Actions

Work Header

Rating:
Archive Warning:
Category:
Fandom:
Relationship:
Characters:
Additional Tags:
Language:
English
Series:
Part 8 of Kavetham / Haikaveh Oneshots & Twoshots , Part 4 of A Treatise on Intellectual Dumbasses and Their Incomprehensible Love
Stats:
Published:
2025-05-05
Words:
3,748
Chapters:
1/1
Comments:
42
Kudos:
267
Bookmarks:
26
Hits:
2,174

A Treatise on the Observational Method (or, How to Lose Your Mind and Gain a Boyfriend in Five Hair Flips or Less)

Summary:

“Oh, oh! You are the single most—infuriating, emotionally unavailable, uptight, lichen-brained man I have ever met—!”

“Mm.” Alhaitham scribbled something in his notebook. “Addendum: subject becomes increasingly eloquent when angry. Elevated use of compound insults. Possible link between caffeine intake and creative vulgarity.”

Kaveh lunged.

There was a flurry of motion, the slap of the notebook being snatched mid-sentence, a lot of swearing (mostly from Kaveh), and then a standoff in the living room that looked like a Renaissance painting titled “The Last Straw, Probably.”

“Give it back,” Alhaitham said calmly, rising from his chair.

Kaveh held the notebook to his chest like a damsel guarding her chastity. “Absolutely not. You wrote a whole damn essay on my hair flip cadence, you psychotic little—”

“It's a perfectly reasonable area of study.”

There are many ways to fall in love. Alhaitham chose the one with footnotes. Kaveh is suffering.

Notes:

(See the end of the work for notes and other works inspired by this one.)

Work Text:

Alhaitham, contrary to Kaveh’s increasingly dramatic proclamations, was not a sadist.

He was, however, a scholar.

And scholars observed. That was simply the natural order of things—particularly when the subject in question had managed, against all odds, to make the study of architectural aesthetics an act of war against both rationality and budget. The sheer volume of receipts Kaveh was capable of generating in a single day could qualify as a Sumeru national crisis. And yet, somehow, that wasn’t the most baffling thing about him.

No, the most baffling thing was the hair flip.

That arrogant little flick, full of contemptuous sunshine and the wrath of seven overwrought poetry anthologies, usually deployed just before Kaveh attempted to storm out of their shared home in an operatic fury. (Usually tripping over a stack of discarded blueprints. Usually blamed on Alhaitham. Naturally.)

Alhaitham had taken to noting the frequency and emotional range of each flip in a thick leather notebook titled:

“KAVEH: A CASE STUDY IN EXCESSIVE EMOTIONALISM.”

A second notebook, bound in soft green and gold, was tucked beneath the first. This one was less objective. He hadn’t named it. He never would. It contained, among other things, five haikus, a sonnet, and an uncomfortably detailed breakdown of Kaveh’s morning routine and how his hair curled at the ends when he was too tired to blow dry it.

It was for research. Obviously.

At this precise moment, Kaveh was in the kitchen committing unspeakable acts upon a bag of coffee beans, half-naked in silk pajama pants and muttering something about “artistic oppression.” Alhaitham, meanwhile, was seated at the dining table with his notebooks and an expression of deliberate neutrality. Which, if you knew him, was basically the facial equivalent of a siren going off.

He noted the following:

Time: 7:42 AM

State of Dress: Shirtless. Floral-patterned silk, drawstring loose. Not statistically relevant. (Liar.)

Mood: Agitated. Possibly hungover. Very pink ears.

Hair Flip Count (Morning): 2

Commentary: One flip accompanied by insult: “You’re a soul-sucking academic ghoul.” Excellent. New material.

Kaveh turned then, catching the unmistakable sound of pen against parchment and narrowing his eyes like a man betrayed by fate and breakfast simultaneously.

“You’re doing it again,” he said flatly.

Alhaitham didn’t look up. “Making observations? Recording them? You’ll have to be more specific.”

“That creepy little study of yours.” Kaveh waved a spoon at him like it was a weapon of the divine. “You’re obsessed with me. Admit it.”

“I’m documenting the psychological deterioration of a man who believes indoor fountains are essential to spiritual health.”

“That fountain was essential! The energy in here is completely stagnant. It’s no wonder I can’t sleep under your—your cold, academic glare!”

