Work Text:
“Hello…? Hey, Haitham?”
Silence.
You snicker quietly as you set your phone down beside you and let it stay on speaker. An arm curls underneath your pillow as you rest your head back down, stretching your body out as you watch the seconds add up on the phone call without a word coming in from the other side.
But what you do hear on occasion from the other side are short labored breaths and a light sniffle or two. What could be taken as ambient noises of someone having only woken up, you know them for what they truly are.
Signs of someone who had been crying or someone attempting to soothe themselves while crying.
“Hayi…?” You call out once more, pulling your phone closer to yourself as if the device was Alhaitham himself.
A moment passes until you hear him clear his throat. “Let me know if this is a bad time.”
Hearing him so unsure with his voice far shakier than it usually is never fails to grip at your heart in a manner most painful. As if preparing for war itself, you sit up against the headrest of the hotel bed.
A pillow resting behind your head with your travel plushie seated in your lap, holding your phone for you as you watch the numbers tick up on the screen. A small connection between the two of you.
At the top left corner lies the time. 3:40 am .
Traveling to Fontaine to visit their withered research branch was fun and all but the time zone changes was something to adjust to. With the help of Toovle you would learn that Sumeru was only an hour ahead of you. 4:40 am. It was still too late for him to be awake without a reason.
“As if I’d ever turn down the chance to speak to my fiancé,” You joke lightly, playing with the wings of your plushie. “Especially with his very attractive just waking up voice.”
Your teasing at least gets a laugh out of him despite how mild it may be. Good, he deserves a little laugh if what you think happened has happened.
The seconds turn into minutes until you reach the ten minute mark on the call. Your presence alone seems to do the trick as you’ve noticed his breathing has evened out into what you recognize to be the norm. That’s good.
There’s light shuffling and rustling from his end until you hear the audio shift ever so slightly. He must have switched to his headphones meaning that..
“Haiyi, you had me on speaker this whole time?” Your voice was laced with concern, frowning slightly.
He was silent for a second before responding. “I wanted to hear you without being overwhelmed. Hearing anything directly in my ears would have had the opposite intention.”
You sigh out through your nose but nod all the same. “Are you feeling better now? Remember to adjust the noise canceling levels, the presets should still be there.”
“I’ve been tinkering with them,” There’s a soft ticking noise to confirm it. “Although, I must have messed them up in my distress. None of them are quite right.”
Your fingers curl underneath the gentle warmth of your phone, thumb stoking the sides of it, hoping that he could somehow feel it.
A soft groan passes through the speaker followed by a sniffle. “… They aren’t working,” He croaks out your name, that tremble to his voice coming back. “Everything is so loud. There’s a ringing noise and static. I- I feel as though I can barely hear you.”
This was one of the difficulties of the two of you being almost strictly long distance. Just recently had you gone away to Fontaine for contracted work which meant the two of you would have to get used to being apart once again. Al Haitham had always handed it better than you but there were occasions where it hit him harder — Right now being one such example.
Turning your phone on you swipe through to your notes app. ‘Headphone adjustments checklist’.
“Let’s go through the checklist,” You say softly, unchecking them as you speak to begin anew. “Is that okay?”
“I’ve already gone through it.”
“It wouldn’t hurt to try doing it one more time to put both of our minds at ease.”
A scoff can be heard on the line. “You- Don’t tell me you think I’m not thorough.”
He was being defensive and truly? You couldn’t blame him for it. It wasn’t often that Al Haitham would have a meltdown in person, he said that having you in his presence was enough to keep heavier emotions at bay, but from long conversations to tackle the situation if it ever it ever occurred when together you knew that he could be irritable.
It seemed like you waited too long to answer. Al Haitham’s breathing grew heavier once more, that ticking noise from the dial of his headphones coming through as he fidgets. “You do, don’t you. Let me remind you that I’m not so caught up in my emotions to forget anything.”
“Mhm.” You quietly fill in the boxes that make the most logical sense for Al Haitham to do. “I’m not asking because I don’t think you can’t do it on your own. Consider me.. The unbiased party here. The encryption key to the unknown language you’re trying to decode that’s covered in dust.”
Silence. Another sniffle and hiccup then a ragged exhale.
“…. I wouldn’t let dust stop me.”
That gets you to smile and laugh. “Okay then maybe the stone tablet had honey and then it got covered in dust.”
“I wouldn’t touch it if I smelled honey.”
You scroll down a bit on the checklist before idly tapping at the last one. Hm.
“Sometimes the most obvious things are blind to us in the heat of the moment,” You muse. “Like… Instead of trying to decode something messy when the same thing is on the backside.”
“The… Backside.” His voice trails off faintly as he attempts to make sense of what you’re insinuating.
“Mhm~” That’s as far as you’re willing to go nudge him along to the answer. If your fiancé happens to not be able to find it on his own then you’ll say it outright but from experience you know he enjoys playing with riddles sometimes.
You toy with the plushie in your lap before raising it up to press a kiss to its beak. The plush was an eagle that Al Haitham had shoddily crocheted for you under the instructions of his grandmothers knitting book. He told you it took many, many times to look like something even resembling an eagle.
ThamTham, was its name. Very childish and he had told you as much but he never pushed for you to change it. Maybe he was just embarrassed of how it was a diminutive of his own name.
One more kiss is pressed onto the bird until you give your attention back to your phone and in turn to Al Haitham. You pick up on the subtle differences in the audio and you grin to yourself. He figured it out.
“I feel as though this alone should demote me from being the acting Grand Scribe.” He finally says, sounding like he’s slowly calming down with each word.
“Aw come on. I’m sure you’re not the only person that’s put their headphones on backwards.”
The last bullet point on the checklist: Make sure headphones are on properly. ( Left side on left ear, right side on right ear. )
Al Haitham tinkers with the settings on the headphones before you can hear him settle back against his bed. When he eventually speaks again he sounds much closer to the microphone, the quality far better than it had been before. Even through the screen you can feel his relief.
“I feel ridiculous.” There’s an obvious pout in his voice that makes you wish you could cup his face and bring him comfort.
You curl up in your blankets and yawn, half lidded eyes set on the screen. “ Habibi , you’re coming down from a meltdown. Be kind to yourself. It’s late at night with the world asleep, no one will mind if you had a brief stint of forgetting a minor detail. I certainly don’t.”
He simply hums in response and you can’t help but laugh. Silly Haitham. Your beloved little eagle that for some reason was always so hard on himself for things outside of his control.
“Are you in bed right now?”
“I am. Are you?”
You grin and nod, rubbing the sleep out of your eyes. “I was going over some papers. The Fontainians sure love to record everything. Got so much shit to read through. Their cursive is insane, you’d think it’s an entirely different language.”
That seems to pique his interest. “Describe it to me, omri?”
The next half hour passes with you attempting to explain how the handwriting for one of the head researchers and how overly bubbly it was in comparison to the other head researcher for another department. Sharp contrasting with round. You think he’d have a field day with it.
When you finish talking you pause and listen closely to the speaker. It’s silent but there was a short snore every now and then that betrays how hard Al Haitham had attempted to seem like he was awake.
A fond smile tugs at your lips. 1:34:14 . Not your longest call with him but it felt the most meaningful. Even with your engagement it brought you comfort that you were still learning about him and everything that made him him .
Settling back onto your side with your phone pressed close to you, you kiss the screen and close your eyes.
“Good night, Haiyi.”