05: his translucent skin made me shiver deep within my bones
Cyno was the first one to greet the two in the morning. There wasn't a clock in the living room, but the windows showed the moon sitting on the horizon. Great. He forgot Cyno was even more punctual than Alhaitham. There wasn't any way he was going to be allowed to stroll in late to work.
Alhaitham had been in and out for most of the night. The hearing aids coupled with previous events had kept his thoughts running, irritating him to the point that he considered it would be better if he just took them off. But of course, he didn't. Not when he could hear Kaveh's uneven breathing a few feet away from him at all times.
As for Kaveh's night, the Scribe was well aware that there wasn't a chance that he'd gotten back to sleep. If he had, they'd probably be dealing with a broken splint and a rush to Bimarstan or the student hospital against Kaveh's will.
Tighnari soon came down afterward and examined Kaveh's ankle. Although overall pleased that it hadn't worsened, he insisted on them seeing a doctor together as soon as possible. Alhaitham noticed Kaveh acted overall neutral to the subject. Overcompensating — pretending his panic attack had never happened in the first place, that he had to consider if he'd trust even his oldest friend with the care of his body.
Breakfast was served by Cyno, who was easily the best cook out of the four. Collei joined them the moment plates were set on the table. Alhaitham had never been particularly close with her, but that didn't mean they disliked each other. In fact, they'd shared conversations about the types of books they enjoyed. Though the attempt at reading one of her books, and conversely her attempt at reading one of his, went rather poorly, he recognized the merit in her choices of material.
Her demeanor was entirely different from the last time he'd seen her. Collei was a shy and soft-spoken child but wasn't particularly skittish or weak-willed. Even if she didn't want to do something, she pushed her way through since she understood the importance of why it had to be done. That consisted of eating, exercising, studying, interacting with others, and more. Alhaitham saw a bit of himself in her, especially in the interaction department.
The girl that sat down at the table next to Kaveh was tired. Dark circles hung like heavy weights from her red-edged violet eyes, and her posture was tense and rigid as if she felt the urge to flee at any given moment. Eye contact was held for only half a second before she went to toy with her food. She was quiet and clearly watching them from behind her eyelashes.
The meal wasn't silent, but it was quiet in a way that let everyone recover from the night previous. Any conversations they had lacked any real substance, aside from when Tighnari asked about Alhaitham's dreams again, to which he politely responded for Tighnari to describe his.
Collei ate very little of her food, though she tried to put more down every time either Cyno or Tighnari requested that she eat a little more. From the corner of his eye, he saw Kaveh struggling just the same, even if he was better at hiding it. Alhaitham was certain he was the only one that noticed how Kaveh would swallow twice, lick his lips, and take extra time in preparing the next bite. His eyes would glance at the Scribe's plate before looking back at his own, seeing how much progress he should be making in comparison to Alhaitham's slow speed.
The coffee was more bitter than Alhaitham preferred. He watched the sunrise from the window in the dining room, and he had the foreboding feeling that it was going to be a weary day.
And yet, he left before Cyno did. Tighnari accompanied him to the door, and he anticipated what he was going to say before the Forest Watcher opened his mouth.
Lips drawn into a frown, he warned, "Don't talk about my sex life again until you can figure out yours."
Alhaitham leveled him a blank stare, leaving the held-open door without a word. Before he could step out of earshot, however, Tighnari's voice called after him. "I mean it, Alhaitham."
The Scribe didn't grant him a response. On his walk to his house, his hearing aids were held firmly in his hands, deaf to the world and forcing his mind to focus on anything else.
—
Throughout the years that Alhaitham knew Kaveh, he'd noticed one intriguing peculiarity about Kaveh:
He was a strangely private person.
It didn't seem that way at first. Really, Kaveh didn't know how to keep his mouth shut most of the time. When they'd first met, Kaveh had sat with Alhaitham and talked his way through the entire lunch and barely stopped enough to eat his meal. He revealed everything there was to seemingly know about him; he was raised by two scholars, he was a student of the Kshahrewar Darshan, a master of trigonometry, loved soup and anything cute, and was generally obnoxious.
He told people so much that they didn't feel the need to look deeper. They would think, after one conversation, that there wasn't anything more to know about him. He'd already supposedly spilled their entire life story to them, so why would they try to find out more?
It had worked on Alhaitham for about one day. After that, he began picking up on the qualities that Kaveh didn't expect people to see, notice or comment on. He expected that his hard-looking shield would deter everyone away from actually hitting it. That way, they wouldn't find out just how brittle the metal actually was.