“I wear a sleep mask,” Alhaitham said, unbothered. “Your insomnia is entirely your own problem.”

Kaveh’s gasp could’ve launched ships.

“Oh, oh! You are the single most—infuriating, emotionally unavailable, uptight, lichen-brained man I have ever met—!”

“Mm.” Alhaitham scribbled something in his notebook. “Addendum: subject becomes increasingly eloquent when angry. Elevated use of compound insults. Possible link between caffeine intake and creative vulgarity.”

Kaveh lunged.

There was a flurry of motion, the slap of the notebook being snatched mid-sentence, a lot of swearing (mostly from Kaveh), and then a standoff in the living room that looked like a Renaissance painting titled “The Last Straw, Probably.”

“Give it back,” Alhaitham said calmly, rising from his chair.

Kaveh held the notebook to his chest like a damsel guarding her chastity. “Absolutely not. You wrote a whole damn essay on my hair flip cadence, you psychotic little—”

“It's a perfectly reasonable area of study.”

“I should sue you for psychological harassment.”

“You’d need to find a lawyer willing to represent that level of delusion.”

“I am a lawyer!”

“Poorly.”

Kaveh shrieked. Not yelled—shrieked. Like a hawk getting exorcised. And then, in a moment of tragic clarity, he opened the notebook to a random page.

“…Wait. Did you—did you write a poem about the curve of my spine?”

Alhaitham blinked.

“Give me that,” he said, a rare flicker of embarrassment crossing his face as he lunged forward.

Kaveh, ever the dramatist, dodged behind the couch with all the grace of a theatre kid escaping stage left. “Oh my god, you’re in love with me.”

“I am not.”

“You are!” He flipped through more pages. “‘Even his rage is architectural’?! Alhaitham—what the hell does that even mean?!”

Alhaitham grabbed for the notebook. Kaveh stumbled backward, still laughing, scandalized and delighted and glowing like he’d been given divine ammunition.

He’d remember this moment forever.

A pause.

A breath.

And then, because Kaveh was a disaster and couldn’t help himself, he grinned.

“I knew it,” he said, smug as sin. “You’re a pervert. A poetic pervert. Who writes horny structural metaphors about his roommate. I should have you arrested.”

Alhaitham, cornered and expressionless, said nothing. His silence, unfortunately, only made it worse.

Kaveh stepped closer, waving the notebook.

“Admit it,” he whispered, low and deadly. “You think I’m beautiful.”

“…You’re tolerable,” Alhaitham said, voice clipped.

Kaveh stared.

Alhaitham stared back.

The air thickened with the weight of denial, unspoken tension, and three years of sexually charged arguing over rent and philosophy.

“…You’re blushing,” Kaveh said triumphantly.

“I’m not.”

“You are. That’s it, I win.”

“This wasn’t a competition.”

“You wrote a fucking sonnet about my shoulder blades, Alhaitham. This is absolutely a competition—and I just won.”

And then, just to be cruel, he recited the final couplet from memory. Alhaitham winced.

“I have many regrets,” he muttered.

Kaveh hummed, leaning in. “I don’t.”

Another pause.

“...Do you want to kiss me or something?” Kaveh asked, eyes sharp and unreadable.

Alhaitham considered this.

Then said, calmly, as if discussing an abstract theorem: “Eventually. Yes.”

Kaveh froze.

“…You’re serious.”

“I wouldn’t write a poem about your shoulder blades if I weren’t.”

“You—unbelievable—” Kaveh sputtered, scandalized beyond repair. “You don’t just say that, you—there’s supposed to be buildup, or or tension, or—foreplay! You’re not supposed to admit it! What the hell is wrong with you?!”

“You asked.”

“YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO DENY IT UNTIL WE HAVE A PASSIONATE, ILL-ADVISED KISS IN THE RAIN.”

“There’s no rain. Also, we’re indoors.”

“I HATE YOU,” Kaveh declared, slamming the notebook against Alhaitham’s chest.

“You’ll still be here tomorrow morning,” Alhaitham said.

Kaveh opened his mouth. Closed it.

“…You’re insufferable.”

“And you’re barefoot. You’ll slip on your own dignity on the way back to your room.”

