelligence,” Alhaitham says, “even when misapplied by melodramatic cohabitants.”

“I’m going to climb into your ribcage like a bell tower and ring every unspoken emotion until the plaster cracks.”

“Sounds like a building code violation.”

“YOU’RE a building code violation!”

They lock eyes.

One heartbeat.

Two.

Kaveh breathes. “You have no idea how to be loved, do you.”

Alhaitham’s pencil stills.

Kaveh covers his mouth.

“Oh,” he whispers. “Oh, I shouldn’t have said that.”

Alhaitham looks at him.

Really looks at him.

Then—

“Maybe not,” he says, voice like splintering marble.

“But I’m willing to learn.”

Kaveh chokes.

“From you,” Alhaitham adds.

And then he turns back to the page, like he hasn’t just demolished the last firewall Kaveh ever had.

Kaveh wants to cry.

Or scream.

Or kiss him until the margins blur.

Instead, he picks up his pencil.

And they keep sketching.

Side by side.

Inching closer.

Drawing a building that neither of them will admit is shaped like home.

---

The sketch is almost done.

Kaveh’s pencil hovers over the final line of ink, a curved archway that connects the main room to the atrium. An open threshold. A symbolic admission.

He stares at it like it might bite.

Across the table, Alhaitham finishes shading the inner contours of the mezzanine, sets down his pencil with a precision that makes Kaveh want to both scream and cry, and says:

“That should do it.”

Kaveh doesn’t respond.

He’s staring at the plan like it’s a body. Like it’s a confession. Like it’s a cathedral of every single thing he’s ever wanted and been too afraid to build with his own hands.

“It’s symmetrical,” he says, at last, voice dry.

Alhaitham shrugs. “Balance is important.”

Kaveh swallows. “Even if it’s not real?”

“Especially then.”

There’s a beat.

A pause.

The blueprint between them radiates heat.

“This was just a project,” Kaveh says quietly. “A test. A hypothesis.”

“Yes,” Alhaitham says.

“Yes,” Kaveh repeats.

But his voice wavers.

And Alhaitham looks up.

“You’re lying,” he says.

Kaveh stands abruptly. “I’m going to get lunch.”

“We haven’t eaten.”

“That’s what lunch is.”

Alhaitham tilts his head. “So we’re ignoring it again?”

“Absolutely,” Kaveh says, backing up. “That’s our whole brand. That’s our thesis. Emotional repression in a two-bedroom domestic arena with passive-aggressive lighting.”

“You said you’d collaborate.”

“Well, maybe I lied!”

He’s halfway to the door when Alhaitham says, very simply:

“You’re still afraid.”

Kaveh freezes.

Not because it’s wrong. But because it’s so right it hurts.

He turns, slowly, like a man facing an avalanche of blueprints and bad decisions.

“Of course I’m afraid,” he says, voice cracking. “You make me feel like a badly poured foundation, Alhaitham. Like I’m waiting for the first tremor to collapse me.”

Alhaitham stands.

Steps forward.

One step. Then another. And another.

Until he’s inches away, the same way he always is when something is about to happen and neither of them want to name it.

“You think I don’t feel that too?” he says, voice low. “You think this doesn’t terrify me?”

Kaveh laughs, bitter. “You’re never terrified. You’re—you’re unreadable. You’re composed. You’re a fortress of silence.”

“I’m not,” Alhaitham says.

“You are.”

“I’m not,” he repeats, “with you.”

Kaveh stops breathing.

His hands fall limp at his sides.

The drafting room is quiet. Sunlight warms the edges of the blueprint table. Their shared design glows, fragile and waiting.

Kaveh exhales, wrecked.

“You’re insufferable.”

“You’re irrational.”

“You’re so—so—”

Kaveh’s pencil has hovered in the same spot for four minutes.

Alhaitham has stopped annotating entirely. He’s just watching. Patiently. Too patiently.

Kaveh can’t stand it.

“This is a trap,” he says at last.

