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They haven’t so much as uttered a word to each other since the Traveler, Candace and Dehya left.
The silence is heavy, stifling in an intensity Cyno is unwilling to admit or let show. Alhaitham, for his part, looks as unbothered by this as Cyno would expect. Ever the picture of poise, ever the unreadable slate of a man. It had frustrated him back then, and it still does now.
Beyond the window in the village chief’s home, night has begun to creep into the horizon, wind howls in the distance, and still, they do not speak.
Refuse, more like. This is as much a battle as when they’d crossed blades in the sand. Whoever breaks the silence first would be the loser—because to speak is to acknowledge what thrums in the air between them, what lies in the past that burns even in the present.
Alhaitham turns a page in the book in his hand, calmly reposed in the chair he leans back in. Cyno tracks the movement of the scribe’s fingers, toying with the corner of the page, the brush of long lashes as he blinks. Something in Cyno’s chest burns, a tangled mess of emotions that he can’t even say with confidence is hate.
He will not be the one to speak first. Instead, he leans on the wall next to the window with arms crossed across his chest, listening to the sounds of the village as it prepares to sleep. Unbidden, embers of the past begin to fill his mind before he can stamp them out—distant memories, vignettes of his days in the Akademiya; libraries at night, a garden at dawn, the gentle brush of lips against his own, the caress of a hand in the length of his silver-white hair.
Cyno inhales sharply, too loud in the silence. Alhaitham visibly pauses, his hand caught in the motion of turning another page in the book that Cyno knows he’s already read hundreds of times. The few seconds it takes for Alhaitham to lower the book on the table feel much longer, and Cyno curses himself.
Foolish, to still be affected by the past.
“You truly are a stubborn man.”
Alhaitham, against all logic, is the first to speak. It doesn’t feel like the victory it should be, not when the memories still cling to the inside of Cyno’s mind like the itch of a scar that has never truly healed.
“As if you are any different,” Cyno says, finally meeting Alhaitham’s steady gaze with a glare. As if he had ever been any different.
Alhaitham—stubborn, intelligent, logical, beautiful—
Cyno crushes that line of thought.
“Are you really so upset?” Alhaitham asks, crossing his arms, eyebrow arching in as much of a question as it is a challenge.
Lying would be pointless, so he doesn’t. “Yes,” he pauses, continues with a half-truth, “you lied to the Traveler and the others. We have done far more than speak two words to each other.” Cyno wonders if he imagines the brief flash of… of something in the way Alhaitham looks at him. “In what way does concealing our history serve you?”
Alhaitham studies Cyno’s face, gaze as undecipherable as it always is, and Cyno refuses to wither under the scrutiny. Somewhere deep and buried inside him trembles in the wake of those eyes, verdant and gold.
“General Mahamatra,” the use of his now former title stings more than Cyno expects, and Alhaitham’s using it means that he intends to keep himself at a distance, “telling the others anything about our past involvement neither contributes to the tasks at hand nor does it have any impact on the goals ahead. It would be nothing but an unnecessary complication that neither of us can afford ourselves.”
Loathe as he is to admit, Alhaitham’s logic is sound. There is nothing to be gained out of disclosing their relationship to the others at this point, but—
But.
Cyno scoffs, pushing himself off the wall to cross the space to the table, dropping himself into the chair directly across from Alhaitham. Cyno chooses not to speak on Alhaitham’s answer, and he thinks he probably doesn’t need to. There’s no doubt Alhaitham already knows that he isn’t wrong in his statement.
“Do you intend to judge me for this, General?”
This, for some reason, gives Cyno pause. Passing judgement on Alhaitham for a lie—he could do it. He has the ability and means to do so; he need only summon his staff. But his duty still means something, held in higher regard than all else, and to use that to strike Alhaitham down for lying would be far more personal, a bastardization of the justice he has sworn to uphold.
“I don’t relish the thought of keeping things from our allies,” Cyno looks away, out the window and to the inky canvas of night that has fully settled over the desert, “but if I were to cast judgement on you, it would be only in retaliation should you betray us, scribe.”
“You truly have not changed,” and the way Alhaitham says it makes Cyno look at him again, his voice barely a sigh between them, and is it relief? Admiration?
No, surely not.
They fall into silence again, this time thicker and headier than before, charged with something more than anger and general distrust, marked by the intensity of the look Alhaitham is giving him now, and Cyno suspects, despite his best effort, that he is no different.
“Your breathing has changed,” Cyno observes, eyes darting to Alhaitham’s mouth for a fraction of a second before returning to his face.
“As has yours,” Alhaitham retorts, but his voice is more breathless than it is sharp, the edge dull and lost to whatever is building between them. “Cyno.”
And maybe it’s the use of his name, or maybe it’s the flames that burn under his skin, lighting his veins in a searing warmth that is growing impossible to ignore, set off by the weight of Alhaitham’s full attention.
Whatever it is, it is an unstoppable force now.
Cyno pushes his chair out from beneath the table with a harsh scraping sound that is lost to the roaring in his ears. He lifts a hand, beckoning, “Alhaitham.”
Alhaitham is on his knees on the floor in front of Cyno’s chair so quickly it could almost be mistaken that his Vision is Electro rather than Dendro, the soft skin of his cheek pressed into Cyno’s open palm, his lips and breath brushing the tips of Cyno’s fingers as he kisses them with a reverence that could be akin to worship.
He stops only for a moment, pulling away to meet Cyno’s gaze. Cyno stares back, his fingers tingling where Alhaitham’s lips had been, words no longer important in this moment.