Kaveh stormed off.

He came back five minutes later.

“So. Hypothetically. If I did kiss you. Would it be a study? Or an experiment?”

The silence that followed Kaveh’s last line stretched.

Long. Lingering. Too thick to breathe through.

Hypothetically. If I did kiss you. Would it be a study? Or an experiment?

Alhaitham turned a page in his book. Didn’t look up. Didn’t need to.

“It would be a hypothesis tested under repeatable conditions,” he’d said.

Kaveh blinked.

And blinked again.

“…You absolute demon.”

No response. Just the turn of another page—deliberate, taunting, like he hadn’t just reduced one of Kaveh’s most charged, devastating, emotionally complicated flirtation attempts into scientific method. Like he hadn’t just invited him to kiss him repeatedly while acting like it was for a goddamn lab report.

“You’re doing that thing again,” Kaveh hissed, stepping closer, arms folded like a Victorian heroine who just realized her corset was laced by the wrong butler.

“What thing?” Alhaitham asked, serene as a calm before a literary storm.

“That—thing. Where you act like you're not smug but you are so smug. You think you’re clever. You think you’re so smooth. Just because you have cheekbones that could slice glass and a brain made of cold-pressed smugness and forbidden knowledge.”

Alhaitham glanced up, one brow arching.

“And you’re still standing here.”

Kaveh flinched. “That’s—irrelevant.”

“You came back five minutes after storming off.”

“I forgot my coffee.”

“You’re holding tea.”

“Same thing.”

“It isn’t.”

“Don’t you dare explain the botanical differences between—”

“It’s not the time or the place for a phytology lecture,” Alhaitham said, setting the book down. “Unless you need an excuse to stay longer.”

Kaveh’s mouth opened. Closed. Then opened again like a goldfish trying to file for emotional bankruptcy.

“…I will sue you for psychological warfare.”

“Try it.”

“Gods, you’re so—so—so detached. You’re emotionally sterile. You flirt like a sentient thesaurus. No build-up, no tension, no romance—”

Alhaitham stood up.

Kaveh stopped talking.

There was a pause.

A charged pause.

And not the romantic kind that played before someone was dipped and kissed against a moonlit backdrop. No, this was the kind of pause you got in a locked room full of volatile chemicals and unspoken feelings and two adult men pretending they weren’t one wrong comment away from either homicide or making out against a bookcase.

“I’m not sterile,” Alhaitham said, voice low and even. “I’m selective.”

Kaveh swallowed.

There were, he would later say, two voices Alhaitham used that made his soul malfunction. One was the calm, steady baritone of ‘I’ve read six dissertations that prove you’re wrong.’ The other was the quieter, slower voice that felt like it had been dipped in wine and implication and whispered against skin instead of ears.

This was the latter.

Selective.

“You are not allowed to be hot and smart,” Kaveh said, which came out sounding more like a prayer and a complaint at once. “Pick a struggle.”

“I’ve already picked you,” Alhaitham said simply.

And Kaveh—architect, poet, half-mad romantic—choked.

“Don’t say things like that! You can’t just say things like that with your face and your voice and your shoulders and expect me to survive!”

“You survived the recession. You’ll be fine.”

“Barely!”

Alhaitham took a step forward. Kaveh took one back. This continued until Kaveh’s back hit the wall and Alhaitham was standing dangerously close, one hand resting beside his head like the setup to a fanfic that he would have scorned two weeks ago while sobbing quietly into a blueprint about feelings.

“I don’t understand you,” Kaveh whispered, breath coming fast, heart going faster.

“Yes, you do.”

“You’re always watching me.”

“Yes.”

“You’re obsessed with me.”

“Also yes.”

“That’s—creepy.”

“Only if the feelings aren’t mutual.”

Kaveh’s lips parted.

He hated—hated—how warm his chest felt. How his stomach fizzed like improperly cooled soda. How Alhaitham always managed to say these ridiculous things with that unreadable expression, like he wasn’t doing damage, like he hadn’t just walked into Kaveh’s ribs and set up a little research tent and taken notes on his entire cardiac system.

“I can’t tell if I want to slap you or kiss you,” Kaveh murmured, voice a little unsteady.

“You’ll do both,” Alhaitham said. “Eventually.”

