#alhaitham x y/n | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

vivalabunbun · 2 months

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As We Are, We Will Be

Summary: A nonsensical question is proposed in one singular moment between a stoic and stoic face in one singular universe.

Word Count: 9k (It was supposed to be short and sweet-)

Tags: Alhaitham X Fem! Reader, Smut, NSFW, Fluff, a lot of fluff, slight angst, soulmate au, slow fic, established relationship, married life, Soft! Alhaitham, attempts at comedy, mentions of aging, slightly jealous! Alhaitham, mutual pinning, soft sex, vanilla, safe sex (wrap it up), riding (cowgirl), fingering, slow sex, making love, really bad expatiations of scientific theories and math, just two nerds in love.

Authors Note: Happy belated birthday and Valentine's Day to my favorite dendro nerd. A continuation of this piece, one I hold dear. A thought experiment based on nothing more than the feverish delirium of love.

It was just for a moment.

A mere pasting instance in the contentious momentum of time when a glimmer caught your eyes in the muddled chatter of a crowd, a silver shimmer like starlight.

Interrupting your contemplation as your eyes impulsively search for the source.

A late morning on a Saturday, the markets and stalls were lively with families replenishing a week's worth of groceries. Bodies veering and easing through the bustle of the busty streets.

The wide breadth of life that moved all around you. Like a collection of small dots within the vastness of a universe.

But amid the vast collection of blurry faces were the flicker of silvery locks refracting the late morning light. Originating from a pair, an elderly lady and an elderly man, their aged hands intertwined.

Time had made her marks upon them, and gravity had pulled down on their wrinkled faces. Yet, the ends of their lips were pointed toward the sky. The corners of their eyes wrinkled as their gazes held each other's faces.

From their view, do they not see the starlight hue of their hair? Instead, do they still see the vibrancy and youth of their locks which age had stolen from them?

The image of each other reflected in their irises, was it from a time before the hands of gravity pulled on their creased skin and bowed bones? Would you ever be able to find out?

“I wasn’t aware you had a hobby of people-watching.” A baritone voice ghosts over your ear.

Jolting your head to your right, you come face to face with the interruption. Or perhaps, your mind finally registered Alhaitham’s presence just off to the side of you. His arms were weighted down with various bags.

Oh, that’s right, the markets and stalls were lively on the weekend with families restocking groceries for the upcoming week. You and Alhaitham were no different.

Glancing up at his ashen trestles and then scanning back at the starlight locks of the elderly couple, and then back to your husband.

“Hmm, not quite. Just noting the fact your hair is the same color as an old man’s, Haitham.” You catch the subtle twitch of his brow.

“Is that so? I hope you are aware you’re not immune to the inevitably of aging, wife,” Alhaitham returns your jest.

“Well, with your hair color and grumpiness, I’d say you’re already halfway there.”

“I needn’t expound on your equivalent levels of grumpiness, it won’t be long before your locks share the same ashen hue.”

“I guess that’s why we get along then, dear husband.”

“That’s one theory,” he huffs, a simple tone lacking any bite.

You pan your face back toward the crowd, partly because it’s getting harder to hold the neutral position of your lips, partly because your curiosity aches for an untold conclusion.

However, when your gaze returned to the ever-bustling sea of people, the pair of starlight hues were nowhere to be found. It was regrettable, but expected, the elderly couple were nothing more than a pair of strangers in a crowd full of unfamiliar faces.

They were just a brief scene that disappeared into the moving tides of people.

Leaving you with your unresolved musings.

“Is there anything else we need for the week?”

Alhaitham’s voice reels your consciousness back, swiftly you check the crinkled slip of parchment within your hand. Scanning down the list of written items, all with a neat little line crossed through their immaculately penned letters.

“It looks like we got everything we need.” You tuck the list into your pocket.

“Then it’s best we get home before our groceries are spoiled by the heat.” Alhaitham readjusts the bags in his hands.

A hum takes its place as your response. Pivoting your body in the direction of your shared home. From the corner of your field of view, his strides were paced to coincide with your shorter steps.

Studying the numerous bags occupying his hands, you can’t help but think it’s quite convenient to have someone as robust as your husband. Maybe it's these weekly grocery runs that are the secret behind his physique.

Discreetly, your hand slowly slips between the gap of his arm and body, linking your elbows together. So that your frame and his could withstand the push and pull of the crowd’s contentious momentum.

The neutrality of your lips had long slipped away, softened by the familiarity of his warmth. Even as your eyes were pointed on the path ahead, you had an inkling that a similar occurrence was mirrored on his lips as well.

An inquiry your curiosity didn’t need to peek to resolve.

That ache for an untold conclusion morphed into a new musing by the afternoon.

The silver shimmer from that elderly couple’s hair truly was like starlight. Perhaps that’s the correlation that steered your thoughts down this winding path of pondering.

Everyone, from those taking their first stumbling steps of youth to the slowed cane-assisted tramps in their golden years, is technically billions of years old. Or more accurately, the atoms and minerals in everyone are billions of years old.

The carbon in muscles, the calcium in bones, and the iron in blood were all forged in the hearts of bygone stars. When those bright beacons burned out they exploded in one last finale, expelling those materials across interstellar space. Stardust that found its way here.

Here within you, and here within the slow breaths of the man in front of you.

After being around for billions of years, does stardust ever get exhausted?

That would be a sensible explanation for why Alhaitham had snuck away amidst hanging up freshly washed laundry.

His tall frame stretched the expanse of the couch as his starlight lashes were shut, shamelessly relishing in a nap under the streams of sunlight trickled in from the window.

Squatting down you observe the guiltless expression plastered over his resting face, still deep in the trenches of sleep, a small huff passes through your lips. Well, this morning you did have him carry all the groceries from the market back home.

Your husband does deserve this little nap.

Trailing your eyes down his neck you note the lack of a pillow, then as your gaze travels further you note the absence of a blanket as well. Internally, your mind tsks at this forgetful habit of his.

Although his body and yours still have youth coursing through your veins, it doesn’t mean they’ll remain as impervious as they are now later down the line, especially if preventative measures aren’t taken.

Like having a pillow to support one’s neck, or a blanket to prevent chills from plaguing the body.

Standing back to full height, you retrieved the missing artifacts, returning with a plush pillow and light comforter.

Even when his head was momentarily lifted to make space for the pillow, and when the spare comforter was draped over him, Alhaitham didn’t stir one bit. At times you can’t determine if he’s a light sleeper or if his stubbornness refuses to leave the plain of dreams.

It’s a true wonder of life how Alhaitham’s able to sleep so soundly at night given his extensive naps.

The vivid sunlight illuminated patterns upon his cheeks and trestles, causing the ashen strands to dazzle in their refraction of the afternoon light. A sight your eyes just couldn’t help but be enraptured by.

Maybe you could blame the warmth of the sunlight, or maybe the serenity of this quiet Saturday afternoon, or perhaps even these fickle inquiries about his naps for the yawn that left your lips. Now might be the prime time for some research.

Lifting up the comforter just enough for an opportunity to slip through, your body settles in the space right against his. It’s crowded on the couch, the cushions unprepared for two bodies to occupy its entirety, the open edge looming against your back.

Even after all the shuffling and pressing against his dozing frame, your husband didn’t budge a bit.

Leaden lashes still shut and lips set in that all too familiar line, chest rhythmically rising and falling in time with yours. The very image of unperturbedness under the blessing of sleep.

“You really are like an old man.”

At that mere jab, the corners of his lips tugged down while his eyes remained closed. A quick slip that confirmed your earlier suspicions.

“Who knew you were so talented in acting, Haitham,” you snicker.

A muscular arm soon enveloped your form, further pressing you against his chest as if to silence any more sardonic quips from entering his ears.

It was quite the challenge to stifle those giggles before they could erupt from your lips. Peeking up, there’s an ever-so-subtle lift at the corners of his mouth. An express which yours mirrored.

Studying the details of the lips just a breath away, a new musing worms its way into your thoughts:

When the hands of gravity and time start to pull down on his skin and yours the same, leaving wrinkles and creases in their wake, will the edges of his lips still curl like this?

Would yours mirror the same?

A second yawn sneaks past your lips as your lashes grow heavier with each fluttering blink. Claiming a corner of the pillow to lay your head upon, the seconds between each subsequent blink grew longer and longer until your lids were too heavy to lift.

Perhaps the stardust in your bones was exhausted, craving a short rest in his warmth.

--------------------------------

There’s something against your back and your legs are tangled in something, sensations which gradually alert your dozing sense back from the fog of slumber.

At first, you only had the strength to peek open one lid, then promptly shut it. But in the nothingness behind your eyelids, something was halting your limps from stretching the weariness out from themselves.

You tried again, this time fluttering both sets of lashes apart ever so slightly. There’s a dry film coating your throat and mouth, feeling the impressions of the couch cushions and bundled comforter imprinted into your skin.

What time was it?

Blinking away the haze of sleep just enough to notice how the golden rays of a star were missing. A gray overlay was plastered over the living room despite the ticking clock hands displaying that it was late afternoon.

Peering back through the window behind, observing the congregating insipid clouds blocking out the azure sky.

A sure sign of rain despite the morning forecast. Rain… wasn’t there something left unfinished on the clotheslines outside? The groggy recollection of responsibilities creeps into the forefront of your mind.

The reign of your weary limbs slowly returns, and your legs languidly attempt to stretch out from the reveal they were caught in. However, their movements only caused a pair of longer limbs to ensnarl them further.

Alhaitham’s legs promptly caught yours, stifling any prospect of escape.

Your displeased whine was responded with a disgruntled groan by the man keeping your body locked against his.

Wasn’t your back looming just about the edge of the couch when you fell asleep? So why are you in this position now?

Your body wedged between the plush backing of the couch and his solid frame, the comforter swaddling you also didn’t aid in your immobility. Brawny arm draped over your waist, halting your feeble squirms at freedom.

“The laundry,” you mumble.

“Later.” A blunt interjection from a groggy voice.

“It’s going to rain.”

“Less than a 30% chance.”

“Haitham…”

Your husband simply burrows his head deeper into the leveled pillow, likely an attempt to leverage the cushy material to block out your grievances. His ashen lashes still stubbornly shut, much to your displeasure.

“Alhaitham.”

No fluctuations in your volume nor tone, but it was enough for one teal eye to peek out from under ashen lashes. Trailing up to a subtle frown to the furrow between your brow, then finally meeting your unamused stare.

“Laundry,” you try again.

A silent stare down, one stone face gazing upon an equally stoic face, like an immovable object pressed against an equally immovable object.

Which one will defend their title of most stubborn today?

His chest expands with a deep breath, grasp enclosing around your waist before his teal gaze shamelessly vanishes behind closed lashes. Robust frame pinning you further to the back of the couch as he continues to ignore your huffy floundering.

“Release me, don’t you dare-”

Your grievance was soon muffled by a gentle hand pressing your cheek into his palatial chest. A move that stupefies the irksomeness bubbling within until it falls defeated into placidness.

“Whether it be now or later, they’ll be clean regardless, it’s quite comfortable right here.” The resonance of his voice vibrates in his chest.

You respond with a humbled grunt. In terms of strength you’d always lose to your feeble husband, wouldn’t you?

There’s no point in peering up, for the pleased satisfaction of his resting face would bring a sour taste to your tongue. Thus, you merely adjust your limbs, coiling your arms around to his back and pulling his form closer.

It’s crowded on the couch, it’ll be troublesome if Alhaitham were to slip off the edge if his back were to stray any further.

At this distance, entangled so closely together, the soft beats of his heart in time with yours like a rhythmic lullaby beckons the heavy to return to your eyelids.

The gentle drumming of his heartbeat coaxes out a final sigh from you, lashes descending down as your vision dims back into the realm of slumber.

Slow breaths and heartbeats homogenize into a tender duet, tranquil enough to distract from the sporadic pattering against the glass and gradually increase in consistency.

A less than 30% chance of rain doesn’t mean that there’s a greater than 70% chance of no rain. It’s merely a statistical probability of 0.01 units of more precipitation at a given area in the given forecast area in the time period specified.

Known as the precipitation probability, calculated based on two factors:

The forecaster's certainty that precipitation will form or move into the area X The areal coverage of precipitation that is expected, then multiplied by 100.

Thus, if the forecaster were 90% certain that 30% of the forecast area would receive rain, then the forecast displayed on screens would read as a 27% chance of rain.

A crucial bit of information that seemed to have slipped his mind midst a quiet afternoon.

A troublesome miscalculation Alhaitham tsks at internally as he wrings out the pillowcase into a sink before tossing it back into the washing machine. Button-down shirts and blouses, wrinkled from the process of twisting out as much rainwater as possible, sat in damp piles awaiting their turn to be rewashed.

As he measures out the detergent he can hear the rattles and clanks of the pot and pans from the kitchen. A late dinner in preparation, a task which was supposed to be his this week.

When he woke up to the pattering of rain drumming against the window panes, the afternoon long gone, it stirred an ever-so-sinking pit of dread. Second only to the unamused stare of his wife as she replicated an overconfident statement:

“Less than a 30% chance, Alhaitham?”

How unfortunate it all was, that the area where this quaint house resides was part of that 30% of the forecasted area.

Teal eyes watch the bedsheets whirl and fumble as they spin in the wash, contemplating the circumstance and further action.

There is only one spare bedding set in the closet, so it’d be wise to allow you to have it for tonight as all the sheets and covers get rewashed and dried.

Your bed is about the same size as his, so two bodies wouldn’t have an issue fitting. At this rate, the two of you just slept in whichever bed was the most convenient.

However, given the current state of things, Alhaitham wonders if he should prepare himself to brave tonight on his bare mattress with a flimsy spare blanket and pillow.

He might as well return to the couch for tonight if that was the case.

The accumulation of all the years of science, mathematics, and research, Alhaitham wonders if there was ever a bright mind who came up with a formula to calculate how displeased one’s wife is.

What would be the factors plugged into the equation? And how accurate would it be?

More specifics needed to be gathered, something the man couldn’t do in the refugee of the laundry room. Thus, Alhaitham must brave a journey into the kitchen. His slipper-clad footsteps are slow and methodical as the kitchen appears from around the corner of the hallway.

Sights honed in on your back as you stood by the stove, a rich aroma wafting through the air.

Sleep still dusted your hair, evident in the few unruly strands sticking up erratically on your head, you made no attempt at fixing it. One hand is too occupied with stirring the pot on the stove, and the other set upon your hip.

Your stance wasn’t exactly tipping the scales in his favor.

Cautiously, Alhaitham made his way to you. Stopping just a few paces as your eyes peer over your shoulder, stoic gaze halting him in place just a few paces away. The faded imprint of the crumpled blankets and couch cushions on your cheek.

His hand twitches with the urge to run his thumb along the impressions, but rationally warns him of the consequences.

“The laundry?” No discernable tone in your voice.

“Everything has been collected and wrung out, I’ll rewash everything tomorrow.” It’s best to answer your questions this time.

“Hmm, they were out in the rain for quite a while now. They were dripping out onto the floor when you brought them in.”

“I’ve mopped away any rain and mud tracked between the back door and laundry room.” Teal eyes quickly checked the aforementioned area to ensure they were pristine before returning to you.

“Hmm.” You turn back towards the stove.

The soft ticks of the clock accompany the waning drums of raindrops against the glass, the kitchen hood whirring as a ladle continues to stir in a pot. A quiet lull engulfed the home. Treading on the side of caution, Alhaitham inhales deeply.

Without opening the box, one will never be able to confirm to fate of Schrödinger's cat.

“What’s for dinner?”

“Hmm? Well, it’s raining tonight, what better to eat on a rainy night than some Sabz Meat Stew, no?”

He’s careful to not sigh too audibly, lest he goes to bed with a stomach half-full of instant noodles and that miffed stare of yours.

Alhaitham decides to hold his tongue as teal eyes continue to watch you add more spices to the pot. Studying how nicely the apron is tied around your waist.

But it wouldn’t be wise of him to stand so close when the fabric of his shirt was still damp with rainwater transferred to him by the soaked laundry and sky.

His chain of thought was interrupted by the chimes of your phone on the countertop, catching your eyes as well as his to peek at the over. A certain name is displayed across the screen. It’s as if the hands of fate wanted to throw more salt into his face.

Bahram (Manager)

It’s a Saturday night, for what reason would an employer need to contact an employee so late?

Alhaitham’s focus shifts to your gaze which is still honed in on the screen. A bitter tinge crawls up the tip of his tongue, threatening to spoil his appetite. Perhaps, he wouldn’t mind settling down in his bare bed with just a spare comforter without dinner tonight.

“Can you reject the call for me? He can wait until Monday to get me to resolve whatever he messed up,” you scoff before rolling your eyes back to the stove.

Swiftly he swipes to decline the call, let your voicemail remind Bahram of the concept of ‘off time’. The phone whirs again right after the first rejection, but he simply swipes decline again.

