Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

If Kaveh were being honest, twenty-eight was a bit too young for him to become a dad. Or pseudo-dad, but when his mom gave him the call that she had to move to Fontaine for her work thing, what was Kaveh supposed to do? Let his little brother’s life get uprooted at five years old by either emigrating him to another country while constantly moving and having no consistent adult around? No! Of course, not!

Kaveh may not have been there for his birth because of his early architect work, but now that he’d moved back home, he was determined to step up.

And so, after settling into his childhood home and helping his mom and stepdad pack up for the move back to Fontaine, he bid them farewell with Kasra sitting high on his shoulders and then he turned back and cooked Kasra a healthy dinner while also sitting down and watching a fun cartoon with him. 

Kaveh was pretty good at this new pseudo-dad thing. He did the gentle parenting thing that was getting big on the internet, held his temper when Kasra knocked something delicate over and helped him clean it up instead of yelling at him for having underdeveloped motor skills. When Kasra drew some blob-shaped lion or finished the twenty-five piece puzzle by himself, Kaveh asked, “Wow, did you have fun making that?” instead of calling him talented and smart and giving him fucked up standards of achievements.

But Kaveh was still in his twenties. He wasn’t all quite settled yet. He had this fuckass architecture job that worked him long hours with a pay too meager to compensate for the god-awful work life balance, and even if he generally liked the work, working these unsustainable hours was a lot harder with a toddler to take care of. It made him pick up Kasra late from daycare sometimes, and even though Kasra was joy condensed into the body of a toddler, it did leave this terrible ache in Kaveh’s heart seeing him be the last kid in the daycare, three employees sitting and waiting to close up but could not because Kasra was still there, long after all the other kids had left.

At least his mom had paid off the house so he could give Kasra a permanent residence to live and play in. And, selfishly, it made Kaveh feel better, too. Just the air of his childhood home made him feel safe, like he, too, was a child again. Even if he was the caretaker now.

But it was fine, or at least Kaveh was trying to tell himself that. When the school year started, he was going to be better about setting firmer boundaries with his manager. Or if not that, maybe he could leave the office when school let out, pick up Kasra, and then head back to the office after putting his little brother to bed. 

For the first day of kindergarten, at least, Kaveh had told his manager weeks in advance that he had to leave early that day, no exceptions. For Kasra’s first day of kindergarten, he was determined not to let Kasra be the last one at the school. That morning, he’d woken Kasra up bright and early, cooked him halim the way their mom used to make it, and then drove the ten minutes to the elementary school and dropped him off.

Then, after a full day of grueling work, Kaveh told his manager that he was heading out, “To pick up my little brother from school. As I’ve been mentioning these past few weeks,” he said.

“I remember,” nodded his manager, a little irritably. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

So Kaveh left work early and ran through a list of questions to ask Kasra when he saw him bounding out of the school on his tiny little toddler legs. Did you have fun? What did you learn? Did you make any friends?

He pulled into the little roundabout in front of the elementary school where all the other parents’ cars were lined up, feeling the strangest sense of world-flipping because the last time he was at the elementary school, he was the one getting picked up by his mother.

Kaveh slowed down as he neared the curb. He looked out through the crowd of all the other little kindergarteners playing in front of the school, searching for a familiar little blond head. All around him, parents were stepping out of their cars with open arms, waiting for their children to come bounding towards them with all the joy of returning home.

He stepped out of the car to get a better view. He scanned the little crowd before he finally spotted a familiar blond head near the benches. He smiled and took a step closer when he realized Kasra was talking to someone on that bench; someone tall and adult-like with an eerily familiar head of gray hair.

No, Kaveh thought. There’s no fucking way.

Kasra whirled around. “Kaveh!”

The figure on the bench lifted his head, green gaze colliding with Kaveh’s like a pair of magnets.

“Al-Haitham?”

-

Kaveh had met Al-Haitham his junior year of college. He’d lived two years blissfully unaware of his existence, just struggling through his architecture degree through the week and finding solace in playing drunk Genius Invokation with his friends on the weekend. It was a simple life. A peaceful life. Something he’d half expected to last forever when one autumn morning, two weeks into the semester, Tighnari dragged in a newcomer.

Nilou had lifted her head first because she’d been facing the door. Kaveh saw her eyes brighten, her smile soften into something friendly and open when she said, “Oh, hey, Tighnari. Who’s this?”

“This is my friend from high school,” said Tighnari. “I found out he hadn’t made any friends yet so I decided to drag him over.”

“I didn’t ask for your help,” a deep voice said, rather rudely.

Kaveh then decided to turn around in his chair. He took his earbuds out—which really weren’t that great at blocking out noise anyway—and craned his neck to find a guy so tall he was absolutely towering over Tighnari. Broad shoulders and surly face with piercing green eyes peering through a curtain of silver hair, observing all of them with the cold distance one would use to look at ants.

“Nice to meet you,” said Kaveh, trying to be friendly. “I’m Kaveh.”

“Al-Haitham,” he said flatly.

Kaveh had tried not to frown. “Are you a freshman?”

“Yes.”

There was a beat of silence, made more awkward by the fact that everyone else was looking at each other awkwardly. 

But Tighnari seemed used to the clipped responses, because all he did was drag out a chair and gesture for him to take a seat. “Here, Al-Haitham.”

Al-Haitham took a seat.

There’d been a little round of introductions. Nilou and Dehya and Dunyarzad introduced themselves as well, though Al-Haitham already knew Cyno because Cyno and Tighnari were attached to each other by the hip—if not physically, then metaphorically because of how much they talked to each other.

“What are you studying?” asked Nilou.

“Linguistics,” said Al-Haitham. And then he pulled his headphones over his ears.

“Wow.” Kaveh blinked. Even Tighnari looked a little apologetic. Kaveh looked at Nilou. “Rude. He—”

“It’s fine!” Nilou waved her hands. “It’s okay, I’m sure he’s just a bit overwhelmed—”

“I can still hear you,” said Al-Haitham flatly. “I haven’t turned the noise-canceling on yet.”

Kaveh’s face burned. He’d turned to Al-Haitham. “What is your problem?”

“Not sure what you mean,” said Al-Haitham wryly, with his fucking headphones still over his ears.

“She was talking to you.”

“I believe she asked a question and I answered.”

“You could have—”

“Kaveh, it’s fine.” Nilou nudged his foot under the table. 

Tighnari sat up straighter. “Sorry, Al-Haitham is—”

“You don’t have to speak for me,” said Al-Haitham. “It’s not my problem your friend doesn’t like the fact that I don’t like small talk.”

“Well when you’re like that, no wonder you haven’t made any friends in two weeks,” snapped Kaveh.

The table fell silent.

Al-Haitham, for his part, didn’t look that offended. “If that’s what you want to believe.”

“Kaveh…” started Nilou.

“I’m sorry,” blurted Kaveh. “I didn’t mean that. That was rude.”

Al-Haitham shrugged. “If it makes you feel better, I really don’t care what you think of me.”

Kaveh had sat back, aghast. He remembered his mouth falling open because he couldn’t believe that someone so rude and annoying actually existed. And he was sitting right in front of him! What the fuck!

“You—” Kaveh began.

Al-Haitham interrupted by reaching up to his headphones and pressing a little button—the noise-canceling feature.

“Are you fucking serious?” He demanded, but Al-Haitham didn’t even look up. He turned to his other friends. “Do you see this?”

“Let it be, Kaveh.” Nilou placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Please, let’s just keep studying.”

Kaveh huffed. “Fine.”

So he did, only to keep the peace, but he’d spent the rest of the study date absolutely seething.

-

Al-Haitham startled. “Kaveh?”

He wanted to die.

“What the f—” Kaveh clamped his mouth shut as Kasra came bounding in at the corner of his vision. “Fudge?”

Al-Haitham’s expression fell flat as if he were unimpressed.

Well, fuck you, too. Was it really such a crime that he couldn’t come up with a more creative censor?

“Kaveh!” Kasra latched onto Kaveh’s arm, his hands gritty with the pebbles from the asphalt. “Are you picking me up early?”

He tried not to wince. “Hey, kid.” He ruffled Kasra’s head. “I…yeah! I wanted to be here on time for your first day.” On time, not late.

“He’s yours?” Al-Haitham nodded at Kasra.

“Clearly.” Kaveh made a little gesture to move his arm, but Kasra clung tight to him. His little brother laughed as if it were a game and dug his fingers in tighter.

Al-Haitham hummed.

Kaveh stood rooted to the ground, half terrified and half hysterical at the cruelty of the gods. He wanted to tilt his head to the skies and cry, but perhaps the end of the first day of kindergarten wasn’t the place. And besides, he didn’t quite want to give Al-Haitham the satisfaction.

He couldn’t believe it—Al-Haitham? Here? In the town Kaveh had grown up, at the elementary school he’d attended over a decade ago, standing in the same concrete area in front of the school where his little brother now stood. Here?

Al-Haitham looked so different from when he’d last seen him. Though, that was unsurprising since it’d been six years. He no longer looked like the punkass, arrogant freshman Kaveh had first met, the one that turned his nose up at a new friend group and retreated into his headphones yet still managed to get everyone to like him a few months in—everyone except Kaveh, of course. The last time he’d seen Al-Haitham, he’d been glued to a book, or his phone, one hand shoved in his pocket and always an earbud in his ear or headphones over his head in a clear Do Not Disturb type display.

Now, though, he had no headphones on. It was just his pale ears almost glowing around the tufts of his gray hair while he surveyed the area to make sure kids weren’t hurting themselves. His hands were tucked into the pockets of his business casual khakis and the sleeve of his dark green sweater climbed a little too high up his forearm, like the whole thing was a bit too small as the cotton stretched around his broad shoulders. The collar of a white button up peeked out and over the collar of the sweater. Al-Haitham looked professional and adult but when Kaveh saw him, he felt the leftover childish indignation from college flare through him all over again.

“Kaveh, I’m hungry.” Kasra tugged at his arm, shaking him out of the past. “Can we go?”

“I—” He couldn’t stop staring at Al-Haitham. Still couldn’t believe he was just right there. “Could you give me a second?”

Kasra peered up at him quizzically.

“Hey, if you bring your backpack to the car, I'll buy baklava for you.”

Kasra brightened. Though, he could clearly see the bribe, because he still said slyly, “Suuuuure.”

Then he turned and went bounding away.

Kaveh watched Kasra skip toward the car out of the corner of his eye, then it was just him and Al-Haitham in the eye of a storm of toddlers.

He looked at Al-Haitham for a long moment, heartbeat thumping in his head. Of all people to be here, he never expected to see Al-Haitham here. Especially not after he’d graduated six years ago.

“What—”

“He looks like you.” Al-Haitham nodded in the direction of the car.

What are you doing here? He’d wanted to ask, but that cut him short.

“Ah…yeah.” Kaveh tossed a glance at the car. Kasra’s hair had grown out since Faranak had moved, bringing it a length almost similar to Kaveh’s. All he needed was a little ponytail to keep the hair out of his neck and he’d truly look like a shrunken down Kaveh. “Genetics.”

“Genetics,” repeated Al-Haitham. “He could be your clone.”

Kaveh laughed, which startled both him and Al-Haitham. Even though they were half-brothers, Kasra had gotten a lot of Faranak. As had Kaveh. So really, Al-Haitham wasn’t far off.

“What are you doing here?” Kaveh finally asked.

“Ah.” Al-Haitham blinked. “I work here.”

Kaveh stared at him for a long moment. “Here?” He gestured. “Like the elementary school?”

“Yes?”

“Like, with all the kids?”

“Yes…” Al-Haitham said slowly. “I’m not sure what you’re having trouble believing.”

“I feel like that’s pretty clear, considering you—”

A scream cut him off as if on cue. Kaveh turned to find a toddler on the ground closer to the doors of the school, knee skinned red and peppered with gravel from his fall. He must have been running along the chalk-drawn path on the ground before tripping over his own feet in excitement. The toddler began to cry, and then he started to cough from trying to cry too hard, snot dripping down his face. Another adult came hurrying over to help him to his feet before they went inside to head, presumably, to the nurse’s office.

Loud, chaotic, dirty. Everything that went against Al-Haitham’s standards.

“Working here as what?” Kaveh blinked. “Like admin or something? That’s probably quiet and far enough from kids for you. Though—”

“No,” interrupted Al-Haitham. “I don’t.”

“Kaveh!” Kasra yelled from the car. “Are you done yet?”

“Kasra, please don’t yell.” Kaveh winced.

Al-Haitham almost looked amused. “Interesting parenting choice having your kid call you by your first name.”

Your kid. “Oh,” he rushed to clarify. “No, he’s my—”

Suddenly forty pounds of frantic toddler rammed into his leg. “Kaveh, I can’t open the door. So I can’t put my backpack away.”

He shot a desperate look at Al-Haitham. He wasn’t quite ready to end this conversation, but Al-Haitham just waved him away.

“Kaveh, please, I really want baklava.” Kasra tugged again.

“Go,” said Al-Haitham. “You don’t want to deprive him of baklava do you?”

Kaveh scowled. The conversation was far from over, but he couldn’t ignore his kid brother for some old stupid college drama.

“Fine,” he conceded. Then put on a brighter face. “Alright, Kasra. You don’t need to tug. I’m coming.”

Kasra unlatched like he was waiting for the command. He beamed up at Kaveh before turning his full-faced grin at Al-Haitham.

“Thank you for your help, Mr. Al-Haitham!” Kasra cried sweetly.

“Oh, you’re devious,” said Kaveh, not without a certain amount of fondness.

Al-Haitham didn’t quite smile, but the corners of his eye crinkled in amusement. “You’re welcome, Kasra. I’ll see you in class tomorrow.”

Kaveh was mid-turn towards the car when he finally registered the words.

“What the fuck?” Kaveh whirled around. “You’re his teacher?”

Kasra gasped. “Kaveh, you can’t say that word.”

Al-Haitham looked truly amused now, a glint in his eye that made Kaveh’s stomach turn. “Yes, I am.”

“What?” Kaveh blinked. “How the—heck. You? You’re terrible with kids!”

Al-Haitham snorted. “And how would you know that?”

“Because I know you.”

He knew Al-Haitham was the most annoying person he’d ever met, a realist to the point of condescension, couldn’t make small talk and didn’t bother coming off polite. He knew that Al-Haitham was rude and stuck-up and in no possible universe voluntarily chose to work with children—

“You do?” Kasra sounded delighted.

Kaveh panicked. “No, I mean—”

“Are you friends?” The excitement in his voice grew.

“No.” Archons, this was spiraling out of control. 

“You didn’t need to deny it so strongly,” said Al-Haitham wryly.

“I mean—” Kaveh pressed a hand to his chest, forcing himself to slow down. “We just…we went to school together.”

“Oh.” Kasra nodded sagely, as if he were finally understanding. “Like me and Zahra. We go to school together so we’re friends. But not outside friends.”

“No, that’s not—” Kaveh took a deep breath. “How are you a kindergarten teacher?”

Al-Haitham gave him a flat look. “I got a teaching certification, applied to this job, got it, and I’ve been working here since.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“It’s not my fault the truth doesn’t satisfy you.” Al-Haitham towards Kasra. “Don’t you have a baklava to buy?”

Kaveh scowled. “Don’t weaponize him against me.”

“I’m not a weapon,” interjected Kasra. 

Al-Haitham raised an eyebrow.

Somehow, even after six years of not speaking, Al-Haitham could still knock him down so easily like that. The cadence of their arguments picking up even years later, like they’d never stopped.

Kaveh narrowed his eyes at him, tilting his chin in a challenge. You didn’t win this. Just that…Kaveh had to take care of his kid brother, and he had grown up enough to not let his own emotions ruin the first day.

“Come on, Kasra.” Kaveh held out his hand.

His brother happily took it.

“Bye, Mr. Al-Haitham!” Kasra waved.

And then Al-Haitham—fucking— smiled. “Bye, Kasra.”

Kaveh pulled Kasra away a little too hard.

He unlocked the car and helped Kasra into his seat, tucking the backpack onto the ground behind the driver’s seat so it didn’t fly everywhere. Then, he climbed into the driver’s side and slammed the door a little too hard as he started the engine.

The car hummed to life. When he pulled onto the road, he could hear it creaking under the weight of its own age. The little metal parts of the undercarriage clanked a near concerning amount, but Kaveh knew that despite its age, it was safe to drive. It lasted from his childhood until now for a reason.

“I didn’t know you know Mr. Al-Haitham,” said Kasra. “He’s my favorite teacher ever.”

“Already?” Kaveh asked through gritted teeth, keeping his eyes on the road. “On the first day?”

“Yep.” Kasra nodded vigorously in the rearview mirror. “He’s really funny. And really nice.”

“Nice.” Were they talking about the same person?”

“Yeah!” Kasra bounced in his seat, his pudgy little limbs flapping. “He gave me a book. And then he told me I’d be helping myself if I read it.”

Yeah, that sounded about right.