“You’re so sure of yourself.”

“Only when the data supports it.”

“You’re insufferable.”

“You like that about me.”

And then—

A breath.

Another.

Kaveh stared up at him, flushed and visibly furious at his own reaction, and said, “Gods, you make me want to do something incredibly regrettable.”

Alhaitham leaned in. “So do it.”

Their mouths hovered—hovered—and for one aching, ridiculous moment, everything in the room felt slow and fast at once. Alhaitham’s breath brushed against Kaveh’s lips. Kaveh’s fingers curled into the fabric of his own pajama pants, like he was physically holding himself back from grabbing him by the jaw and kissing the smirk off his face.

And then—

“KAVEH!”

It was Faruzan. From the hallway. Loud. Furious. Knocking.

“Are you home?! I saw your hair on the balcony, I need the copy of that design brief you promised me or so help me I will break in again—!”

They both froze.

A long, awful pause.

Alhaitham closed his eyes. Kaveh looked like he’d aged fifteen years in ten seconds.

“I hate everything,” Kaveh whispered.

“You left your copy on the coffee table last night,” Alhaitham muttered. “Under the wine. She’s going to see the notes you scribbled in the margins.”

“I was tipsy.”

“‘Skylight looks like a nipple’ is not constructive feedback.”

“Oh my Gods.”

The door burst open—again, because no one in their lives respected privacy—and Faruzan marched in like divine judgment in heeled boots and high expectations.

Kaveh fled to the kitchen. Alhaitham, ever the tactician, slid his book in front of the KAVEH STUDY notebook before anyone could see.

Faruzan raised an eyebrow. “Am I interrupting something?”

Alhaitham, stone-faced: “No.”

Kaveh, behind a cupboard door: “YES.”

She didn’t even blink. “That’s disgusting. Keep your sexual tension to yourselves and hand me my draft.”

---

Faruzan left twenty minutes later, muttering something about “useless men and even more useless designs” as she vanished down the stairs in a whirlwind of fabric, fury, and unpaid mentorship.

Silence returned.

It was not the same silence as before. This one wasn’t charged—it was loaded. Like a bow drawn back. Like a volcano holding its breath. Like a romantic comedy one scene before the kiss. Like a porno one scene after the kiss.

Kaveh stood in the kitchen doorway, arms crossed, hair slightly fluffed from where he’d yanked on it in quiet agony while Faruzan rifled through his drawings and lectured him on line economy.

Alhaitham hadn’t moved.

He was sitting exactly where he had been when she barged in. Calm. Still. Seemingly undisturbed.

But his book was upside down.

Which meant one thing: he had read exactly none of it. He had been thinking.

Kaveh. Kaveh had been on his mind. Probably. Unless he was mentally revising a monograph on Faruzan’s volume-to-body-mass ratio.

And that was the problem, wasn’t it?

The real problem. Not the bickering, not the insults, not even the maddening chemistry between them that was so potent it could’ve been bottled and sold as an aphrodisiac called Hostile Glances & Poor Boundaries.

The problem was—Alhaitham felt things. And he thought about them. And then he studied them. And then—

“Why are there two notebooks?”

Kaveh’s voice broke the silence like a wineglass hurled off a balcony.

Alhaitham blinked once. Slowly.

“Excuse me?”

“The black one is for your academic notes,” Kaveh continued, pacing now, hands fluttering like he was conducting an invisible orchestra of rage. “That’s where you wrote down observations like ‘Kaveh speaks with hand gestures during arguments. Correlation with emotional investment: High.’ Which, by the way, is psychotic and intrusive and probably illegal. But fine. That’s your study notebook.”

A pause.

“And then there’s the red one.”

Alhaitham did not speak.

Kaveh turned to him. One hand on his hip. The other holding a notebook that looked like it had been sat on, cried on, and then kissed.

“Why is this one labeled ‘Subject: K. Romantic Inclinations — Hypotheses & Anomalies’?”

Ah. So he had found the second notebook.

Alhaitham stood up with all the resigned grace of a man walking into his own trial.

“I believe the title is self-explanatory,” he said.

“No, it’s deranged!” Kaveh yelled, flinging it onto the couch like it had personally insulted his mother. “You wrote a section called ‘Volatile Reaction to Pet Names: A Case Study!’ There are graphs.”