Pushing the device away with a bit too much satisfaction in his veins.

Glancing back at your frame, he lets out a sigh as he relents. Resting his head into the crook of your neck, careful to leave a bit of distance between your bodies and to not hamper your shoulder’s movement.

“Hm?” You hum expectantly.

“It was my oversight tonight.” A string of words a bit unfamiliar on his tongue, but stubbornness hasn’t been in his favor tonight.

“And?”

“I’ll be more cautious regarding naps.”

“Hmph.”

The lull returns, him resting his head on your shoulder and you continuing to watch over the stew. Teal eyes on you and your eyes on the stove. Until your shoulders raise with a deep inhale.

“Go get changed out of that wet shirt then set the table, this bastardized version of ‘soup’ will be ready in 20 minutes.” You reach for a skillet just off to the side.

He hums this time, the liberation from treading in suffocating lull tugs at the end of his lips. He surmises that laying his head against you for a few moments more won’t be so consequential.

The patter of raindrops still splattered against the glass panes of the window, drops which warped and blurred the scenery beyond the glass. Not that there’s any scenery to look at, not with the dreary clouds crowding the sky.

A heavy sigh huffs through your nose, curling onto your side as you adjust your pillow.

A filling dinner, a warm shower, and soft comforters. Factors that should contribute to a restful night’s sleep, or at the very least make your eyelids weary with the weight of lethargy.

Yes, perhaps those components should’ve granted you entry into the reprieve of a dream.

If it wasn’t for the fact you’ve intruded into the domain of slumber twice already today.

And the tempter who lured you to do so currently has his arm wrapped around your waist.

Alhaitham’s chest rises and falls against your back, soundly asleep without an ounce of guilt over the predicament he’s partly responsible for.

Lifting your head off the flattened pillow, your body twists around to fluff the stale stuffing back up before settling back to your position.

His body rested against yours just as it would any other night. But there’s a weight at the corners of your lips, one only grew heavier as your ears witnessed each content exhale resounding from the man who seemingly stole your sleep.

If you were crueler, you would’ve exiled Alhaitham to the couch or his barren mattress.

However, he’d probably sleep just fine regardless.

Canting your head up, you flip your pillow to the other side once more.

Your rolls and rhythm were abruptly interrupted by the clasp of two harsh hands pulling your hips into his, the contours of his rigor now digging into the plush of your ass. Forcing a stunned gasp up your throat.

“It seems like my wife has quite a bit of energy.” His timbre deeper from grogginess.

Ah, all the twisting and turning you did just to adjust the troublesome pillow must've disturbed him.

The softness of your ass cradled against his pelvis through the thin material of a button-down, an item borrowed from his closet that you’ve designated as sleepwear, and his sweatpants.

‘Serves him right.’

Your attempts to twist out from his iron-clad hold only ground your ass more against the stiffness, earning a grumble from his lips.

“Oh? And who’s fault is it?” You retort, still protesting in his hold.

Snaking one hand downwards Alhaitham presses against your lower stomach to arch your ass further into him. Leaning his face closer to yours.

“Do you want me to take responsibility?” His whisper ghosts over the shell of your ear.

You could feel the pads of his fingertips tracing under the loose button-down.

“Shouldn’t you resolve the issues you’ve caused?” A huff leaves you.

The outline of his shape pressed along your skin, the plushness of your bottom contrasting against the rigidity.

“I can say the same to you.”

The pads of his fingers trail up your heated skin, crawling along your torso, feathering touches alighting your senses like sparks. Massaging the tired yet restless muscles. You sigh in contentment.

The billowing button-down dragged up by his vascular hand, unveiling your skin to the cool sheets. Wandering touches slow as they rest in the valley of your breasts. His fingers enclose around one mount, gently twisting the defenseless nipple.

“H-hey! Hmph-“ Barely catching a moan before it fled past sealed lips.

“Hm?” His lips are now right next to your ears. “Surely you foresaw this, I’m just helping my wife with all her excess energy.”

His forgotten hand made its presence known as it kneaded your hips, cunning touches breaching under the feeble defenses of your panties. Effortlessly brushing them to the side, long fingers encroaching closer to their destination.

Your thighs react, squeezing together to prevent him from venturing further. Unfortunately, it was all in vain, for his fingertips already dipped into an all too familiar sap.

“See, you seem quite eager,” he taunts.

Stubbornly, your body attempts to buckle away from his influence. Face firmly pointed away from his lest he peeks at your heated cheeks.

Alhaitham abandons the perch on your breast, two large hands attempting to tame the bucks and rolls of your hips. He releases a slow sigh into the crook of your neck.

“Are you not feeling it tonight?” His hands remain where they were, but the strength missing.

At the lack of resistance, your hips seem to have lost interest in their writhing, staying within his yielding hold. Internally, you chiding your body for being so straightforward. The only thing blocking an answer from exiting your throat was that fickle ego of yours.

“Won’t you allow me to make up for my blunders today, wife?” He soothes his hand along your leg.

With that stubborn ego of yours still biting down on your tongue, you simply nod your head. Feeling the heat of your cheeks reflected to you by the pillow.

Permitting your thighs to give into the tow of his grasp. Allowing the grip of one large hand to pull your bent leg open, exposing your vulnerable cunt. Shielded from the view of the raindrops by a mere blanket.

The hand snaked under your waist took swift advantage of the oppurtunity. Sliding one firm finger down to part the fold of your slit as his warm hand cups your greed.

Alhaitham continued with the caresses of his fingers. Your lashes and lips pressed tightly shut, your leg still held in his tender hold. His slow breaths brush ghosting your skin.

He spreads the slick along your slit, the tips of his fingers ever so often knocking against the bud at the very top. Teal eyes catch the sudden jolts of your body every time it happens.

He moves his fingers downwards, slowly parting the now soft folds of your core. Feeling the subtle puckers of your entrance as his touch traced closer, more wetness dribbling out from the honeypot.

The tip of his finger now encircles the fluttering hole. Your hip subtly bucked into his hand, as if to lure him in a soundless plea.

Breaths getting deeper as your eyes follow his touch, the warm pad of his index finger twirling against your clit. Stoking a burgeoning fire with each slow circle. Your placid sighs fill the lull.

His middle finger ventures past the entrance of your satin walls welcomed with a lewd squelch. Curling his finger against slick walls to test the give, he wonders if this hidden oasis is etched into his shape yet.

Diligently, his digit continues to sink in and out of your weeping hole, making your teeth sink into the flesh of your bottom lip. The squelches increased in volume as trickles of nectar began pooling on the sheets. Walls clamping around a lonely finger, it wasn’t enough to quell that mounting heat within.

A second deft finger joined in, sliding past a hungry entrance. A tangled dance amongst gummy walls as they curled and stretched the space. The lewd squelches resounding in your ear, a whimper trapped in your throat. The heel of his warm palm now pressed flat against the soft mound of your cunt, every movement of his hand resulting in a grind against your clit.

Each grind causes a hot flash to shock throughout your body, starting from your curled toes to the very top of your head. The jostling of your hips and legs gradually expels the blanket off the bed.

“Mmph!” A whine from a sudden surge of bliss when his thick fingers curled against a spongy patch deep within.

“T-there! More there!”

Your body writhes, no longer docile under the white searing pleasure frying the ends of every nerve within your being.

He gladly obliges. Unrelenting rhythm slipping in and out of your convulsing walls. Ensuring to grind against that spongey patch.

Your body twitches and flails in reaction. Trying to find some way to handle this surcharge of sensations.

Legs instinctively wanting to shut together as if to cease this turbulent sensation, unfortunately, your pitiful strength gave no resistance against his rigid hold.

Piqued by the sweet tune, Alhaitham watches the scrunch in your trembling brows. He repeats his actions, another mewl leaves your lips as your head leans further into his shoulder.

The mellow pace of his fingers suddenly amps up, retreating out only to clap back in as his palm presses into the twitching bud.

“Ah! Haitham.”

A pressure mounting up, a sirens call beckoning you closer and closer to a hazardous cliff’s edge. The only foundation for your sanity is thousand-count fabric, thus you twist the silk fibers as tremors overtake your body.

Walls clamping down to trap his thick digits inside as it spasms. Muscles tensing and quivering as your back arches away from his chest, parted lips with nothing choking past them.

Three thick fingers sink deeper into your pussy without a hint of resistance, as a reward he makes sure to roll your overstimulated clit in firm circles with his palms. Judging from the violent tremors in your legs, it seemed you were almost there.

Just at the cusp of rapture when your hand tangles into his ashen-locks, canting your head back so that your panting lips could capture his. Alhaitham returns to gesture with just as much fervor in his kiss, swallowing down your sweet mewls for himself.

With a singular gasp, the siren’s call had beckoned your sanity to drown in the murky depths. It’s as if you lost control of your body to the possession of pleasure.

Eyes rolled back and lips broke away as breathy moans escaped the prison of your throat, a haze heavy over your thoughts, pride long lost amongst the gale of an orgasm.

The beckoning depths of euphoria welcome your descent.

Your limp frame rests against him. A light layer of sweat coating your panting chest, blurred vision merging and blending the details of the ceiling above the bed.

Alhaitham coaxes the contractions of your core, riding out the waves of their squeezes and sucks against his fingers. Earning an addictive whimper from you when his digits pulled away. Entranced by the glimmering string of nectar stretching between his fingers and your oasis.

Trailing back up to your face, he notes the return of your hazy irises from their ogle of the bedroom ceiling.

“Better?” Teal gaze watching the pants of your chest as they steady.

‘No, not at all’, a statement just at the tip of your tongue, but your lips were busy attempting to grasp deep breaths. The surplus of vigor festering into unquenchable desire. To be closer, deeper, more. You needed more.

Where words fail, action must take its place. Even before your mind finishes up the scheme brewing within, your lips catch him off guard, plush lips embracing his in a tender waltz.

Your body rolls back so that your breast can press against his chest through the thin fabric of his stolen shirt.

At the tender caress of your kiss, teal eyes disappear behind ashen lashes, the clasp of his grip loosening. Allowing you the mobility to finally pull your body on top of his, lips never once parting until you were finally settled atop his broad body.

A certain stiffness makes its reintroduction against your roused clit.

Breaking the seal of the kiss as a line of salvia stretches between your tongues, arms pushing against his firm chest to prop your body up as you gaze down at him.

“Still have too much energy?” Haughty eyes peer into yours, yet you can see the ardor oh so thinly concealed behind the brilliant teal.

“What do you mean? Aren’t you the eager one?” You hum, rolling your hips against the rigidness trapped behind the prison of sweatpants.

“Hmm.” He sucks in a breath through his teeth.

Large hands feel down along the plumpness of your ass as they drag a flimsy bit of fabric down your thighs. Daintier hands pull down the hem of sweatpants and briefs.

A fair exchange. Him helping you out of those ruined panties, and you freeing him from a compressed prison of cloth. Discarded and forgotten along the floorboards as the fog of passion obscured them from further consideration.

His vascular hands slide down the curves of your body, settling on your hip as your legs plant themselves on either side of his body. Alhaitham coaxes the hem of his stolen button-down just above your midriff. Sharp eyes surveying the puffiness of your clit, glistening with temptation.

Lowering your hips a breathy sigh leaves his lips and yours as the ridges of his cock drag against your slick folds. A few slow rolls starting from his leaking tip sliding down, thick veins skimming against your swollen clit. Precum mixing with arousal in a sinful concoction along his length.

Perhaps he should convince you to participate in more naps if he knew it’d make you this excitable.

“Oh,” you hum aloud, pausing your hips as you reach over to the bedside table.

Pulling open the drawer and rustling about a box followed by the crinkling of foil. Holding up the corner of the packet to your lip, tearing the foil while your gaze held his. Taking your time in dragging the condom out from its package. Easing it down his length while your fingers traced along, feeling each twitch and shudder.

“You sure do know how to test my patience.”

“Hmm?” You feign innocence.

A pair of shaky breaths mingle as Alhaitham helps position his engorged tip at your dripping entrance. Your hand guides him while raising your hips.

Other hand pressing his chest down for support as your thighs sink back down, a shameful squelch accompanying heavy breaths as your walls welcome his cock’s fat head.

Weeping pussy engulfing his girth in bit by bit until you clit kisses his pelvis. Sending jolts of searing pleasure that caused your satin walls to twitch and tighten.

Releasing a breathy sigh as you gather your senses.

Drawing out his cock inch by thick inch, sloppy trails of arousal caught on each ridge before dropping back down. Earning low grunts and sighs each time your satin walls swallowed his girth. The rhythm of your hips is paced and controlled despite how Alhaitham’s fingers dug into your skin.

A whine living your drooling lips with each slap of his skin against your clit. Pushing each tantalizing inch to stroke your starved walls until his skin claps against yours with a wet kiss. The bedframe creaks with each calculated movement, back and forth, back and forth the wood sings along.

Your head was light, intoxicated by a feverish potion of lust and desire. Feeling him reach the deepest depths, fat tip grinding against those spots which made your legs falter momentarily each time.

Utilizing the strength of both your arms now to support yourself. However, the jolts of pleasure that shot up your spine with each roll of your hips were too maddening to stop.

His calloused fingers massage circles into your hips. Squeezing the plush flesh to ground his sanity, watching your lewd face as you shamelessly bounced on him for your pleasure. Observing the subtle ripples with each slap of your hips and the jumps of your perky breast.

The ghostly touches of your fingers skim across his lips, prompting his eyes to connect with yours. Lush and glossy lips parted with your deep pants as your lust-hazed eyes peer down at him, unspoken plea inscribed within them. Who is he to not fulfill your desires?

Lurching his upper body up, he answers your plea, capturing your lips with his. Swiping his tongue against your bottom lip, deepening the kiss. A messy and feverish tangle as if to replace the air in your lungs with his.

Mewls and whimpers muffled by his skin, your hands moving to perch themselves on his broad shoulders. Your quivering legs grew limp as the strength of his hands took over. Barely processing the sweet nothings whispered as your core relishes in the fullness. Like an ache that’s been finally satisfied.

He wondered if tonight’s excessive vigor was fraying his control, or if your body was just this addictive.

By now any notion of decency and integrity has long left you, your hand clawing into his shoulders, marking him with the scars of rapture. A harsh thrust of his hips recoils through you, a wanton moan reverbing off the walls as it forces your tangled lips to part.

Tongue unable to produce anything other than strained moans, your head nods into his broad shoulder as your hips ground against his. The wet squelch announces the reciprocation of your walls.

The intervals of those unrelenting rams increasing between the tender thrusts, half-lidded eyes trained on the shivers of your body. Cock sliding against satin ridges of your wall. Grunts and pants reverberate through his throat, teeth clenching as your heat engulfs him again. Reaching deeper into your welcoming core as your lips fall open.

“Is this not enough?” You could feel the mirth in his whisper.

Closer, deeper, more. You want more. Walls aching for more, for his girth to jostle your core more, to extinguish this all-consuming heat within you. Hips floundering in harmony with breathy mewls.

Pressing libidinous kisses along his throat feeling the vibrations of his grunts and pants, a deep chuckle was soon felt against your lips.

“Good grief you are a greedy little thing aren’t you.”

A deafening slam of skin resounds through the heavy air, swiftly followed by another and another. A new tempo in this waltz of passion takes over like a wave sweeping both of you out to a sea of indulgence.

Possessed by the desperation of chasing a white light, your hand rakes deeper into his toned arms. Seizing anything to prevent your mind from abandoning your sinful body as his girth twitches within your velvety folds.

Sanity like a foolish sailor who’s beckoned by the lure of a siren’s voice, uncaring of the rocks which will sink them to the very bottom of the bemused tides. Keening against your husband shamelessly, a shameless wife on the cusp of her second fall into ecstasy.

The heavy scent of lust, the smothering heat, his unrelenting and unshakable thrusts amalgamating into the spark that lit your nerves alight. Toes arched into the air and eyes reaching the back of your head. Sobs and incoherent babbles resounding through the room.

Your devious walls clamped around his dick with maddening convulsions, gummy muscles suckling against his girth eager to quell your aching greed. It was too much.

His fingers claw into your soft hips, pressing your cunt flush against his hips with a sloppy slap of skin. The bulbous tip prodding against that weakness deep within you. Bruising grip holding your body in place as his lips crash back into yours.

Swallowing down his breathless groans with your sweet mewls and praddles.

A heat is spilled into the rubber, making your greedy walls quiver amidst the aftershocks of ecstasy. Alhaitham’s hips twitch with each subsequent rip of his orgasm, thrusting his length further into your crowded cavity with each one. The filthiness of it all prolongs your sinful depravity.

Chest expanding with pants, your lopsided shirt falling further down your shoulder. Your eyes return from seeing blinding white, exhaustion drenching each fiber of your body.

Limp figure crumbling against your husband as his back lays back on the creaking headboard. Even before your worn mind could conjure a coherent thought, your hands caress his starlight tresses.