The drive from the elementary school to Faranak’s home was just a short ten minutes, but the rest of it passed in a strange silence as the music from the radio came tinny and muffled. Kasra looked at the window and chattered mindlessly, Kaveh interjecting with his usual responses.

When they pulled into the driveway, Kasra spoke again.

“How long do you know Mr. Al-Haitham?” asked Kasra.

“A few years,” said Kaveh. “But I haven’t talked to him since college, really.”

“Why not?” Kasra tilted his head, his eyes terrifyingly inquisitive—piercing and curious, like how Faranak had described Kaveh when he was young.

“We fell out of touch.”

“Oh.” Kaveh pushed open the side door and hopped out of the car. “It’s cool that you saw him again today after a really long time. Maybe you can start talking again.”

Kaveh stepped out and led Kasra to the front door. “Maybe.”

Like a wall breached, the first leak in years.

-

Kaveh had moved back to his hometown over the summer.

It wasn’t originally part of his life plan. When he graduated from the Akademiya six years ago, he’d planned to do the usual early-twenties thing of drunkenly chasing after grandeur. He’d traveled to all the nations of Teyvat, climbed the ladder of his career, worked countless late nights while also going out to bars on the weekends because he was young and crazy and had the energy to. He’d gotten his heart broken a handful of times, had flings in Liyue and Mondstat that lasted a whole of two days each before work pulled him away, met up with his old college friends when his work took him to where they’d scattered—all of them except Al-Haitham, of course.

He’d created his magnum opus at the insane and prodigious age of twenty-four: the Palace of Alcazarzaray, marking the pinnacle of his career. All the chatter that followed carried the same murmur of, What will he do next? Where will he go? How will the Light of Kshahrewar ever top this? Nevermind that he’d gone into debt to complete the project. Just having the damn thing in his portfolio skyrocketed his marketability and he told himself that he could make it back he would make it back.

He joined a prestigious architecture firm, dazzled his seniors and skips with his innovative designs and incredible with even just as a junior architect, charmed everyone so deeply there were whispers of him being promoted to project architect before he even hit thirty, on the verge of breaking into something grand once again, into the shining thing that everyone expected him to be. Then he clashed with some of the senior architects, and eventually one of the partners. He’d argued for the slashing of the budget on a particularly large project because, “The clients clearly don’t know what they’re talking about and they don’t need such a fancy library. It’s impractical and ridiculous, and I’d suggest we tell them now before we begin drafting.”

“What if they say no?” Some other junior architect had asked.

“They won’t,” said the partner. “If they have any amount of common sense—which they should since they hired this firm— they should know that we knew better than them.”

Kaveh had hated it. Had hated him so bad. What kind of partner was he? Did he just get so high up on the architect totem pole that he forgot that architecture, too, was art? That it was not just what the firm could do and what the firm could make, but how you could realize the vision of someone else?

He’d spoken up, of course. Kaveh had stood up right in the middle of the meeting to march up to the partner and tell him he was wrong, and ridiculous, and an embarrassment if he wanted to cut corners like that.

“Bold words from just a junior architect,” said the partner, dangerously low.

“I may just be a ‘junior architect,’” said Kaveh, voice soft in warning. “But I have far more principle and artistry right now than you’ve ever had in your entire career if you’re making those kinds of statements.”

They fired him on the spot. Kaveh didn’t even have time to clean out his desk. They’d just escorted him out of the meeting room and shipped his belongings to his shitty studio apartment. The whole event had been strangely quiet, despite the way Kaveh had absolutely shot the future of his career in the mouth. Then, the news from his mother came.

His mother Faranak, a similarly famous architect, had been called to Fontaine for a long term project. They wanted her to build a new courthouse. They wanted her to build the new symbol for the Nation of Justice. They wanted something big and grand, incorporating all the history of the nation, all the likeness of their public figures: the first Archon, the first court justice, all the leaders that upheld the equity of the nation. They wanted something to make everyone who walked in feel the might and the mercy of justice.

Basically, she had to uproot her life and move somewhere for, like, a few years. Long enough to disrupt the new life she’d just restarted.

Kaveh had attended the wedding of Faranak and his stepfather, Antoine, a few years ago in Fontaine and he knew they were trying for kids. Somewhere between graduating and building Alcazarzaray, Kasra had been born, but Kaveh had been so busy dazzling the masses and crying himself to sleep out of fear of not reaching his potential that he’d missed it entirely. He’d hated himself for it, but Faranak had just told him gently, “You didn’t miss anything. You have the rest of his life to see him.” So he’d flown home and met his baby brother, had put his index finger in the crib so Kasra could wrap his tiny hand around the circumference of it. Kaveh remembered melting—he’d probably cried too—and just feeling the soft, pudgy hands of his brother, skin still smooth and untouched by the troubles of the world, made him feel alive again. Like there was a future to work towards.

After that, Kaveh made an earnest effort to visit Kasra. At least once a month, if he could, or twice if he could not make the previous one. Amid the whirlwind of his early twenties, Kasra remained a steadfast anchor, even when he could barely comprehend what Kaveh was actually doing. He’d brought his whole family to Alcazarzaray after its construction. Kasra said his first words there, which were, “Ah! Kaveh!” Kaveh had cried then, too.

A week after getting fired, Kaveh had lain in his bed in the shitty studio apartment, looking up at the bare white walls and thinking about how for all the time he’d spent living there, he’d never turned it into a home. He’d been too focused on creating and building his career that he’d forgotten to build the rest of his life, too. 

Faranak called right before he fell down another spiral. He’d sucked back his tears and then picked up, listening as she went straight into the good news. She sounded so sweetly excited, talking breathlessly about the opportunity and the joy of creation and what an honor it was that they had selected her. But Kaveh was his mother’s son, and he could hear that undercurrent of fear in her voice as she’d spoken, that bit of breathlessness that came from trying to outrun your exhaustion.

“Mom,” he’d said, cutting her off in the middle of a ramble about securing a moving company. “What’s wrong?”

“What?” She’d said it too brightly, like she’d forgotten that she was supposed to be confused about the question. “Kaveh—nothing’s wrong!”

“Mom.” He gave her a look.

There was a pause and Kaveh knew he’d struck the correct nerve. He heard her breath fluttering through the phone before she finally admitted, “I…I’m just not sure I want to move Kasra to a new country. I know he’ll be able to adapt and make friends just fine, but I won’t be able to take care of him there even if I did bring him. I’d have to be on-site most of the day and so would Antoine.”

He listened to her breathe over the phone: long and shallow and shuddering.

“I’m just not sure it would be a good environment to grow up in. Especially because I don’t know how long I’ll be there.”

The idea lit his head immediately, kicking into gear right at inception.

“But—” Faranak said quickly. “I’ll figure it out. You don’t have to worry about it, Kaveh. I shouldn’t have said anything in the first place—”

“I could take care of him,” said Kaveh.

A pause. “What?”

“I can move back,” said Kaveh. “I can raise him in Sumeru while you’re away. So you don’t have to worry.”

“Oh, Kaveh. I can’t ask you to do that.”

“Well, you weren’t asking.” Kaveh smiled. “I was offering. So.”

He could hear her exhaling through the phone. It was a tempting offer, truly the best solution and it’d fallen straight into her lap. Faranak hadn’t had to worry about him in years because Kaveh was all grown up, but with Kasra, she had the new mother jitters all over again.

But this really was the best solution. Kasra knew Kaveh, Kaveh knew Kasra, and she could trust him. She could pursue the job and know that Kasra would be in good hands for however long she was away.

“Kaveh…” Faranak began again. “I…don’t want to take your years away. You’re supposed to be enjoying your youth.”

“It’s my youth, so shouldn’t I be the one to choose how to spend it? You don’t think I’d enjoy being around my brother?” Kaveh adjusted his phone as he rolled over on his bed, heart pounding. “ I can’t believe you’d think so lowly of me, Mom.”

“Kaveh.” That smile was back, slipping through the reluctance. 

He suddenly wished he could see her face. It’d been far too long since he’d been home.

“Mom,” he said in the same tone.

“Thank you.” He could hear the relief in his voice. “Thank you, really.”

“No need.” Kaveh swung his legs and sat up, filled with a new vigor for his future. “Of course, I would do it. Besides, I got fired anyway so I have nothing else going on.”

“You what?”

And so, Kaveh had packed up his whole life from the city and moved back to his hometown. He moved into his old bedroom, which stayed exactly the same as he had left it ten years ago when he first went to the Akademiya, because Faranak was careful about preserving it. Kaveh remembered standing in his childhood bedroom, just soaking in the air while his moving bags weighed down his arms, and felt for the first time just how much he had changed.

Each time he’d been home before had just been a pit stop—a temporary holding place while he visited his mom and flitted around his old stomping grounds in the gasp of free time he had before rushing back into his whirlwind of a life.

Now, though, the dust was settling. He was replanting himself in a home that had nearly forgotten him. The too-small bed suddenly felt smaller in a way that was suffocating. He could bear it for a few nights, but when he laid down on it, it felt suffocatingly small knowing that he would have to endure it for the next few years.

His dresser—paint-scuffed and still full of old high school T-shirts he was too sentimental to throw away—didn’t have enough space for his adult wardrobe now. The books and toys and sketchbooks tossed haphazardly into corners were no longer background objects, but things he had to pick up and tidy to pull his room back into the timestream. The most startling realization of all was that he had to make this room into a place he could live in again.

Faranak had come in shortly after he finished unpacking, stepping tentatively like she was afraid of intruding. 

“Mom.” Kaveh had called toward the door, because her lingering there left a worse itch than a genuine rash.

Faranak had flushed, embarrassed at being caught. “Ah, I just wanted to check how the unpacking was going.”

“I’m almost done.” 

She walked up to him and he found that she only came up to his shoulder now. It was so strange having her stand next to him in this room while he was preparing to move back into it. The memories of the room superimposed on the present, and he felt both twenty-eight and five-years-old again, clinging to Faranak’s skirts, asking to be picked up so he could teach a taller shelf. Now, Kaveh could see the top of the bookshelf just from where he was standing. And his mother, once his greatest guardian, now stood so small.

“How does it feel being home?” she asked.

“...weird,” he said truthfully. “Nice. I mean—I’ve been home before, it’s not the adjusting. I just…it’s different moving back in.”

“I understand.” She pressed an open palm against his back. “Thank you. For doing this.”

He could hear the guilt still lingering in her voice. He turned and grabbed the hand that had been touching his back and squeezed it. “Of course. I would do it a hundred times over.” And he meant it.

A few hours later, Antoine had come home from daycare with Kasra in tow. Antoine had known that Kaveh was moving back in, but they’d left it as a surprise for Kasra. Kaveh and Faranak were waiting in the foyer when the front door opened, and when Kasra saw Kaveh, his whole face lit up.

“Kaveh!” Kasra had screamed, utterly delighted.

“Hey, kid!” Kaveh dropped to his knees and barely opened his arms in time for Kasra to collide headfirst into his chest. “Oof, have mercy on me, I’m not young like I used to be.”

“You’re twenty-eight,” Antoine had said, amused.

“That’s ancient!” Kaveh wrapped his arms around Kasra and then stood, hefting him up. 

Antoine rubbed his face. “If you’re ancient, what am I? Dust?”

Kaveh grinned. “Well, you said it, not me.”

They hadn’t quite told Kasra that Kaveh had moved back in at that point, only that Faranak had gotten that job opportunity in Fontaine, and that Kaveh would be staying at the house for longer than a week. That was good enough for Kasra.

Slowly, they’d started to introduce the idea that Faranak and Antoine would be away for a few years. They promised that they would video call, and she’d visit when they could.

Kasra took it pretty well, all things considered. He was mostly just thrilled that Kaveh was going to be there. 

“He really looks up to you,” Faranak had said fondly. 

Kaveh had snorted. “Not sure I’m the best role model.”

Faranak glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. “Why’s that?”

Kaveh winced. “Don’t make me say it.”

“I’m serious.” She turned to him. “You’re a good brother. And a wonderful person. Shouldn’t that make you a satisfactory role model?”

He snorted bitterly. “Please, if he’d seen me in the last few years, he definitely would not want to follow the path that I’ve gone down.”

“He would.” Faranak leaned closer, though Kaveh still looked straight ahead. “I saw what you did the last few years, Kaveh. And I’m extremely proud of you.”

She probably didn’t mean for it to, but Kaveh still cried at her words anyway. They came far too fast for him to even realize what was happening—only that one moment they were talking, and the next she was wrapping her arms around him while his throat grew thick and he began to soak the collar of her sweater.

Faranak held him like that while he sobbed into her shoulder on the couch, wrapping his whole body around her like he was five again and had broken a toy or scraped a knee. He’d grown so large, so long, that he couldn’t stretch his legs properly across the couch like he used to, but Faranak held him like he was still small. Like a child. And for a moment, the world tilted back into place.

The weeks after were filled with lots of packing and immigration paperwork. Faranak and Antoine were busy dealing with the headache of that, so Kaveh helped with the manual labor of packing. 

Most of the furniture would be left in the house, but there were a few things Faranak wanted to take with her to Fontaine: old architecture textbooks, photo albums, all things of sentimental value. She left the photo of Kaveh’s father on the mantle, but Kaveh didn’t miss the way Antoine subtly tucked it into her suitcase later, because even if Faranak wouldn’t admit that she missed him, Antoine knew her well enough that she would. She really had chosen a good man to remarry.

In between shoving things into boxes and talking to the movers, Kaveh went job hunting on his little laptop for open positions in little architecture firms around his hometown. They would be small, “below his caliber” as his professors might have once said, but they would hopefully be out of the loop from the architecture world enough that they wouldn’t have heard about his fallout with his last job. And there, maybe, he could start something new in a smaller place.

He got an offer the night before Faranak and Antoine were supposed to leave for Fontaine. Kasra and Antoine were asleep, but Faranak was still up, anxious about the whole trip and unable to relax. In that, she and Kaveh were alike. So, she celebrated quietly with him in the kitchen by drinking a single sip of screw-top wine before they both realized they should probably go to bed if they were to wake up on time tomorrow. 

Kaveh drove them to the airport at the asscrack of dawn. Faranak sat in the front to spend a little more time with Kaveh while Antoine and Kasra sat in the back. Well, Kasra was asleep, but the night before he’d begged to be taken with so he could say goodbye properly, no matter how tired he was. Even now, as Faranak chattered nervously about moving in and meeting the clients in person, the image of Kasra passed out and half drooling on the back seat made him smile.

Kasra woke up as they pulled up to the drop-off location. Kaveh helped them unload the car with all their luggage onto the sidewalk as Kasra dutifully held Faranak’s purse out of the way for her. When they finished, Faranak had taken about one step towards the door before she was whirling around and squeezing Kaveh into a tight hug.

“Please, please, please call me if you need anything,” she murmured.

“I will,” he promised, then hugged her tighter, resting his chin on top of her head. When had she gotten so small?

“Thank you again,” she said, pulling away. “I know this probably wasn’t how you planned to spend the latter half of your twenties.”

“Mom, I promise there is no better way I’d want to spend them.” He squeezed her hands. “Please, believe me.”

She smiled at him and her eyes suddenly looked too shiny in the shadows of the airport. Fuck, if she started crying then he was going to start crying, and he wasn’t going to risk that when he had to drive Kasra back.

The corners of her eyes crinkled.

“Stop, stop.” Or he was really going to cry. “Please, go check in for your flight.”

“Okay.” Faranak stepped back and sniffed, wiping her eyes.

Kasra hopped down from Antoine’s arms to run over and hug Faranak.

“Bye, Mommy! Have fun!” Kasra said cheerily.

Faranak lifted him and hugged him, burying her sniffling into his little shirt.

Kaveh swallowed the lump in his throat and turned to Antoine. 

They stared at each other for a long moment, the stretch of silence that usually settled between a stepfather and his stepson. They had a good relationship, Kaveh liked him just fine, but he didn’t know Antoine the way he knew Faranak and Kasra. What was the appropriate response here?

But then Antoine was stepping forward, wrapping him in a two-armed hug that pressed them too close but also lasted far too short. It was awkward—one light thump on the back—but Antoine had done it anyway, and perhaps that was the important part.

“Take care of yourself,” said Antoine, pulling away.

“I will.”

Antoine gave him a soft smile then, too. It startled Kaveh enough that he barely remembered to return it before Kasra was jumping down from Faranak’s arm and barrelling towards him. His little brother thudded into his legs with an oof before Kaveh lifted him up into his arms, giving him leverage to wave their parents goodbye.

When they disappeared behind the airport doors, Kaveh and Kasra climbed back into the car. It felt startlingly empty now that half of its original passengers were gone.

Kaveh remembered driving home that morning with a strange feeling settling in his chest. Like a dream, still half processing the fact that he’d really just bid Faranak and Antoine goodbye for the next three to five years and that he was really going to be raising his kid brother all by himself. The fear planted itself in his chest, the worry if he was really good enough to raise Kasra well. Would he turn out alright? Or would Kaveh fuck it up like he had with so many other things in his life?