“I’m nothing if not thorough.”

“There’s a pie chart that just says ‘Flustered: 78%, Angry: 12%, Pretending Not To Be Flustered: 10%.’ What kind of research method is vibes?”

“A surprisingly accurate one.”

Kaveh threw a throw pillow.

Alhaitham caught it. Effortlessly. Like the smug bastard he was.

“Why do you even want to understand me so badly?!” Kaveh cried, hair flopping into his eyes as he collapsed dramatically onto the chaise lounge like a tortured poet with student loans. “You don’t even like people.”

“That’s true.”

“I’m people.”

“Debatable.”

“Alhaitham!”

A pause.

And then, very quietly—

“I like you.”

Kaveh froze.

His heart did that thing again. That awful, fluttery, painful thing like it was trying to escape through his ribs and fly off into the sky like a soap opera dove.

“You—”

“I like that you’re passionate,” Alhaitham said, crossing to him slowly, deliberately. “That you believe in beauty. That you cry at architecture documentaries and make terrible metaphors and talk with your hands and take up too much space and apologize for none of it.”

Kaveh was blinking so fast it was a miracle he wasn’t generating wind power.

“I loathe you,” he said. Weakly. Softly.

“I know,” Alhaitham said. “So does your diary.”

“YOU READ—”

“I skimmed.”

“YOU—”

Alhaitham sat beside him on the chaise. Close. Too close. Their knees touched. Their knees lingered. Somewhere, a dramatic soundtrack was starting to build, possibly performed by a choir of exasperated scholars and one deranged harpist.

“I like you,” Alhaitham said again, voice low. “But I don’t understand you. And that bothers me.”

“Of course it does,” Kaveh muttered. “Because if you can’t diagram it, dissect it, and define it in a footnote, you have no idea what to do with it.”

“Precisely.”

Their eyes met.

“I hate how attractive your voice is,” Kaveh said.

“I hate how much I think about your hands.”

Kaveh shivered. “Don’t say that.”

“You started it.”

“Don’t say it like that.”

Alhaitham’s hand lifted, almost on instinct, almost on autopilot, and brushed Kaveh’s wrist. Just a graze. Just enough to test a theory. Just enough to see if skin could, in fact, short-circuit logic.

It could.

Kaveh’s breath hitched. Loudly. He looked down at the contact like it had personally cursed his bloodline.

“I’m going to make terrible decisions tonight,” he whispered.

“I’ll record the results.”

“Don’t you dare—”

Alhaitham leaned in.

The moment stretched. Too long. Not long enough. Their lips were inches apart. Their breath tangled.

But the kiss didn’t come.

Because Kaveh—curse his dramatics, bless his instincts—grabbed Alhaitham by the collar instead, yanked him forward, and said, “If we’re doing this, you’re not allowed to take notes during.”

Alhaitham smirked. “No promises.”

---

The next hour was spent pretending neither of them had almost kissed.

This was accomplished through a sequence of events that included:

Kaveh sweeping dramatically out of the living room to “get some air,” only to return twelve minutes later with a single lemon tart and no explanation.

Alhaitham mysteriously ending up shirtless because of a “tea spill” that no one actually witnessed.

An aggressive, vaguely erotic pillow fight that began with academic insults and ended with Kaveh straddling Alhaitham’s hips while shouting, “ADMIT MY DESIGNS ARE SUPERIOR.”

“Your designs are—chaotic,” Alhaitham gasped, breathless from laughter and being elbowed in the ribs. “They defy physics. They rely on emotion. They’re architectural fanworks.”

“And yours are soulless schematics!” Kaveh shot back, golden hair sticking up at multiple furious angles. “Your papers look like they were made by a calculator having a midlife crisis!”

Their faces were close. Too close.

Again.

This was becoming a pattern.

Kaveh’s hands were braced on Alhaitham’s chest. Alhaitham’s hands were very carefully not touching Kaveh’s hips. They remained there. Frozen. In a moment suspended between war and surrender.

Kaveh's cheeks were flushed—just a bit, just enough that someone with a death wish could call it cute.

Alhaitham, unfortunately, had a death wish. It was named Kaveh.

“You’re blushing,” he said.

“No, I’m overheating from the sheer density of your ego.”

