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Kaveh was tired.
He was so, so tired.
But Alhaitham wasn't home yet.
He'd promised to be home early--Kaveh wanted to experiment with his cooking skills and had asked (forced) Alhaitham to be his taste-tester.
Yet the sun had already disappeared from the sky and the moon hung low in its place, illuminating the streets of Sumeru with a soft glow, and Alhaitham still wasn’t home.
It was unlike him to pull such a thing, to go back on his word. The scribe always kept his promises—courtesy of a good friend Alhaitham had made on a trip to Liyue in his early adulthood.
Kaveh was tired.
But something was wrong.
So he waited and waited, awake in their shared house with heavy eyelids and a muddled brain. He waited for hours and hours and watched the shadowy streets of Sumeru through the window. The shadows had moved and shrunk, and finally, finally, when the dark patches hidden beneath decor and roofs had all but disappeared, the door opened.
Kaveh stood on shaky legs, eager to greet his housemate. His frustration bubbled up like a pot of boiling water left on for too long, and he all but screamed at Alhaitham.
“Haitham! You said you’d be home early, then you proceeded to get home especially late! What is with you!” he cried out, stomping over to Alhaitham.
The scribe didn’t even so much as look up. He simply shrugged off his coat and placed it neatly on the rack, ignoring Kaveh entirely.
“Take off your goddamn headphones and—“
But when Kaveh reached to yank them from Alhaitham’s head, like he always did, he found that they weren’t there. Alhaitham had his back turned to him, kneeled on the ground as he tugged his shoes away from his feet.
The scribe could hear him. He was just choosing to ignore him.
Although the pair often fought, such an occurrence had never taken place before.
It made Kaveh mad.
No, it made him furious.
When his housemate stood and turned around and had the audacity to look surprised upon seeing Kaveh, the latter’s anger boiled over. He struck Alhaitham with the back of his hand, nails leaving thin traces of white where they had scratched his skin.
“You!” he yelled at Alhaitham, preparing to go on an endless rant. “How dare you—“
He paused when he saw the astonished look on Alhaitham’s face as he silently reached up to touch his ears. The scribe pressed his fingers all about the lobes, feeling them up and down.
“Haitham?” Kaveh asked, utterly confused.
Alhaitham’s movements paused and he stared at Kaveh, eyes wide. If the architect hadn’t known better, he would have sworn he saw a trace of fear flash behind those viridian irises.
“There—“ Alhaitham said, but he stopped nearly immediately. The hand that had been caressing his ear flew to his throat, feeling the front as he spoke once more. “There were eremites,” the scribe said. He sucked in a harsh breath and pulled his hand from his throat.
“And?” Kaveh prompted after a moment of silence.
Alhaitham ignored him once more.
“Haitham?” Kaveh asked again, now concerned. He tapped the scribe’s shoulder twice and let a puzzled look wash over his face, eyebrows furrowing together and lips turned down in a frown.
“Kaveh?” Alhaitham asked, reaching out to touch Kaveh’s cheek.
“Yes?” Kaveh asked, tilting his head.
“Kaveh,” Alhaitham repeated, a statement this time. Kaveh simply watched and waited for his housemate to continue.
“I can’t hear you, Kaveh,” Alhaitham said eventually. The pain was brought into his voice alongside a multitude of other emotions, confusion, frustration, sadness, and disbelief mixed in an odd concoction that Kaveh had never seen on Alhaitham before.
And Kaveh felt it too, all the emotions Alhaitham had failed to hide. Alhaitham had said there were eremites. But mere eremites couldn’t possibly have done this. Alhaitham was just pulling his leg. There was no way—
But Alhaitham had never been good at faking emotions. Hiding them? Sure. Faking them? The scribe was worse than a newborn baby at that. He could feign indifference all day long, but the shock and misery had to be real.
“Haitham?” Kaveh asked, panic overtaking his voice. It shook and wobbled as he spoke, unsteady and uncontrolled. He noticed the way Alhaitham watched his face, eyes darting to his lips as they moved, trying to make sense of what he was saying.
“The eremites, they hit my head,” Alhaitham said. His face scrunched like he was trying to make sense of it all. “There— There was this popping noise. I thought nothing of it— the night just seemed silent, but crickets never sing here anyways. I didn’t think—“
And Alhaitham stops there, his words sinking into Kaveh’s brain and making a home there.
Alhaitham was struck in the head by an eremite. And now he’s deaf.
He’ll never get to argue with Alhaitham again, to hear Alhaitham’s hums in response to Kaveh’s whispers of sweet nothings to him as they cuddle on late nights, to hear the ‘I love you, too’ that had become Kaveh’s favourite phrase. Perhaps in the future, they could do all those things again. But it would never truly be the same, would it?
Alhaitham would never be the same.
Kaveh was tired.
He was so, so tired.