But then he caught sight of Kasra in the rearview mirror again, wide-eyed and wide awake like this goodbye had woken him up for the day. He didn’t look too sad. In fact, he was just watching the world outside with the same quiet wonder he always did, as if he also didn’t just say goodbye to his parents for the next few years.

Kaveh cleared his throat, still thick with the goodbye. “Hey, Kasra. How are you doing?”

Kasra had turned away from the window. When he caught Kaveh’s eyes in the mirror, he broke out into a wide, toothy grin. “Good!” Kasra kicked his feet. “I wanna see pictures.”

“What?”

“Daddy said he was gonna send pictures.” Kasra kicked legs rapidly. “He said Fontaine has different birds so I wanna see them.”

“Oh.” Kaveh almost wanted to laugh. He was glad Kasra was so carefree about this. It was certainly better than being sad. “Well, it won’t be for a few hours. They still have to board the plane and then unpack.”

“I can wait,” said Kasra. “I’m good at waiting.”

Kaveh raised an eyebrow at him in the mirror. “Are you sure about that?”

“I am!” Kasra kicked his feet. “I’m really, really good. Mommy said I was good at waiting.”

“Yeah? What about that one time I visited and you kept waking me up because you wanted to show me your puzzle?”

“That doesn’t count, you were asleep for forever!”

“Kasra, it was, like, twenty minutes. Actually less.”

“No, it wasn’t! It was so long!”

“Was your brain even formed enough to remember correctly?”

“It was! You’re too old to remember correctly.”

“You have to be nice to me,” warned Kaveh. “Because I get to pick dinner tonight.”

Because Faranak and Antoine were flying to Fontaine. And Kaveh was now the sole adult of the house. 

A little pit dropped in his stomach, tinged faintly with the scent of grief.

Kaveh swallowed and looked back at the road.

“Are you sad?” asked Kasra a moment later.

Kaveh nearly choked. “Why do you ask that, Kasra?”

“You got really quiet.” 

He could feel Kasra’s eyes on him in the rearview mirror. He was sure that if he looked up, he’d see entirely too piercing eyes looking back at him.

The perceptiveness of children always caught him off guard. Kasra was a sweet kid, always smiling and giggling in delight at every little thing going on, so it always startled Kaveh when Kasra said something that seemed to peer through him. Even people his age didn’t bother to look so closely, but perhaps that was the point. 

“I’ve been quiet before,” said Kaveh simply.

“You weren’t sad before.”

Touché.

“Are you sad?” Kasra repeated.

He swallowed, chest tight. “A little,” he admitted, thought it felt like pulling a barbed quill out of his skin. “I’m fine, though. I…I mean, I’ll be a little sad not having Mom around.”

“She said she was gonna call.”

His heart hiccuped. “She did.”

“So she will!”

So simple, so easy. Such rock-solid kid logic that Kaveh couldn’t help but believe it.

“You’re right,” said Kaveh.

“I am!”

Kasra grinned at him so brightly through the rearview mirror that Kaveh couldn’t help but return it. He turned the radio up a little more, and checked to make sure Kasra was looking out the window again before he let out another sigh.

That night, despite his threats, Kaveh ended up getting fast food for dinner to celebrate their first night in the house alone. Half because he and Kasra both wanted greasy, unhealthy junk. And half because if Kaveh had to cook something at the stove with Faranak’s nice pans without her standing behind him, gently but neurotically telling him not to use the metal utensils on the non-stick pan, he really would cry.

So he ordered a burger and Kaveh ordered fries and nuggets, and then they watched Kasra’s favorite cartoons until midnight when Kasra’s eyelids started drooping so comically heavy that Kaveh had to carry him to his room. Just like how Kaveh’s father used to do for him when he was young. After, he crawled back into his own childhood room onto his too-small childhood bed and stared at the ceiling, trying to soak in the fact that this was his life now.

The first few weeks without his parents were strange. Kaveh got into the routine of waking up early, dropping Kasra off at daycare, working his job, then coming back and making dinner and doing that all over again. It felt like being twenty-two and freshly graduated, but this time with an extra living being relying on him. 

He’d never expected to settle down quite so fast, but perhaps this slower routine was what he needed after the whirlwind of building Alcazarazaray. And besides, twenty-eight was a perfectly fine age to settle down. He was almost certain Faranak and his father had had him sooner. He’d always wanted a family anyway, especially remembering how it felt with Faranak and his father when he was young. He wanted to make that kind of family, too, but then got too busy to think of anything except his career.

But now he had Kasra, which was just as good. Especially since he didn’t have time to date or really settle down into a long term relationship, so having Kasra without having to go through the hassle was the next best thing.

Really, living with Kasra was the best. He was everything Kaveh used to be, and what he wanted to be again—like his childhood distilled and reborn into the little person he now had to take care of. Kasra reminded him of what it was like to be young, to look at the world with open wonder.

It reminded Kaveh of being small. Of wandering into Faranak’s office even when he could barely walk, but still finding her sketchbooks laying flat on the floor and the edges of the table, all open and inviting for his curious hands. It reminded him of what followed after: his mother taking him out to the buildings she’d designed in person, showing how her sketches had come to life. How she would tell him little design details in architecture until Kaveh could point them out himself, until Kaveh began to dream and draw and dig, passing interesting structures and wanting to pull apart how they stood, how they were formed, wanting to know. The ineffable need to make something that lasted.

Kaveh wouldn’t last. Neither would Kasra. Neither would Faranak. His father certainly hadn’t. But their blood would be carried into the next generation and the next and the next, and there was a legacy in that. 

An eternity, in its own way.

-

Kaveh didn’t always work late. Sometimes he was able to get off early and pick up Kasra from the school just like all the other parents. 

Like now, on a warm autumn day. He pulled up to the curb in his middle-aged car and watched all the kids scramble around the front of the elementary school in a little chaotic bundle. He scanned the swarm of children for Kasra and found him towards the center of the pavement, surrounded by a cluster of other kids all laughing and smiling around him.

He’s a lot like you, Faranak had said to him once when he’d gone with her to pick Kasra up from daycare. He attracts a lot of friends.

He remembered looking in through the window of the daycare, trying to block the glare of the evening sun as he watched Kasra with a group of children through the glass. He’d even managed to pull a shy boy in the corner into his circle.

Hopefully he doesn’t turn out like me, too, he’d laughed before he realized what he’d said.

She’d looked at him disapprovingly. What would be so bad about that?

Kaveh had sputtered. He hadn’t meant for the self-deprecation to slip out, but he was so used to making those jokes that he forgot his mother would actually call him out on them.

Ah, I mean, he sputtered. That…his future turns out better than mine did.

You turned out just fine to me, Kaveh.

He paused now, watching Kasra play with his gaggle of friends. He wasn’t quite sure what they were doing, only that they were laughing so loud they had to do that wet toddler cough to get more air. 

And all through it, the other teachers were surrounding the children with easy smiles and just the right amount of attentiveness to make sure they didn’t crack their heads open—and then there was Al-Haitham. Al-Haitham, standing there stoically with his giant arms and broad back and stony face, watching the kids with his arms crossed like a prison guard instead of a kindergarten teacher.

His eyes were too harsh. No fudging way Al-Haitham was a kindergarten teacher. Even after seeing definitive proof that Al-Haitham really did teach kindergarten at this school, Kaveh still couldn’t believe it.

Al-Haitham had studied linguistics in college, not education. Where did the interest even come from? Had he always wanted to corral five-year-olds for six hours a day? Or did he just wake up one day and decide he wanted his career to be babysitting children with underdeveloped motor skills?

If anything, Kaveh thought being a professor suited Al-Haitham more. Academia, being surrounded by other pretentious assholes; maybe he’d finally deem one or two of them worthy enough as intellectual equals with him, or maybe he’d look down on them, too. He’d probably love creating convoluted assignments just for the satisfaction of watching students struggle to comprehend them, and then laughing maniacally like a villain when they pulled all-nighters and still couldn’t pass his exams in the end.

Not this: not a bunch of snot-nosed kids screaming and running in circles, crying when they fell over. A few kids ran over to where Al-Haitham was standing. They tugged at his pants and shoes and jumped in circles around him as if he were just part of the playground and Kaveh expected him to push them off or step away.

Instead, Al-Haitham stood there calmly while the kids played peekaboo around his legs. And when their parents came, he pushed them forward with an all too gentle touch and an all too soft, “See you tomorrow.”

Kaveh’s stomach burned.

“Kasra!” He finally called through the open window.

Kasra pulled away from the woodchips. “Kaveh!” He shrieked, delighted.

“Ready to go?” He forced a bright smile onto his face and hoped Kasra couldn’t see the strain behind it.

“Yeah!” He scooped his backpack off the ground and went bounding toward the car. “Bye, Zahra! Bye, Akshith! Bye, Mimi! Bye, Mr. Al-Haitham!”

“See you tomorrow, Kasra.” Al-Haitham nodded.

Kasra yanked the backdoor open and flopped into the seat. “Hi, Kaveh!”

“Hey,” said Kaveh as he started the car. “How was your day?”

And as he pulled away from the school, Kasra babbling about his day, Kaveh swore he felt Al-Haitham’s eyes on him until he disappeared around the corner.

-

After he met Al-Haitham, there wasn’t a single moment they spent in each other’s presence that they weren’t arguing.

Post cafe-incident, he’d texted Tighnari later that night asking in what fucking world he thought it was a good idea to bring Al-Haitham, to which Tighnari had responded, Just give him a chance, Kaveh.

Like hell he would. Kaveh would rather swim naked through the Abyss than talk to Al-Haitham again.

Except as the semester went on, Tighnari kept inviting Al-Haitham to their group gatherings. To a movie night, to a drunk TCG night, to another study date—hell, even to a bar where Al-Haitham had spent the entire time on his phone. Kaveh had wandered over at some point to ask Al-Haitham why he’d even bothered to come if he was just going to stare at the screen the whole time, when he leaned over to find Al-Haitham reading some ebook. At that point, he gave up and went to talk to his friends in the friend group that he actually liked.

The more they met up, the more Kaveh, horribly, began to realize that the awkwardness between Al-Haitham and the others began to melt. Al-Haitham still barely did small talk, barely gave more than his clipped condescending answers, but instead of getting offended like Kaveh expected people would, his other friends would just laugh or smile and seriously consider whatever flat platitude he gave about their current issues. It was infuriating. How the hell was Al-Haitham becoming friends with his friends without even trying?

“Because you keep antagonizing him,” said Dunyarzad, one day. “You come to these hangouts expecting him to be terrible and you interpret everything he says as terrible.”

“How can I not? Have you listened to him?”

“If you spoke to him more,” said Dunyarzad gently. “You’d probably find it differently. He doesn’t always say things delicately, but that doesn’t mean he’s unkind.”

“How would you even know?” Kaveh grumbled.

“Well.” Dunyarzad tapped her chin. “I mean, every time I’ve asked him to proofread my essays, he always makes time and gives good feedback.”

Kaveh had choked on his water. “He what?”

“Gives me feedback on my essays?” she repeated.

“Him?”  

He couldn’t imagine someone like Al-Haitham sacrificing any of his precious time for anyone, let alone proofread essays for classes he wasn’t in.

“Yes.” Dunyarzad nodded. “I just remembered once that he had to write a lot of essays for his major, so I asked if he’d proofread an essay I had for a difficult class-”

“And he said yes?”

“Yes, Kaveh. Clearly.” Her voice was gentle and patient, but she nudged his foot lightly under the table to tell him to keep listening. “He gives good feedback. He’s very precise and he tears apart my essays when I ask him to, but he’s not cruel about it.”

“What did you have to do?” Kaveh still couldn’t fathom it. “Did you beg?”

“No, Kaveh. I did not beg.” Dunyarzad leveled him with a look. “I just asked, and he said yes.”

As if it were that simple. As if this parallel version of Al-Haitham where he was patient and straightforward instead of an asshole actually existed.

And it kept going like that with everyone he talked to. Dehya, Nilou, Cyno (he almost didn’t count Cyno because he had an obligation to at least be polite to his boyfriend’s friends, except then Cyno started having genuine conversations with Al-Haitham at drunk TCG night and Kaveh gave up them). He didn’t get it. What was everyone seeing that he wasn’t?

One day, they met up for a movie night. Kaveh didn’t know what he expected. Tighnari had messaged in the group chat, inviting everyone to his apartment, so of course everyone in the group chat would have seen the message. Kaveh, still half hopeful and half stupid, had held out hope that it’d be a peaceful movie night.

But of course, the moment he stepped in, there Al-Haitham fucking was, sitting all by himself on the couch on the corner while the rest of everyone else was chatting elsewhere, drifting from kitchen to living room.

“Kaveh, I’m glad you could make it!” Tighnari cried when he spotted him. “I almost thought you wouldn’t. You had that project, right?”

“I always have projects, Tighnari.” Kaveh stepped in and kicked off his shoes. “But having an excuse to leave the studio is always better than none.”

Kaveh, having been the last one to arrive, locked the door. Now, with everyone gathered, Tighnari ushered everyone back to the living room to start the movie. Cyno and Tighnari took a seat on the floor in front of the coffee table. The girls took a seat on the other couch, leaving just Al-Haitham’s couch for Kaveh to sit.

He’d looked at the empty cushion next to Al-Haitham for a long moment with disdain. Then he took the seat, because for all his own personal misgivings, Kaveh wouldn’t ruin the movie night for anyone else.

But of course, several minutes into the movie, something bright flared at the corner of his eye. Kaveh turned to find Al-Haitham’s face illuminated in the dark by the glare of his white phone screen.

Why did you even come if you weren’t going to watch? He thought moodily.

He quickly turned to face away from Al-Haitham, hopeful that if he wasn’t looking at him, then he could at least swallow the irritation rising rapidly inside him.

Kaveh didn’t quite remember what movie had been playing that night, only that at some point, the main character on screen had donated a bunch of money to impress his crush. She’d accepted, and so he kept dumping money into the charity to hold her interest.

“Archons, he’s so scummy,” Kaveh had muttered.

“Is he?” Al-Haitham piped up, which nearly shocked him into falling off the couch. “The impact of donating the money is still there. So what difference does it make?”

“‘What difference does it make?’” Kaveh whirled around, horrified. “The point is why he was doing it in the first place. To trick some girl into liking him! Isn’t that awful?”

“So you’d rather him not donate the money?”

“I never said that. In the end it’s good that he gave money, but he’s still doing it for a terrible reason.”

“Even so, he is still contributing to a greater good in the end, since he’s continuing to fund this charity? Doesn’t that, in its own right, redeem him a bit?”

“It’s not about the impact, Al-Haitham. It’s about the intentions.”

“How do you measure the good of a person if not their impact? Since that is the most concrete thing? What if you had a person always wishing to help, but they never got up and did anything?”

Kaveh frowned. “But how can you measure everything by objectivity? What about two homeless people, neither of them have much but one still tries to give half of his bread to the other. In the end, two loaves of bread would be the objective best, but in their circumstances this is all they can give. What about relativity? They both mean to help. How can you make judgements just based on impact then?”

There was a pause like a stuttered heartbeat. Then, Al-Haitham turned to look at Kaveh fully, eyes widening like he was seeing him for the first time.

“What?” Kaveh huffed, face feeling hot.

Al-Haitham opened his mouth but no sound came out. The colors from the movie splashed over his skin in the dark, making his face almost look flushed.

“Kaveh,” started Al-Haitham, voice too low, too soft.

“If—” Tighnari cut in, voice strained. “You could take your debate elsewhere while we watch the rest of the movie. That would be great.”

Kaveh realized then that his chest was heaving, and he immediately flushed with guilt at how loud they must have been speaking. He’d never had an issue with talking too loudly during a movie before. He’d never had any issues with common courtesy before until Al-Haitham walked into his life that autumn morning. He was so good at being calm and polite and normal, but he lost all sense of self-control around Al-Haitham because he was so terrible and annoying.

He turned to glare at Al-Haitham because it was his fault Kaveh was like this. But when he met Al-Haitham’s gaze, he paused.

Al-Haitham didn’t look the slightest bit apologetic. In fact, he hadn’t sounded like he’d heard Tighnari at all. He just stared at Kaveh with this odd, lopsided expression that almost looked like wonder.

But that couldn’t be right. What would he be looking at Kaveh like that for? Kaveh narrowed his eyes, and the wonder fell away to something that almost looked like a smile.

Kaveh’s stomach curdled. The jackass didn’t even have the sense to look sorry! Fuck that. Fuck him. If he had the nerve to be smug after all this, after disrupting movie night, then Kaveh wanted nothing to do with him.

-

Another horrible thing about realizing that Al-Haitham was his little brother’s kindergarten teacher was the very real realization that Al-Haitham also, probably, lived in Kaveh’s hometown. Kaveh hadn’t quite processed this fact until he went to the grocery store one day, trying to find ingredients to cook Kasra a healthy dinner when he ran into a familiar face in the pasta aisle.