As his own breath evades him Alhaitham releases one hand to cup your cheek, thumb brushing softly against your smoldering skin, guiding your lips back to his.

Basking in the warmth forged between your bodies, between drumming heartbeats and breathless lungs.

Two bodies lay under silken sheets, skin freshly wiped clean of sweat as the crisp breeze brushed against the curtains gradually erasing the sinful haze. The cool air aids your rising and falling chest to pace itself.

Muscles and bones heavy with fatigue, yet your eyes couldn’t bring themselves to retire behind shut lids. Not when those dreary clouds have finally retreated.

The moon hangs high in the sky, finally free from the shroud of rain clouds, she sits among the twinkling dots. Twinkling dots were in actuality brilliant stars, some even larger and brighter than the beloved sun.

Glimmering lustrously as they traverse through the contentious vacuum of space and past other nameless stars. A scene from a late-morning market trip wanders its way back from the depths of your memory, bringing its musings with it.

“Something on your mind?” A timbre voice beckons your conscious mind back from its trek.

Teal eyes set upon yours as your heads rest on plush pillows, just a breath away from one another.

“Hm, just senseless musings.” Your gaze shifts away from the window.

In a changed world with millions of hands will your hands and his find each other to make two pairs of hands?

In a different time with a million pairs of legs, will your steps and his steps still coincide in time with each other

In a new life with a sea of new faces, will a stoic face and another stoic face spot each other in the crowd?

What is the likelihood of those odds?

“If you keep letting your thoughts fester, it’ll only bring trouble upon yourself in the morning from sleep deprivation.” He shifts his position, supporting his cheek on his fist as he stares down at your face.

You sigh because he spoke exactly what those whispers of rationale were urging you, but the scoffs of pride had deemed these rampant inquiries ‘childish’. However, it’s a bit hard to avoid his eyes now.

“I was just musing about the soulmates concept again,” you confess.

Alhaitham hums in curiosity.

“Do you…” You take a deep breath, forcing the hard-to-vocalize question from your tongue. “Do you think we’ll only be together in this life?”

He’s silent. Just the muted chorus of Summer crickets rejoicing over the conclusion of a rainstorm resounding through the space.

“In a different time, a different universe, or the next life, do you think we’ll be soulmates again?” You muster together the courage to peer up at his face.

“I don’t recall ever reading an article or paper related to this topic, so it’ll be convoluted to get an answer.” He brings his other hand to his face, signifying his musings.

Right, there isn’t even a definitive answer for what happens after life passes, an afterlife, a cycle, or nothing, no one knows. Was this the only universe where life exists or are there infinitely many far out there in the stars? Does anyone know?

Your hand pulls your blanket up to your face, partially to cover the growing shame creeping up your face. That haughty voice within was right, these baseless questions are silly and childish. Perhaps even too morbid to bring up so unprompted on this weekend night.

What were you expecting Alhaitham to even do? Did you want him to give you an answer? What can he even do? A question you can’t even begin to understand, why would you even expect him to have some solution prepared?

What to do now? Can you just take back your previous words from his memory, so he’ll just forget what you said? Maybe just ask him to quell any more mindless musings from plaguing you tonight by placing his lips on your forehead? So that you could finally drift into the realm of slumber.

However, is that temporary solution enough? Enough to stifle the contentions and riddles clattering together into a clamorous ruckus in your head? Could sleep even spare you from their tumult?

“The Membrane Multiverse Theory or reincarnation, hm, do you have any personal theories you’d like to share?” The sensation of his fingers grasping yours brings you back to reality.

Glancing at him with a quirk in your brow, you wait for him to continue.

“Who knows, maybe we’ll be the first to publish something for this topic.” His thumb runs along your knuckles.

“So, is there a speculation or possible rationale you feel particular to?” Teal eyes reconnect with yours.

“Well…” You sigh, relishing in the warmth of his hand as you concoct a half-baked theory.

“There’s stardust from stars that had burst billions of years ago, that have somehow ended up on this planet. Subsequently, every being on earth has the atoms of stars in them. So, naturally by the law of conservation, the earth is where the atoms of the human body will return.”

“Based on the law that atoms cannot be created or destroyed?” He drones.

“Yes, they all had to come from something before them. The carbon in muscles, the calcium in bones, and the iron in blood. The atoms that make up you and I might become part of something else, or even of different people too.”

“Hm, that sounds probable.”

“But, then this brings up a whole new host of questions, such as, if the new people our atoms become a part of are even ‘us’? Will they ever meet? What if you become a tree and I a rock? What if the atoms of you end up on one side of Teyvat and I on the other end?”

You peer into his irises, but you were just searching for an answer that isn’t there.

For his beryl irises were impassive. But it was the impassive foundation you needed to ground your rambling thoughts and nonsensical musings into the desolate truth of it all.

The warmth of his hand slips away.

“Never mind, I suppose it’s the most logical to conclude that we’re just soulmates in this instance of time, in this universe, and only here.” Your hand closes over the empty space he left.

Maybe it’s wise to dismiss it as silly rambling and then withdraw from his indecipherable eyes. Is it too late to put this plan into motion now?

The weight of a muscular arm is draped over your waist, hand pulling you closer unlike your ploy to escape.

“But I have a few theories I haven’t shared yet.” He glances out toward the bedroom window.

“While the theory of reincarnation currently doesn’t have any solid scientific backing, in some way, the law of conservation of mass does give a bit of merit to that notion.” Alhaitham draws circles into the small of your back.

You hum in response.

“The atoms that created us will return to the earth after us and become a part of something or someone else’s molecular structure. A tree or a rock, a human or a beast, it’s all probable. However…” Beryl eyes return to meet yours.

“What’s stopping them from repeating the same molecular structures as right now?” He asks.

Maybe it was his turn to peer into your eyes to search for an answer, an answer currently brewing and forging between your united gazes.

“What’s stopping these atoms from returning to these exact molecular structures in the future? In a different time, the atoms of us now could one day in the far future come together again and make ‘us’ once more. Maybe just you, maybe just me, or maybe both at the same time.”

He frees his other hand from the duty of supporting his head, broad body settling down into the bed and blankets, allowing his face to move closer to your level upon his pillow.

“What��s the likelihood of those odds? Me and you again?” You ask.

Alhaitham pauses. All the bright minds of science, mathematics, and physics, have yet to come up with a formula to calculate such a thing.

What would be the factors plugged into the equation? And how accurate would it even be?

The ashen-haired man wasn’t sure, but there was at least a statistical observation that would provide some basis.

“A true 0% chance is an absolute impossibility, just as nothing can be proven absolutely 100%. Since we don't know the absolutes of time, existence, or physics. So, there’ll always be a non-zero chance.” Feeling the drums of your heartbeat against his chest.

“Then, when they do, I think I’ll spend my life pondering what could fit into the spaces between my fingers like this.” He slips his hand into the gaps of yours, intertwining them.

Then finally, he saw the smile he’d been yearning for rising on your lush lips. The ends of your eyes crinkle as it make its way to your irises as well. Your grip mirrors his as you nestle your face closer to his.

“You won’t get tired of this stoic face?” You taunt.

“Will you get tired of mine?” He counters.

Your shoulders quiver with stifled giggles.

“No, no I won’t,” you promise him.

“Then I won’t,” he promises back.

His larger hand brings yours closer to himself, all the while your attentive eyes watch failing to keep the curl of your lips under control.

“Any thoughts on the Membrane Multiverse Theory? How will your astute mind surmise the possibility of us laying like this somewhere else in the stars?” Honeyed-voice mimicking awe as your face inches closer.

“I believe I’ve shared enough, I’d much rather hear what your brilliant postulate is.” His tone casted with mirth, but the bite missing from teal eyes.

Letting a soft hum, your mind rifling through all the paragraphs and journals your hands had ever thumbed through.

The soft rhythm of his breaths kept time. Stringing the words together on your tongue, you hope this monologue of yours will provide some amusement for him.

“If universes are randomly put into 2 boxes of ‘yes’ and ‘no’, then on average the number of universes in each box would be the same. For every universe I’m not with you, there’ll be equally as many where I am with you.”

A coin toss, perhaps it was all just a coin toss after all. Whether or not the Akasha paired a stoic face with another stoic face, for the gaps of your fingers to fit his so perfectly.

It could have all been a coin toss, for one half to stumble upon the other half cruelly parted from them by the hands of unseen gods.

“Something akin to a bijection existing between both sets of universes?” He cross-examines.

“Maybe… If we were to assign one type ‘yes’ to a positive integer, and the other type ‘no’ to a negative integer, then perhaps we can construct a bijection from the positive and negative integers.” Your brow furrows in contemplation.

“If we submit this theory do you think the Akademiya would publish it?”

“Not likely, bijections are usually made between sets of elements like numbers, not sure if bijections can be applied to something like whole universes. I’m just hypothesising nonsense,” you sigh.

“But they did publish the nonsense known as The Lifespan of Love,” he interjects.

“Hm, then maybe there’s a non-zero chance they’ll publish our nonsense too.” You stifle a scoff.

“Hm,” Alhaitham hums in amused agreement.

His free hand pulls the covers further up over your frame then smoothing out the wrinkles. Observing the growing delays between your slowing blinks.

“Only you and I would turn pillow talk into an academic deliberation.” You couldn’t hold back the giggle any longer.

He sighs in agreement, nestling his head closer to yours on the plush pillows, teal gaze never once leaving yours.

“It’ll make any romantic keel over and die from how dry it is, wouldn’t it, Haitham?”

“I say let them.”

Scoffing and shaking your head at his crude declaration as a yawn slips past your lips, a conclusion to this nonsensical academic deliberation.

With one hand still intertwined in the tender grasp of another you pull Alhaitham closer. So that the spaces of your body could lay against the spaces of his.

The warmth of his skin mingling with the warmth of yours, pressed against one another. You drawing mindless shapes into his back, his hand tracing senseless ruins into yours.

Perhaps, an illogical attempt to echt memories into the stardust in your bodies.

So he and you could imprint the memory of each other into the very fibers of your beings. Then maybe someday when these atoms return to these exact molecular structures, they’ll remember this too.

The law of conservation of mass, the probabilities upon probabilities, and bijections used in an inconsequential pseudo-academic ramblings to no one but an audience of silent stars.

Alhaitham’s certain no academic publisher would spare a glance at them.

But this nonsensical instance in the continuum of time, feeling the rhythm of your heart on the other side of his chest next to his own, is his most precious epiphany.

Fin~

©️vivalabunbun DON’T PLAGIARIZE, REPOST, OR TRANSLATE ANY OF MY WORKS.

#vivalabunbunfics #alhaitham smut #genshin smut #alhaitham x reader #genshin impact x reader #genshin x reader #alhaitham fanfic #genshin impact x you #alhaitham x y/n #alhaitham fluff #alhaitham x you #alhaitham x female reader #genshin x reader smut #alhaitham x reader smut #alhaitham x yn #alhaitham x you smut #genshin fluff #genshin x reader fluff #genshin soulmates au

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sixosix · 7 months

Text

(OFFICIALLY) SWEPT OFF YOUR FEET

i. summary in which everyone knew you were in a relationship, except for you.

ii. warnings wc 1.5k, profanity, reader will be angry: couple fight scene but not really, alhaitham is kinda dumb here, but he loves you and you love him and that's all that matters, ending is kinda lame... ft. tighnari and cyno

iii. written for my big sibling @earthtooz hope u like this one earf ily

“Hey, Alhaitham?”

He hums noncommittally.

You nestle further in his arm that’s draped lazily over your shoulder, his other hand and his attention occupied by a book. He doesn’t respond again, but he does glance at you for a moment while you shift, adjusting his arm more comfortably.

“Tighnari sent me a letter the other day.”

“Hm.”

“And it was real sweet, you know. He sent over fruits and told me you have your share in my package. He didn’t want to send them to you because he said the fruits would have expired by the time you’d read the letter.” Alhaitham doesn’t deny it. “But I read something extremely strange in the letter that had me dropping the fruits out of pure shock.”

Alhaitham still doesn’t reply. But you know him well enough to know that he’s no longer reading—just keeping appearances.

“Did you read it?”

“...No.”

Obviously. “Ah, well. Let me quote it, as I feel the need to share it with you as well.” You sit up straight and push Alhaitham’s book away from his line of view. “He said, ‘For the insufferable, lovely couple. It’s been a while since you two have visited. How are you and Alhaitham doing? Write back soon.’ And then he taped a flower.”

Alhaitham’s mouth twitches into a half-smile. “You look miffed.”

You scowl. “Alhaitham, of course I’m miffed! Since when were we a lovely couple? And why are you not surprised? Were you the one to prank them?”

“No one’s trying to fool anyone,” he says smoothly, picking up his book once again. As if he just hasn’t caused your crisis. “Tighnari is simply being a good friend and looking for something to nag us about.”

“Alhaitham, since when were we a couple?” you demanded again, shaking his arm. “Did I miss something? Did I wake up one day and forget about being in a relationship with you?”

“Haven’t we always been in one?”

“No, we have not?”

Alhaitham casts you a glance. “You sound unsure.”

“Because you seem so sure of yourself for no reason,” you fume, itching with the urge to hurl the book at his face. “I didn’t even know you were even into me like that!”

“I let you kiss me on the cheek every night before you leave my house. Sometimes, you don’t even leave my house, so we sleep on the same bed.” As if that explains anything. And did he fling out these reasons to Tighnari, too?

“Well, I do it because I’ve been doing it since we were, like, six. And you never told me to stop. Plus, it’s just a cheek kiss—that’s way different from an actual kiss actual couples do,” you say, getting increasingly infuriated with each word that’s coming out your mouth. Why do you have to explain how relationships work to Alhaitham? Surely he’s read a guide about love in the millions of books he’s touched?

“I don’t see why you wouldn’t start kissing me the way couples do, then.”

Oh, this bitch. “So you knew that I liked you?” Your voice wavers, and you feel a little pathetic. “And that’s what prompted you to start spreading lies to everyone? Is this some joke to you?”

Immediately, his expression is swept off of amusement. “Y/N,” he says as you feel your lips tremble. “Y/N, that’s not—”

“Shut up,” you say. “How long has this been going on? Since when have I been outside of the biggest inside joke, huh?”

“It’s not like that. I thought—”

“Oh, you thought, didn’t you? Yet you didn’t think I don’t want my feelings to be played like—like—” You can’t even bring yourself to say this. You know that Alhaitham can be mean when he wants to be, but making a joke out of the feelings you’ve desperately hidden for years?

“I need to leave.” You’re not sure why you feel the need to announce it. Was it because you rarely even leave his place? Each step feels wrong. You don’t want to be mad at Alhaitham to this extent but you’re hurt.

You ignore Alhaitham’s hurried, “Where are you going?” because you don’t have an answer to that. Wherever you go, you always end up in Alhaitham’s arms.

You forcefully push the door open and march off, head spinning, humiliated. You hear Alhaitham’s steps fall into place after yours. It’s pissing you off even more that Alhaitham doesn’t even look the slightest bit frazzled, as if you impulsively sprinting off is just a walk in the block for him.

Then you spot Cyno in the middle of a street. He catches your wrist before you can avoid him.

He blinks, mildly surprised to see it’s just you and not some food stall thief. “Y/N.” Cyno tilts his head slightly to acknowledge the man a few feet away from you. “Alhaitham. Is something the matter?”

“It’s nothing!” You don’t question why or how Cyno is here, shoving him aside—which proved to be a little difficult given how he’s pretty strong for such a tiny man.

“You’re crying,” Cyno points out as you try to push him away as if you aren’t aware of how your face feels uncomfortably hot and how tears are sliding off your cheeks.

“It’s a marital dispute,” Alhaitham says, directly behind you.

His voice makes you scowl. So infuriatingly sexy, and you’re mad at it. “We’re not married!”

Cyno nods, serious. “Yes, I only heard about the engagement.” At your stunned silence and Alhaitham’s reluctant stillness, Cyno clears his throat and steps aside. “I suppose I’ll leave you two to it. I don’t know how relationships work.”

You groan as Cyno walks off, “Great, so even Cyno thinks we’re a couple. Who’s next, Lesser Lord Kusanali?”

Alhaitham looks away. “Well—”

“Oh, fuck off.”

Your wrist seems keen on being dragged around by men today, it seems. Alhaitham firmly tugs at your arm, pulling you close to his chest, his gaze intensely searching yours. But all he would be able to see is your scowl. And all you can see is his handsome face.

“Y/N,” Alhaitham says, your name in his voice a sweet murmur. “I’m sorry I upset you. I didn’t think you would react that way.”

“What, you think I’d just roll with it?” you spit with dripping bitterness.

“Yes.” You're taken aback as you gaze at him and find his expression to be entirely genuine and open. “We fell into a friendship so easily. I fell in love with you the same way: naturally. I thought…” And then his usually blank face twists into something unpleasant. “Forgive me.”

“Alhaitham, you idiot. You bastard. Do you have any idea how relationships work?”