Alhaitham grabs Cyno’s hand with one of his own, lacing their fingers together in a vice grip, using his grasp to pull Cyno into his orbit as his free hand lifts to remove the headpiece from Cyno’s hair in a fluid motion before it is placed on the table and forgotten.
Cyno meets Alhaitham in the middle, a collision of an unmovable object and unstoppable force, and the kiss sears against his lips and makes his soul burn so intensely that he wonders if this is what it would feel like to be burned in the rays of the sun. Years have passed since the last time they were together, and yet, it feels just like the first time they kissed in between the shelves of the Akademiya library in the middle of the night with no one else around.
Cyno skims Alhaitham’s bottom lip with his teeth, tugging harsher than gentle, but not enough to draw blood. Alhaitham gasps against his mouth, then uses the hold he has on Cyno’s hand to pull him fully from the chair, sending both of them falling against the floor, Cyno’s legs straddling his waist as they’re pressed flush together, chest to chest. The chair clatters to the floor behind them.
The kiss breaks, Cyno panting as he puts some space between them, but still hovering close to study Alhaitham’s face. Alhaitham’s pupils are blown wide, his lips kiss bitten and red, face flushed and his clothes partially disheveled. Cyno observes this with no shortage of vindication, knowing that there is no one else in the world who can shatter the cold and collected air the scribe flaunts, pride and arrogance all but forgotten in the wake of their shared touch.
Cyno imagines he probably fares no better. And though he doesn’t dare share it aloud, because otherwise it would make all of this too real, too tangible—he’s missed this.
Alhaitham lets go of his hand to reach up and brush Cyno’s bangs away from his face, so achingly gentle and even a little hesitant, and Cyno thinks that it does not suit him, so uncharacteristic of a man who does not hesitate to toe the lines of morality if it means securing the desired end. Nor does it suit him to have such a soft, open look in his eyes as he looks up at Cyno, a hand smoothing down Cyno’s side to rest at his bare hip.
Cyno can’t bear it, so he leans forward and kisses him again, harsher and deeper than before. He tangles a hand in the softness of Alhaitham’s hair, the other one sliding over his well-defined chest and down to his waist, dipping beneath the fabric of the belt there.
He feels Alhaitham’s breath hitch, the hand on Cyno’s waist gripping tighter, blunt nails scraping against his skin. Alhaitham’s tongue pushes against his lips, and Cyno opens his mouth with a groan that comes from somewhere deep in his throat, returning the fervor as he presses ever closer.
It’s too much—it’s not enough.
This is almost certainly a very bad idea. They have a mission, one that could very well shape the future of Sumeru, and there is no room for something as mundane as this, feelings from the past that seem impossible to quell or discard completely.
But the mind and reason have a long and burdened history of bowing in the face of the human heart and what it desires.
It’s Alhaitham who pulls back, breathing ragged and uneven, “Beautiful,” he gasps between breaths. “Completely and utterly beautiful.”
Cyno takes Alhaitham’s face in his hands, a huff of a laugh escaping his lips, mostly humorless. “Such pretty words,” he swipes his thumbs over the scribe’s cheekbones once, twice, before speaking again, “but do you mean them?”
Alhaitham closes his eyes, touching the back of Cyno’s left hand with his right, a soft sigh escaping his lips. “You know I do,” it’s delicate, barely a whisper, but it is a confession all the same.
Cyno yearns, a familiar ache that settles behind his ribs and makes its home there.
But no matter how much he wants to, he cannot give all of himself to the man beneath him, not now when there is so much at stake, and not after what ended them in the past. Some things cannot be so easily forgotten, nor forgiven.
It’s something Cyno knows they should talk about, to finally put to rest their past and move forward.
Cyno takes a deep, measured breath, before he pulls away, retreating from Alhaitham’s personal space to right the fallen chair and sink back into it. Alhaitham watches him, and he leans up with complex, fleeting emotions crossing his face.
Cyno combs his fingers through his hair, trying to undo most of the mess Alhaitham has made of it.
“Tell me one thing.” It isn’t the time or place, but Cyno can’t stop the words that slip from his traitorous tongue. “Did you ever really love me? Or was I nothing more than a means to an end for you?”
Cyno knows he doesn’t imagine the flash of hurt that clouds Alhaitham’s expression, before it disappears, Alhaitham’s mask sliding itself back into place, and Cyno knows he’s done something irrevocable, that he may have crossed into the one unspoken thing neither of them has dared to question: whether either of them really cared for the other.
Alhaitham stands, his hands jerking against his clothes to right them. “If that is something you feel is necessary to ask,” he spits, not looking Cyno in the eye, “then perhaps it is for the best that we did not work out in the end.”
This is not the outcome Cyno wished for, but he cannot take the words back now or ever, so he presses on. “I love—” he stops, catches himself, “I loved you. Have you never… have you ever given thought to us? Have you ever regretted it, Alhaitham?”
Alhaitham’s hands freeze, and he still refuses to look at Cyno. Finally, finally, he meets Cyno’s gaze, and they’re dull and empty, glossed over in ice and devoid of anything remotely close to emotion.
And this is how they’ve always been, hurting and being hurt by each other, and Cyno wills his eyes not to burn quite so harshly at the thought.
“What thoughts could I possibly have to spare for you, General Mahamatra,” and venom seeps from his words, wounding deep and festering as intended. “Now if you’ll pardon me, I have some intel to gather.”
Cyno dips his head in a half nod, granting permission where Alhaitham truly sought none, the other man already walking around him and exiting the door without so much as another word or glance back.
He knows he brought this on himself, but that does nothing to soften the hurt, and he wonders just how the two of them ended up like this, so unsuitable for each other even now.
Incompatible, after all.