Kaveh wasn't private around Alhaitham much anymore. It was hard to be with the Scribe's perceptibility and how often they were around each other. Aside from the nightmare situation, Kaveh had given up on hiding. He let every part of his life and personality bare their ugly teeth in the containment of their home.
However, there was one aspect of himself that he'd never revealed to Alhaitham. And for his part, Alhaitham had never cared to push on the subject. He didn't need to see Kaveh's bare body. Even if there were days where he found himself picking apart Kaveh's clothes, imagining what may lay underneath, he'd never brought it up before.
But it was while he was sitting in his office, trying to work through the thick stack of post-meeting documents, that he was struck by the fact that he'd never seen Kaveh's naked stomach before, nor his thighs.
He wouldn't know if dark freckle marks were dotting his skin like glittering constellations. Kaveh could have birthmarks of any shape. He was likely pale, paler than the rest of his skin. Would it be smooth from underexposure, or rough from constantly rubbing against his clothes? There could be blemishes, prominent abs on his stomach, or sharp muscle lines stretching across his thighs.
He'd thought about it before. It had kept him awake at night, wondering what he may never get to learn, and how he could go about finding out without driving Kaveh away from him. Because, of course, Kaveh wouldn't expose himself for Alhaitham's pleasure and curiosity.
Alhaitham had never before contemplated the matter the way he was now.
Scars of Kaveh's past could be littering uncharted skin. And the shape of those scars, whether they be burnt, large, jagged, narrow, or straight, could be a clear indicator of stories Kaveh left untold about his childhood. They could be the answers to the incessant questions Alhaitham had on childhood surgeries, torture, and escapes.
And there may be nothing there at all. There could be nothing to indicate trauma, nothing to show for physical abuse. Kaveh wouldn't be hiding anything underneath, but rather keeping what's there away from other people.
Alhaitham recalled the taut rope, sobbing, and incoherent words, and felt a little nauseated. The paper in front of him blurred out of focus for half a second. It was worse knowing that Kaveh might be afraid of what Alhaitham would do if he ever saw what he kept hidden.
"I hope this isn't a bad time, my Scribe," a young voice called, and Alhaitham's vision cleared immediately. He focused on the Archon and the slight glow she always emanated. He wondered if she was aware of it, the way that people couldn't help but notice her presence.
The Acting Grand Sage carefully set his pen down on top of the document, a little too aware of the organ working in his chest. "Not at all. What do you need?"
She walked up to his desk with heavy feet. Her eyes were open and imploring as if she could read every emotion on his face. Alhaitham had always been told that he was impossible to read — his facial expressions rarely differed. Kaveh had once said that his eyes would go from narrow to narrower, and that would sometimes be the only indication that his emotions had flipped.
"Kaveh isn't afraid of you," she blurted. Immediately, her hands went up and shook them. "I wasn't trying to read your mind! I… I do it subconsciously. Looking into people's heads, especially Dendro Vision holders, is like breathing for me. I sincerely apologize."
"There's no need," Alhaitham forgave, and really, the only reason he did was the knowledge she provided and the ease that knowledge set aside. His stomach was still coiled with the theories left untested, but at least one tight knot was set free.
The Archon nodded, though her fingers twisted together in front of her chest uncontrollably. "I didn't come here to tell you that, anyway. I want to inform you that I've found the reason why I can't help Kaveh directly." She paused, giving time for Alhaitham to fully prepare for what she was going to say. That, and her voice was uncharacteristically tight. It appeared that it caused her great discomfort to speak aloud. "He blames me for what happened to him."
"I find that hard to believe," Alhaitham refuted. His mind was already piecing together the route Kusanli took to come to that conclusion. "He loves his Vision more than he loves himself most days, and he holds you in extremely high regard. I don't see how he could blame you for something you couldn't have taken part in."
Then there was the matter of Collei. Alhaitham had already compared and contrasted them; Collei had even mentioned before that she had screamed for the gods to help her, angry at them for allowing her to be tormented in the first place. Out of the two Dendro wielders, it would be Collei that should be blocking Kusanali out.
"He blames me like how I read minds; it's subconscious. What happened to him occurred in Sumeru, and he thinks he survived it all alone, without any help from me or anyone else," she mourned. "I hear the prayers he sends in his dreams. I'm not helping him there, either. And that Vision… when he looks at it, he is only reminded of all the times I've failed him."