Alhaitham raises an eyebrow. “How so.”

“You’re letting me feel things. In a building. While we’re collaborating. That’s unethical.”

“I didn’t realize your emotional boundaries had zoning laws.”

“Oh, they do,” Kaveh says. “Heavily reinforced. There are permits. There’s fencing. There are signs that say ‘trespassers will be romantically prosecuted.’”

“And yet,” Alhaitham says calmly, “I’m already inside.”

Kaveh stops.

Looks up.

Their eyes meet.

No metaphors this time. Or blueprints.

Only breath. Space. And the creaking tension of something soft trying to survive inside a structure built for denial.

“I hate you,” Kaveh says, voice trembling.

“I know.”

“I hate your stupid symmetry. I hate your mug collection. I hate how you always know what page I’m on before I do.”

“Sounds exhausting.”

“It is. You’re exhausting. You’re the equivalent of a silent museum exhibit I keep coming back to because I can’t stop wondering what the plaque says.”

“I see.”

“And your face,” Kaveh whispers. “Gods, your face. It’s like… it’s like a colonnade. Stoic. Permanent. Unshakeable. I keep waiting for the cracks. I keep waiting for the—”

Alhaitham leans in. “Kaveh.”

“What.”

“Shut up.”

And then he kisses him.

It is not a polite kiss.

It is not a theoretical kiss.
It is not a well-reasoned, properly scaffolded, carefully peer-reviewed kiss.

It is a collapse.

It is the ceiling falling in.

It is a thousand unspoken things finally deciding they’ve waited long enough.

It is mouth on mouth, hand in hair, blueprints crumpling beneath elbows and spines, and Kaveh gasping like he’s being carved open by gentleness.

Alhaitham kisses like someone who doesn’t ask questions he already knows the answers to.
Like someone who’s read the thesis and found the hidden footnote.
Like someone who wants to stay.

And Kaveh—Kaveh, gods help him, kisses like a building giving in to the shape of the light.

“I’m still mad at you,” Kaveh whispers, breathless, fingers tangled in cotton and intellect.

“I’d be concerned if you weren’t.”

“You’re infuriating. Cold. Stubborn. Condescending. And emotionally as accessible as a locked wine cellar under academic embargo—”

“And yet,” Alhaitham murmurs, mouth brushing the corner of his, “you kissed back.”

Kaveh whimpers.

It’s embarrassing.

He’s going to blame the acoustics later.

And then—finally—

Kaveh kisses him again.

It is not elegant.

It is not symmetrical.

It is chaotic and loud and unapologetically Kaveh—hands in Alhaitham’s hair, lips crashing like they’ve both run out of time and metaphors.

Alhaitham responds like he’s been waiting. Steady hands on Kaveh’s waist, anchoring. Grounding. Pulling him closer like a new axis.

They kiss like a blueprint collapsing into a real house.

They kiss like a foundation that never cracked.

They kiss like this was always the plan.

Like scaffolding being removed from something already standing.

When they break apart—only barely, only enough for breath—Kaveh’s eyes are shining.

“You kissed me,” he says.

“You started it.”

“I finished it.”

“I’ll allow it.”

Kaveh laughs into his shoulder. “This is so stupid.”

Alhaitham hums. “You’ve designed dumber things.”

“Shut up.”

“Make me.”

Kaveh kisses him once more.

Longer this time. Softer. Sweeter.

A finishing touch on something built by hand and hope and years of misplaced pencils.

And afterward—when they’re sitting on the floor of the studio, backs against the drafting table, blueprint curled between them like a cat—they say nothing.

They don’t need to.

But Kaveh—Kaveh reaches for a pen.

And writes, at the bottom corner of the plan:

Revision Note: Functioning as intended.

And Alhaitham, without looking, adds below it:

Status: Occupied.

They lean into each other.

And for once, they do not argue about the furniture placement.

Or the light.

Or the acoustics.

They simply exist in a room they built together.

In a moment that finally—finally—holds.