“No. All I know is how to be with you.” He wipes a tear off your cheek. “But it appears I’m not even doing that right.”

“Fuck you.” You bat his hand away. His face falls. “You don’t get to act all sweet to me like that. I spent years thinking you would never see me that way, and you get to decide one morning that we’re in a relationship, just like that?”

“You’ve liked me for years?” Alhaitham’s eyes are a bit wide, totally missing the point.

“Alhaitham.”

“I ask you out every dinner. And you say yes each time.”

“I didn’t think you meant it like that!”

“I did mean it like that,” Alhaitham says, and again with that ‘so sure of myself’ personality. You hate it. You love it. “And I meant everything I’ve ever said to you like that. I didn’t tell anyone anything; they just assumed on their own, and only then did I realize how it did seem that way. It was my selfishness that didn’t try to deny their assumptions.”

Alhaitham’s usually so difficult to speak to, especially when it comes to expressing his true emotions. You often find yourself filling the silence, and he seems content with it. However, he appears desperate at this moment, as though you’re planning on leaving if he doesn’t give you a reason to stay.

You are too weak. “So you like me.”

“I do.”

“…And you want to… be in a relationship with me.” Alhaitham nods. You're beginning to feel flustered as the realization sets in that the man you've always dreamt of is holding you intimately in the middle of nowhere, and also confessing that he feels the same way. “Ask me out properly, then.”

Alhaitham looks at you incredulously. Did he think it was over?

“Do it, Alhaitham. Woo me. Win me over. Sweep me off my feet.”

“...Y/N,” he hesitates, his face tinted pink, vaguely embarrassed. “Go out with me. In that way.”

It sounds demanding and clumsy, but it’s perfectly Alhaitham, so your heart beats out of your chest and your face splits into a grin all the same.

You wrap your arms around his neck. “If you’re gonna be my boyfriend, you’re going to do it right, you hear me? You won’t just let me do anything. And you will start—officially—tomorrow by telling everyone that we are not engaged nor married.”

Alhaitham dips his head down, your chin trapped by his fingers. “We will be, eventually, though. And I can just start now. Officially.”

Your confusion doesn’t last for even a second when his lips meet yours in a kiss. You’ve been wooed. Won over. Swept off your feet.

earth i hope u know it took me months to find a good plot for your man this was a feat in itself. also i copy pasted your tags love u.

also if u caught the title while it was called swept over your feet shut up…. Please. this didnt have a title originally 🙁

#alhaitham x reader #al-haitham x reader #alhaitham x you #al haitham x reader #genshin impact x reader #alhaitham fluff #al-haitham fluff #genshin x reader #alhaitham fic #genshin fic #genshin x you #genshin impact x you #genshin impact #alhaitham x y/n

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komitomi · 1 year

Text

FILTH AND NSFW!!! (afab!reader)

Imagine alhaitham inviting you over to his house in the pretense of helping you with academics but now you're in his bed, legs over his shoulders as he hungrily laps at your cunt, groaning cause he's so drunk on your pussy that it's driving him insane.

You push his head away due to overstimulation but he simply doesn't budge and continues eating you out as if he had been starved for a decade, refusing to let go of you, nibbling at your clit time to time, you don't know how many times you came, you've lost track, your cunt is so swollen and overstimulated that you're definitely sure it will go numb if he continues like this.

#genshin impact smut #genshin smut #alhaitham smut #genshin impact #genshin #alhaitham #alhaitham x reader #x reader smut #alhaitham x reader smut #alhaitham x y/n #x reader #smut #genshin imagines

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dustofthedailylife · 25 days

Text

You were not supposed to hear that...yet

→ Masterlist || → Taglist

Pairing: Alhaitham x (gn!) Reader

Summary: Alhaitham reveals a secret about the inner workings of his heart to his friends over a cup of wine and in between some banter. However, he did not expect it would go this wrong...

Tags: Fluff, crack, comfort, teasing, consumption of alcohol (by characters), the whole 4ggravate crew is here, friendly banter between friends, a small sprinkle of angst because reader is insecure (but it's unjustified)

A/N: Dust posting a new fic?! Not an April Fool's joke, despite the date! Finally felt inspired and well enough again to finish this fic that has been rotting in my WIPs forever. I hope you like it. And feel free to hit me up with asks and reblogs - it'd motivate me greatly after my long break 🥺

The usual friend group of Cyno, Kaveh, Tighnari, and him - Alhaitham, was sitting at the Tavern. A gathering like it happened almost every weekend at this point.

The wine bottle on the table had been emptied around two or three times already when Kaveh ordered a new one yet again. At this point, Alhaitham had actually lost count of how many glasses of wine he'd already had, too. But one thing was for certain, he could feel the alcohol in his system and the warm blood that was rushing to his cheeks. All things considered though, despite feeling a little tipsy from the intoxication, he was still able to think clearly.

"Let me guess I'm the one who will have to end up covering your bill again?" He took sarcastic a jab at Kaveh.

The man in question just squinted his eyes and glared daggers at him before opening his mouth in an attempt to protest before it was quickly shot down by Tighnari's hand covering it.

Alhaitham leisurely leaned back in his chair smirking to himself, training his focus back onto the TCG cards in his hands and considering his next turn of action in the game he was playing against Cyno.

"What, am I just supposed to take it all the time and be quiet?!" Kaveh retorted, directed at Tighnari. The fox's ears were beginning to droop lower and lower as his expression became more and more deadpan.

"You all know as well as I do that if [Y/N] was here he wouldn't be acting like this. He would be on his best behavior and pay for the drinks without so much as complaining or being so cocky."

"By the way," Tighnari attempted to divert the attention away from Kaveh's ranting. "Where are they? Didn't you say they wanted to stop by the Tavern as well today, Alhaitham?"

Alhaitham played his round, throwing his card Cyno's way before looking up at Tighnari again.

"They mentioned it but I suppose something must've come up instead. I will ask tomorrow."

"Isn't it strange?" Kaveh addressed the others. "Whenever it involves [Y/N] he graciously offers himself up to talk to them and seek them out but whenever someone else is looking for him he is nowhere to be found."

"Maybe you just can't find me because I simply don't have anything to discuss with you." Alhaitham threw another jab at Kaveh with a smirk, which was promptly followed by a light punch against his bicep by the blonde architect.

"What? I constantly have to talk to you already when we're at ho-"

"SHHH! Don't say that out loud." Kaveh hissed, quickly covering Alhaitham's mouth in panic, since he didn’t want him to spell out that they were currently living together. “It's embarrassing enough that I currently have no other choice, no need to add to my misery.”

A witty quip was burning at the tip of Alhaitham's tongue after Kaveh's remark yet again, but he decided to swallow it. He didn't want to upset him too much, especially since he knew he'd had it rough lately. Even if it would've been said in jest, there was no need to add insult to injury. Instead, he simply resorted to taking another sip of his wine with a low chuckle and a glance in the blonde architect’s direction.

“Aaaaanyway…”, Tighnari cleared his throat, addressing Alhaitham once more. “What is it between [Y/N] and you anyway? You've become quite close haven't you?”

“That's an understatement.” Kaveh groaned, dropping his head on his folded arms on the table dramatically. “He can't stop talking about them. Day in and day out it’s [Y/N]-this, [Y/N]-that.”

“We started working on a project about six months ago. Things are progressing quite smoothly if I do say so myself. Certainly makes things easier if you're working with someone who is both hardworking and intelligent in every way. I’ve been lucky to have been assigned to the project with them.” Alhaitham answered Tighnari’s question rationally while ignoring Kaveh’s dramatic display.

“Here he goes again.” Kaveh huffed, directing his comment at Cyno and Tighnari. “Whenever he talks about them you hear nothing but praises.”

“If someone is doing a great job, is it not logical to give them the credit they deserve?” Alhaitham added matter of factly.

“No… I mean yes, but no. It's just not something I'd see you doing. It’s so out of character.” Kaveh huffed. “And before you say anything, yes, maybe I just don't know that side of you because I don't give you any reason to praise me. No need to add that, thank you.”

Kaveh poked his tongue out at Alhaitham before taking a big sip from his wine.

“Why, if you want to be praised you just need to say so, Kaveh. I think you're quite brilliant - your shortcomings aside.” He just had to add that last bit. Kaveh was just way too easy to tease. And what would this friend group be without the playful banter and jabs at each other?

Kaveh choked on the drink immediately and slammed his cup down onto the table with a loud clang. A fire burned behind his crimson eyes when he spoke next.

“This is exactly what I meant, thanks for proving my point!”

Kaveh looked at Cyno and Tighnari gesturing in the direction of Alhaitham with a move that said “Do you see what I mean now?”.

Tighnari just facepalmed and shook his head.

“And what is your point exactly?” Cyno inquired, playing a card from his hand.

“Did you not listen to what he said?” Kaveh gasped.

“Not really,” Cyno admitted honestly, his eyes trained back on the cards in his hands.

“It's the fact that he can praise others too, but never without also pointing out their faults in the same sentence. Did no one ever notice that? However, he never does that when it's [Y/N].” Kaveh explained.

“And?” Tighnari and Cyno replied in unison, looking puzzled as to where Kaveh wanted to go with this.

Kaveh put his head in his hand and groaned in frustration. “Sometimes you all make me feel like I am surrounded by idiots.”

Now everyone raised their eyebrows at him.

“You're all so clueless… anyway.” He sighed dramatically and accusingly pointed a finger at Alhaitham. “This guy. This admittedly handsome but blockheaded, know-it-all, stoic, annoying-”

“Get to the point.” Alhaitham chided, crossing his arms over his chest.

"Fine, fine." Kaveh spread his arms like he was holding a presentation and Alhaitham his canvas.

“This guy's right here, as alien as it may sound – has fallen in love.”

“You're in love?!” Cyno exclaimed his eyes widening. “With who?!”

Tighnari rolled his eyes, knowing full well Cyno hadn't listed at all the past ten minutes because he had been so absorbed in his cards, and gently slapped the back of his head.

“[Y/N], of course!” The Forest Ranger exclaimed with a huff.

Cyno, now rubbing the back of his head just ushered a “Wait really?” while Kaveh and Tighnari just curiously began eyeing Alhaitham in the hope of seeing any type of confirmation on his face. However, it stayed as unreadable as ever.

He nonchalantly took another sip of wine from his cup while leisurely looking back and forth between the cards on the table and the ones in his hand before playing another turn as if this conversation just now hadn't happened.

“So!?” Kaveh asked, almost hysterically at this point. “Do you intend to enlighten us?”

Just how had he gotten into this situation now? Alhaitham suppressed a sigh before turning to Cyno: “Your turn. Two of your cards are down.”

“Archons!” Cyno cussed, immediately attempting to go back to study his cards but a fist slammed the table harshly, drawing all attention to it.

Tighnari flinched in shock and Cyno, too seemed to be pulled back to reality. Kaveh’s hand was trembling slightly, visibly agitated.

“Stop changing the subject, Alhaitham. The more you keep avoiding answering the question the more I think I am right in my assumptions.”

Alhaitham pinched the bridge of his nose beginning to truly feel a little stressed by Kaveh’s insistance. The man was truly too nosy for his good.

“Kaveh, just let it be if he doesn’t-” Tighnari began before being cut off by Alhaitham.

“And what if you are right? What then, Kaveh?”

Everyone at the table fell silent and everyone was staring at him with a mix of disbelief and shock.

He hadn't planned to reveal any of this yet, especially since he feared they would try to become his wingman. Which, admittedly, may be a nice gesture on paper but with them it could only end in disaster. Plus he would prefer to deal with his feelings alone first and think them through thoroughly, before talking about them with anyone. Besides, it should be you, if anyone, who should hear about them first - alas he was too deep into this now to weasel his way out.

“What?!” Kaveh’s mouth hung open in shock.

“So it is true then?” Cyno inquired, putting the card in his hand down on the table, now suddenly fully hooked on the tea that was being spilled.

“Hold on. Pause.” Kaveh sat upright, before quickly gazing over Alhaitham’s shoulder. “So you-”

“For Archon’s sake.” Alhaitham was beginning to get annoyed because he didn't know how much clearer he had to become for them to get it. “Yes - I’ve been in love with them. For a while now-”

“Alhaitham-” Kaveh tried to interject.

“No, don't interrupt me now, you pestered me about it for the past twenty minutes now you'll have to listen. I have never met anyone who is so hardworking, intelligent, and stunning in any way. Of course, I would be infatuated with a person like them. It would be hard not to fall for them.”

“Uhm Alhai–” Kaveh laughed awkwardly before being interrupted by Alhaitham’s ongoing monologue once more.

“At first I wasn't sure about it but I am now. I am thinking about them first thing in the morning and last thing when I go to sleep - unless you're hammering away on some project again that keeps me awake, Kaveh.”

Kaveh waved for him to shut up already but Alhaitham didn't let that bother him. If he wanted the full story with all the details - he'd get it. He hoped that would get this discussion out of the way once and for all.

“And guess what? They even remembered how I liked my coffee just after I told them once and gifted me a book that I had been trying to find for weeks. So yes, Kaveh. I love [Y/N]. There, does that suffice now, or?”

Kaveh let out a squeal as soon as Alhaitham had stopped speaking but upon further inspection of his expression, it hadn't been one of excitement but rather pure terror and awkwardness.

“Alhaitham…” Cyno and Tighnari said in unison and he only then noticed as well how their gaze was trained on a spot behind him.

“What?” Alhaitham inquired, curling a brow up in confusion before all three men pointed their fingers at something behind him.

When he turned his head around to look at what they were trying to show him, he felt his heart drop to his stomach for the first time in ages.

To his utter shock, you were standing right behind him. Or rather, you were frozen in place, your hand still half lifted in greeting as if you had just been about to greet the lot of them. Your mouth was slightly open in shock still and your pupils were but the size of pinpricks and transfixed on Alhaitham.

And judging by your reaction you must've heard every last word he had said.

“I-I…” You started stammering, clearly confused about what you had just heard. “I uh-, I'll head back home.”

You abruptly turned around on your heel and marched straight out the Tavern door you had just come through as if someone was chasing you.

Alhaitham hadn't moved a muscle ever since he had spotted you standing behind him and he looked like he was frozen in place. Everyone at the table had fallen so silent, one would've been able to hear a needle drop.

Alhaitham's eyes were still fixed on the door you had left through. The little bell that chimed every time the Tavern door hit it on the way in or out was still dangling lightly from the impact. But the movement was dying down slowly but surely - just like Alhaitham, who felt like someone had dropped a boulder on his chest.

You were not supposed to hear that, yet.

“You uh…, Alhaitham you should probably follow them.” Tighnari was the first to speak again. He awkwardly scratched behind his ears. Cyno hummed in agreement while Kaveh just sat there with his mouth wide open.

Alhaitham exhaled in frustration, unable to properly place his emotions. But they were somewhere between unsettled, nervous, and discomforted.

When he got up it felt like someone had tied heavy iron blocks to his ankles that were weighing him down.

“Yeah, I guess I do,” Alhaitham muttered before marching off.

When you stormed outside the Tavern the cool evening breeze gnawed at your skin and made goosebumps erupt all over. Although you weren't quite sure if it was the temperature or your emotional turmoil at play here.

There was no way Alhaitham had just said that and actually meant it. He wouldn't be the type of man to flat-out admit that he had feelings for anyone. Or would he? He had been talking to his closest friends after all.

You were questioning your sense of reality and thought you must've fabricated it all in your mind. Or maybe you misheard what he said and he was talking about something else entirely.

But no, he said your name, and the others looked panicked when you entered the tavern and approached the table.

As you rushed through the streets of Sumeru City the chilly wind kept whipping in your face. Not even you knew where you were going at this point. You simply went where your feet were carrying you.

But eventually, you realized you had run up the Akademiya and to the blue-green mosaic pavilion that glistened in the last rays of sunlight. The spot at which you and Alhaitham often spent your lunch break together.

You sunk down on the bench exhaustedly and stared holes in the ground.

No way.

There was just no way.

Alhaitham. The man you had fallen for so hard that he had begun to occupy every waking thought you had. That man was supposed to have feelings for you and had just flat-out admitted it?

No, this simply had to be a dream. A bad joke. Or maybe even a bet between the group that they orchestrated to prank you.

You could feel your heart thumping in your head and it felt like your head was swimming. It was as if you had downed an entire bottle of wine by yourself, but you were as sober as one could be.

Yes, that had to be it. It was a bet between the boys over one too many cups of wine and they had all acted their parts out flawlessly.

You got up again walking to the railing, overlooking Sumeru city that shone majestically in the last remaining rays of sunshine that the day had to offer. Another gush of wind blew your way, making tears well up in your eyes. Although it may have also been your emotions who were to blame for that instead.

You inhaled deeply. Once. Twice. But nothing seemed to help calming the rapidly beating heart in your chest.

In your daze, you completely missed how someone had quietly come up to the pavilion as well.