Alhaitham sat with fighting words on the tip of his tongue, ready to come back to Kaveh's defense. Even though Alhaitham largely disagreed with his viewpoints, he knew how much Kaveh loved her. He believed that his dedication had finally been recognized by their Archon herself.
But, he couldn't deny that her conclusion seemed correct. It was an undeniable fact that Kaveh had unattached his Vision during the night, and hadn't bothered to reattach it that morning at Cyno's house before Alhaitham left. Collei, on the other hand, had her safely pinned to her sides as most Vision wielders preferred.
"He doesn't attribute a lot of the blame to me," she continued. "His reservations are mainly held in other places, but it's enough to block me out. The reason why this doesn't apply to Collei," and she looked a little sheepish as she said those words. It was clear she was still reading his mind. "Is that she has already remembered most of her time in treatment before the nightmares started. She's had time to heal and realize that the only person she can put her anger to is the one that hurt her, not the ones that couldn't help her."
Alhaitham finished for her. "Kaveh hasn't had that time to adjust."
The Archon shook her head, her shoulders tense and eyes downcast to the floor. "I would apologize to him in person, but doing that would be the equivalent of putting a roof over a young sapling. Its growth would be stunted and deformed, twisting in order to get around the roof and towards the sun."
In other words, Kaveh wouldn't heal properly. "There's more," Alhaitham prompted.
"... Yes. I'm honestly a little ashamed," she admitted. Her body rocked side to side. "It's not just Kaveh, but Sumeru as a whole. My people have been suffering for the past five hundred years, and there is little I can do to help or change that fact. I feel like a tiny fish in a wide, storming sea, trying to make a ripple among raging waves. Apologizing now wouldn't even make so much as a sound."
He narrowed his eyes at her. "I'm certain you didn't come here to gain sympathy from me."
"No," she said, and a small smile appeared on her face. "I'm saying this because I want to thank you for all the work you've done for me and Sumeru. I know you don't enjoy being the Acting Grand Sage but If you hadn't offered to hold the base, the Akademiya would have crumbled by now. You've done an amazing job so far."
Alhaitham stared at the young Archon, unsure of what to do with the praise. People didn't often acknowledge the work Alhaitham did — they seemed to think his ego was already inflated enough. It was foreign. The last person to congratulate him on a "job well done" was his grandmother, who had long been buried.
Noticing his silence, Kusanali carried on with, "And I want to express my gratitude in more than just words. The issue is that I don't know what would suffice. My Scribe," she said with her hands spread wide open, "what would you like from me?"
His first instinct was to bite out "a new Grand Sage," but he knew that it simply wasn't feasible. Kusanali had made it his responsibility to pick the next Grand Sage, and so far he hadn't been able to find a suitable heir to the title. He hadn't had the time, and all of the candidates were less than exemplary. His second desire was equally as unattainable. Kaveh's nightmares were far out of Kusanali's hands.
Why did he care enough about Kaveh to give this divine opportunity to him?
He shut down the line of thought before it could spread. He could think about it later when his Archon couldn't read just how confused he truly was when he had the time to fall to the same frustrating conclusion he always came to.
Alhaitham didn't need anything. He supposed the window needed to be replaced, but he already made time to fix that issue at a later date. He wanted to wake up later than six in the morning, but that couldn't happen until there was someone to take his place in the grand chair he sat on. His life was cozy and complete; other than his occupation and Kaveh, there was nothing he wanted.
"Your dreams," Kusanali said, interrupting Alhaitham's vigorous search for a request. He looked at her curiously. "How do you feel about them?"
He couldn't remember his first dream, but that didn't surprise him. His research on the topic showed that recalling dreams, especially after an extended period of time after they originally occurred, was exceptionally hard. Unless the dream caused an extreme emotion or was vivid enough, most people go their whole lives with only being able to remember a handful of their dreams.
However, he could recall his second and third dreams relatively well. In his second dream, his house was burning down, and he went down with it in search of his roommate still trapped inside. A few of the details blurred at the edges. His third dream, a ship capsizing with Kaveh as a drowning prisoner underneath, still exceedingly clear in his mind's eye. His heartfelt desperation to release Kaveh was as vivid as it was real in the waking world. When Alhaitham analyzed it, he wondered why he hadn't dreamt of either his Vision or Kaveh's.
Dreaming, as he'd learned, is a way for the brain to process information. He didn't mind that he was having them based on that fact, but Kusanali wasn't asking for his opinion on the objective truth of his dreams. She wanted to hear what he felt.
If she'd asked Kaveh the same question, he would've said that his dreams made him feel fear and out of control of his life. Alhaitham knew this because he'd observed Kaveh react to his dreams and mask his emotions in an effort to regain authority over his own mind.
"I don't hate them," he started. "I'm aware of their value in processing information. That doesn't mean I appreciate what their contents are. During the day, I watch Kaveh suffer. Then at night, I relive it all over again. I can't escape his pain or mine."
Even in his office, far away from the architectural work Kaveh was laboring over, his mind persisted in reminding him of all that his roommate wasn't telling him, all that he was dealing with alone in his own head. He never truthfully ceased reflecting on Kaveh and his situation, and Archons-forbid if Tighnari's incessant voice echoed in his thoughts one more time Alhaitham might have to go the rest of the day without his hearing aids. It wasn't like he cared to hear anyone's voices anyway.
When he slept, it was a respite from the day he had. Since upholding the title of Acting Grand Sage, Alhaitham had craved that solace even more. Now, his dreams prevented him from receiving that break.
Lesser Lord Kusanali put a hand on her chin and stared thoughtfully at the desk in front of him. "Thank you for telling me, Alhaitham. Even if it's just for one night, I'll see what I can do for you and your dreams."
Alhaitham nodded to her. "Is there anything else you wanted to talk to me about?"
"No. Please, continue your work and I will continue mine. We are making Sumeru better every day." She smiled and winked at him. Instead of walking to the elevator, she blinked out of his sight. The only indicator that she had even been in the room was the faint green outline of the body that permeated the air.
Now that he reflected on it, she hadn't come in through the elevator, either.
Blinking away the reflection, he returned to the document on his desk. Kusanali had cleared his head and ebbed away his growing anxiety and overstimulation. Sifting through papers wasn't fun regardless, but it was easier to do when he wasn't focused on Kaveh. Instead, he thought of his dreams and how Kusanali intended on influencing them. The logistics played in the background of his mind as he approved another paper.
—
Alhaitham hated being the Acting Grand Sage of the Akademiya. It was exhausting, hard work that was incredibly boring at the same time. He had chosen to be the Scribe of the Akademiya for a reason; it was easy work that rarely took up much time during his day. The title of Acting Grand Sage guaranteed the exact opposite.
Worst of all, the meeting he had scheduled later that day to further the process of choosing the next Grand Sage since two of the sages were ill with the flu. The virus had been spreading through the Akademiya during finals week, and the students that had all caught it from their weakened immune systems due to stress had spread it to their mentors.
Of course they spread it to their mentors. Alhaitham used a sparing prayer to Kusanali, silently asking her to protect Kaveh from the illness. Not because he was worried Kaveh wouldn't make it, but because he would spread it to Alhaitham. There were few things that Alhaitham despised more than being sick.
As he walked to his house, he eyed the Matra tailing him. Then he spotted the ones lurking further up the street, finding himself disappointed that Cyno hadn't been lying.
Cyno had dropped by his office soon after Kusanali left. The visit wasn't overall unexpected; if he was in the city, he would make the personal trip to drop off the reports and case files that Alhaitham had to analyze and approve. The General Mahamatra acted first on reports, but they did wind their way to the Grand Sage for a second opinion. If he wanted to have a case halted or pursued, he had the authority to override the General Mahamatra's decision.
Alhaitham knew that Cyno would do what he believed to be righteous no matter what the Grand Sage thought, so he didn't even bother to correct his decision. The most he would do was read the first passage of the report in the instance that it was intriguing.
When Cyno had delivered the papers, he warned Alhaitham that he, Kaveh, and their shared house would be on surveillance for the next week. The General Mahamatra then showed him the report that he'd filled out. Kaveh and Tighnari's names had been listed as the correspondents.
"We're going to snuff out the criminals as soon as possible," Cyno had said, his eyes narrowed and unamused. "But if they manage to catch wind of this before we get to them, Kaveh could be targeted, and you by extension. I'm keeping you both safe this way."
Alhaitham had carefully held the paperclipped stack in his hands, flipping through the pages until he landed upon a blueprint and a sketch. They looked just like the ones that Kaveh was working on for his commission. The one that had needed it to be finished as soon as possible, and even paying extra for maximum efficiency.
Before the Acting Grand Sage could open his mouth, Cyno had said, "I advise you to talk to Kaveh about this. He wasn't taking it well when he gave me the report. Tighnari and I convinced him not to drink, but it's been a few hours. I don't know how well our advice stuck."
Alhaitham was fully expecting to open his door to either two situations:
One. Bottles strewn across the living room with the architectural drawings ripped up in a pile. Kaveh would be drunk out of conscious thought, mumbling his woes into Alhaitham's ear.
Two. The papers would be intact, but Kaveh wouldn't be home. He'd be at the tavern, drinking his sorrows where Alhaitham couldn't see his pitiful state.
With a Matra staring coldly at his back from across the street, he prepared himself for either scenario. The blanket that had been re-tied over the empty window slot moved with the door. Alhaitham tugged it behind him as quickly as he could, not wanting the Matra to see the scene inside.
Kaveh was home.
There weren't any empty bottles. There weren't any bottles at all. The living room was spotless clean of any dust, dirt, and architectural sketches. The book that Alhaitham had left open after he'd departed that morning had been closed and tucked into its proper place. A distinct smell of cooked meat and roasted vegetables drifted through the house.
The Light of Kshahrewar sat hunched over on the center couch, a paper clenched in his hands. He didn't react to Alhaitham's entrance.
"Kaveh?" Alhaitham called, making his way over to his roommate. The only indication that Kaveh had heard him was a small bob in his throat as he swallowed.
When he reached his side, the Scribe didn't pick up on any trace of scents of alcohol. His clothes were unmussed, his hair pinned back in his usual style, and his skin glistened like he'd taken a long, hot water bath. A proper splint covered his foot and ankle, meaning he'd made it to the doctor and back just fine.
His ruby eyes were blank and unseeing. The paper in his palms was crinkled from constant pressure, and the ink had been smeared in various places. It was otherwise free of variant marks and stains. It did not tremble or move in Kaveh's grip. The architect was as still as a statue carved by his own hands.
Alhaitham sat beside his roommate on the couch slowly. He recognized this routine now. If he tried to say anything more, the results would be static and unchanging. Perhaps he wouldn't make it worse, but he certainly wouldn't achieve any progress.
He could violently pull Kaveh from the couch. It could startle him into the present, or he could be an emotionless doll. Under Alhaitham's hands, he would allow himself to be pushed in any direction or touched in any way without a reaction at all. Alhaitham could tear the sketch to pieces, light his blond hair on fire, rip the earrings from his skin, and Kaveh wouldn't make a sound.
The Scribe laid his hands on his lap and stared forward, letting himself drown in the static feedback from his hearing aids. Normally, everything had sound. The air moving, Kaveh's breath, their house creaking — the only time he could ever escape it was when he took off his hearing aids. Now, it seemed like the world had sewn its mouth shut.
Silence was Alhaitham's comfort. It was his blanket. He had lived without sound until his grandmother had fitted him with a pair of hearing aids. He hadn't worn them often, then; he hadn't cared to. It was only after he'd been a year into studying at the Akademiya that he'd crafted his own pair of hearing aids, ones that reverberated sound back to his eardrums as though he'd been born listening to the city's bustle and the scholars' debates.
His hearing aids weren't made for the convenience of others. If someone wanted to converse with him, they'd find a way to do it. They'd learn sign language like they would any other ancient language they had to study in order to graduate, or they'd write what they wanted to say. Alhaitham had developed a keen eye for reading lips and understanding the words being spoken. He didn't make them for the convenience of himself. He didn't have any issues with his perpetually deaf world, and the occasional rough sound the old hearing aids provided.
He'd made them because, for the first time, he wanted to clearly hear someone's voice other than his grandmother's.
He had met Kaveh a year into his higher education career.
In the presence of Kaveh, silence was disturbing. He wore his hearing aids around his roommate for a reason. They were not meant to ring with static alone.
"They told me it was a ranch."
Kaveh's voice was not quiet. It was not choked. It was entirely blank, void of any of the depression, fury, or regret that Alhaitham associated with the architect. It matched his posture, the living room, his cleaned body, the scent of cooked food permeating the air, his dull ruby eyes.
"I had known they were lying. It looks nothing like a ranch."
His voice was nothing at all.
"My first draft certainly looked like one. We talked about the notifications, and though I argued with them, I couldn't pass up the mora they were offering. They knew what they were talking about, exactly what they wanted. If they wanted a terrible ranch, then that's what they were getting," Kaveh continued. His gaze was in the present, but not exactly focused on the sketch. "Cyno has already told you about this, hasn't he?"
That was the first indicator that he'd acknowledged and recognized Alhaitham's presence. Just because he'd been talking didn't mean he'd known exactly who he'd been talking to. But the use of Cyno's name showed that Kaveh was acutely aware of his surroundings, no matter how absent he had been before.
Alhaitham's voice was toneless when he said, "Very little. I skimmed the first paragraph of the report; I want to hear the rest from you."
His hearing aids rang with silence as he waited patiently for a response.
"The plan includes bedrooms, bathrooms, and a kitchen. At first glance it seems normal, but then you take into consideration everything you'd need in a house in general, not to mention a ranch house, and it certainly doesn't meet the standards. Then there's the fact that it's in the center of the ranch, where the animals are roaming all around, and there aren't any sheltered areas designed for animals themselves," he monotonously explained. "But I'd explained all of the problems to them already. They didn't care. This was the way they wanted it."
For the first time since Alhaitham got there, Kaveh moved. It wasn't much — he changed his grip on the paper so he had one free hand while the other prevented the paper from flopping at the edges. Kaveh lightly traced the outline of a fence on the sketch with his pointer finger. Alhaitham followed the finger intently, his attention flicking back and forth between the sketch and the architect's face.
"It was the f…" His voice cut out, failing on the word he'd intended to say. He blinked, possibly for the first time in a while, and took a moment to regain his speech. "Fence. Ranches require specific types of fences for a list of reasons I won't bore you with. There canbe leniency for people as uneducated as the commissioners, but a palisade is obviously out of the cards for a ranch. The perimeter also wasn't long enough for any type of ranch animal, nor the area big enough to provide enough space."
Alhaitham had come to that conclusion on his own. He hadn't asked Kaveh to explain it because he didn't understand the logistics, he did it under the assumption that it would help Kaveh process the information and begin healing from it.
Looking at him, then, Alhaitham realized that the issue ran deeper than he had originally thought.
"It's meant to keep people," Kaveh started, and then choked on his own sentence. He let the sketch flutter softly from his hands onto the ground in front of him. His eyes were scrunched up together and his teeth were bared in a half-snarl. The usual shine that came with unshed tears was absent from his gutted face. "It's meant to keep people in. Meant to harvest their organs and throw them out once they are emptied of anything to sell."
When Kaveh stood, he staggered, tripping over his splint and hitting the edge of the table. The sketch crinkled and tore under Kaveh's weight. Alhaitham stood up with him, reaching out to steady him before he fell. What he received for his efforts was a hand wildly swatting him away and a strangely level voice that said, "I don't need your help." Those ruby eyes, the ones that Alhaitham could never get enough of — the way they were so unique, their color descending from a deep crimson to a dusted pink, always so expressive of frustration and excitement — met the Alhaitham's with a glaring intensity. "I have never asked for it."
And his nose was flared, and his hands were balled into fists, and he was favoring both legs as he roughly pushed past Alhaitham. His bedroom door slammed, rattling the vase settled by a set of books on the shelf beside the center couch. The sound reverberated into Alhaitham's hearing aids, and they reminded the Scribe just how sensitive they were with an ear-piercing screech.
Fresh dust settled in the newly-cleaned house. The aroma of cooked meat and roasted vegetables filled the space where the smell of Kaveh's shampooed hair had once been. Light streamed in from where the blanket had come slightly undone. The ever-present sound of silence wrapped around Alhaitham like the Grim Reaper's skeleton hand.
Alhaitham tied the blanket back over the empty space where the window should be. He checked the kitchen to see a plate carefully preserved for him. It had meat and vegetables and a glass of water on the side. His footsteps were light and even as he brought the food to the dinner table. He kept his mouth closed and chewed slow as he ate alone. His mind was blank as he tried to think.
Lesser Lord Kusanali's words bounced around in his head, reminding him constantly of their weight. It made him want to plunge his steak knife into a carotid artery. It gave him urges, not thoughts, not plans, not ideas. Only the strong urge to do something incredibly and uncharacteristically impulsive. Alhaitham prided himself on the fact that he did not do anything without consideration beforehand, and that he didn't have compulsions since they were entirely illogical, reckless, and without cause.
Alhaitham wanted to flip the dinner table. He wanted to choke on his food. He wanted to cradle Kaveh's head and beg to see his stomach and thighs. He wanted to shake his Archon's little body and scream in her face.
Alhaitham did not act on his urges. Instead, he tossed his hearing aids onto the wooden table, took a deep breath, and ate the rest of his food in the complete, utterly deaf world he belonged to.
He wanted to be able to think, but the dead silence in his head was infinitely better than the uncontrollable voices scraping his brain like a dog that's been trapped in a cage for days, making his hands shake and his heart burst. Having real thoughts would have to come later, when he calmed down and could open his mouth for anything other than eating.