“Your pupils are dilated.”

“That’s because I’m filled with rage. Rage, you insufferable man-shaped spreadsheet.”

“Do you want to kiss me, Kaveh?”

“I want to shove you out a window.”

“That’s not a no.”

And then, something shifted.

It was subtle. Like a draft in a room you thought was sealed. Like the quiet inhale before an argument that changes everything. Kaveh stopped yelling. His eyes flicked down—just once—to Alhaitham’s mouth. A barely-there moment.

But Alhaitham saw it.

He catalogued it.

He mentally titled the entry: “Subject exhibits unconscious ocular fixation on researcher’s lips. Hypothesis: imminent kiss.”

Kaveh moved.

Not away.

Down.

A beat. A breath.

And then—

“No,” Kaveh whispered, sitting back with the cruel precision of a surgeon slicing out his own hope. “No. We’re not doing this.”

Alhaitham blinked.

Kaveh slid off him, limbs still trembling slightly from exertion (and maybe something else). He stood, ran a hand through his hair, and paced a few steps across the room like a man who had just dodged a thesis-level emotional crisis.

“I can’t,” he said. “I won’t.”

“Why?” Alhaitham asked, genuinely. Not cruelly. Not smugly. Just—quietly.

And damn him, that hurt more than anything.

Kaveh turned to him, arms folded. “Because I know how this ends.”

Alhaitham tilted his head. “With us kissing?”

“With you turning me into another subject,” Kaveh said. “Another study. Another set of anomalies to analyze and dissect until I’m nothing but a chart in your notebook.”

Silence.

Alhaitham stood. Walked to him. Carefully.

“Kaveh. I like studying you because I can’t figure you out. Not fully. You’re illogical. Frustrating. You contradict every theorem. You haunt my hypotheses.”

“You make me sound like a glitch in your data.”

“You are.”

Another step. Closer.

“But it’s not because I want to reduce you,” Alhaitham said. “It’s because you expand everything I thought I knew. About logic. About passion. About—love.”

Kaveh’s breath hitched.

“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t say that.”

“Why?”

“Because I’ll believe you.”

Pause.

“Good.”

Kaveh looked up at him. “I hate you.”

“I’m okay with that,” Alhaitham said softly. “If it means you’ll stay.”

And then—

Somehow—

They were kissing.

Not gently. Not gracefully.

It was a collision. Teeth and hands and gasps. It was clumsy and perfect and tasted like lemon tart and repressed feelings. Kaveh fisted his hands in Alhaitham’s hair like he was trying to punish him for every smug word he’d ever said. Alhaitham gripped his waist like a man anchoring himself to something real for the first time in years.

They stumbled.

To the couch.

Then off it.

Then into the hallway, kissing like it was a debate they were both finally winning.

They broke apart only once—long enough for Kaveh to pant, “If you try to describe this in your notebook later—”

“I won’t.”

“Not even a pie chart.”

“Not even a footnote.”

“Promise?”

Alhaitham leaned down, pressing their foreheads together.

“I promise.”

And then they kissed again.

Slower. Softer. Sweeter.

Like they had all the time in the world.

Which they didn’t.

Because Alhaitham’s third notebook—the forbidden one, hidden under the floorboard—was still very much real.

And it contained an entire appendix titled: “The Structural Integrity of Kaveh’s Moans Under Prolonged Stimulation.”

But that was a problem for tomorrow.

Notes:

Hope you enjoyed! I know it's a bit shorter than my usual fare – blame the brainworms! 🐛🧠 Sometimes the plot bunnies just want a quick sprint instead of a marathon, you know? Gotta keep things varied in the writing world, word count wise and otherwise. Hope you enjoyed this peek into Alhaitham's very... unique... observational methods. 😉

Please stay tuned for next week's Haikaveh oneshot! I update this series weekly; consider subscribing or bookmarking this series if you want to keep up! Much love! <333

 

I've regained access to my old Twitter account (the_wild_poet25), but have decided that I will not be active on it anymore. Instead, you can find me on Bluesky ( @the_wild_poet25 ) and on my new Twitter account (the_tamed_poet) if you want to connect. I'm also on Discord too!

The comment section also works—feel free to leave a comment! :)

Works inspired by this one: