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Logic tells him that he should be transcribing the pile of documents sitting on his desk. Rationality is doing the same, urging him to continue that research on the ancient runes he’d recorded a few days ago inscribed on some of the goods he’d gotten his hand on at Port Ormos’ underground illegal network. Yet the strange, runaway voice in his mind whispers to just wait five more minutes, because maybe they’re late. He’s recently started calling that voice absurdity, yet here he is.
Al-haitham stares at the board he’s already set up ten minutes ago, its mint green squares with various colourful ones littered throughout the board in strategic patterns. The bag of tiles sits untouched next to the thick, already-yellowed dictionary he retrieved from the House of Dawna’s reference shelves. You’re twelve minutes and sixteen seconds late, according to the pocket watch currently placed open on his table. He’d thought that it was already a shared appointment with you- he stole an hour of your weekly Thursday afternoon, keeping you from your paper grading, and in turn you stole an hour of his. Not that he would ever complain- sure, he does make a few snarky comments about how he’d rather be doing work, but anyone involved at the Akademiya knows how often a break is needed.
He huffs a sigh, thinking that he might as well start translating the article written in native Sumerian at the top of his stack of workload. Thinking of work is better than having to think of the shape of your mouth when you smile, or the curve of your hips whenever you twist away to hold a door open, or the movement of your throat whenever you swallow, or- The Scribe groans into his hands.
He’s doomed, hopeless, resigned to a fate where he can only think about you when you’re not around but never know what to say when you are. He’s pathetic and completely helpless and he hates that you don’t know he’s completely at your mercy- There’s a knock on the door, a gentle two quick taps and one solid one. Definitely you, because he would recognise these knocks in his sleep with how often he hopes to hear it. Quickly, he swipes the first file lying on top of the stack- because there would be no way on Teyvat he would ever let you catch him idling away. “You can enter,” he says neutrally, hiding the relief in his voice.
Relief, just because you didn’t jilt him from a game of Scrabble. Truly, he thinks, this is illogical. Irrational. Absurd. Yet here he is, sitting patiently behind the board game on his table, waiting for you to enter- and you do, with two paper cups in hand. “Afternoon, Scribe.” You carefully pass him one of the cups, and he has to pray that your fingers don’t touch, because then he might drop it. Just because his hand had contact with yours. (He really is damned.) “Sorry I was late- I wanted to get some coffee, but the queue at the Cafe was long.” You explain, taking the seat opposite him, your own cup in hand. Al-haitham takes a sip of the rich dark brew. It is exactly how he likes it, a flat white with whipped cream, more condensed milk and three cubes of sugar. Is it possible that the last time the both of you had coincidentally met at the Cafe, you’d scrutinised his order as much as he’d scrutinised yours?
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You try to gauge the Scribe’s reaction to his coffee, but (as always,) all emotion is carefully guarded behind that cold facade of his. These days, he’s been even more silent than usual. Silent not in the way one is introverted or reserved, but in the way one might be silently plotting and calculating another’s demise. Al-haitham looked like the kind of person to sort people according to lists, and you’re pretty sure you only recently moved yourself up from Al-haitham’s ‘Immediate blacklist’ to ‘Possible acquaintances’. The thought kept you up at night- what if you had done something to warrant him murdering you in cold blood?
Which was why you’d brought him his coffee order. Caffeine has been scientifically proven to improve people’s moods due to stimulation of one’s central nervous system, though it had been a pain to stand behind him at the counter a few days ago and keep your ears peeled for what he told the cashier- surprised that such a seemingly-unfeeling man would get such an obnoxiously sweet and especially hard to memorize drink order. The minute you’d entered his office- which was a lot bigger and draftier than yours (you really should have applied for a job at the House of Danae instead of being Amurta’s sage’s secretary cum Sumeru’s doctor slash forensic pathologist, so you could have a nicer office than the dingy desk you had in the Akademiya), you’d passed the coffee right to him. Not only because that coffee was threatening to burn your hand but also because you were expectant to see his reaction. Nevertheless, his green eyes are entirely dull.
“Still playing by tournament rules?” He asks you after setting the cup down on the table (with no reaction! It cost you 1000 mora- why was a flat white so expensive?), and you roll your eyes. Friendly matches were never as fun as competitive ones. “Obviously. Five-point challenge rule?” When he nods, you pass him the bag of tiles. “First draw,” you remind him. He looks as if he wants to object and let you draw first, but accepts the bag anyway. His long, nimble fingers reach into the opaque green bag and pull out a tile. “U,” he scoffs, placing it onto the table.
You intercept the bag from him, praying you get something that’s not V, W, X, Y or Z, because then you get to go first, gaining a small advantage. And beating the Scribe of the House of Daena, a member of the Akademiya’s school of Haravatat, known for its linguists and prowess of the languages, is no easy feat, but it’s extremely satisfying.
It’s an N. Grinning triumphantly, you show it to the man sitting opposite you, who only narrows his eyes and takes another sip of his coffee- talk about cold-hearted. Nevertheless, you draw another seven tiles and return the N to the bag, where he takes it and draws seven tiles of his own. The game begins, and you study the letters in front of you. The only non-tournament feature of your game is the fact that there’s no timer, so you have all the time in the world to think. Sometimes you play fast and Al-haitham follows suit, so both of you get to play three rounds in an hour. Sometimes, you do want to take all the time in the world to think, and today’s one of those days- if only so that you can make small talk.
Unfortunately, life seems to be going against you- or going for you, depending on how you want to look at it. In less than a minute you’ve spotted a bingo, ACONITE, which would perfectly get rid of the troublesome C onto the double letter spot. So that’s where you put the word down, giving you a heavy 74 points. The ash-haired man makes a noise. “What kind of word is that? Challenge.” He points at the dictionary beside, to which you make an exasperated face- hello, you challenged, shouldn’t you check it yourself?- but make to flip through it anyway, reaching the AC section.
“Right here in your face, sayyidi. ‘Aconite’, a poisonous herb.” There’s no need for you to call him that title, since technically your positions are about the same rank, but you do it anyway because his ears flush a little pink when you say it. You’re sure he doesn’t know you know.
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He really hopes you can’t see his ears burn. Sayyidi. You’re always calling him that- either ‘Sir’ or ‘Scribe’, never by his name, and he can’t quite place why.
He also can’t quite place when he discovered his hands shake whenever they accidentally touch you anywhere. Two months ago, most likely, when you’d arrived back at your apartment injured and he’d helped patched up your wounds. And also told you he didn’t despise you. A long story- but when his bare fingers had accidentally brushed along the skin on your spine, you’d shivered. So had he. It was logical that you had done so- external stimuli along the vertebral column easily caused reactions of the body, but it was not reasonable for him to be doing the same.
Perhaps the tipping point was a week and a half before today, when he was sitting at his home office, reading through a study you had written and published recently on the effects of each part of the Sumeru rose as a medicinal herb on injuries. It was late in the night, and his head wasn’t functioning as well as it should have, which might have explained why he’d been doodling smiley-faces, little dolphins, and Archons forbid, a single heart, near the research paper’s author’s introduction- next to your name, for Archons’ sake.
Kaveh, his annoying roommate, had simply looked over, said “You really like them, huh?” And walked away.
And that was it. Al-haitham didn’t have the chance to properly get Kaveh into a headlock and make him explain himself because the man had shut the door to his room, probably to find another architecture project he could work on to repay his ever-growing debt.
The parts that helped him make decisions, the ones that largely influenced his conniving schemes, told him that’s untrue and how foolish.
He told them shush.
Because they were right- logically, he had nothing to gain from having a crush on someone. As such, there would be no reason for him to have one.
And yet you are here, defying all his logic, rationality and sanity. Sitting across from him, having just played a 74-point word he has no way of catching up with with his damned luck today (his tiles are quite literally A, E, U, V, and three Rs), completely unaware of his predicament. Life truly was unfair sometimes.
The school of Haravatat does not study the scientific method, but Al-haitham has a hypothesis: As the time he spends with you increases, so will the chances of him finding out what these feelings are. So he takes two minutes to think, idly shuffling about the tiles on his rack, even though he already knows what he’s going to put down. (CRAVE, down from the C, giving him twenty points.) If only just so that he can spend a bit more time with you to figure out just exactly what this stirring emotion, deep within his chest, is.
Stop lying to yourself, the voice he’s named absurdity whispers. You already know, don’t you?
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It’s been thirty minutes. “I still have no idea why you are in Amurta instead of Haravatat,” Al-haitham grumbles, folding his arms across his chest as you play another 20-point word to widen your current lead to sixty. Is he letting you win? “Because I only found out when I joined the Akademiya that you can’t be in two schools at once,” you respond. “Are you letting me win?” You continue, raising an eyebrow.
He shakes his head. “Obviously not. My tiles are extraordinarily bad today.” He takes another sip of his coffee- it’s probably cold by now, the 1000-mora flat white you specially bought. “The next time we play, you’d best hope I get low-pointer tiles, because I won’t be holding back especially after such a miserable defeat today.” The words are threatening, but you’ve learnt to read the Scribe well. This is an olive branch, an invitation to come back next week. He’s said similar things in the past weeks- “Perhaps you’ll do better at our next game” when he’s the one trashing you, or “Stalemates can be broken after another round” when both of you have high scores.
The thing is, he looks fidgety, hands moving to rest on the edge of his seat, like he doesn’t know whether you’ll accept his offer or not. Or maybe these words are just a formality now, to him, and he has better things to do. You wouldn’t put it past him to have some important matters like… Oh, stealing from underground illegal networks. Or beating up Eremites for information.
To you, knowledge is currency. However, even though you have a Hydro vision dangling from the knot hanging down the loop of your belt, you try your best to practice peaceful democracy, either through open bartering or trading for information. Unlike the man sitting across from you, who carefully schemes great plots to exploit intel from innocents- never mind. But you know how much he values his work and… whatever he does as the Scribe and almost-criminal, and as a researcher and doctor yourself, you know how painful it is to be separated from it.
The problem for you is, this weekly game has become a routine for you. Every Thursday, you make sure to keep your entire afternoon free, just so you could fully devote your time to this damn board game, with no other commitments. For Al-haitham, though, you’ve heard him more than once say he’d rather be translating documents, albeit a bit sarcastically, but… Maybe you’re overthinking it, but if your opponent doesn’t want to be there, who are you to stop him?
You take a deep breath. “Haitham,” you start carefully.
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“We don’t have to continue playing our games weekly if you have something else or something urgent to do.” The Scribe’s head snaps up from surveying the board for good spots to place his word (YGOE, an obsolete spelling of ‘ago’). “What?” He says, a little too icily. You just stare back at him. “I said, if you don’t want to play anymore, you can just tell me. No deceit, no need to beat around the bush.” He stares right back at you.
What could have brought this on? If this was because he’d shifted slightly in his seat and changed the position of his hands, you were such an idiot. He wanted to kiss it out of you. That was an idiotic thought. “I have nothing better to do.” He replies, folding his hands on top of each other on the desk.
“You have a pile of unfinished reports on your desk,” you point out.
It is urgent, but it is not better than playing Scrabble with you. “Like I said- nothing better to be doing.” He repeats, finally placing his word on the board (not YGOE after all, but rather GO(O)EY, leaving the double-word space open for you but also scoring thirty-two points for himself).
Your brows are still furrowed, and you press on. “Are you sure, sayyidi? I don’t want to keep you from anything-“
“Am I keeping you from anything?” He tilts his head slightly, interrupting you. It’s something he doesn’t do often- quite rarely, in fact, except when it comes to you. It’s slightly amusing and endearing to see the way you frown at him, lips downturned when you hear him cut you off.
This time, though, your answer is quick. “Of course not,” you say, and put down your tiles, promptly reaching into the tile bag to grab some more. Upon retrieving a third one, you set the bag down and announce, “No more tiles left.” He nods. “Then I suppose that there are also no other issues I should be attending to.”
You’re quiet for a moment. “If you say so. But if you ever have anything going on, just let me know. We can always reschedule.” The rest of the game goes on silently but comfortably, and when the match is over, you help him pack the tiles back into the bag, placing everything back into the game’s box. And when you take the empty cup from his table, telling him you’ll throw it away on your way out, he feels the need to say something, anything, to make this hour last longer.
Your name slips from his lips. You turn, looking at him expectantly. Idiot, Al-haitham chides himself. You are an idiot, a moron and a fool. And yet he cannot help the next words that come from his mouth: “You- you will be here next week, right?” There. An outright invitation, nothing for you to think back on and misunderstand. Just him, wanting you. To play Scrabble with him again next week, of course, Logic and rationality remind him. “Of course, Scribe.” You smile. “If I don’t see you around first,” you add, then shut the door behind you, leaving him back to his now somehow slightly-more-gloomy office.
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It is reasonable to like things. Al-haitham likes translating easy languages, those that don’t use as many metaphors, or academic scripts that rarely use any. It’s straightforward, there are no hidden meanings to look for and sometimes he’s quite literally just translating numerical values. But he also likes the atmosphere when you and him play Scrabble together in his office, just an easy silence punctuated by the occasional comment or small talk. Would that be right? Logically, what did that mean- were you his colleague, friend from work or something else his heart is refusing to acknowledge? (The word is CRUSH, worth ten points on the Scrabble board.)
So far, Al-haitham calculates, he’s spent around five whole days’ of time in total with you since you both started working on the case of the Scarlet King’s runes together three and a half months ago. And so far, his hypothesis still cannot be proven right, or wrong. Which then leads to his secondary hypothesis: The more time he spends with you, the more you affect his logic to make decisions. More importantly, you affect his rationality to identify feelings.
To prove the first hypothesis, the Scribe thinks, he must spend time with you. But, based on his second hypothesis, doing so would only further affect his judgement of Hypothesis One.
Due to inconclusive results, further investigation of the leading question (‘What exactly is it that he feels for you?’) must be continued.