Or, well, Kaveh had been pushing his shopping cart into the aisle when he caught sight of a familiar silhouette: Al-Haitham standing in the aisle with his basket, head bent as he read the back of a penne box.

Kaveh barely managed to muffle his yelp before he quickly turned and yanked his shipping cart into the previous aisle. Unfortunately, he forgot how shitty these carts were, so when he tried to make his stealthy escape, the pivot wheel let out a blood curdling screech instead.

He froze in the next aisle, heart pounding, before he heard, “I saw you. You can come out, Kaveh.”

Kaveh came out.

He tentatively pushed the shopping cart back into the pasta aisle and found Al-Haitham watching him with a tired expression. “We are both adults.”

Kaveh frowned. “Okay, and?”

“If you have a problem with me, you can just tell me instead of avoiding me like a child.”

Kaveh flushed. “I am not—I’m not a child.”

“Obviously.” Al-Haitham gave him a flat look. “But I do work with children on a daily basis, so I know what they act like.”

“Fuck you.” Kaveh pulled the shopping cart back. “This is why I was trying to avoid you.”

“Because I point things out?”

“Because you’re an asshole.”

Al-Haitham pursed his lips. 

There was a beat of silence. Then, because Kaveh couldn’t stand the silence, he asked, “What do you want?”

“Nothing in particular,” said Al-Haitham, a bit stiffly. “But I won’t force you to talk to me if you’re so vehemently opposed.”

Kaveh winced. “I—sorry. Maybe ‘asshole’ was a bit strong.”

Al-Haitham didn’t say anything, but he did raise an eyebrow as if to say, You think?

Which was fair. The last real time he’d spoken to Al-Haitham was six years ago. Kaveh had certainly changed in that timespan, who was to say Al-Haitham hadn’t as well?

Maybe he could figure out just how much.

“So—” He started. “Kindergarten teacher, huh?”

Al-Haitham nodded slowly. 

“How did that career choice happen?”

“I just wanted to try out teaching,” said Al-Haitham. “And I’ve been enjoying it. So I haven’t stopped yet.”

“I see…” 

Another silence weighed between them, stiff in a way that was uncomfortable. Like an itch on the back of his neck that he couldn’t reach, no matter how he clawed through the fabric of his shirt. Archons, it was so fucking awkward but things weren’t supposed to be awkward with Al-Haitham. Even in college, things between them had never been stiff or stilted. They were always too busy arguing to ever let it get to that point.

But this was terrible and odd and Kaveh started to feel the years between them, like they really were strangers. He felt so brutally the time since they’d last spoken, the way he graduated and said goodbye to everyone except Al-Haitham.

“When did you move back?” asked Al-Haitham.

“Um.” Kaveh flexed his fingers around the shopping cart handle. “Over the summer. How long have you been teaching?”

“Since I graduated.”

After Kaveh had moved away. So all the times that Kaveh came to visit Kasra—had Al-Haitham been here the whole time?

“Should I say welcome back?” asked Al-Haitham.

“You could, but it’d be weird coming from you.”

Al-Haitham frowned. “Why’s that?”

“I’ve already been here for a few months. I’m not sure the welcome fits anymore.”

“Well,” said Al-Haitham stiffly. “I was trying to be polite.”

Polite? Kaveh wanted to say. I thought you didn’t care for niceties. He certainly hadn’t in college. But he reminded himself again that they weren’t in college anymore, so he shouldn’t.

“I… appreciate the sentiment,” said Kaveh, though he sounded strained even to his own ears.

“Do you?” Al-Haitham raised an eyebrow.

“Yes.”

This was far too civil for how they normally talked to each other. Even the few times he’d spoken to Al-Haitham as Kasra’s kindergarten teacher had a little more punch than this, more like how they’d spoken to each other a few years ago. But they weren’t college students anymore wandering on campus anymore. They were both older, filing their own taxes, and shopping for groceries in the depths of the suburbs. They couldn’t quite get into a yelling match here no matter how natural it felt, and Kaveh, surprisingly, didn’t have it in him either.

He couldn’t stand the silence. Kaveh wasn’t made for it. But as he was scrambling to come up with something to say, Al-Haitham suddenly spoke.

“Do you ever check your email?”

He startled. “What the fuck? Why?”

Al-Haitham gave him a flat look. “I sent an email out to all the parents a month ago about signing up for parent teacher conferences. They start next week and you still haven’t responded.”

“Fuck.” Kaveh remembered scrolling blearily through his emails one morning on his phone, but then he realized he’d slept through his work alarm so he’d had to shoot out of bed and forgot all about it.

He pulled his phone out of his pocket now and started furiously scrolling through his inbox. Sure enough, with a timestamp marked with four weeks ago, was an email titled: Sign Up Now for Parent-Teacher Conferences: Your Child’s Progress Matters!”

“Fuck,” said Kaveh again. “Oh my gods.”

Even if that was true, dread still pooled in his stomach. How had he forgotten? Archons, maybe he wasn’t cut out for this parenting thing.

“It’s not a big deal,” said Al-Haitham, cutting him off mid-spiral. “Just sign up for a slot, though some time slots may be more inconvenient than others. If nothing works, we can arrange another time.”

“Really?” 

“Yes,” said Al-Haitham flatly. “It’s just a meeting.”

“Alright.” Kaveh tapped the link in the email to find a webpage with different time slots. Sure enough, a lot of the more convenient slots had been taken up, but there was one close to seven p.m. that he could probably swing.

So, right there in front of Al-Haitham—his little brother’s kindergarten teacher—Kaveh signed up for a parent teacher conference with the man in front of him. The Teacher to Kaveh’s Parent. How bizarre.

“Oh.” Kaveh looked up suddenly. “Is that why you cornered me?”

Al-Haitham furrowed his eyebrows. “No.” His lips pressed together, and if Kaveh didn’t know any better, he’d almost say Al-Haitham looked upset. Then, “I just saw you and wanted to catch up. But then I remembered that, too.”

“Oh,” he said again. “Oh.”

Al-Haitham watched him for a moment longer before turning away. “Well, if that’s all, I have to get the rest of my groceries.”

“Right.” Kaveh stepped back. “Ah, yes. Yes, right, I have to do that, too. It was, um, nice to see you?”

Al-Haitham let out a quiet exhale, just shy of amused. “Don’t force yourself.”

“I wasn’t!” 

But Kaveh’s cries fell on silent ears because Al-Haitham was already walking down the aisle, disappearing to some other part of the store. 

He still couldn’t believe Al-Haitham was in the grocery store he used to run around in as a kid, there among the shelves that used to tower over him. But they’d both grown—both he and Al-Haitham—and now it was just one more thing to overlay this town, one more thing in the present to fuck up the carefully preserved past he had here: Kaveh’s childhood home without Faranak, Kaveh sleeping in his childhood bed more permanently, and Al-Haitham in the grocery story he used to run through as a child.

Kaveh waited in the pasta aisle long enough to look suspicious to any passerby, but he wasn’t risking running into Al-Haitham further down the line. When enough time had passed, he quickly bought the rest of his groceries before speeding back home.

-

Kaveh barely had time to worry about the parent-teacher conference, not with work kicking his ass and all that. Even though his resume demanded he probably have a higher-level architect position, the new firm he worked at was smaller with old guys with sticks up their ass, so he had all the grunt work of a junior architect and all the respect of one, too (read: very little). The news of his skyrocket to fame (and subsequent downfall) had not reached the ears of this town, and that in and of itself was a boon and a bane.

All this to say: he’d totally forgotten about it. Between drowning in work and picking up Kasra and staying at home long enough to cook dinner before running back to the office, he lost track of the days until a friendly notification during lunch from his calendar app reminded him of the parent-teacher conference.

“Fuck.” Kaveh’s spoon clattered to the table. He snatched it up hastily before checking if anybody had seen, but no one was paying attention to anything in this tiny break room.

Kaveh spent the rest of the day with his stomach churning in anxiety. He tried to focus on his work, tried not to get up every five minutes to throw up in the bathroom, but by the time he finished his work, he was late picking up Kasra again. 

He sped over to the elementary school, caught Al-Haitham watching him again, before driving Kasra home and cooking a very swift dinner. He got the neighbors to watch Kasra for the evening, then he sped back to the elementary school just in time to catch the previous parent walking out of the school.

As he walked through the elementary school, trying to navigate to where Al-Haitham’s classroom was, it finally struck him that he would be alone with Al-Haitham for an entire fifteen minutes. All of the times they’d caught each other before were in public. Now, it would just be the two of them in a room.

Kaveh found the classroom in the next five minutes. The door was propped and he could see Al-Haitham lounging at his desk, legs crossed so one ankle rested on the other knee, reading the way he always did back in college. The sight of it was terrifyingly familiar and Kaveh suddenly felt twenty-two and volatile all over again.

“The door’s open for a reason,” said Al-Haitham without looking up.

Kaveh scowled as he stepped into the classroom. “Can you let me have my moment?”

“You can have your moment without lingering around the corner like a stranger.” Al-Haitham sat up and set his book down.

“What if I need to brace myself in privacy?” Kaveh eyed the plastic chair sat across from Al-Haitham’s desk, set up for the parents, supposedly.

“Brace yourself for what?”

Al-Haitham raised an eyebrow. He spoke with that leading tone he always used when he knew the answer to his own question, but still wanted to see what Kaveh would say. It had always infuriated him in college because it was usually a sign their arguments were about to take a turn for the worse. Now, though, it made him feel frantic.

“Talking to you,” said Kaveh flatly.

If Al-Haitham was offended, he didn’t let on. He just looked through something on his laptop silently. He scrolled for a long moment, and he was probably just digging up some notes, but Kaveh couldn’t stand the silence, the ticking of the clock dragging him an inch closer to madness with each second.

“Can you hurry up, please?” Kaveh asked before he could stop himself.

Al-Haitham paused and raised an eyebrow. “Have somewhere to be?”

“Yes.” He bit irritably. “Home. I left Kasra with the neighbors because I didn’t have time to find a babysitter, but I asked them really last minute so I don’t want to burden them for too long.”

That gave Al-Haitham pause. “Your neighbors are watching Kasra?”

“Yes?” Kaveh glowered at him. “That’s what I just said.”

Al-Haitham didn’t speak for a moment. His eyebrows furrowed. After what seemed to be much internal debate, he asked, “You don’t have…anyone else to watch him?”

“Obviously not,” Kaveh bit irritably.

“...no second guardian?”

Kaveh frowned. “Well, that’s a bit personal, isn’t it? Do you need to know that to do your job?”

Perhaps it was a bit harsh, but Kaveh didn’t need Al-Haitham prying into his life. But then Al-Haitham’s expression shuttered. He jerked his head away, and though Al-Haitham didn’t let it show, his mouth pressed into a deeper frown.

Guilt washed through him hotly. For some terrible reason, Kaveh didn’t think he had the power to actually hurt Al-Haitham’s feelings, but before he could open his mouth to apologize, Al-Haitham spoke again.

“No,” said Al-Haitham evenly. “I suppose not.”

“I’m sorry,” said Kaveh quickly. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“But you’re correct. I do not need to know your marital status as a teacher, and it was a breach of privacy for me to ask that.” Al-Haitham swallowed, grimacing like he was swallowing a stone. Then, “I apologize.”

Kaveh felt like he’d been slapped. I never thought I’d see the day.

“Al-Haitham,” he said. “You don’t have to. I shouldn’t have—that was too—”

“I’ll save us both the trouble.” Al-Haitham held up a hand. “Why don’t we just focus on the actual point of this meeting?”

Kaveh swallowed. “Right.”

Al-Haitham scrolled through his laptop one more time before whatever was on screen landed in its final resting place. Then, he sat back in his chair and began to read.

“Kasra’s mostly on track with reading and writing,” began Al-Haitham. “He’s doing well with the beginner books, but having some trouble with the mid-level ones. Overall meeting expectations, just needs some more guidance. He is, however, doing very well with math. He’s beginning to do some basic arithmetic which makes him well ahead of his peers in that regard—”

“Okay, this is weird.” Kaveh squirmed. 

Al-Haitham paused. “What’s weird? I’m just doing my job.”

“Exactly.” Kaveh gestured vaguely. “This—this whole thing—your weird little teacher voice and you’re just talking about my brother like—”

“Brother?” Al-Haitham interrupted.

“Yes?” Kaveh blinked. “My brother?”

“Oh.” Al-Haitham’s expression softened all at once—no, that wasn’t the word. Before, his eyebrows had been hard and furrowed, bolting around the sharp wall of his face. But he looked truly surprised now, like that shock of the news had knocked him wide open.

“Oh—” Kaveh realized it all of a sudden. “Oh my gods, wait, did you think he was my son?”

“You look exactly the same,” said Al-Haitham, almost accusatory. “What was I supposed to think?”

“Our mother has very strong genetics.” Kaveh crossed his arms. “Al-Haitham, I’m twenty-eight and an architect. When do you think I had time to date and settle down and pop a kid out?”

“I wouldn’t know,” said Al-Haitham matter-of-factly. “We didn’t keep in touch after you graduated.”

Kaveh’s face heated. “I don’t like your tone.”

“What tone am I giving?”

“Like it was my fault.”

Al-Haitham raised an eyebrow. “You kept in touch with everyone else after you graduated.” Except me, was not said. 

Al-Haitham had texted him privately after graduation, a simple, Congratulations. Kaveh had chosen not to respond to it. Even when Al-Haitham had graduated two years later and everyone else congratulated him in the group chat, Kaveh still didn’t say a word.

Kaveh glared. “That’s because you—”

Al-Haitham’s face darkened. “I what?”

Al-Haitham had made a terrible joke—a really, really childish prank all things considered. It’d pissed Kaveh off so bad that he ignored Al-Haitham for the next six years. But now, looking at Al-Haitham in front of him with his collared shirt and shiny loafers and decorated kindergarten classroom, it reminded him brutally that they were adults now, and it suddenly felt strange bringing up petty college drama from so long ago.

“Nevermind.” Kaveh slumped back into his seat.

“Well, don’t leave me hanging,” said Al-Haitham wryly.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said, even though he had half a mind storming out of the room just so he wouldn’t have to come to terms with how childish he felt. But he’d survived getting ejected from one of Sumeru’s most prestigious architecture firms—he could survive this parent-teacher conference, too.

“Really?” Al-Haitham arched an eyebrow. “From what I remember, you used to hold onto grudges pretty badly.”

“Yeah, when I was twenty-two.” Kaveh huffed. “But I grew up, just like you did. I am an adult, despite what you think. I’m literally raising a kid.”

“Your brother.”

“My brother.”

There was a beat of silence, but Kaveh wasn’t built for silences. Never been and never would. Which was why he found himself tripping over his tongue to say, “Not my kid. He’s my half-brother. My mom had him with my stepdad, but they both had to move to Fontaine for a few years for one of my mom’s architecture projects and she didn’t want to drag Kasra all the way out there when she wouldn’t have time to take care of him. So I offered.”

Al-Haitham straightened. “You moved back here for Kasra?”

“Of course. Why else?”

“What about your career?”

“What about my career?” He could feel the irritation dragging through his teeth. “I’m still an architect. I work at an architecture firm nearby. Sure I’m not—” The Light of Kshahrewar. “Doing big projects like I used to, but I’m still doing things I like.”

Al-Haitham went quiet for another long moment. Kaveh began to wonder if Al-Haitham knew what happened to him, and then he felt arrogant for even wondering that in the first place. Why would Al-Haitham care about that anyway? Why was he so arrogant to think that Al-Haitham would even keep track of him in the first place?

“Besides,” he said, throat feeling thick. “I mean, it’s my brother. How could I ever—how could I just choose something else over him?”

There was a pause. Then, “I’m glad to see you haven’t changed.”

Kaveh glared. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing negative.” Al-Haitham pulled the laptop closer. 

Kaveh narrowed his eyes. “You expect me to believe you?”

“Believe what you want.” It sounded like a jab, but when Al-Haitham looked up again, the furrow in his eyebrows had smoothed out into something neutral and open. “Let’s continue the meeting so you can get back to Kasra.”

Kaveh huffed. “Sure, fine, whatever.”

The parent-teacher conference moved forward with Al-Haitham reporting on various progress points while Kaveh sat back and listened, trying to reconcile the two images of Al-Haitham sitting in front of him with his teacher voice and his teacher clothes in his teacher room, and the memory he still held of him in college—same hair, same eyes, same snark.

The conference ended in exactly fifteen minutes, which was very in character for Al-Haitham. When it was all over, Al-Haitham stood up and held out a hand.

“Thank you for attending. Let me know if you have any questions.”

Kaveh looked down before taking it, trying not to look like he was holding a dead rat. “This is still weird.”

Al-Haitham’s palms were startlingly warm. He gave one firm shake before he let their hands fall. “I’m just doing my job.”

“It’s still weird.”

“Hardly, I’ve been teaching for four years at this point.” Al-Haitham sat down. “Now if you’ll excuse me, the next parent should be coming soon and I’d like to be respectful of the appointment times.”

Kaveh rolled his eyes. “You haven’t changed much either.”

“I’m assuming you didn’t mean that as a compliment.” Al-Haitham wasn’t smiling, but his voice sounded warmer in a way he couldn’t quite understand, to a miniscule degree he couldn’t quite measure.

“Of course not!” Kaveh snapped.

Al-Haitham made a sound almost like he was amused, but when Kaveh glanced back to check, all he saw was Al-Haitham staring intently at his laptop again, probably pulling up his notes for the next appointment.

Kaveh drove away feeling more unsteady than he should. Like he’d missed something crucial. Where did Al-Haitham’s bite go at the end? At what point did he decide the fight was over and forget to tell Kaveh? He felt like he was still teething at some toy while Al-Haitham had long left the playroom.

When he arrived home, he relieved his neighbors of their toddler-watching duties. Even though Mrs. Kapoor insisted it was no trouble and that Kasra was a delight, Kaveh still tried to shove a small pouch of Mora at them because Faranak had raised him with sharp manners. Of course, all that got him was an affectionate slap on a risk and a, “I’m surprised you’re still single, Kaveh. You know, I have a daughter around your age—”

After which Kaveh had hurriedly dismissed himself, much to Kasra’s confusion.

“What does single mean?” asked Kasra.

“Don’t worry about it.” 

Kaveh distracted him by turning on Kasra’s favorite cartoons and bribing him with a bag of corn snacks. They settled into the couch for half a minute before Kasra turned to him and asked, “Does Mr. Al-Haitham like me?”

Kaveh snorted. “That’s not what the meeting was about.”

“Does he?” insisted Kasra.

Al-Haitham’s face popped up in his mind. The clinical report he’d given on Kasra’s progress before Kaveh had been too weirded about by his teacher persona; the way his face had softened in that imperceptible Al-Haitham way after Kaveh had spoken about his family.

He’d changed since college—they both had, certainly. Yet somehow, Al-Haitham knew how to deal with Kaveh, but Kaveh didn’t know how to deal with him. It made him feel afraid, not knowing who his opponent was anymore.

But when he turned to Kasra, finding his little brother staring up at him with those wide, curious eyes, it lit a little torch in him. Not all was dark. Not all was unknown.

“Yes, he does,” said Kaveh. “You’re doing very well, Kasra.”

And Kasra broke into a brilliant grin the way Kaveh knew he would. There was something comforting in knowing that no matter how people changed, he’d seen Kasra through all the growing, and knew him still.

“Yay!” Kasra clapped like a toy monkey, but it was so genuinely him Kaveh couldn’t help but laugh. 

Kaveh had lived far too much life in the past six years, always torn between the vertigo of looking at the height of his potential career and the fear of letting the Light of Kshahrewar sputter out. But Kasra only knew his older brother Kaveh, through every event that brought him home. Kasra, always, anchoring him back to shore.

-

Perhaps Kaveh didn’t need to tell Kasra the former detail. It was important to tell him he was doing well, that he was working hard and to continue with these positive reinforcements, as the parenting books suggested, but Kaveh already liked “Mr. Al-Haitham” far too much, so hearing that Mr. Al-Haitham did, in fact, like him and think he was doing well only made his torment worse. 

It made Kasra linger longer at the doors when school ended, like he wasn’t quite ready for the afternoon with his friends and his favorite teacher, Mr. Al-Haitham, to be over. It meant Kaveh being exposed to Al-Haitham longer, the presence of him radiating against his side while Kaveh stayed near the car and looked pointedly ahead at only Kasra while trying to beckon him over. He was sure that if let his Al-Haitham exposure go on any longer, he’d get a rash.

Of course, that just meant he’d have to look at Al-Haitham again eventually, because when it came Kasra’s time to leave, he wanted to say goodbye to every single other kindergartener still left at the school and, of course, his favorite teacher, Mr. Al-Haitham. Kaveh would have to watch—still near the car, still hovering uncomfortably—as Kasra gave a full-body wave with his little arm and Al-Haitham gave a nod in response. Then, Al-Haitham would bend his knees—just a little, just enough to meet Kasra’s eyes without craning his neck—and give a light nudge towards the car. Kasra would come running, Al-Haitham would straighten, and inevitably, Kaveh would meet Al-Haitham’s eyes through the thick curtain of his silver hair, still on his way back to his full height.

He still didn’t quite know how to behave around Al-Haitham. Kaveh kept getting caught in the memory of Al-Haitham and who they were in college before he’d blink and slam back into the present—the one where Kaveh was living in his hometown again and Al-Haitham was the kindergarten teacher of his kid brother. They had to remain civil, at least, for the duration of the school year.

But he still didn’t see what Kasra saw in him. He had yet to see the parts where “Mr. Al-Haitham” was particularly nice or funny or whatever. Mostly, when he pulled up to the elementary school after work, he just saw Al-Haitham watching him broodingly and intensely until he managed to wrangle Kasra into the car and drive away.

After the fifth iteration of arriving at the school and trying to urge Kasra into the car before he remembered he had a teacher, Kasra fully planted his feet right before stepping into the car.

“Kasra, please,” said Kaveh, on the verge of desperation.

“Why won’t you talk to Mr. Al-Haitham?” Kasra asked in that loud speech-whisper that kids thought they were being stealthy in.

“Why do you want me to?” He suddenly felt so, so tired.

“He’s my favorite and you’re my favorite so you can’t be mean to him.”

Kaveh sputtered. “I’m not—I’m not meant to him—”

Kasra gave him a look so flat it looked almost comical, like it should be on a tired adult instead of his round toddler face. Perhaps he was learning too much from Al-Haitham.

“I don’t need to talk to him,” said Kaveh. “There’s—no reason for me to.”

Kasra looked at him for a moment. Then he turned and went running back towards the concrete. “I’m playing again!”

“Kasra, what—”

“Yay!” Another little boy ushered him back onto the square drawn on the ground. “Zahra’s still King so she has to make the rules.”

“Oh my gods.” There was no way he could drag his little brother out of another round of four square.

“Having trouble?”

Kaveh turned to find Al-Haitham watching him.

“Maybe,” he bit. “Kasra is…blackmailing me.”

“He’s five,” said Al-Haitham flatly.

“Five-year-olds are more capable than you think!” Kaveh looked back at the little crowd of kids, watching Kasra bounce the ball to another player.

“What is he blackmailing you for?”

Kaveh stumbled. My little brother wants me to be nicer to you. He couldn’t tell Al-Haitham that.

“Nothing,” muttered Kaveh. “Sibling stuff.”

Al-Haitham eyed him for a moment. “Alright.” Then he turned to leave.

“Wait!”

Al-Haitham paused and turned around slowly. “What?”

Kaveh bit his lip. Was he really doing this? He almost dropped his hand and resolved to sulk back near his car when he caught sight of Kasra watching him with a pout before the ball came flying back at him.

“I…” Kaveh sighed. “How are you?”

Al-Haitham looked at him, bewildered. “Why?”

“I’m being polite.”

“I’m working right now,” said Al-Haitham.

“You can say hello to someone on the job.” Kaveh scowled. Why did he even bother?

“You’re distracting me from watching my kids.” Al-Haitham waved his hand. “Go pick up Kasra and let me do my job.”

Fuck this.

“I was trying to.” Kaveh turned to look at the four square game to see it still in progress. “But he went back to his four square game because he wanted me to—” He swallowed. “I wasn’t trying to bother you. I didn’t mean to talk to you at all.”

Al-Haitham followed his gaze. “Do you want me to get him?”

He grit his teeth. He didn’t want to ask Al-Haitham for anything.  

“It’s fine,” he said.

“Are you sure?”

Kaveh wanted to scream. Why did it sound like he was trying to be helpful when he was being an asshole earlier?

“Yes.” Kaveh stormed past him to the four square game.

Kasra had just bounced the ball out of another person’s square and mid-victorious fist-pump when Kaveh approached. All the other kids in line looked up at him and scrambled to get out of his shadow.

“Kasra,” said Kaveh, fighting to keep his voice controlled. “We need to go home now.”

Kasra looked up.

“Please,” he said a little softer.

Kasra set down the ball without a fight.

“Bye, Kasra!” A chorus of high-pitched voices sang.

“Bye, Mimi! Bye, Zahra! By, Akshith—”

Oh my gods.

Kaveh stood by patiently while Kasra waved to each of his individual friends. Then, he followed behind as Kasra started skipping towards the car.

Kasra suddenly stopped. “Bye, Mr. Al-Haitham!”

“Bye, Kasra,” said Al-Haitham, because of course he did. But he couldn’t say hello to Kaveh because it was too distracting.

Kaveh stormed past and ripped the driver’s side door of his car open. He leaned inside and started the car before straightening back up, finding Kasra skipping towards the car without a care in the world. Al-Haitham was back to watching the children, face turned away as if the interaction had never happened at all.

He plastered another high and false smile on his face. “Ready to go home?”

Kasra nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah!”

Later, after helping Kasra buckle up and pulling away from the school, Kasra spoke again.

“Are you mad?”

“What?” Kaveh startled. “No, why would I be mad?”

“I dunno.” Kasra kicked his legs. “You look like this.”

Kaveh glanced up at the rearview mirror to find Kasra scrunching his face up in a near comical imitation of anger: eyebrows pulled together, nose crumpled into a wrinkled ball, and a frown so deep at the sides it looked carved. He crossed his arms and huffed so dramatically that Kaveh felt like he should have been offended at mimicry of him.

Instead, the sight of it alone startled a laugh out of him. It made all the irritation melt away.

“I do not look like that,” laughed Kaveh.

“Yeah, you do!” Kasra’s face returned to normal. “You were like. ‘Grr.’”

“I was not like, ‘grrr.’” Kaveh smiled.

“Yeah, you were.”

“Kasra, at what point did I make that noise.”

“The whole time.”

“The whole time of what?”

Kasra kicked his feet again and then devolved into some sort of toddler speak. Kaveh let it go one for another minute before he gave up on trying to interpret it.

“How was your day?” he asked.

Kasra stopped. “Good! I talked to all of my friends and Mr. Al-Haitham a lot.”

Mr. Al-Haitham, Mr. Al-Haitham, Al-Haitham—

“You really like him, huh?”

“He’s my favorite!”

Kaveh gripped the steering wheel and tried not to scream. “Kasra, hasn’t Mr. Al-Haitham been your only teacher? How can he be your favorite?”

“Because he’s the funniest and the smartest and he lets me paint his arm.”

Kaveh nearly choked at the mental image: Al-Haitham, stone-face, buried in a book, sweater sleeve rolled up to the elbow so Kasra could smear messy acrylic across his forearm. But of course, that wasn’t accurate because Al-Haitham would probably be as attentive in the classroom as he was outside after school and watch him the entire time.

“Kasra, that doesn’t answer the question,” he managed.

“Yes, it does.”

“Oh my gods.”

Kaveh didn’t get it. He really didn’t get it. Maybe he just needed to see Al-Haitham’s teaching skills in action, but all he ever saw was Al-Haitham standing stoically around the toddlers while they shrieked around him. He didn’t approach them unless they were truly screaming, but they still seemed to flock to him anyway! What the fuck!

Whatever anger Kasra picked up from Kaveh soon seemed to flee his mind. When they got home, Kaveh suggested they paint something together because the parenting books suggested arts and crafts was a good way to have quality time with your toddler. Besides, Kasra had apparently already painted on Al-Haitham’s arm—Kaveh, the actual artist, would not be outdone by that.

Kaveh drew a quick sketch of Alcazarzaray and felt a stab of satisfaction when he saw Kasra’s eyes light up. He let Kasra paint it all the wrong colors and praised him for the creativity. After, Kasra lifted it up and declared, “I want to show this to Mr. Al-Haitham!”

Kaveh agreed because what was he going to say—no? But gods. Gods. How the fuck did this happen? How did Al-Haitham end up teaching kindergarten? How was he still there? How had all the kids and Kaveh’s own damn brother declare Al-Haitham their favorite teacher? How had the world tilted so far? Where had Kaveh gone wrong?

-

Certainly, the worst part about being an architect was the whole staying-late-in-office thing. Kaveh had run late picking up Kasra more than once, but he was running late—far too late in a way that made him feel panicked.

The latest he’d get Kasra was usually an hour after school let out, but today his manager had decided to throw three new projects at him. All of them with severely unrealistic deadlines that had Kaveh scrambling to do enough proper analysis before he could bust out even the roughest of drafts. In a frantic scramble to get something done, he shoved his earbuds in and worked until his eyes burned and only when he started nodding off from sleep deprivation did he knock his head into the desk, wake his phone up, and catch a glimpse of the time.

“Fuck!” Kaveh shouted into the empty office.

That led to him speeding back home around seven p.m. in a panicked and guilt-ridden frenzy. The only good thing about leaving so late was that he’d past most of rush hour, leaving the highways and roads clear enough that he could race to the school with any further delay.

He pulled up to the front of the school, heart pounding. It was late enough that the evening was beginning to bleed into the sky, darkening it to a deeper orange at the edges and purpling towards the center. The kind of sleepy darkness edging in that signaled the end of the day, except he was here now and Kasra had been waiting for who knows how long.

His heart dropped when he saw how empty the front of the school was. He imagined Kasra standing at the doors, losing his playmates one by one to parents that actually picked up their children at a reasonable time until he was the last one there—alone and friendless, still unsure when he’d finally get to go home.

Kaveh had hated it as a kid. He knew his mother had been busy, but it still didn’t couldn’t stop the low wave of despair rolling through him. He couldn’t imagine Kasra liked it any better.

As he pulled up to the curb, he braced himself for a sullen Kasra finally spotting him from the doors. But when he looked forward, he saw no little brother waiting inside. He scanned the area. It took him another second, but he finally spotted two figures sitting on a bench off to the side, hidden by bushes, heads bent together.

It was Kasra and Al-Haitham. Kasra was speaking, hands flapping wildly as he talked emphatically about whatever was on his mind. And Al-Haitham was—

Al-Haitham was watching attentively, nodding along to everything with a serious sort of expression that showed he was really listening. It took Kaveh a moment to realize that he’d seen that face before—Al-Haitham didn’t listen to anything that didn’t interest him, but he’d at least always paid full attention when Kaveh argued with him in college. Al-Haitham was using that face now with his little brother: open, honest, attuned to the air around him. He wasn’t wearing his headphones—probably wasn’t allowed to as a teacher—but the sight was still strange, his ears like a pale splotch against the gray of his hair. It almost made him look too naked. Too unlike the Al-Haitham he should know.

“And I have a mommy, too,” he heard Kasra say. “She’s like Kaveh. She draws and she builds and that’s why she’s in Fontaine with my dad.”

“I see.” Al-Haitham nodded very seriously. “What is she building in Fontaine?”

“A court!” Kasra declared. “It’s like—um, it’s like a circle where everyone sits. And then you can tell people what they did wrong.”

“Interesting,” said Al-Haitham, as if he didn’t already know what a court was.

“Yeah!” Kasra kicked his legs. “My mommy’s building that. She’s gonna make it look really cool and my dad’s there because he was born in Fontaine so he shows her how to eat the bread and also the birds. My dad’s sending Kaveh bird pictures to show to me because I like birds and I’ve already seen all the birds in Sumeru. But—but my dad’s helping my mommy because she gets really busy and forgets to do stuff sometimes.”

“It’s nice of him to go out there to support her.”

“It is!” Kasra beamed. “My dad is really nice. He’s as nice as my brother.”

Kaveh’s heart clenched. He cursed the distance then because he suddenly wondered what Al-Haitham’s face looked like? He was sure that Al-Haitham wouldn’t describe him anywhere near “nice.”

“I’m sure he is,” said Al-Haitham. “Have you ever been to Fontaine?”

“Not yet!” Kasra bounced on the bench. “But I will when my mom’s done with the court. And then I’ll go with Kaveh and we can visit together.”

Then Al-Haitham smiled and Kaveh almost fell forward against his car horn. “That sounds fun. You should ask your brother to take pictures while you’re there so you can bring them back.”

“I’ll show you, Mr. Al-Haitham!”

Al-Haitham laughed, quiet and warm. “If I’m still your teacher, I would like to see them.”

Kaveh’s heart ached. He’d expected to see Kasra melancholy and sad at being the last kid picked up—Kaveh certainly had in his childhood. But he wasn’t; Kasra was lively and rambunctious and happy—because of Al-Haitham.

Archons, it was close to seven and both Kasra nad Al-Haitham were still here. The school normally closed at five, but Al-Haitham—who refused to do homework past six p.m. in undergrad—had stayed the whole time.

He couldn’t stand it anymore. Kaveh burst out of the car.

“Kasra, I’m so sorry I’m late—”

“Kaveh!” Kasra sprung off the bench and barreled toward him.

He caught his little brother with an oof before he hoisted Kasra higher up to his chest. His heart was still beating wildly from the race to get to the elementary school, but Kasra’s small heart beat steady and strong. No breathlessness in him, no fear. Just the simple joy of seeing Kaveh.

“I’m sorry I was late,” said Kaveh, throat thick.

“That’s okay. I got to talk to Mr. Al-Haitham!”

Kaveh opened his eyes and looked at the bench. Al-Haitham had risen, now watching both of them impassively. All the quiet warmth on his face had fled, replaced with his usual unreadable gaze. He wasn’t smiling anymore, jsut crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow.

“I’m glad you made it,” said Al-Haitham rather flatly.

Guilt flushed through him. He already felt bad enough that he’d picked up Kasra so late, he didn’t need Al-Haitham’s snark either.

But, terribly, Kaveh couldn’t find it in himself to be mad. Instead, he just felt terribly, terirbly grateful.

“Thank you for watching him,” said Kaveh as he set Kasra down. “I’m, um, really sorry you had to stay late to watch him.”

Al-Haitham shrugged. “I’m just doing my job.”

Kaveh laughed, startling them both.

“What?” Al-Haitham furrowed his eyebrows.

Kaveh looked at him, remembering the Al-Haitham of college. The one who never did more than necessary, who never went to office hours or did extra credit or stayed up late to study because he valued his free time more than anything else. This same Al-Haitham now who stayed two hours past closing just to watch over Kaveh’s kid brother.

“Nothing,” said Kaveh, that strange laughter bubbling up in his chest again. “Thank you, regardless.”

Then, against his better judgement, Kaveh smiled.

Something like alarm flickered in Al-Haitham’s eyes, but Kaveh was too far away to be sure. Al-Haitham shifted almost uncomfortably. “As I said, it’s part of my job.” He grabbed his bag from off the bench. “If you’re really picking him up, though, then I’ll be heading home for dinner.”

Kaveh winced again. “Ah, I’m sorry for keeping you.”

Al-Haitham waved it away.

“Kaveh, what’s for dinner?” asked Kasra.

“Um.” Fuck, he really hadn’t thought about it because he was so distracted with work. He ran through a mental list in his head to figure out what they had in the house.

“I’m heading out.” Al-Haitham started walking towards the staff parking lot. He paused for a moment to add, “Have a good night.”

“Thank you, Al-Haitham,” said Kaveh, meaning it.

Later, after helping Kasra into the car and making extra-double-triple sure that Kasra was okay and not mad at him (“I had fun!” Kasra promised), Kaveh pulled away from the front of the school and started the drive home. He passed Al-Haitham’s car on the way out, and when he peered inside, catching a glimpse of Al-Haitham serenely drumming his fingers along the steering wheel. He really didn’t look bothered being kept so late, and Kaveh started to think that, perhaps, teaching did suit Al-Haitham after all.

-

One strange thing happened during Kaveh’s senior year of college. 

Lots of strange things tended to happen during college just by the very nature of shoving a couple thousand extremely smart, yet very sleep-deprived and caffeinated, college students. Usually in the form of strange campus performances or lectures or essays or simply just watching people behave.

But this was a little different.

In a once-in-a-blue-moon type occasion, Al-Haitham and Kaveh were studying alone together.

Originally, it’d been a study date with the whole group. But then Nilou had to cancel because of some impromptu theater club rehearsal to clean up one of the songs, then Dehya had to bail because her recreational sports club needed another member for a game, then Candace was halfway to the House of Daena when she got a call that her car was getting towed, then Tighnari canceled because he was still hungover and Cyno subsequently canceled because of course he had to take care of his boyfriend.

Dunyarzad did end up showing up—thank the Archons—and she acted as a great buffer between Kaveh and Al-Haitham. Well, until she got a text from one of her one million project group chats she tended to have as a business major that they needed to rehearse for a presentation.

“I completely forgot about this,” said Dunyarzad. “I’m so sorry—”

“It’s okay,” Kaveh had said, trying not to sound too terribly strained. “Go do what you have to do.”

“Are you sure…?” Her eyes drifted subtly to the left where Al-Haitham was sitting. If Al-Haitham noticed, he pretended not to.

“Yes.” Kaveh would feel infinitely worse if she stayed for his sake. “Go, Dunyarzad. Good luck with your presentation.”

She smiled at him, relief cracking across her face like a sunrise. “Thank you. Good luck with your studying!”

And then she was gone, leaving him and Al-Haitham alone.

They were sitting in a quiet, cozy corner of the library. The House of Daena was the Akademiya’s largest library, renovated to all hell with thick floor-to-ceiling windows and decorative stained glass that muddled the light into a smeared color palette wherever it fell. All of it bright with light and open air, save for the little nook in the east wing of the library on the second floor that seemed to be preserved from a different time. It was all dark wood bookshelves and archival books with faded colors, antique lamps with incandescent light bulbs that burned too hot as yellow light shined through their glass shades. It was getting dark outside by the time Dunyarzad had left, the evening falling like a weary bird. And the fading sunset was bleeding the last of itself into the sky.

They were sitting near one of those lamps. This late into the evening, the usual hum of the library had faded to a softer murmur. Less voices and more keyboard taps, air vent humming, weary sighs. From the moment Dunyarzad left, Kaveh hadn’t said a word. But he wasn’t one to sit with silence for long, not even with Al-Haitham. So when another long minute passed without a word between them, he finally tried to make conversation.

Kaveh asked, “How much do you have left in you?” How much longer are you going to be here? How much work do you have left? He kind of expected Al-Haitham to bounce the moment Dunyarzad had because now they had no buffer. Yet surprisingly, Al-Haitham stayed.

“Hard to measure,” said Al-Haitham.

Kaveh bit back his irritation. “Can you give me a straight answer?”

“It is a straight answer,” said Al-Haitham. “It’s hard to measure.”

Kaveh rolled his eyes and went back to work irritably. The glare of his laptop screen hurt his eyes and the haze of the setting sun made it hard to focus.

“I don’t know why you’re like this,” he blurted. “Like, I don’t know why you’re still here.”

“I like you,” said Al-Haitham.

Kaveh blinked, unsure he’d heard correctly. “What?”

“I like you,” he repeated.

“As in—” Kaveh blinked. “As in, like, a friend?”

“No.”

Kaveh stared at him for a long moment, but Al-Haitham was still looking serenely down at his laptop like he’d just remarked on something as simple as the weather.  No, as in, no Al-Haitham did not like him as a friend. But Al-Haitham liked him. But not as a friend. Which meant—

“Are you pranking me?” he burst.

Al-Haitham finally looked up. “Am I what?”

“This is really funny, Al-Haitham,” Kaveh had bit. “But I don’t believe you.”

“What do you mean you don’t believe me?”

“It means I don’t believe you.” Kaveh slammed his hands down on the table. “What the fuck? Why would you say that? I don’t—” 

Al-Haitham furrowed his eyebrows, all concerned and quiet confusion instead of the usual impassiveness which made him angrier.

“Kaveh…” he started.

“Don’t.” Kaveh shook his head and began packing up his backpack. “Don’t. Archons, why would you—that’s not funny.”

“I’m not trying to be.” Now Al-Haitham looked angry, which made him angrier. Archons, the fucking nerve.

“Don’t.” Kaveh stepped away. “Whatever, I don’t care.”

“Where are you going?” Al-Haitham furrowed his eyebrows as if he were truly concerned.

“Home.” Kaveh slung his backpack over his shoulder. “You know, don’t—don’t pull this shit with me again. Do you think this is funny? Playing with people’s feelings? This is a fucked up prank. Even for you.”

“Kaveh, I’m not—”

“Don’t.” Then Kaveh had turned around and marched straight out of the library and into the dark, leaving Al-Haitham alone at the table.

He remembered thinking: what an asshole. What a fucking prick. Because how could you play with someone’s feelings like that with no regard? What did that even mean?

After that night, Kaveh had expected something to change. But no. Al-Haitham acted like normal the next time they met up, kept being normal and annoying and arguing with him as if the night had never happened. Like he’d never said something so strangely and terribly life-changing that it sent Kaveh’s world tilting on its axis. He got angrier at Al-Haitham because it was his fault Kaveh was feeling like this, acting like this: noticing and staring and feeling this hot and terribly itchy feeling in his throat when he looked at Al-Haitham. Like he wanted to vomit. And it was all his fault.

Kaveh had thought about talking to Al-Haitham again, just to reiterate what a fucked up and terrible little prank this was and ask him why. Why would you say that? Why would you do that? Except Al-Haitham kept acting normal and kept arguing with Kaveh, which further solidified for him that it must be his version of a practical joke. Which made him wonder in the first place why he’d ever said that in the first place. Why then and there he had decided to fuck with the fundamental nature of their relationship.

When Kaveh graduated, unbeknownst to what awaited him, he’d stared at the afternoon sun burning overhead, the Akademiya campus sprawled out before him in his green graduation robes and degree in hand. He’d thought about what a tumultuous four years it had been, how the latter two had been made worse by Al-Haitham. He’d gotten that Congratulations on graduating text from Al-Haitham shortly after the ceremony, but he didn’t respond. As if to say, Good riddance, Al-Haitham. I’m wiping my hands of you. As if to say, That’s what you get for fucking with my head. And now Kaveh would leave him behind. He would leave it all behind and never have to think about Al-Haitham or any of his antics ever again.

-

“And then what happened?” Faranak smiled through the phone screen on their weekly video call.

“My teacher said I’m doing really good!” Kasra beamed. “Kaveh went to a meeting and said my teacher said I was doing really good and I like drawing and I like math but I need to read better, but Kaveh said he’s going to help me.”

Faranak turned to look at Kaveh. “Is he now?”

“Yes,” said Kaveh.

“When do you think you’ll manage to do that?” The corner of her mouth twitched, eyes sparkling with amusement.

“Mom—” Kaveh sighed. “If you think I’m working too much, you can just tell me.”

“I remember what it’s like being a junior architect, Kaveh. Just remember to take time for yourself, too.”

“I am, I am.”

Kasra let out a yawn in front of him. Kaveh shifted Kasra in his lap.

“Bedtime?” he asked.

Kasra nodded sleepily. 

“Give me a minute, Mom,” Kaveh told the phone.

“Goodnight, my love.” Faranak blew a kiss through the phone.

Kasra pretended to grab it and pressed it to both of his cheeks before Kaveh lifted him up and brought him to the other room. He put Kasra in his pajamas and tucked him into bed, and then Kasra was snoring softly before Kaveh made it to the lightswitch.

By the time he returned to the living room, he found Faranak still on the phone, looking at the corner. Kaveh picked up the phone again and stayed silent for a long moment.

It must have been the maternal instincts, or the empathy that came from coming from the same blood and behaving the same, but Faranak took one look at him before she asked, “What is it?”

Kaveh laughed a little deliriously. Of course she would catch him. “I…don’t know if I’m doing enough for Kasra.”

Kaveh loved taking care of Kasra, truly. But what he had learned from growing up was that sometimes the feeling was not enough without the action, and as earnestly as he tried to take care of his brother, it didn’t change the fact that he picked up Kasra late, that he had to tuck him in and then hurry back to the office. Kasra still smiled brightly, but Kaveh couldn’t help but feel the guilt.

Faranak was silent for a long moment before she asked, “Does Kasra seem happy enough?”

Kaveh thought for a long moment. 

“Yes,” he admitted. “I think—I think he loves kindergarten. It sounds like he has a lot of friends. He loves learning, loves going to school, and—” Kaveh admitted regrettably, “—really likes his teacher. It’s just—I picked him up really late from school once, but his teacher stayed with him the whole time until I came.”

Faranak smiled. “His teacher sounds kind.”

Kaveh paused for a moment. “It’s Al-Haitham.”

“Oh?” Her eyes widened. “The friend you had in college?”

Kaveh laughed bitterly. “I wouldn’t call us friends.”

There was a pause. “But he must have been significant if you remember him.”

Kaveh snorted. “He was definitely…significant in my life.”

He thought again, telling Al-Haitham, I know you. Did he know Al-Haitham? In college, would he have expected this to be the same man, the one that let children dance around his legs and was apparently funny to his kid brother and stayed late for two more hours talking to Kasra to get rid of the dread of being picked up late? Did he really know Al-Haitham?

Faranak raised an eyebrow.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said quickly.

She smiled and leaned back against the chair. “Alright, if you say so. How are you doing otherwise, Kaveh?”

He thought about the future, about the state of things. How far he’d fallen from his early twenties into an ordinary junior architect role when he’d already created his magnum opus at twenty-four. Fall from grace, or perhaps he’d burned too bright and too fast like a star too bright, and so maybe he wasn’t always meant to last. But he was back full circle, back to where he first discovered his love for architecture, back in the home that nurtured it. It was stressful being a parent, even if it was to his brother, but there was joy in Kasra’s eyes and even when he picked him up late, he was still smiling.

He could afford his groceries, he had a home, and his brother was happy. So really, how bad could he be doing?

“I’m fine, Mom,” he said, and meant it. “I really am.”

-

Kasra’s Reading 8:00 AM

[email protected]

Hi Kaveh,

Kasra hasn’t turned his reading homework in for the past few days. Normally this is not an issue for him, but since this is unusual, I wanted to bring that to your attention. I would suggest checking in on him and investigating why he would not be turning in his homework and I will do my best in the classroom.

Regards,

Al-Haitham

RE: Kasra’s Reading 9:12 AM

arch.kaveh @mail.com

What do you mean he hasn’t been turning in his homework??

RE: Kasra’s Reading 9:14 AM

[email protected]

Hi Kaveh, 

I mean what I said in my original message. We have small daily reading assignments, but he has not turned in an assignment since last Friday. This is not usual behavior for him and he is usually pretty diligent, so I wanted to reach out and let you know in case there may be a root cause that I cannot investigate in the classroom.

Regards,

Al-Haitham

RE: Kasra’s Reading 9:28 AM

[email protected]

Al-Haitham you don’t have to keep adding “hi kaveh” and “regards” to the end of all your messages. This is weird.

Also has this been happening since Monday? I swear I’ve seen him doing all his homework. I sit down with him everyday. Also, daily reading assignments? Al-Haitham, this is kindergarten—what are you doing to these kids???

RE: Kasra’s Reading 9:40 AM

[email protected]

Hi Kaveh,

Since this is a professional email regarding my student and you are his legal guardian, I will not be dropping these formalities as it would be unprofessional of me. 

Secondly, I am the one who obtained a teaching certification so trust that I know what I am doing in regards to educating my students.

Thirdly, yes this has been happening since Monday, per my original email. I’d like to follow up on the idea of investigating any root causes at home. Kasra has more of a natural inclination towards mathematics and our science, but he has been having a little more trouble picking up reading than others. I wonder if that sort of hiccup may be making him hesitate trying harder things.

Regardless, please keep an eye on him.

Best,

Al-Haitham

RE: Kasra’s Reading 9:57 AM

[email protected]

Al-Haitham, please, we literally went to college together. Whatever professionalism you’re trying to maintain is instantly tainted by just my memories of you.

Secondly, should I be concerned??? Is this normal for five year olds? I’ve never raised a five year old before. What do you mean by “keep an eye on him?” Do you think I’d be strangling his freedom by trying to enforce turning in homework? The books say that I should let my child make mistakes and learn on their own but like to what extent? Should I be getting supplemental help? I can try reading more to him, but I don’t have a lot of time. Will this hinder Kasra’s development permanently if I don’t do something now?

RE: Kasra’s Reading 10:11 AM

[email protected]

Hi Kaveh,

No, this will not permanently hinder Kasra’s development. He’s just not turning in his homework.

If this is too much of a bother, I will keep track of this myself. But if this persists, I’ll follow up next month.

Regards,

Al-Haitham

RE: Kasra’s Reading 10:15 AM

[email protected]

Are you sure? Can we, like, talk about this in person? Come up with a plan?

RE: Kasra’s Reading 10:22 AM

[email protected]

Hi Kaveh,

That’s not strictly necessary, but if it would put your mind at ease, we can talk about it in the parent teacher conferences next quarter.

Best,

Al-Haitham

RE: Kasra’s Reading 10:41 AM

[email protected]

Next quarter??? Can we not just meet up? 

RE: Kasra’s Reading 10:51 AM

[email protected]

Hi Kaveh,

If you can find a time during the week where we are both free, I’m willing to meet. Here is my schedule for next week:

Regards,

Al-Haitham

[Attachment: 1]

RE: Kasra’s Reading 11:11 AM

[email protected]

You’re not gonna believe this but none of those work for me. I’m only free on Thursday but you’re busy that day. What about the week after on Monday?

RE: Kasra’s Reading 11:22 AM

[email protected]

Hi Kaveh,

Unfortunately, that Monday I have after school activities. Are you available on Wednesday, though?

Regards,

Al-Haitham.

RE: Kasra’s Reading 11:43 AM

[email protected]

I have to finalize a blueprint draft for a client by Thursday so that’s not ideal. Maybe Thursday afternoon?

RE: Kasra’s Reading 11:55 AM

[email protected]

Hi Kaveh,

Unfortunately, I also have the same after school activities on the Thursday. Are you available the week after that on the Friday?

Regards,

Al-Haitham

RE: Kasra’s Reading 11:56 AM

[email protected]

Don’t you get tired of typing “Hi Kaveh” all the time? You can literally drop it.

Also, we are now three weeks out from today for a meeting that will probably take like twenty minutes. What’s your number? Can we just call about it?

Kaveh didn’t get another response for the rest of the work day and he was not anxious about it. He did not check his email all throughout lunch and all throughout the day in between doing his work.

Asking Al-Haitham for his number? What the fuck was he doing? And why hadn’t he responded yet? It was the livelihood of his little brother they were talking about what the hell?

He didn’t get a response for the rest of the workday, not even when he left the office and drove to the elementary school. He decided to confront Al-Haitham there except when he arrived, Al-Haitham was nowhere to be found among the usual gaggle of teachers.

Kasra spotted him from afar and came barreling towards the car. Kaveh let him climb inside, and he tried to stay as long as he dared to see if Al-Haitham would come out, but then Kasra began to grow restless and hungry so he had to give up and drive home.

After driving home and helping Kasra out of the car, making him a snack, and then setting him in front of the T.V., Kaveh finally laid down on the couch and found a single email.

RE: Kasra’s Reading 7:25 PM

[email protected]

Hi Kaveh,

My number’s still the same. I haven’t changed it.

Regards,

Al-Haitham.

Kaveh stared at it for a long moment before he swiped out of the email app. He scrolled through his contacts and found Al-Haitham sitting at the top. He swiped into their messaging app and found their last messages to each other were from a few years ago, Kaveh saying, Tighnari wants to know where you are followed by a message from Al-Haitham a few weeks later with congratulations on graduating. After that, it was Al-Haitham saying he’d heard about the falling out with the big architecture firm. Kaveh had responded to neither of those messages.

It wasn’t entirely strange to keep the same number throughout the years, but he half expected Al-Haitham to lose it. But their messages were there, preserved in time. The last time they’d spoken they’d been entirely different people in entirely different circumstances. And now would be the first time texting since all those years ago.

Kaveh hesitated only for a moment before pressing the call button.

“Hello?” Al-Haitham picked up immediately.

“Why didn’t you respond to my email what the f—” He glanced at Kasra, still occupied by the T.V. “...heck?”

There was a pause. Kaveh swore he imagined the little snort, but when Al-Haitham spoke again, his voice was flat. “In case you forgot, I have a job, which is odd considering you also have one. But I had to teach.”

“We were emailing regularly just fine earlier in the day?”

“Silent reading time switched to the morning so I had more time to respond,” said Al-Haitham simply. “After that, I had to resume teaching in the afternoon.”

Kaveh bit his lip. “Okay, but—where were you after school?”

“Were you looking for me?”

From anyone else, it would have sounded taunting, suggestive in the implication that Kaveh was seeking Al-Haitham out specifically. But from Al-Haitham, it sounded like a genuine question.

Regardless, Kaveh’s face burned when he said, “I wanted to follow up on what we were talking about. Like, the…the meeting. And you weren’t responding.”

“One of my students fell and scraped her knee,” said Al-Haitham. “So I brought her to the nurse.”

“Ah.” 

Kaveh imagined Al-Haitham watching the gaggle of children from afar. He pictured it from the viewpoint he usually looked at Al-Haitham at—in his car, at a distance, but this time Al-Haitham wasn’t watching him. He imagined a little girl in a green dress tottering along the pavement before she tripped and fell to the ground. He imagined her face scrunching into a little wrinkled ball before she began to cry, and he imagined Al-Haitham swooping in out of the sky like a hero—or he would be from her point of view—and lifting her up. It’d be no struggle for him, either. Al-Haitham had always liked working out in college, to Kaveh’s extreme bewilderment, and he imagined that must have continued, so lifting some forty pound kid was no matter to him.

He couldn’t imagine Al-Haitham speaking softly. Even when he was talking to Kasra for two hours, he did not soften his voice. He did not warm it to falsehoods, but he spoke with a clear sense of truth and interest that must be more than what most children got. He couldn’t imagine Al-Haitham reassuring her with empty platitudes of everything being alright and calling her strong and brave, but he could imagine Al-Haitham saying, “We’ll be there soon. It’s not bleeding too much. It will heal quickly.”

“Yes,” repeated Al-Haitham. “‘Ah.’”

Kaveh’s face burned again. “I wanted—I wanted to talk to you about meeting up.”

Al-Haitham hummed through the phone. “Okay.”

“Since none of our weekdays work,” said Kaveh. “What about the weekend? Are you open to meeting up outside of the work week?”

Al-Haitham was silent for a long, long moment. So long that he almost thought Al-Haitham had hung up, except when he pulled his phone away from his ear, he saw the timer still counting up. 

“Hello?” Kaveh tried, and failed, not to let the panic creep into his voice. 

Did I say the wrong thing?

“I’m here.” Another pause. “That’s fine.”

“Cool,” said Kaveh. “We could get dinner or something? We might as well. I haven’t left my house for anything except work since moving back.”

Ak-Haitham was silent again, though the pause cut off quicker. “Fine. When and where?”

“Lambad’s?” suggested Kaveh. “This Saturday? I’ll need to get a babysitter, but it’s close to my mom’s house so I can get back quickly if needed.”

“Sure.”

“Great.” Suddenly, the great weight in his chest ceased, if only for the fact that he now had a plan of action forward. Kaveh was good with those, when he had direction. “I’ll see you then.”

“See you then.”

Kaveh hung up. It was only after he’d set his phone down, cleaned up the kitchen, and began to wash the dishes that he realized what he’d just asked: to see Al-Haitham on a weekend. At a bar. In any other context, it sounded terribly suggestive. But as they knew each other now, Kaveh was more hung up on the fact that he was seeing Al-Haitham alone. For the first time in years.

“Fuck,” he dropped his elbows to the kitchen counter.

“You can’t say that word, Kaveh!” called Kasra from the living room.

“Please, let me have my moment!

-

The scramble to find a babysitter was a hell that Kaveh would not wish upon his worst enemies, not even Al-Haitham. The babysitter Faranak usually called was busy so he had to resort to asking his neighbors, who then asked their neighbors, who then asked their family friends within the neighborhood to find one person who was trusted enough and also willing to watch Kasra.

Finally, his neighbor’s daughter’s best friend’s old brother’s girlfriend said she was available and willing to spend her Saturday night watching Kasra because she wanted, “to study early education in childhood and I’ve had lots of experience babysitting other kids so honestly I’m really fine. I’d love to watch him! It’ll be another experience to add to my essays when I apply to the Akademiya later.”

Kaveh thanked her profusely over email and promised her good pay for such short notice. She thanked him in turn, and Kaveh let out a sigh of relief that Kasra would be all taken care of.

Speaking of: Kasra watching him now from the floor as Kaveh sat on the couch, hunched over his laptop like a bridge troll.

“Are you okay, Kaveh?” asked Kasra.

Kaveh blinked. “Huh? Yes, yes, I’m good! I found a babysitter for you on Saturday.”

Kasra blinked at him owlishly. “Are you sure?”

Damn perceptive kid. Kaveh plastered on a smile and slid his laptop off his lap. “Yes, I’m very sure. She’s really nice from what I can tell. You’ll have a good night on Saturday.”

Kasra fiddled with the puzzle piece in his hand. “Where are you going?”

“I’m meeting with a…friend, remember?” Kaveh leaned forward. “Just getting some dinner nearby and talking about something really fast. But I’ll be nearby so if you need anything, I can get home soon.”

“Mr. Al-Haitham?” shrieked Kasra.

“What—” Kaveh winced. “Why do you think it’s him?”

“You’re friends with Mr. Al-Haitham, right?”

“I never confirmed that.”

“But you’re eating dinner with him.”

“I also never confirmed that.”

Kasra slotted a puzzle piece into place. When he looked up, he was smiling. “Can you tell Mr. Al-Haitham I said hi?”

Kaveh sighed. “Sure, Kasra. I’ll tell him you said hi.”

The rest of the week rolled by alarmingly fast. Something to be said about working that office job again and coming home to his kid brother that, while well behaved, still had kid needs. Saturday pounced on him the morning he woke, struck with the immediate reminder that he was seeing Al-Haitham for dinner that night.

Kaveh jerked out of bed immediately.

He started making a simple breakfast before Kasra came stumbling out of his own room and sat at the table. Kaveh served him and ran through all his routines. He let Kasra play in the living room while he deep cleaned the whole house to get rid of his nerves—dusted the old bookshelves, mopped the floors, took a toothbrush to the crevices of the tile. Everything just to work off the nerve of the meeting.

Closer to evening, Kaveh disappeared to his room to try on outfits. Not that it should matter, but maybe the atmosphere of Lambad’s made him want to dress up. He tried on several combinations of shirts and pants before he came out in a red shirt and black khakis and opened the door to the babysitter standing outside.

“Here’s some Mora for dinner. Please call me if you need anything,” said Kaveh.

“Don’t worry, I got this.” Saanvi stepped inside. “Kasra and I are going to have a great night!”

Kasra giggled.

“Thank you again, Saanvi.” He stepped out the door.

“No problem.” Saanvi turned and began to close the door, their positions reversed. “Good luck on your date, Mr. Kaveh!”

Then she shut the door.

“It’s not a date,” he muttered, feeling very much like the air had been punched out of him. It was a professional discussion on the academic progress of his little brother with said brother’s teacher and very much not a date, though perhaps the outfit and the bar location didn’t help.

Not that Kaveh was going to drink much, if at all. He had to drive home, and he didn’t want Kasra to see him any amount of inebriated.

All of his nerves were buzzing under his skin as he drove to his town’s location of Lambad’s. Lambad’s Taverns was a small chain that existed throughout Sumeru, but the original location with the actual Lambad himself was back in Sumeru City with the Akademiya—Kaveh had met him during his freshman year of college and felt like he’d met a celebrity. The one he was driving to now was simply a branch that Kaveh used to sneak into back in his high school days.

The drive was both torturously long and far, far too short. Each passing landmark felt like a clock hand pulling him closer to the edge. Which was ridiculous! Since he had been the one to request the meeting in the first place, and the anxiety of fucking up Kasra’s childhood was clearly a much greater worry.

Archons. Kaveh imagined telling Tighnari about asking to meet up with Al-Haitham at a bar. He imagined Tighnari saying, The fuck? Did the Abyss freeze over? But Tighnari was all the way researching in the Avidya forest now where the signal was poor and his free time was sparse, so he didn’t text Tighnari like he would have once done.

Kaveh pulled into the parking lot with his heart rabbiting in his throat. The sky had darkened enough that Lambad’s was illuminated from within, and through the window, he could see Al-Haitham sitting at the bar area, nursing some sort of seltzer looking beverage, though he couldn’t tell if it actually had alcohol or not.

“Fucking hell,” muttered Kaveh. He sucked in a breath and stepped out of the car.

The sounds of the tavern blasted him across the face as he pushed through the doors. The first thing he noticed was how quiet this location was. The last time he’d been there was in high school, and his subsequent experiences with Lambad’s were all in the clamor of Sumeru City—the adults retiring in the bustling city, college students crowding in, all the clamor of the city condensed into a clean yet crowded establishment with Lambad’s loud voice booming through the restaurant.

Here, there were far less people. The atmosphere was less crowded mob and more quiet gathering place with its warm wood tables, soft green carpets, the limited patrons chattering in muted voices just below the crackle of the honest-to-the-gods real fireplace crackling in the corner. 

Did he remember it being this quiet? Or had he been so consumed by the thrill of getting in that his eighteen-year-old self had found more magic here than he thought? How, in all of the times he’d visited, had he not come back once? If Al-Haitham had been teaching here for years, did he now know this place better than Kaveh?

Someone cleared their throat. Kaveh jerked his head in the direction of the sound, just in time to see Al-Haitham bringing his drink up to his mouth.

Kaveh stalked over and plopped onto the seat next to him. “I saw you,” grumbled Kaveh. “You didn’t have to cough to get my attention.”

“You were standing there for so long, I was worried you’d forgotten how to use your eyes.”

“Fuck you,” he said automatically.

“You’re not supposed to use those words,” said Al-Haitham, then his face twisted like he hadn’t quite meant for those words to come out.

“Was that—was that your teacher voice?” Kaveh smiled despite himself.

“Yes.” Al-Haitham grimaced.

“Am I going to get in trouble if I say ‘fuck’ again?” Kaveh’s mouth twitched. “Will you tell me off if I say shit? Are you going to call my parents?”

“I don’t want to incur international fees calling your mom in Fontaine,” said Al-Haitham flatly.

The knot in his stomach uncoiled a bit. “What are you drinking?” asked Kaveh.

“Sparkling water,” said Al-Haitham. “I have work in the morning.”

“I do, too. But surely you must have a better tolerance than that.” It used to take Kaveh several beers before he started feeling something. And even then, he could go on for a while.

Al-Haitham looked at him. “Do you remember how often I drank in college?”

He felt a little jolt run down his spine. Every time they explicitly acknowledged the fact that they’d gone to school together, it made Kaveh feel strange. Like he wasn’t supposed to bring that part of him back to his hometown.

“I don’t have the tolerance you have,” said Al-Haitham. “Or, had. But don’t let that stop you from getting what you want.”

“I wasn’t going to drink tonight. I’d rather not be drunk around my five-year-old brother.” 

They both paused for a second, as if realizing that they weren’t there to catch up, but this was in fact a strange ad hoc parent teacher conference because of Kaveh’s immense worry that Kasra wasn’t going to be able to read.

“Have you eaten?”

Kaveh startled. “Huh? No, I haven’t.”

“Do you want to get something, then?” Al-Haitham nodded toward the bar.

His stomach rumbled. He’d been so caught up in finishing a good dinner for Kasra before the babysitter arrived that he’d forgotten to have his own share of food. “Sure.” Because he couldn’t imagine a world where he could keep a good and civil conversation with Al-Haitham while he was delirious from hunger and sleep deprivation.

Al-Haitham raised his hand and waved the bartender over. Kaveh ordered a small cheap shawarma wrap while Al-Haitham ordered a plate of skewers. 

They ate in silence. Kaveh supposed they should have been talking at that point, but the moment he took a bite of the shawarma wrap, he forgot his words and only focused on scarfing everything down. This was a parent teacher conference—or at least it was supposed to be, even at a bar on the weekend—but he couldn’t bring himself to speak while he ate and soaked up the warmth of the room.

Finally, when he shoved the last bite down, Kaveh spoke again. 

“So,” said Kaveh. “What do you think I should do about Kasra?”

Al-Haitham blinked, midway through shoving a skewer in his mouth. 

“About his reading,” Kaveh clarified. 

“Ah.”

Kaveh peered at him. “I’ve been watching him the past couple of days and I see him do his homework—and he usually doesn’t do anything else until he finishes.”

“Did you observe any unusual behavior like what I mentioned in my email?”

Kaveh frowned. “I—I don’t think so? We called our mom the other day and he seemed fine. I don’t know, I try to read with him when I can but I’m so busy that it’s hard—sometimes when I get home late he doesn’t want to read with me? Do you think he’s like…mad at me?”

Al-Haitham stared at him for a long moment like he was turning the answer over in his head. “Well, I can’t read his mind, but it’s possible.”

Kaveh tried not to sound like the air had been punched out of him. “Really?”

“Anything’s possible, Kaveh.”

Kaveh stared at the table for a long moment, dread churning an awful storm in his stomach.

An idea brewed in his mind but he was too afraid to broach it. But perhaps that was what dragging Al-Haitham out here was for.

“Do you think—I don’t know. Do you think he’s mad at me for picking him up late? Is this, like, acting out for attention?”

“Why would you think that?” asked Al-Haitham.

One of the parenting books mentioned something about kids acting out when they weren’t getting enough attention. Kaveh remembered being young and even knowing his mother was busy, had still wanted her to look at him. The closest he’d gotten was a slipping grade in history, which made her turn to him with worried eyes asking, Are you doing alright? Just the concern in her eyes made his heart crackle like a firework, like having her eyes on him reignited some spark. Oh, sure, he’d still had his father at the time as well, but they were both busy—so busy. Even between the two of them, even when he knew they loved him, selfishly, it didn’t feel like enough. It made him feel so, so horrible.

Kaveh wanted so badly not to repeat that. But maybe it was just part of him, part of his blood, part of the profession of being an architect: being able to create and love so loudly but still never able to give the world enough.

“Because I pick him up late. And—I don’t mean to, but it keeps happening. And he’s never mentioned it, but he could just be good at hiding his feelings because he learned that from me and Mom. I don’t know.”

Al-Haitham stirred his straw in his drink. “I’ve never seen him upset before in school. Have you asked him how he feels?”

“I feel like…I should just know.”

Al-Haitham gave him a look like he just said something stupid. “Why is that?”

“I’m—the older brother. Why should I have him try to help me parent him?”

Now, Al-Haitham really looked at him like he was stupid. “How can you expect to know what people are thinking if you don’t ask them?”

“It’s—” Kaveh waved his hand. He looked vaguely at the bartender and thought about how nice it would be to have a drink except he didn’t want to get drunk when he still had to get home to Kasra. “It’s complicated.”

“It’s not,” said Al-Haitham. “You’re brother’s just having trouble reading.”

Kaveh suddenly felt very, very stupid. “Maybe we shouldn’t have met up. Maybe I shouldn’t have gotten a babysitter, this was stupid. I’m sorry for wasting your time.”

Al-Haitham sighed. “All kids hit developmental hiccups, Kaveh. But that doesn’t necessarily indicate any failures on your part. Children will grow or stumble regardless of our interference.”

“Al-Haitham—”

“All this to say…” Al-Haitham turned toward him on the stool. “I can tell you’re anxious. A lot of new parents worry about their kids because for a lot of them, it’s their first time and there’s no easy way to prepare for being a parent. Things will happen, Kaveh. But sometimes you just have to let kids figure it out on their own. I only told you about Kasra because—” Al-Haitham paused. “Because I wanted you to be aware, but you don’t have to be concerned. Kasra and I will figure it out. If I truly saw any issues, I would have told you, and we’d be having a very different conversation. But it’s very clear that you’re doing your best given the circumstances.” Another pause, like he wasn’t quite sure he wanted to say it, but decided to anyway. “Any new parent situation is difficult, with or without any help.”

It reminded him of their first parent teacher conference when Al-Haitham had asked if there was a second guardian. Well, that’s a bit personal, isn’t it? He didn’t know why, but now, Kaveh suddenly needed Al-Haitham to know.

“There’s not a second guardian, by the way,” said Kaveh. “I know you…you asked about that a while ago. But yeah, it’s just me.”

Al-Haitham blinked at him. “I see.”

“Just…just thought you should know. It’s, um, hard.”

“Well,” said Al-Haitham. “I think you’re doing a fine job anyway.”

Kaveh suddenly wanted to cry. It was fucking embarrassing.

“Thank you,” he said, voice shaky. “Even though I keep fucking up.”

Al-Haitham gave him a flat look that said, Did our conversation mean nothing to you? What he said out loud, though, was, “You’re not fucking up in the way you think you are. You are trying, but even if you make mistakes, children are more resilient than we often give them credit for. Kasra will figure it out, and I’ll help him along the way.” Al-Haitham shifted in his seat, their toes brushing in the space between the stools. “That’s what I’m here for.” 

Kaveh sat there for a long moment, reeling. Al-Haitham stared at him unwaveringly, his green eyes sharp and perceptive and all too seeing. His heart thudded in his chest, and the knot in his chest truly unraveled and he couldn’t quite believe Al-Haitham of all people could have comforted him but—

Al-Haitham had been a teacher for years. For all Kaveh couldn’t believe it, Al-Haitham knew children, had worked around them often.

How little had he known Al-Haitham? How had he known Al-Haitham for two years and not known he could be like this? How little did Kaveh really know?

“I—” Kaveh’s throat felt thick. “You’re right.”

Al-Haitham raised an eyebrow. “And you’re admitting that?”

Kaveh scowled. “I can take it back.”

Then, surprisingly, the corner of Al-Haitham’s mouth pulled up.

He suddenly felt hot. “Stop that.”

“Stop what?” The smile disappeared.

“That.” He felt something itchy and hot rising in his chest. He did not remember Al-Haitham sounding like this in college, looking like this. It was uncanny. 

Al-Haitham furrowed his eyebrows again.

Instead of feeling irritated, Kaveh felt warm. He took a sip of his drink to clear the thickness in his throat.

“Thank you, though,” he finally said. “I needed to hear that.”

“New parents often do.”

Kaveh looked at him. “Are you used to giving people pep talks?”

“Not particularly, no,” said Al-Haitham. “I only share my observations.”

Now that was something he was used to Al-Haitham seeing: Al-Haitham’s strange little side comments that were supposed to be objective, but erring in another direction. Though, it felt different now, sitting next to Al-Haitham at this bar, talking like real adults. Instead of feeling irritated, Kaveh felt like a revelation had fallen on him.

“I—” Kaveh stood. “I should go. That was everything I wanted to talk about, so…um, thank you for your time.”

He stood and walked to the register to pay, but when the bartender placed a receipt down, there was only one.

“Oh,” said Kaveh. “Can we split—”

“I got it.” Al-Haitham slid his card between them. 

“You don’t have to—”

But the bartender already took Al-Haitham’s card. He stared at Al-Haitham while the bartender processed the transaction, examining his face and trying to understand what he was thinking, but Al-Haitham stared ahead impassively. If he didn’t know any better, he would have thought that Al-Haitham was avoiding looking at him.

“Here you are.” The bartender returned and gave the card back.

“Let me take a picture,” said Kaveh. “I’ll pay you back.”

But Al-Haitham had already finished signing the receipt. He gave it back to the bartender before shooting a quick glance at Kaveh.

“Don’t bother,” said Al-Haitham. “I’ll see Kasra on Monday.”

Then he turned and fled out the door, leaving Kaveh reeling.

-

(Shortly after the whole incident with Al-Haitham in the House of Daena, before Kaveh graduated, the group had met up again. They’d hosted another drunk Genius Invokation game because most of them were tired upperclassmen that had little desire to stumble around bars at night. Which suited Kaveh just fine because even at the supposedly sprightly age of twenty-two, he felt very un-sprightly.

They gathered in Cyno and Tighnari’s apartment as usual, crowding around the short coffee table as they spread out the playing cards alongside the many bottles of alcohol. Various plastic shot glasses and cups lay scattered across the table, waiting for someone to lose so they had to take a shot.

Al-Haitham was invited, of course, because people like Tighnari and Nilou and Dehya insisted on bringing him to everything. The moment Kaveh saw his face, the memory of the night in the House of Daena washed over him like a heatwave. Terrible stupid prank and he was just sitting there like he hadn’t done anything at all.

Kaveh remembered sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with Nilou and Tighnari, Al-Haitham across the table and staring stone-faced at his cards. Even as he started to turn pink from the alcohol, his resolve did not waver. 

“Are you a lightweight?” Dehya nudged him.

“No,” said Al-Haitham, though his eyes looked glassy.

She smiled, amused. “Are you sure?”

He shot her a glare so unexpectedly forceful, even Kaveh laughed. He’d never seen an expression like that on Al-Haitham before; it was so startling he forgot his anger in the incredulity.

Al-Haitham turned to him, startled.

“What?” Kaveh froze.

“What?” Al-Haitham furrowed his eyebrows. “What are you laughing at?”

“You,” said Kaveh, because he was also several drinks in with a partially impaired brain-to-mouth filter. “You look—”

“Your turn, Cyno!” Tighnari butted in pointedly.

“Ah.” Cyno took the cue and rolled his dice. “Alright, I’m using Fischl’s skill on your Diluc, Candace.”

“I look what?”

Al-Haitham’s eyes stayed heavy on Kaveh.

“Oh my gods,” muttered Tighnari.

“You were pouting,” taunted Kaveh. “Like a baby.”

“I was not pouting.”

“You were.”

“Oh my gods!” Tighnari said louder. “If you’re going to bicker, please do not do it across the table where the game is happening.”

Then, Tighnari stood and proceeded to maneuver everyone around the table in a complex manner until Kaveh ended up sitting next to Al-Haitham.

“There,” said Tighnari. “Now please, keep your conversation to yourselves.”

Kaveh had stared Al-Haitham in the face, the air between them heavy. He could feel the foot of distance between their faces like a rubberband pulled taut—one inch away from snapping.

“You were pouting,” said Kaveh, because he was also drunk and not quite thinking straight

“I was not.” Al-Haitham’s eyes narrowed. His mouth pressed into a hard line like he was trying to sharpen all his features, as if to say, I would never do something so childish.

Which was exactly what he looked like. Kaveh snorted. “You were.”

“I was not.”

“You were.”

“I was not.”

“Please, please, take this to another room or let us play in peace,” begged Tighnari.

Kaveh flushed and turned his head. He cast a sidelong glance at Al-Haitham.

“You’re such a lightweight,” he said, lowering his voice.

“I’m not.” In the light of the apartment, the tips of his ears almost looked pink. “I’m not drunk.”

“Oh, you absolutely are.” Why else would Al-Haitham entertain Kaveh for this long? “How many drinks did you have? Two?”

Al-Haitham seemed to flush redder though his face remained the same. “One.”

“Al-Haitham, that’s worse.”  

And then Kaveh was laughing. Al-Haitham scowled again and the look on his face amused him so terribly that he shoved Al-Haitham—bold move—right on the arm at the hem where the short sleeve of his T-shirt ended. Al-Haitham’s skin was astonishingly warm against his palm, like lifting the coffee mug too freshly out of the pot.

Al-Haitham lifted his eyes. Kaveh expected yelling or a deeper scowl, but instead he got something strange and unreadable: Al-Haitham’s eyebrows unpinched, mouth unlined. Mouth a bit open, watching with something close to awe.

Kaveh’s heart kicked up, the way it did in fear, and he swallowed and looked away.

The silence pulsed between them like a wound. Around them, the game continued with the same fervor, all laughter and spirit and everything sucked out.

They didn’t speak for the rest of the night.)

-

The next time Kaveh saw Al-Haitham was, once again, picking Kasra up from the elementary school. He didn’t come terribly late that night. In fact, there were still ten other kids there when he arrived. Perhaps not the highest bar to cross, but he considered it a win compared to the time he’d come at seven p.m. where Kasra had been left alone for two hours with Al-Haitham. Kasra wasn’t with the other kids, instead chatting emphatically with Al-Haitham while Al-Haitham nodded along.

Kaveh pulled up to the curb. Overhead, the sky was still a balmy blue this early into autumn, the air warm enough to smell like hope and the remnants of summer. 

“Kasra!” He called, stepping out of the car.

At the sound of his voice, Kasra turned away and his face brightened. “KAVEH!”

He came bounding down the pavement and threw himself into his arms. Kaveh caught him with a quiet oof before hefting him up, so Kasra could wrap his little arms around his neck.

“Good day?” Kaveh murmured into his fine hair, still soft from youth.

“Good!” Kasra nodded. “Very good!”

Kaveh let him down when he felt Kasra’s arms loosening. As he straightened, he lifted his head and was startled to find Al-Haitham walking over.

“Kaveh,” said Al-Haitham.

Kaveh blinked. They hadn’t spoken since dinner on Saturday, and all of a sudden all of the words he knew shriveled up in his throat.

“Hey, Al-Haitham,” said Kaveh, a bit awkwardly. “What’s up?”

Al-Haitham blinked at him once before his eyes trailed down slowly to Kasra. Kasra was looking back and forth between them, as if expecting something exciting to happen.

“Nothing,” said Al-Haitham. “Can’t I say goodbye to a student?”

“You don’t normally walk over here.”

Al-Haitham pressed his lips together. It suddenly reminded him of when they were in college, Al-Haitham drunk on two drinks and flustered at being a lightweight. Like he was annoyed that he’d been called out for it. He was pouting.

Kaveh felt the corner of his mouth twitch. “You don’t need an excuse to talk to me.”

“Don’t I?” Al-Haitham raised an eyebrow, as if to say, Haven’t I needed to in the past?

He swallowed. Truly, perhaps, he hadn’t given Al-Haitham enough credit in the past.

Kaveh redirected. “Say bye, Kasra.”

“Bye, Mr. Al-Haitham!”

Al-Haitham’s eyes shifted down, and though his face didn’t change, his voice was a whole degree warmer when he said, “Bye, Kasra. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Kaveh’s heart twisted funnily. “Did you need something?”

Al-Haitham looked at him for a moment longer before he shook his head. “No, I did not.”

“Cool.” Kaveh took a step back. Part of him felt dissatisfied with the ending of this conversation. So he said, “Thanks again for dinner.”

Kasra’s eyes widened. “Did you go on a date?” 

“Shh.” Kaveh clamped a hand over his mouth. “No! Kasra, what—do you even know what that is?”

“I’m five, not stupid.”

Al-Haitham made a noise behind his hand that sounded suspiciously like a laugh.

“What the hell?”

“You’re not supposed to say that,” Kasra said, a little too smugly. 

“Kasra…”

“I watched shows with Mommy!” He cried defensively. “Before you moved back! They usually go to dinner. Did you go on a date?”

“No.” Kaveh darted a nervous glance up at Al-Haitham but only found the bastard hiding his smile poorly behind a hand. “We were just talking.” 

“About what?”

About how worried I am about you. But he couldn’t tell Kasra about that. It wasn’t his burden to bear.

“Stuff,” said Kaveh quickly. “Like friends do.”

“So you are friends!” Kasra’s eyes sparkled as if that was the best news he’d heard all day. Even better than the idea of Kaveh going on a date.

Kaveh’s gaze snagged on Al-Haitham’s. Al-Haitham nodded as if to say, Your move.

“We are,” he decided. “Friends.”

“Like me and Zahra!” Kasra cried again. “Mr. Al-Haitham, are you gonna come over for playdates?”

“No.” Kaveh ushered him away. “No, no. We already said our goodbyes. No more questions.”

“But—”

“Goodbye, Mr. Al-Haitham.” Kaveh looked at him pointedly.

Al-Haitham’s hand dropped, revealing a startlingly soft smile. Like a sunset outside of the city. “Goodbye, Kaveh.”

Kaveh placed a hand on Kasra’s back and ushered him away before it confused him any further.

-

Because Kaveh had a diagnosed anxiety disorder, he did email Al-Haitham again about Kasra. He asked about Kasra’s reading progress, to which Al-Haitham responded: Hi Kaveh, it has been four days. Give him more time. Thanks, Al-Haitham.

But Kaveh, paranoid and very, very invested in his little brother’s upbringing, emailed him again. And again. And after the fifth email, Al-Haitham stopped responding to him.

So he resorted to texting.

You

How’s Kasra doing?

Al-Haitham

Why are you texting me.

You

Idk it’s faster than emailing

And u weren’t responding to my emails :(

Al-Haitham

I don’t know if you should be texting your little brother’s kindergarten teacher.

You

Is it against the rules?? 

Aren’t there like a million romcoms about parent/romances?

Not that we’re dating

But like that’s infinitely worse than me texting you

Al-Haitham

Those are movies. And typically, the rule is to not date the parent of one of the children you’re teaching for impartiality reasons.

The same should apply here.

You

Yeah but like

I knew you from before you were a teacher

But also how is Kasra doing

Al-Haitham

Fine.

You

???

Al-Haitham

I mean exactly that. Don’t worry about him.

You

That’s physically impossible for me btw. Like it goes against more core values and the fundamental parts of me

Al-Haitham

Kasra is fine. Go do your job and let me do mine.

Kaveh sent him a few more sporadic messages but received no response. He gave up around noon, and resorted to his old college habits of throwing himself into work so he didn’t have the headspace to worry about anything else. It almost worked—the anxiety gnawing ceaselessly at his stomach fading to a dull ache towards the afternoon, but still there. Still teething.

Around four p.m., his phone buzzed.

Al-Haitham

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Below Al-Haitham’s default contact photo was a picture of Kasra. He was looking at the camera, the shirt Kaveh had dressed him in that morning was a little crooked at the collar, and his one wiggly front tooth slightly ajar in his open-mouthed grin like he was throwing his all into the command of Smile for the camera! Which Kaveh couldn’t imagine Al-Haitham saying, but he must have said it—or something to that effect because this wasn’t a candid photo taken from a far. This photo was up close, had called for Kasra’s attention, all in deliberation.

Oh.

You

Fuck you, you’re going to make me cry at work

Al-Haitham

He’s just reading a book.

You

Exactly!

Al-Haitham didn’t respond after that, which meant he must have gone back to teaching.

An ache pressed at the back of his throat, hard and demanding. The backs of his eyes prickled and Kaveh felt like he needed to shove a sock in his mouth before he really started crying in the office.

He thought about dinner with Al-Haitham. Kasra will figure it out, and I’ll help him along the way. That’s what I’m here for. And for all he did not trust Al-Haitham, that unraveled something tight and terrified inside him.

For all he had hated Al-Haitham in college, the one thing Kaveh knew was that Al-Haitham didn’t lie—his greatest vice and most honored virtue. To hear that, to know that Al-Haitham said that to him and meant it—it unraveled something tight and terrified inside him.

I know you, he’d told Al-Haitham. Because he thought he had him all figured out from the slash of time they shared together in college.

Kaveh looked down at his phone, at the photo of Kasra smiling brightly at the camera with a book in his lap. He imagined that Al-Haitham must have walked over and asked him to smile for a picture. Just to send to Kaveh.

I know you. But he didn’t. Not in the slightest.

But Kaveh thought that, perhaps, he’d like to now.