Alhaitham leaned against the railing himself, looking over the city in silence, too. He was clearly ringing for words. Although you assumed the wrong reason for his struggle.

“Look,” you began, trying your hardest to suppress the tremble in your voice. “If you came here to apologize - please, spare me your words.”

He looked at you opening his mouth before closing it again right after with a silent nod. His cheeks were dusted in a light pink shade - you assumed it was caused by the alcohol he had downed at the tavern with the others.

“I hope that we can go back to normal tomorrow and just finish our project. I’d prefer if we kept our distance after that. I think it’s for the best” The words left your mouth at normal speed, but it felt like you had to force every single one out. They felt tenacious, like old chewing gum that you tried to pull out from in between your teeth.

“I understand.” He stated calmly before retraining his gaze back into the distance.

You both kept standing next to each other in silence for a long while before you decided to confront him about it directly. You eventually decided it was for the best if you got things off your chest now so that you could get over him quickly. Ripping it off like a band-aid would hopefully give you the relief you so desperately craved right now.

“You know,” you began. “I don’t know who came up with the idea and I also don’t care, no need to tell me. But you guys should never do this to anyone again because you never know how much it might end up hurting someone else’s feelings.”

Alhaitham stood upright and turned to face you directly. He crossed his arms over his chest and slightly cocked his head like he always did when he was thinking about something you said.

After a momentary pause, he asked: “What do you mean?”

“I mean that you shouldn’t toy with someone’s feelings as a prank. It’s never actually funny for anyone but the people who orchestrate such a prank. No matter if the other person reciprocates the feelings or whether they believe the statement, they always end up being the one who is being ridiculed.” You explained as rationally as possible, which was a stark contrast to the tempest that was raging both inside of your heart and mind.

“Especially when the person hoped to hear those exact words for the longest time, too…” You added. It wasn't more than an utterance under your breath - so quietly it was barely audible. But Alhaitham heard nonetheless.

“But I meant everything I said.” He stated matter of factly, seemingly catching on to the fact that you must’ve assumed the wrong things about the whole situation.

“What?! Alhaitham, please, there is no need to add insult to injury. You had your fun now–”

“No.” He gently took your hands in his, exhaling heavily. “Archons, you weren’t supposed to find out like this.”

He rarely swore which made the impact of his words even stronger.

“I wanted to tell you face to face and was waiting for the right moment to do so. But, just know that every word you heard and everything I said back at the tavern was the truth. No bet or scheme made me say it. Not that anyone would be able to make me say these things in the first place.” He sighed once more, giving your hands an emphasizing squeeze. “I meant it.”

“You did?”

“Every word.”

You felt the blood rush to your face and immediately lowered your gaze in an attempt to hide your flusteredness.

“Had I known this would happen, I would’ve told you everything right from the start. I don’t like how this went now but–”, he moved his hands up to cup your face. His beautiful turquoise eyes trained on no one but you.

“I’m absolutely certain I like you. You drive me crazy. And I love and hate how much you occupy every waking thought of mine because I can’t focus on anything when you’re around. And when you’re not, you’re still always on my mind. So please – be mine.”

Do not repost, copy, translate or edit - © dustofthedailylife || reblogs, comments, and asks about Genshin or my fics are always greatly appreciated and motivate me! Maple dividers are mine - do not copy.

#genshin impact #astronetwrk #genshin fanfic #genshin x reader #alhaitham x reader #al haitham x reader #alhaitham x y/n #genshin fluff #genshin crack #genshin alhaitham #genshin x y/n #genshin impact fanfic #genshin drabbles #genshin scenarios #genshin brainrot #genshin headcanons #🍁 dust writes #🍁彡 gi

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torntoblivion · 1 year

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rough s3x with alhaitham

cw: nsfw (mdni), gn!reader, doggy style, unprotected (wrap it y'all), hair pulling, breeding

"haitham!"

your muffled scream reaches alhaitham's ears, his cock twitching inside of you. he has you pinned face first to the bed; one hand tangled in your hair, pushing your head to the pillows and the other holding your wrists. if he wasn't holding you up, your body would have given up on you a while ago.

alhaitham is not usually this rough with you but you knew the second he got home that he was pissed off at something. you barely managed to greet him before he dragged you to his room.

at first, you were worried that kaveh would get home and hear your cries for haitham to fuck you harder but you're too far gone to think about it right now. you lost count of how many times you've came at this point but you want more.

you're sure alhaitham got the point by you chanting his name like a prayer and your walls tightening around his thick cock, making him groan. suddenly alhaitham pulls you up by your hair and angling your face down.

"watch how i fuck you."

was all he said before speeding up, the sinful sight of your hole taking alhaitham's cock pushes you to the edge even closer. you feel your cheeks flush at the wetness smeared on your thighs, you want to look away but also watch at the same time.

you can tell alhaitham is close by his groans getting louder and his pace turning sloppy, you thrash underneath him as more sobs escaping your lips. you want him to fill you up already, feel him cum inside you.

you're so focused on alhaitham's pistoning cock that your orgasm feels so sudden when the knot in your stomach finally snaps as you release all over the sheets.

following you; alhaitham snaps his hips one last time, going as deep inside you as he could as his cock swells and constricts, shooting his load in your quivering hole. you hum happily, alhaitham finally filled you up. curse him and his ungodly stamina.

now he'll be using that stamina to take you to the bathroom to bathe together like he always does after sex. <3

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theother-victoria · 7 months

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all stars must die one day

SYNOPSIS: it’s always been him- stupidly perfect and handsome Alhaitham who you saw as the bane of your academic achievements. Three years later and now so much has changed. He misses you. He misses your endless bickering and meaningless fights. Why did you change so much? It’s a mystery he makes up his mind to resolve.

CHARACTERS: Alhaitham, gossip circle consisting of Kaveh, Tighnari, and Lisa + the rest of the Sumeru cast

TAGS: heavy angst w/fluff, academic burnout, burnt-out gifted kid, mild profanity, gn reader, reader is briefly mentioned to be shorter than Alhaitham, toxic family dynamics, 15.7k+ word count

NOTES: college decisions and my experiences from the past two years really compelled me to write this. If you’re going through burnout, know that you’re not alone and that you can do this.

this took me almost half a year to finish wtf

NEXT | LAST

There’s a comet that crosses Sumeru’s skies only once in a lifetime.

Alhaitham had heard some Rtawahsit students discussing it the other day. They were practically buzzing with excitement over the news of its reappearance.

“Isn’t this the perfect opportunity?”

“How lucky are we to be able to witness it?”

“Even our professors are excited about it!”

Alhaitham couldn’t care less. The phenomena of celestial events, while dazzling, are easily explained by science. It’s not like they were anything special either. At their heart, they’re composed of ordinary materials- rock, dust, water, and ice, plus other chemicals.

He puts it out of his mind until he’s rudely awoken one night by loud noises outside the window. A flash of annoyance runs through him as he gets up and looks out to glare at the crowd of students passing through. A glance at their berets tells him they’re Rtawahsit students. They’re trying their best to be quiet, but when it’s practically an entire Darshan on the move, that becomes a difficult task.

It seems as if he’s not the only one that was woken up. Other familiar faces are peeking through cracked-open windows. Lisa, Cyno, and Tighnari all yawn while watching the crowd of students pass by before looking at each other and following them. Kaveh, who has just woken up from his spot across the room, gives Alhaitham one last look before leaving.

Alhaitham closes the window and flops back onto his bed. He covers his ears with his pillow and closes his eyes, attempting to fall back asleep. He never cared for what other people thought or did, so why should he blindly follow the crowd? He wasn’t even curious anyway.

But for some strange reason, he can’t seem to fall asleep. He tosses and turns, squeezing his eyes shut in frustration, before finally getting up to put his restless mind at ease.

It’s easy to figure out where everyone has gone. All he has to do is follow the sounds of chatter. It leads him to the top of the Divine Tree the city is built upon. There, Rtawahsit students are busy setting up their telescopes while others have pen and paper at their disposal for note-taking. Professors guide said students while those from other Darshans watch on in curiosity and gaze at the sky in anticipation.

Tighnari and the others beckon him over. He squeezes himself into the secluded corner they claimed for themselves, poking Kaveh with his limbs intentionally in the process. To his surprise, you’re there too. You lean against Lisa’s arm and shoot him a little glare that lacks any real hate before turning back to the sky, glaring at him when he decides to sit in front of you and block your view.

“Look!” shouts a student. “It’s started!”

Almost immediately, everybody goes silent. Only the sounds of birds and wildlife can be heard, along with the quiet breathing of everyone searching wildly for it.

(He’s acutely aware of the warm puffs of air that tickle the back of his neck when you exhale. It shouldn’t be this distracting, but it is. Is this your way of getting back at him?)

There’s an excited gasp from a girl with her telescope. She wildly gestures toward the sky and Alhaitham sees a bright speck of light out of the corner of his eye. Several smaller meteors zip through the sky, but everybody’s attention is on the largest one. It outshines all the other stars in the sky as it speeds by, heating up into a white-hot glow and leaving a glittering trail of blue stardust behind. It is a star not of this world, speeding onward toward its destination- toward something greater.

“Look,” he hears Lisa whisper. He briefly tears his attention from the sky to see her lean toward you. “Make a wish.”

Alhaitham sees you close your eyes for a moment before opening them again. What did you just wish for?

It’s gone in just a few minutes, heading toward the horizon until not even a pinprick of its light can be seen anymore. The sky is now dark again. With the main event over, most people begin getting up to return to their rooms. His eyes linger on your form, now walking away. Lisa’s voice from earlier repeats in his head.

“Make a wish.”

It’s a childish belief not rooted in reason- he knows that. But for just a second, he closes his eyes and makes a wish.

He met you at the start of his first year.

It’s too loud here. I want to go home already.

From his seat in the back of the room, he watches as spots gradually fill up as the start time draws nearer. Much to his delight, everybody leaves his spot in the back of the classroom alone, instead opting to sit toward the front.

That is until someone sits down in the row in front of him. He looks up from the pages of his book, slightly annoyed. Curses, now he couldn’t be by himself anymore. But they leave him alone and keep to themselves as the professor walks in and introduces himself and the class, so he tolerates it.

There’s a light tap on his desk. He looks up to see you watching him expectantly. He’s able to get his first good look at you now. Your Akademiya uniform is a little too big on you and the sleeves drape over your hands. Your green hat sits lopsidedly on your head and you have the air of a starry-eyed and enthusiastic first-year student.

“Yes?”

“The professor told us to introduce ourselves to those around us,” you explain. “I’m (Name).”

“Alhaitham. Pleased to meet you.”

You nod in response and turn back around. Your professor is explaining the course and handing the syllabus out, but your mind wanders toward the guy sitting behind you whom you’ve just met.

He’s cute, you think to yourself. In like, a little kid or puppy kind of way. He’s still a little short and scrawny- wait, how old is he anyway? Don’t tell me he’s one of those child prodigies that got in at a super young age… Or maybe he’s just a late bloomer, who knows?

A few weeks later, the results of your first test roll around. The 98 scribbled and circled in red ink at the top of the paper makes you nod in satisfaction. It’s indicative of a good start, but when you take a look at the board in front of the class, you see someone has gotten a perfect score.

And it turns out the culprit himself sits right behind you.

You glare at the 100% in red ink at the top of his page as if it has personally offended you. As if to further insult you, there was a small “good job!” written in the margins by the professor that you didn’t have on your paper.

“A 98? Good, but not perfect. Perhaps you should have studied more,” he nonchalantly remarks after seeing yours. Your eye twitches in irritation.

Oh, it is so on.

From that day onward, you swore to yourself that you would beat Alhaitham, no matter what it took. Even if it meant sleepless nights spent hunched over your notes and textbooks, they were all a price you were willing to pay to prove that you were the undisputed best.

Soon after, you don’t see Alhaitham in class anymore. His seat behind you is left unoccupied and you hear rumors that he opted for self-study instead- whatever that was. Despite that, he still gets top marks in everything, only serving to annoy you and spur you onward.

However, you still see him at the library, and frequently at that. It’s somewhat surprising, considering that the Akasha Terminal has the same function and is more convenient. As a result, the library is mostly empty save for the few students that are there to study materials that aren’t entered into the Akasha’s database. You’re there because you prefer the quiet, focused environment of the library to your dorm, which despite the Akademiya and its students' almost religious devotion to academics, can get a little too rowdy for your liking at times. Plus, you prefer the feeling of a physical book in your hands over its digitized counterpart in the Akasha. It makes it easier to take notes and learn that way.

Recently, you’ve found a spot in the library that you’ve taken a liking to. It’s located in the back and obscured by bookshelves, giving you some much-needed privacy while you study and it’s located by a window, allowing for ample natural light.

But apparently, someone else has already claimed it, unbeknownst to you.

“This is my spot.”

You don’t even look up from your book. The voice alone was a dead giveaway as to who was speaking.

“And? I didn’t see your name on it.”

Alhaitham sits at the seat across from you, purposefully spreading his books and other materials across the desk to push yours off to the side. A satisfied smirk twitches at the corners of his lips when he sees your eyes narrow in irritation.

“Are you here just to bother me?”

“If I wanted to bother you, I’d find other ways to do it.”

You huff in annoyance and turn the page. He watches you over the top of his book with intrigue as you alternate between reading and taking notes.

“... Will you quit staring at me like that? It’s distracting.”

“Oh? So you’re admitting that I’m a distraction?”

“You-!”

A sharp hiss to be quiet from a librarian passing by silences you both temporarily. You glare at him accusingly, which he merely brushes off.

There’s a reluctant compromise that arises between you after that. Every day after class, you would meet at the same spot in the library to study. You would sit across from each other and work independently from each other until it was time to go, where you’d then say your goodbyes before heading your separate ways. Rinse and repeat and that was what your average day looked like.

“So, what’s up with that thing between you and (Name)?”

You pause from your studying after overhearing that line and look up. Across the clearing are Alhaitham and a blond-haired man. Kaveh, if you recall his name correctly.

“I don’t know what you’re trying to imply,” replies Alhaitham.

“Is there some sort of competition between you two? Whenever I see you guys, you’re basically at each other’s throats over test scores and stuff.”

“There is no such competition. That would be a pointless waste of my time and energy.”

The urge to throw your book at his head across the clearing is strong, but you’ll settle for Kaveh giving him a doubtful expression.

“You say that and yet you’ve been putting more work into your studies than ever.”

“That’s none of your business.”

But for all your efforts, you can’t seem to catch up to him. He was always one step- or rather, one point- ahead of you. He’d always be there, subtly rubbing his achievements right in your face even though the difference is practically negligible at least half of the time.

It gets to the point where you begin to rant about your troubles to Lisa.

“Can you believe this guy? It makes me wonder if he’s a sadist of some sort that gets a kick out of annoying me.”

You’re sitting outside in one of the many gazebos around the Akademiya. Despite studying under a different Darshan, you quickly became friends with her.

She laughs lightly at your words.

“To me, it sounds like your poor heart is troubled! Shall doctor Lisa perform a checkup on you?”

You swat her hand away.

“Don’t play with me like that. And you’re not even an Amurta student!”

You hear footsteps coming down the pathway and speak of the devil, the topic of your conversation is walking toward you, his book in hand as always. You watch him out of the corner of your eye. He meets your gaze and holds it for several long, agonizing seconds before looking forward again and disappearing out of sight. You shudder and look away, Lisa chuckling lightly at your actions.

“Asshole,” you grumble. “What’s his problem? And did you see how cold his eyes were? Makes me wonder if the rumors of him having a heart of ice are true…”

Lisa hesitates at that.

“I’m afraid that’s where you’re wrong, (Name).”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

She purses her lips and looks off to the side.

“It’s hard to explain, even for me. But you’ll see and come to understand in due time how acutely aware he is of the emotions of those around him, especially those he is close to.”

You think you understand the meaning of her words a few weeks later when the results of a particularly rough test greet you.

75%

Damn it, you think before roughly shoving the papers into your bag, away from the prying eyes of your classmates. I can’t falter here now. I still have so much more to do.

“I can tutor you if you’d like. I don’t offer this to just anyone, so I’d advise you to consider it,” Alhaitham says in the library later that day. You know that most people would kill for this opportunity and you weren’t blinded by jealousy to the point where you couldn’t see the benefit of his offer.

But your pride prevents you from accepting it.

“Thanks, but I’m fine. I’d rather do this myself.”

Another time, Alhaitham has to get up at a time when he should be asleep. Earlier that day, he had left a book of his behind and forgotten about it until now, leaving him to search the now-dark and empty halls of the Akademiya for where it might be.

He happens to pass by the House of Daena on the way and sees a solitary lamp lit in the back corner where he usually frequents. Out of sheer curiosity, he steps inside to see there’s a familiar figure hunched over the desk, clearly fast asleep with piles upon piles of books and notes stacked around them.

Alhaitham gazes down at you with his ever-impassive eyes, silently wondering what to do next. A cold gust of air blows through the library and he shivers slightly. He looks down at your exposed arms, then at his jacket, before taking it off and draping it over your form. Catching a cold would serve you no good and you’d most likely return it to him later tomorrow.

Before he leaves, his curiosity gets the better of him and he takes a quick peek at your notes.

His eyes widen ever so slightly. Much of the material scattered around your desk was far ahead of what you were and needed to be learning. Did you borrow these books and notes from upperclassmen? The handwriting is a mix of yours and someone else’s… He doesn’t see the point in you doing so- it’s all just unnecessary work, in his opinion. Either way, it’s none of his business and you can do as you please, but Alhaitham can’t help but wonder if you were doing all of this just to stay ahead- to keep up or even surpass him.

He leaves and you wake up soon after to something warm and soft covering your shoulders. It’s a standard Akademiya-issued jacket for the fall and winter terms. It’s way too big on you and the sleeves completely cover your hands. Curiously, you pull it tighter around your form. It smells nice- like old books and coffee- and you suddenly realize who it belongs to. Your face suddenly flushes and it’s not from the warmth of the jacket.

Alhaitham-!

The next day, Alhaitham arrives at his usual spot in the library. You’re sitting across from him as usual and interestingly refuse to make eye contact with him.

Sumeru’s climate has always been temperate, but the days are getting longer and warmer now. You’ve finally shed your winter uniform for your spring one and with the end of the year rapidly approaching comes major tests. The library is the most packed it's ever been with students everywhere cramming last-minute. It’s rare to find an empty table now, but thankfully your spot in the back with Alhaitham is still left unoccupied. If not, Alhaitham’s cold glare is more than enough to scare them away.

For one of your classes, it’s a project instead of a test. You have the option to choose the type of project, but for some stupid reason, your professor was still assigning partners instead of being able to choose.

“And (Name), let’s see… hmm, I’ll pair you up with Alhaitham. How does that sound?”

Your blood runs cold and you hear your classmates snicker around you. You want to scream at the prospect of it. Sumeru would sooner freeze over before the two of you cooperate and he knows it. You catch him staring at you out of the corner of your eye, daring you to say no.

You swallow your pride and nod. The tips of your ears burn and at that moment, you wish the ground would open up and swallow you whole.

“... That sounds fine.”

How humiliating.

Later that day in the library, he’s even more infuriating than normal, if that’s even possible. His face betrays nothing but you can hear the smugness dripping from his voice and mannerisms. His arms crossed in front of his chest, the way he would subtly look down on you with that know-it-all gaze… it all made you want to punch his (handsome) face.

“Don’t fall behind now,” he says once you’ve finally settled on a project.

“Let’s see if you can even keep up with me.”

Your project is relatively straightforward but involves a lot of cooperation between you two. As you work, it becomes an all-too-common sight to see you arguing everywhere you go, much to the irritation of others.

“I’m telling you, this character has to be symbolic of rebirth! Why else would we see it so concentrated in scripts that were dated toward the end of that civilization?”

“You seem to be forgetting that this has also been seen elsewhere. Besides, there are reasons to believe that it means something else.”

“What, did it get lost in translation? If you think you’re so smart, then go ahead and enlighten me.”

You glare at him as he sips his coffee (with milk and two sugars, you note. Just the way he likes it).

“God, can they just kiss already?” grumbles Kaveh from where he sits across the room. Lisa and Tighnari sitting at the same table nodded in agreement.

“Meeting up to work outside of class is normal, but over lunch? Sounds like a date to me,” complains Tighnari while not-so-subtly eyeing the way you animatedly bicker with him.

“Hey, isn’t this Alhaitham’s treat as well?” asks Kaveh. Tighnari’s ears twitch and perk up at his question. He glances at the both of you- Alhaitham just paused to ask if you’d like a refill of your tea, and you said yes- before groaning.

“It sure looks like it…”

Lisa decides to take matters into her own hands.

“Are you two arguing or flirting?” she asks in a loud voice.

“Arguing!” you retort. Alhaitham merely rolls his eyes and steals one of your samosas while you aren’t looking.

“I saw that! Give it back!”

“Too late.”

Two months, lots of bickering, and lots of coffee later, you present the culmination of your work to the class. For all the headaches and lost sleep you had to endure, your efforts are handsomely rewarded with a perfect score and rare compliments from your professor. And for that alone, it was well worth everything you went through.

“Good job. It was a rewarding experience working with you. I daresay that our arguments aside, we make for a decent team.”

You look up to see Alhaitham.

“Oh? A rare compliment from the stoic and sharp-tongued man himself?”

“Don’t make me retract my words.”

“Ouch, how cold of you.”

When you return to your dorm later that night, there’s a note addressed to you from Lisa.

I overheard one of your professors talking about you and Alhaitham with someone else today- Professor Behnam, I think that was his name? I’m fairly sure this was after you guys presented because they mentioned that briefly. I wrote this down in a hurry as they were speaking, but here’s what he said:

They complement each other perfectly. While they both have unmatched erudition and wit, one has the creativity and uninhibited ambition the other tends to lack. However, he is more pragmatic and logical. Despite their differences, they make for a perfect team.

They will surely be among some of the best scholars the Akademiya has seen in a long time.

You end your first year tied for the top of the class with him.

“I’m home!”

“Welcome home, (Name)! How were your last few weeks at the Akademiya?”

Your parents’ home is as warm and welcoming as always. The house has been freshly cleaned and is practically shining. They take your bags and usher you into the kitchen, where your favorite dishes are sitting on the kitchen table, freshly cooked for dinner with steam still rising from them.

“It’s been fine,” you say. “Stressful, but also enjoyable. I like my classes and I get along with my classmates and professors.”

“How are your grades? Have they been finalized yet?”

You nod and beam them with pride.

“Ended the year at the top of the class.”

Your parents’ eyes widen and they clap excitedly.

“That’s our child!”

“As brilliant and talented as always!”

“Good, keep going! Remember to study for money!”

“I will!”

Your mother leans in close and clasps your hand in hers. “After these four years, you should continue your education and become a sage! Maybe even work your way up and become the next Grand Sage!”

You balk at the prospect of it.

“A-A sage? Mom, there are tons of talented people in the Akademiya- that’s where the best of the best go to study! The chances that I’ll make it to that point are slim!”

Your father clicks his tongue and shakes his head.

“Nonsense!” he exclaims. “You ended this year at the top of your class, you know. Besides, you inherited the intelligence of both your parents- I’d imagine that this would be a doable task for you. Also, imagine how amazing it would be if you were to become a sage! You’d be the first one in the family! Wouldn’t that be such an achievement for us?”

“That’s not even true! There was someone else who tied with me for the top of the class as well and if I’m being honest, he has a better shot at it than me!”

Your mom’s eyes sharpen and you instantly regret saying that.

“He? So… a guy, huh?”

You mentally brace yourself for a barrage of questions.

“What’s his name? What’s he like? How smart is he? Is he good enough for you? Does he have-”

“Dear, stop it,” your father says. “Look, you’re overwhelming them.”

You sigh and shake your head. “For starters, his name is Alhaitham-”

“Alhaitham? I’ve heard that name somewhere before… wait, I remember now!” exclaims your father. “His grandmother was a Ksharewar scholar. His mother was a renowned Vahumana scholar and his father was a mentor in Haravatat.”

“Was?” you ask. Your father bites his lip and looks away.

“... His grandmother passed away a few years ago and from what I heard, so did his parents when he was young.”

“Oh.”

The kitchen is silent for a few moments before your father breaks it.

“Wait, (Name), why do you look so surprised? I thought you knew this already, considering he’s your rival and everything! I thought you would at least know something about him.”

“Dad, that’s exactly the point- we’re rivals and I don’t want to know anything about him! All that matters is beating him at his own game and that’s that. Besides, he never tells me anything about his personal life, so why should I do the same?”

“They’re right, you know.”

Your father merely rolls his eyes at your mother’s remark.

“You know the rules, don’t get too close to him now,” your mother warns. “You have to do whatever it takes to be the best, whatever? That’s what you promised us.”

You roll your eyes. “Yes, mom, I know. I’ll do my best to become a sage.”

Your parents lean in to hold you close, your mother giving you a soft kiss on the forehead.

“That’s our child. Make us proud, ok?”

“I will!”

After a lovely three months of summer vacation (and not being forced to see Alhaitham every day save for the rare occasions where you’d run into him in public- you’d immediately turn the other way and act as if nothing happened), you head back to the Akademiya for your second year. Like last year, you share many of your classes with the bane of your existence, although things are… less tense than they were before. The underlying spark of competition is still there, but not as prominent as before.

Alhaitham is pleasantly surprised at how you’ve mellowed out over the summer. Something in your eyes has hardened and the way your mouth is set is different now. You’ve lost some of the baby fat in your cheeks (shame, he enjoyed poking and prodding at them, much to your annoyance) and you’ve grown a bit taller as well. He’s grown taller as well and to your irritation, he’s gaining on you. He’s put on some muscle as well and according to Kaveh, who you befriended over the summer, he’s started learning the art of the sword.

(“What for?” you had asked back then. He had merely shrugged.

“Too much free time on his hands, I guess. I thought he was training to be a mercenary at first.”

“I just can’t imagine him with a sword. In my mind, I see him toppling over from the weight of it.”

“Same here.”)

On the first day back, you merely greet him with a nod and you’re less opposed to working with him than before- although you can’t seem to break the habit of making a sarcastic jab at him now and then.

As the year progresses though, Alhaitham notices a change in you- namely, your test scores. He catches a glimpse of them sticking out of your folder at the library.

85%. 75%. 83%. 79%. They’re not as good as they were last year but they aren’t a concern for Alhaitham. As far as he knows, you’re still doing good overall and your classes are getting harder. It’s only reasonable and he hasn’t observed any noticeable or drastic changes in your personality, so it doesn’t warrant any concern.

That is, in his eyes. The same can’t be said for you though.

You didn't realize how much time you had spent studying until the library was closed one day. Sitting at your cramped desk with your roommate you barely know nowhere in sight, you’re suddenly aware of how quiet it is. Normally, you’d hear at least something- people arguing down the hall and music playing, among others. But today, it was eerily silent.

From the back of your mind, you recall news of a party that was supposed to be happening around this time. Lisa extended an invitation to you but you turned it down, claiming that you had to study. It was a bullshit excuse, now that you think about it.

(Lisa had looked at you knowingly when you said that, but not in a good way. Worry was present in her eyes, resigned to the fact that she couldn’t do anything.

“Alright,” she had said. “Just… don’t head down the path I think you’re on.”)

Your pen freezes mid-stroke as a horrifying thought crosses your mind. You now finally understand the true meaning of her words.

Have I… been making the right decisions? How much have I missed out on?

Your books and the allure of good grades tempt you, but you force yourself to evaluate your life so far. You have some of the highest marks in the entire class but you realize you have almost no experience or connections, and that was what really mattered.

All of the studying in the world can’t compare to pulling a few strings, after all.

Not long after the year starts, Alhaitham notices that you’ve started going out more. You’re spending less of your time at the library during weekends and instead spending time with friends in the city.

(“You actually have a life outside of the Akademiya. I’m surprised.”

“I should be the one telling you that.”)

“Come on, (Name), come join us at the tavern tonight! We booked the place and everyone is going to be there! You’re missing out if you don’t, just saying…”

The familiar voice belonging to a certain blond makes you look up. You huff a sigh and set your notes down to glare at Kaveh, who has been pestering you to go to a party at Lambad’s Tavern tonight. You’re about to tell him you’re not interested when you stop just short of saying so.

Will I regret saying no?

“(Name), you’re young right now! Take some risks and live life a little, otherwise, you’ll have nothing to look back fondly on once you’re all old and wrinkly! That old dusty rock-of-a-friend Alhaitham would say the same thing, you know… although, maybe he’d phrase it differently.”

Kaveh’s right, you realize. I can make up a test. I can always study later. But I’m only young for a little while. I can’t make up for lost time.

“Just curious- what’s in it for me?”

“Oh, the usual. Free food, entertainment, a break from these stupid books, alcohol- oh, and you might get to see a rare drunk Alhaitham there! Doesn’t that sound exciting?”

“No need to venture into that territory. You already had me at the free food part. So, what time?”

Later that evening at the tavern, you realize Kaveh wasn’t kidding when he said everyone was going to be there- he really did mean everyone the moment you step inside. Lisa is the center of attention with wide-eyed students gawking at her alcohol tolerance- seriously, how is she not drunk yet?- while Tighnari stands in the corner with his ears folded over and eyes squeezed shut. Cyno’s glare is more than enough to scare anyone away as he leads the fox hybrid upstairs toward a quieter spot.

There’s enough alcohol being passed around to knock a Sumpter Beast unconscious. You only have a few drinks, not wanting to be hungover on a weekday. At one point, a familiar voice drifts its way over to you.

“(Name), over here!”

It’s Kaveh, and… Alhaitham next to him is drunk from the looks of it? His face is flushed and he stumbles as he walks with Kaveh being the only thing stopping him from faceplanting onto the floor.

“I thought Alhaitham could handle his alcohol?” you ask as you sling one of his arms around your shoulder and make your way out the tavern.

“He does, but he tried a new type of alcohol tonight that was stronger than he expected. Fire-something… it’s from Snezhnaya, if that explains anything.”

You glance at his heavily flushed face again and sigh.

“Yeah, that explains everything.”

After lugging Alhaitham across Sumeru City and up the many steps leading to the Akademiya, you’re prepared to say goodnight to Kaveh and head back to your dorm when you feel something latch onto your shirt. It’s Alhaitham and even in his drunken stupor, he’s surprisingly strong.

“Wait.”

“What is it?” you ask after a moment of hesitation. His answer is instant.

“Don’t go,” he slurs out.

He’s drunk, you remind yourself. Don’t take anything he says at face value.

But even so, you spot the opportunity to tease him.

“Oh? And why is that?”

“Because… you’re one of my only friends.”

You go quiet at that. Nothing could have prepared you for that response. Every witty remark and sarcastic jab you had prepared on the tip of your tongue fizzled out instantly. Even Kaveh, who has no shortage of words when it comes to Alhaitham, falls silent.

In the year or so that you’ve known Alhaitham for, he’s never been one to get close with people, instead preferring to keep them at arm’s length. Most likely, it’s the alcohol inhibiting his filter, but you can’t ignore the little flutter in your stomach at his words.

“I guess you are one to me as well, Haitham. I-”

“Say that again.”

His sudden demand makes you pause. Despite his drunken state, there’s a fire in his eyes that briefly makes you question whether he’s sober.

“... I guess you are one-”

He stops you. “No. Not that. Repeat what you said at the very end of it.”

“Haitham?”

“Call me that again.”

“Haitham.”

“Again.”

A smile creeps onto your face now that you’ve finally caught on. How cute.

“Haitham.”

“Again.”

And secretly inside, you’re happy. Happy that someone considers you a friend for the first time. You no longer feel dehumanized from idolization or isolated from everyone else and you realize it’s what you’ve been secretly wishing for this whole time.

“Goodnight, Haitham.”

It’s now a common occurrence between you two to drag each other to activities on the weekends. One day, it’s Alhaitham camping out with you late at night to go stargazing. (“(Name), this is boring.” “You can go home if you want. I won’t stop you.” “Hmph.”) Another day, it’s him inviting you to the various coffee shops throughout the city and sampling their beverages. (“The shop we went to last week does a pour-over better.” “You think so too?”)

Another time, you’re heading back to the Akademiya after a day of shopping and playing Genius Invocation (he lost miserably several times in a row to you, much to his embarrassment). It’s been overcast the whole day and the air has been humid but you nervously brushed off the weather’s warning signs.

Something wet lands on your cheek. You blink and look up, then at the ground where raindrops are rapidly dotting the surface. You meet Alhaitham’s gaze, the rising panic in your eyes apparently visible because he pulls you toward the souvenir shop, where you both seek shelter against the escalating downpour. Sheets of rain crash against the ground and the sides of buildings and the gusts of wind make the trees sway violently.

(You both, like idiots, forgot to bring your umbrellas. In the middle of Sumeru’s rainy season.)

You can barely see past your two feet but you can make out something moving nearby, and it’s getting closer. Small, gray, and most definitely sopping wet, it’s… a cat?

The small creature pauses and runs as fast as it can toward you. You take your hat off and scoop it up, where it meows pitifully and sneezes. A quick check tells you that the cat is a girl.

“(Name), what-”

“Look, Haitham,” you whisper as you shrug your jacket off and dry the cat. “Poor baby must have gotten stranded and lost in the rain. She came running to us for help.”

The cat shakes off the last of the rain clinging to her fur and now you can see that she resembles Alhaitham quite a bit with her gray fur and green eyes. You wonder if she has his attitude as well…

“I wonder if she’s someone’s pet cat that ran away.”

“She’s probably one of the city’s many strays. I don’t see a collar on her.”

“She’s well-fed for one…” you grumble, noting her plump belly. “So, can we keep her?”

“(Name), you know animals, unless they’re service animals, are not allowed in Akademiya dorms.”

“That hasn’t stopped people though. Someone on my floor snuck their pet cat into the dorms and it’s an open secret among all of us.”

“But still-”

And then you hit him with puppy eyes. The edges of your mouth quiver and turn down, while your eyes soften and go wide.

“Please?”

His resolve crumbles instantly.

“Fine. But you’re keeping it.”

You sheepishly smile. “About that…”

What now?

“My roommate is a blabbermouth and a stickler for the rules. If I kept her, she would be gone and back on the streets before noon tomorrow.”

“Are you suggesting that I take care of her?”

“Are you against it?”

“Taking care of an animal is a big responsibility, (Name). One that requires time and-”

“I can help you take care of her. With the two of us looking after her, it shouldn’t be a problem.”

“I can’t tell if you’re being optimistic or oversimplifying the problem here.”

You roll your eyes and Alhaitham looks off to the side.

“I’ll have to ask Kaveh-”

“Kaveh would be over the moon at the prospect of you bringing home a cat. You know how much he loves animals. This cat will be in good hands under his and our care.”

Looks like he now has no other choice but to say yes. He heaves a deep sigh and looks back up at you.

“Fine. I’ll keep her in my room.”

Your face lights up.

“But first, we need to give her a name.”

You scrunch your brows and think for a moment.

“How about Thamina?”

“Thamina,” he repeats. “Meaning valuable or priceless. It fits well.”

You become a frequent visitor to Kaveh and Alhaitham’s dorm after that. It gets to the point where Alhaitham gives you his copy of the spare key so you could come and go as you please (to which Kaveh gives him a knowing look that he pointedly ignores for his own sake). At first, you primarily visited to take care of Thamina, but at some point, you began visiting primarily for him.

Study sessions slowly move from the House of Daena to his room, with him at his desk and you sitting on his bed. Thamina bears witness to the heated debates shared between you two in the late hours of the night and the quiet moments of studying. Alhaitham is there to keep her company throughout the day, but she patiently waits for you after a long day of classes. She watches as you two steal each other’s belongings and food (occasionally joining in if she smelled fish in the box you brought home from a late-night dinner). When there is a disagreement between you two, she’s there to help you reconcile in the form of demanding affection and cuddles.

But when she and Kaveh are fast asleep, only you two are privy to the heavy conversations that happen once and are never brought up again.

“Tell me more about your family, Haitham.”

He freezes, then casts a suspicious glance at you over his shoulder.

“Where is this question coming from? And why?”

You shrug.

“I just wanted to know more about the people that raised you to become the person you are today.”

“... My grandmother raised me,” he says after a moment of hesitation. “I admittedly don’t know much about my parents- only that my mother was a renowned Vahumana scholar and my father was a mentor in Haravatat. They both died in an accident, thus leaving me under my grandmother’s care.”

You make yourself comfortable on his bed and nod, urging him to continue.

“My grandmother was a Kshahrewar scholar. By the time I was born, she had already retired. As such, she had a lot of free time. We did a lot of things together.”

He pauses to recount his fading memories of her.

“She liked to bake. Her desserts were on the sweeter side, but I have the recipes. I can tweak them so they’re less sweet for you.”

“I’d like that very much.”

“She liked to cook as well. I’d often wake up to the smell of food in the kitchen and she’d be there at the stove. She’d make my favorites and always save most of it or the best parts for me. Unlike with baking, she never used any recipes for her cooking. I’ve tried to imitate her dishes, but it’s never exactly the same as I remember.”

Haitham’s bed is comfy, you note. You pull the covers over yourself, feeling your eyelids grow heavier.

“Were you a chubby child who was spoiled by grandma?” you tease.

“Yes,” he admits.

You giggle. “I wish I could have seen you as a kid, chubby cheeks and all.”

There are baby photos his grandma kept that he now has, but he’ll never tell you that.

“Like you, she was more of a tea person than a coffee person. She liked hers sweetened while I liked mine more plain. She never knew where she left her reading glasses and she’d always ask me to find them. When I was younger, she’d read a bedtime story to me every night. If there was nothing we were doing, I’d spend the whole day on her lap as she read the books of my choosing aloud to me. One of the last things she told me was that I was so similar to my father, both in nature and appearance. And more than anything else, she was kind.”

“You miss her, don’t you?”

“Yes. I miss her a lot.”

“Your grandma sounds like an amazing person,” you sleepily mumble. “I would have liked to meet her.”

The last thing you hear before finally drifting off is Alhaitham’s whispered response.

“She would have liked to meet you too.”

And the next night, the conversation is equally as heavy.

“Hey, Haitham.”

“What is it?” he whispers back.

“Do you think that.. I don’t know, that I’m not quite who I used to be?”

Alhaitham sets his pen down.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Do you think I’ve changed in more ways than one?”

“Well, you’re less annoying now.”

You give him a well-deserved jab on the bicep with the end of your pen. Much to your annoyance, he doesn’t even flinch and continues.

“The way I see it, change is inevitable. We all fight and run from it, but it eventually catches up with us. It is neither good nor bad. Rather, it’s what you make of it. But to answer your question, yes. You’ve matured more mentally. You’ve realized there’s more to life now. You’re learning how to live life on your own terms now, aren’t you?’

Your silence tells him everything he needs to know.

“Tell me, Haitham. What do you wish for?”

Alhaitham is a simple man with few desires. If all his basic needs and simple wants of books and time to himself are met, then he is content. But your question has him thinking. Is there anything else he wants in his life?

And it turns out the answer is yes.

“Regardless of how things turn out in the future, I’d like to be able to continue talking to you like this. That’s my wish.”

Kaveh stirs in his sleep. Thamina rolls over and makes biscuits on your lap. A small smile creeps onto your face. You turn away and resume your work. He does the same.

It’s a mundane scene- two Akademiya students pulling another all-nighter to complete their work. And yet…

Yes, this is what I want, Alhaitham thinks to himself. Everything I could ever want means nothing if you aren’t here.

The spring semester comes around and with that comes the finals grind. You’ve thrown yourself into your studies in a last-minute attempt to save, in your opinion, your failing grades since you aren’t at the top of your class anymore. (Alhaitham thinks you’re insane- you’re still in the top five.) As if to rub it in your face, you get a letter from your family one day.

We heard that you’re no longer at the top of your class. What happened?

Your eyes and mind glazed over the rest of the letter until the end.

Study harder. You can end it the same way you did last year if you would spend more time on it. Don’t get distracted now.

A rare instance of frustration flashes through you and before you know it, you’ve ripped up the letter and tossed it in the trash.

Who told them that anyway?

“Lisa… graduated early?”

The news comes to you over dinner one day when you ask where Lisa is upon realizing she’s not there. You’ve just finished all your finals and you want nothing more than to relax and catch up on some sleep, but news regarding your best friend makes you temporarily forget about those plans.

Cyno nods. “It’s a whole thing now. They’re saying she’s the best student the Akademiya has had in the past 200 years. Once in a generation is what they’re calling her now.”

You bite your lip and look away. A weak “tell her I said congratulations” is all you can get out as envy begins festering deep within you. You’re ashamed of yourself- she’s your best friend, for Archon’s sake, you should be feeling excited for her- but you just can’t.

Why couldn’t it have been me instead?

You end your second year third in the class, with Alhaitham at the top.

“Welcome home, (Name).”

The house is a little chilly when you step inside. Dinner has already been prepared- it’s sitting on the table- but it looks like it was made some time ago. Your father ushers you into the kitchen, where your mother waits expectantly, her lips stretched into a thin smile when she sees you.

There are the usual dinnertime conversations- how has your day been? Fine, yours? Same old, same old- but they feel stiffer than usual. It doesn’t flow and you find yourself internally wincing at the heavy silence between you.

“So.”

You pause and look up at your mother, who has finally broken the awkward silence surrounding the kitchen table.

“We heard you… didn’t do so well at the Akademiya this year.”

You freeze and internally brace yourself for what is to come.

“Only third this year? (Name), you were first last year, how come you couldn’t place first again? That’s not so hard, is it? You just have to put some effort in, stop being so lazy, and you’ll do fine! Besides, it’s only your second year, what could be so difficult about it? We know you’re smart and that you could’ve easily been first again. You’re just getting complacent, that’s all! Do you really want that Alhaitham to beat you at your own game? How humiliating would that be for us? Think of the embarrassment we, your poor mother and father, would face from others in the Akademiya- our golden child (Name), who was once someone people aspired to be, but now nothing but a disappointment!”

“Your mother’s right, (Name),” says your father. “We have high expectations for you, or should I say, had.”

Their disappointment cuts deep into your soul, yet something quietly snaps inside you. You glare at them one more time before slipping away.

“I’m not hungry anymore. I’ve lost my appetite.”

You go to your childhood room and lock the door behind you. Your parents’ voices- most definitely talking about you- drift up the stairs and you do your best to tune them out. As if to mock you, hanging on the wall across from you are all the awards you won at academic competitions throughout your life. Trophies, ribbons, certificates, and medals line every bit of space available, all of them with your name and a first-place title proudly engraved onto them.

Now that you think about it, were you really happy with being the best? Your younger self would laugh and say “of course!”, but why exactly?

And then the realization hits you. You personally felt nothing being the best at everything. The title, the fake smiles, and the forced compliments from others- they couldn’t mean less to you.

You were only happy because your parents were happy. Were you ever happy with yourself- with who you were as a person? You don’t know.

Stars live for an incredibly long time, but they too must die out one day. Their reserves of hydrogen gas will inevitably run out and they will either go out with a bang or a fizzle depending on their size. Larger stars go out in a blaze of glory, expanding up to several times their size before exploding and bathing the universe in the remains of their supernova for eons to come, while smaller ones condense from the gravity pushing inward and shrink down into a cold white dwarf, destined to drift across the universe alone for the rest of time. That is your fate, yet you do not know it yet. The last of your fuel has finally been spent, and the end is nigh. Whether you will go out with a bang or fade into obscurity is something only time will tell.

You’ve had enough of the stifling atmosphere in the house.

It’s only been a few days since summer vacation began and you’re already at your wit’s end. The heavy silence hanging in the air and their passive-aggressive comments toward you make you want to tear your hair out. Or run away. Maybe both.

There are still lots of days left before you start class again. Surely there’s something you can do until then…

And then it hits you: traveling throughout Sumeru! You were born and raised in the city, but you’ve rarely ventured outside of its borders. This could be a good chance to expand your horizons and gain experience!

So without further ado, you pack your bags, plan a route, and begin your adventures. Most of the time, you’d leave at dawn before your parents woke up and return late at night after they’d fallen asleep. Sometimes, you wouldn’t return for days, instead choosing to camp outside or stay at a friend’s house for a while. From what you’ve heard through your neighbors and friends, your parents don’t seem to care what you’re doing either. Some of your friends even say that they look happier now that you’re out of the house. The notion stings, but you don’t dwell on it for too long.

There’s a strange sense of peace you feel throughout your travels that’s foreign to you. Whether it’s camping out underneath the stars or scaling a rocky cliffside, you’ve never felt more attuned to yourself than now. You gradually discover more about yourself that you otherwise would have never known. You like stargazing even more after seeing the expanse of the night sky and all its stars for the first time without the light pollution of the city. You like to swim, as demonstrated when you dove headfirst into a river for the first time and felt the cool waters wash over your skin. You’re decently skilled with a bow and arrow after Tighnari gives you some lessons and his old bow to keep yourself safe on your travels.

Most importantly, you discover how to find happiness by yourself. After being told your whole life what you could and couldn’t do, being able to take control of your life was a liberating feeling.

You end up seeing Alhaitham quite a bit during this time. Strangely enough, he was always one of the first people you’d see returning back to Sumeru City. He’d always give you a subtle nod when he noticed you staring at him before leaving. Sometimes, he’d even be there to wish you a safe trip- no, not sometimes- almost all of the time. It’s basically a given that he’ll be there to see you off at this point. How he hears about it every time, you have no idea but you aren’t complaining.

“Leaving early as always, I see. Where to this time, (Name)?”

You pause from checking your supplies to see Alhaitham standing behind you.

“I’m heading down to Gandharva Ville to spend some time in the rainforest. But you’re up this early just to wish me a safe trip? I didn’t take you for a morning person.”

“I’m not. But someone should see you off each time, and if your parents won’t do it, then I will.”

“Y-You… how did you know?”

“Know what?” he asks while stepping around to help you with your bag. “All I know is that I’ve never seen them send you off or welcome you back.”

“So be it then,” you grumble. “It’s not as if I care.”

So he doesn’t know about our strained relationship yet, you muse to yourself. That’s surprising, considering how big mother and father’s social circle is…

“You’re all set now. Best you head off before it gets too hot.”

“I will. You take care as well.”

He watches you leave through the city gates until you’re no longer in sight. A rare expression of longing crosses his face then and only after lingering for a few more moments (with his eyes trained on where you once were) does he leave.

He was lying when he pretended to be unaware of your family situation. When you’re hailed as one of the best scholars in recent times in a land that has a borderline fanatical dedication to academics, everything pertaining to you will be scrutinized and monitored. Your sudden decision to leave Sumeru for extended periods of time, and the way your parents refused to talk about you or changed the topic whenever you came up… it wasn’t hard to put two and two together.

For your sake, Alhaitham hopes you would return later rather than sooner so you wouldn’t have to hear what was being said about you.

“You seem to have gotten good at this,” he remarks over coffee and desserts when you return several weeks later. Alhaitham notices you’ve put on some muscle. There are some new scars and the bow slung on your back is an unfamiliar sight as well. “You would be a perfect candidate for the Adventurer’s Guild.”

You laugh. “Nah, it’s not for me. As much as I enjoy traveling, I don’t think I could earn my living through it, plus I won’t be able to keep it up once I’m all old and wrinkly.”

“Tell me about your adventures though. Where did you go?”

Your eyes light up and you begin rambling excitedly about your travels. You go into great detail about your time spent in the Avidya Forest and your spontaneous decision to travel to Liyue, which catches him off-guard.

“Liyue?” he repeats when you mention it. “So that’s why you were gone for several weeks instead of days. I’ve never been there before. Tell me, what was it like?”

Your smile grows even bigger and your eyes may as well have been stars from how brightly they were shining.

“Oh, you should’ve seen the architecture- actually, wait, I should be telling Kaveh this- but it was so pretty! The food was super good too and a friend I made shared some of her recipes with me. I have a feeling that you’ll like them so I can teach you some other time! Ooh, and you can’t miss the scenery for the world! Personally, my favorite was…”

You’re so caught up in reliving and telling your adventures that you fail to miss the fond look in his eyes and the rare hint of a smile that stretches across his face.

You’re halfway through recounting your way back home through the Chasm when you happen to glance at the clock and the realization begins to set in.

“I have to get going now,” you explain as you hurriedly gather your belongings. “I’m meeting up with some other friends in a bit. But thanks for the coffee and sweets. Hopefully, I’ll see you around again sometime soon?”

The chime above the door jingles as you rush outside and Alhaitham is left alone with his thoughts. With a deep sigh, he takes a look out the window and decides to address the thoughts about you that have been on his mind lately.

You’re annoying, there’s no doubt about that. You love to push his buttons and purposefully irritate him. You’re an overachiever and you care too much about what other people think. For the longest time, your whole personality consisted of your academic accomplishments and nothing else. You’re a people pleaser and you long for acceptance and praise from others- two things he thinks are utterly useless coming from other people. The moment someone questions your abilities, regardless of who it is, you begin to second-guess yourself and waver. Ridiculous, in his opinion. You know your worth and skills better than anyone else, so why are you letting their baseless accusations affect you? You’re easily affected by rumors and your self-worth is determined by what others think of you.

But you have a warm and welcoming demeanor that’s rare in the cutthroat halls of the Akademiya that draws others to you like a moth to a flame. You enjoy traveling and you have a major soft spot for animals, especially cats. Whenever you’re in the city, you always stop to pet all the strays roaming around, no matter how long it takes. You enjoy sweets- not the overly cloying kind, but the ones that have a touch of sweetness to the point where you can just taste it. Your favorite dessert is the Padisarah Pudding sold in the Grand Bazaar and he’s stopped by so often that the vendor knows his name, face, and order by now. You’re more of a tea person than a coffee person, but he has your coffee order memorized just in case (iced, with two sugars, a splash of milk, and rosewater) and he’s the one that has been mysteriously supplying your favorite tea whenever it’s running low. He notices you like to ramble about things you’re passionate about (and he willingly- gladly- listens too).

And he’s come to realize that maybe you’re not as insufferable as he thought you were. You have a brilliant mind and you’re one of the few that isn’t put off by his blunt nature. You don’t just tolerate him- you appreciate him, flaws and everything.

You’ve always been envious of him- he’s known that ever since he met you. Because of him, you have strived to prove yourself as better in all aspects. A stupid rivalry is what it started off as with your pride getting the best of both of you. But throughout these three years, you’ve only brought out the best in each other.

At this point, he doesn’t feel complete without you.

He’s well aware of the question hanging over people’s minds whenever they see the both of you together. You are the sun, the golden child of your parents who are renowned within the Akademiya and held to the highest level of scrutiny. Their judging gazes, eyes that fixate on every move of yours, comments whispered behind your back- you take them all in stride. Meanwhile, Alhaitham’s presence is glossed over when you’re there. To many, he is just another Akademiya student that they will see in passing and forget about immediately. In that aspect, he is the moon that hides from others. Those who were acquainted with his parents or his late grandmother may recognize him and speak with him, but he mostly goes unnoticed and ignored.

But free from the prying eyes of others, Alhaitham is able to sleep peacefully at night. Your fitful sleep, on the other hand, is plagued with dreams of what-ifs and the looming fear of disappointment from others. You’ve always succeeded, not because you craved success, but because you feared failure and how others would react.

The rising moon admires the sun because of the boundless love they receive from others. On the other hand, the setting sun is envious of the moon for his sweetest dreams that they can only long for.

You enter your third year with a sense of apprehension that wasn’t there before. Your high hopes for yourself are still there, but they’ve been dashed considerably. But despite your lack of ambition now and your experiences from last year, you still (attempt to) throw yourself into your studies, knowing that this year is where the challenge begins. Your first two years were just warmups, or nothing, according to your parents.

Your first few weeks go well, but before you know it, you find yourself lost and overwhelmed by the material.

I… don’t understand any of this. But how could this be? I’ve spent so much time.

Your test scores don’t reflect your efforts either.

45%. 50%. 63% 67%. 55%. 38%.

“Damn it!”

You slam your fist onto your desk table as the results of another failed test greet you. You had spent so much time preparing for this one, only for your efforts to be rewarded with a slap to the face.

You can’t keep going like this. You need help, and desperately at that, but you can’t bring yourself to ask for it.

You’re smarter than everyone else, you don’t need help, a familiar voice comes into your mind. You’re the pride and joy of our family because of your grades. Don’t let us down now.

You look out the window, the heat still simmering in your stomach.

“What a load of bullshit.”

“... I saw your test scores earlier today.”

You glare at Alhaitham with poison in your gaze that was never there until now. The hairs on the back of his neck stand up and he feels strangely uneasy, like his body is warning him to stop.

“And? Here to mock me for it?”

“No. On the contrary, I want to offer you my help.”

Oh, the humiliation. Look at how far you’ve fallen.

“Forget it,” you snap. “I don’t need your help.”

You get up and leave, slamming the doors shut behind you. It echoes through the House of Daena and the other students there turn to stare at Alhaitham in silent shock. He’s stunned too. Although you can have quite the sharp tongue at times, you’ve never lashed out at him like that before.

A few weeks later, the results of another test are announced. Alhaitham’s name sits at the top like it always has. His name is on everyone’s tongue as they jealously grumble over the results once again. His eyes examine the list, searching for one name in particular, until he finds yours at the bottom of it.

He pauses, then turns around in time to see you storming out. He doesn’t miss the looks your classmates give you- mocking, ridiculing, scornful, and disgusted sneers that relish in your downfall. The jealous grumbles about him now turn into titters and sneering whispers with your name now being trampled upon by those that used to extol your virtues. It’s all noise and it grates his ears until he can’t stand it anymore.

“What a waste of time.”

The noise stops and everyone turns to look at him.

“You all have the energy to complain about your own scores while making a laughing stock of someone else. It’d be better spent on improving your own scores- unless you’re just that incompetent?”

Later that night as you’re studying, you get a message from your parents through your Akasha. It’s the first time you’ve gotten anything from them all year. After hesitating, you open the message.

It’s short and simple but your heart sinks and your temper flares after reading it. You rip your Akasha Terminal off and toss it to the side.

Don’t come home this year.

“I need your help. I’m asking for a friend.”

Alhaitham looks over his book at you. It’s the first time he’s seen you all week and to be frank, you look awful. Your hair is a mess, your uniform is wrinkled, and your skin looks dry and dull.

“Do I know them? If not, then I won’t help.”

You roll your eyes and throw your hands up exasperatedly. “Ok fine, yes, you know them.”

“Well, why won’t they just ask me themselves? Why trouble you?”

“Whatever, it doesn’t matter right now. Just answer the damn question.”

He leans back and knowingly looks at you.

“They’re going through a tough time right now,” you explain, choosing each of your words carefully. “They aren’t doing good in their classes and they’re trying to get back on track, but they don’t know how to.”

“... This is for you, isn’t it?”

Damn, he saw right through you. Were you that obvious?

Alhaitham goes back to reading his book. “I can’t say I would be of any use here. After all, I’ve never been in that position nor would I let myself get there.”

You feel your temper flare once more. You clench your jaw and try to reign in your anger before speaking to him.

“Well, duh. You’re also not helping either.”

“Really? I think it’s a perfectly reasonable answer.”

“Put yourself in my shoes for once, would you?”

He sets his book down and looks at you.

“You asked me for my advice and I told you what I would do in that situation. I don’t understand why you’re getting upset.”

“That’s because it’s not the answer I’m looking for!”

“That’s on you for expecting others to somehow know what you want without telling them.”

“You-!”

You groan and run your hands through your hair. Is it just you or is he being more insufferable today? Can’t he read the room for once?

He continues. “If you wanted someone to only tell you what you wanted to hear, a mirror would be a better audience.”

“Alhaitham, all I’m asking from you is a little empathy. Is that so hard to have?”

“And is it so hard for you to stop throwing a hissy fit just because I didn’t tell you what you wanted to hear?”

His words are all spite and knives meant to hurt. They lack the usual lighthearted tone he has with you. You feel it coming- the barbed words that are poised to strike and cut deep, but it doesn’t help when he begins speaking again.

“You asked for my help and I gave you advice. You’re not in a position to be complaining here.”

“Yeah, well, your ‘advice’ isn’t what most people would consider as help.”

He scoffs and looks away before looking at you once more- like he’s looking down on you, you realize. There’s something akin to disgust and impatience in his gaze that makes you freeze despite all your sharp words earlier.

“How irrational could you be? You reject everyone’s help even though you need it and you don’t listen to anybody’s suggestions. You’re too caught up in the conception that you’re always right and everyone else is always wrong. You’re childish, (Name), that’s what you are. You’re like a child still naive and ignorant, content with playing with their toys and games and ignoring reality. You’re not cut out for the Akademiya. You never were.”

He laughs and now you realize just how much it hurts when it’s directed toward you.

“And you’re telling me that my ego is overinflated. No wonder you’re failing everything. Archons, (Name), you’re utterly hopeless. What did I ever see in you?”

The silence that fills the space afterward is enough to make Alhaitham immediately regret his words. You angrily glare at him and Alhaitham’s heart sinks when he recognizes the emotion present in your eyes.

Utter hate.

“... For all these years, I've heard so many rumors about you but chose to brush them off,” you begin. “I was so stupid! I should have listened to them! They say you’re cold and heartless and only now do I realize that they were right. They say you’re not human from how cruel you are- archons, dammit! Look at me!”

The sudden demand makes Alhaitham nervously glance toward you after avoiding your gaze this entire time. You sniff and wipe away the few tears that managed to spill over. Losing your composure in front of him, the perfect and poised genius, was already humiliating enough, but you hold his gaze long enough to let him see. Let him witness the results of his own actions and the prospect of losing someone he cared about (all over again).

“You’re an absolutely horrible person, Alhaitham. I hope you remember this.”

Alhaitham. It’s the first time you’ve used his full name ever since you befriended him and the implications of it sting.

He reaches out toward you. “Wait-”

You slap his hand away.

“No, we’re done here. I thought you could at least understand, but you’re just as uncaring and self-centered as everyone else here. And I once thought that you were better than anyone else here, but only now do I realize how stupid I was."

You laugh sardonically one last time.

“My parents were right. They would have been so much happier if you were their child.”

Alhaitham doesn’t see you again for several weeks after that. It’s as if you’re purposefully avoiding him and it gets to a point where he’s beginning to get concerned about your health and safety.

Currently, he’s meeting with Tighnari. Out of everyone, the fox hybrid had the highest chance of knowing with his keen sense of hearing.

“I’m concerned about (Name).”

Tighnari’s ears twitch in response.

“They aren’t the same person anymore. You’ve seen it too.”

The fox hybrid sadly nods. “They’ve been consumed by rage and self-hate. I see it in their eyes and the way they lash out. They’re angry at themselves and at everyone around them and it’s completely understandable considering the situation and the response of those they trusted most. Still, it’s not healthy if they continue like this. Speaking of which, were they always this temperamental?”

Alhaitham shakes his head. “No. To be clear, they’ve always had a sharp tongue but it was always lighthearted. They only started getting truly angry this year.”

“Lashing out or displaying signs of anger is often a common symptom of burnout. I’m fairly confident that’s what (Name) has. Specifically, academic burnout. But I’m sure you already knew that, didn’t you?”

Alhaitham uncomfortably avoids Tighnari’s prying eyes.

Tighnari’s eyes narrow. “Look, (Name) is a great friend to me as well, but why are you telling me about this? You’re in their Darshan so shouldn’t you know more?”

“I haven’t heard anything about them either. I got concerned after they didn’t show up at the library for a week. From what I’ve heard, they haven’t been showing up to class either for the past few weeks, which is strange for them. I’m asking around- maybe I’ll find something out that way.”

Tighnari shakes his head. “Sadly, I don’t know why either. If it helps, some people have said they haven’t even seen them. Not just at the library or at class but in general. It’s almost as if they’ve just… disappeared.”

There’s a moment of silence that passes between them. Tighnari stares at Alhaitham curiously and he rests his chin on his hands.

Alhaitham doesn’t have a good feeling about this…

“Speaking of which, does the fight from earlier have anything to do with this?”

“You knew?”

“Please. When two of my closest friends get into an argument as big as that, I’m bound to find out eventually. So, did it have anything to do with this?”

“... Yes,” he admits. “I feel guilty and I want to apologize to them.”

“Well, better late than never,” grumbles Tighnari under his breath. The stink eye he sends his way doesn’t go unnoticed by Alhaitham.

“Why do you care for them so much?”

The question comes out of nowhere and leaves him reeling.

“I suppose it’s… because I consider them a friend?”

Archons, that answer sounds even more pathetic out loud than it did in his head and Tighnari knows it.

Tighnari heaves a long sigh that makes Alhaitham pause.

“You absolute lummox!” he snaps. “I always knew you were somewhat emotionally constipated but I didn’t think you’d be this dense…”

He suddenly stands up and stares the ashen-haired male in the eye, his tone softer this time.

“You’re in love with them, Alhaitham. That’s what you’ve been feeling lately.”

Alhaitham immediately scoffs. “No, that can’t possibly be-”

“You, who hates sharing what you consider yours, share your notes with them.”

“It’s a win-win situation for both of us. We’re in the same Darshan and we’ll be able to learn better from each other.”

“But them, specifically, when there are countless others that would kill for the chance to learn from you?”

“They can figure the material out themselves. Plus, I stand to gain no benefit from what they have to offer.”

“What, so only (Name) can keep up with you?”

“Precisely.”

Tighnari sees the opening Alhaitham has created and takes advantage of it.

“Are you sure that you’re still rivals? Even though (Name) is…”

“Of course. It’s been like that since day one.”

“Huh, that’s interesting. Because from what I know, academic rivals don’t go out to lunch together. They don’t go stargazing even though a certain someone finds it mind-numbingly boring. They don’t sneak out past curfew and break Akademiya rules on a daily basis, and they certainly don’t spend hefty chunks of Mora to make the other happy.”

Tighnari has Alhaitham backed into a corner and he knows it.

“Kaveh knows as well.”

“And?”

“And you still let yourself get roped into his schemes to make them happy. Look, I know this isn’t a good time to bring him up considering…”

He gestures at the empty space, a silent indication of Kaveh and Alhaitham’s broken friendship.

“But there’s no denying that Kaveh did and still does care about you. Why else would he be willing to put in so much time and effort to make them happy? Because in addition to being their friend, he knows that when they’re happy, you are as well. And if that doesn’t mean something, then, I don’t know what else does.”

“We’re just friends,” he argues once again. Tighnari glares at him.

“You’re an idiot to think it doesn’t go deeper than that. You also saw them off every single time during the summer.”

“That’s what friends do. Besides, their parents should have-”

“Uh-huh. Go on, keep lying to yourself like that. Do I have to hit you over the head with a brick in order for you to realize your own feelings? You’re sounding like a broken record here.”

“I-”

“There’s no use in denying or lying to us, Alhaitham. We’re your friends, after all. But the one who’s going to have to decide what to do next is you.”

He gets up and gives Alhaitham a pat on the shoulder. Before leaving, he looks at him one last time.

“It’s going to hurt even more when you lose them for good. You’ll only wish you could have done something sooner. But I think you already know that by now, right, Alhaitham?”

“Do you know where (Name) is?”

It’s a rare occasion today- Alhaitham actually showed up for class. But it wasn’t to listen to whatever the professor had to say- no, it was to ask your classmates where you went. He’s been trying every day to find you, but only to no avail.

He’s gained some valuable information, however. Your roommate moved out a while ago, leaving you the sole occupant of your dorm room. He also managed to find your dorm room number after asking some of your “friends”, who after relentless prying, reluctantly opened up.

“I can’t say for sure, but I heard they’re in the hospital. They somehow ended up there over the weekend.”

“The hospital?” he repeats. “Do you know why?”

“No idea. Sorry.”

He shows up at the Birmarstan after the class ends, fully expecting to see you. He gives the nurse his name and a few minutes later, she returns with an apologetic smile.

“Sorry, but the patient is not accepting visitors at this time.”

A slight pause. Barely perceptible.

“I see.”

You look at the window to see Alhaitham’s retreating form. The nurse enters your room a few minutes later and crosses her arms.

“He’s the first person who’s asked to visit you ever since you came in. I’m surprised- I thought you’d get more. Most people usually do.”

You pull the covers over your head and roll over. Such is the way of life in the Akademiya. Friendships were formed out of convenience as a way to climb up the ladder later in life. As soon as you were no longer useful or fell from grace like you did, others were quick to abandon you without a second thought.

So why did Alhaitham visit then? To you, your relationship (as enemies? Friends? Or even…) was built solely on how you could assist each other, and nothing more. By your prior logic, there is no logical reason why he should visit you.

Unless…

“Is there any reason why you didn’t want to see him in particular?”

Even if your hypothesis proved to be true, it doesn’t excuse or undo the hurt he caused.

“He’s the last person I want to see right now.”

A few days after being discharged from Birmarstan, there’s a knock from the door that wakes you up from your sleep. Still disoriented, you look up and roll over, opting to ignore it and go back to sleep.

The knocking continues. You cover your ear with a pillow and squeeze your eyes shut even more.

“I know you’re there, (Name). Several people told me so.”

Shit, it’s the last person you want to see right now. Your mood sours instantly and now you’re fully awake.

“What do you want?” you snap.

“I just want to talk.”

It doesn’t seem like he’ll be going away anytime soon, so you get up, kicking the trash that litters the floor to the side, and carefully cracking open the door. He looks down to see you. You pull the sleeves of your shirt down as he does so.

“Can I come in?”

You look behind at the mess that is your dorm.

“... It’s not exactly clean right now.”

“That doesn’t matter to me.”

You flick the lights on and hide the worst of the trash underneath your bed. He follows you, his gaze traveling around the room. He notices the side with the unoccupied bed is considerably cleaner (that must have been your roommate’s before they moved out, he reasons) and your desk looks like it hasn’t been used in a while. He takes a seat at it and examines the table. Your Akasha Terminal is lying in the corner and collecting dust. Your textbook is open to a section that was taught a while ago and it looks like you just started taking notes.

(Although, the frustrated scribbles that occupy most of the page have him concerned. Additionally, certain parts of the paper are wrinkled, as if they have dried after getting wet. The shape and spot where they are concentrated in is another cause for concern as well. Were you… crying?)

You pull the covers over your form and glare at him.

“Well? What did you want to tell me?”

“I’m sorry.”

You pause, then shake your head.

“That alone won’t be enough.”

“I know. And that’s why-”

He gulps, his voice shaking toward the end. It’s just a simple apology, so why is he so nervous?

(But deep down he knows the real answer: this is his last chance to ask you for forgiveness before losing you for good. And it was the thought of losing you, the one that had managed to worm their way into his heart and appreciate him that scared him the most.)

“I’m sorry. I really am. I shouldn’t have said those things back then. I should have been more understanding of your struggles and, like you said, had some more empathy. I realize that I am far from an ideal friend in many people’s eyes and if you feel the same, I will not hold that against you.”

His chest tightens and he subconsciously looks away.

“I’m aware of how people see me- valuing logic above all with a mind fueled by equations and facts over feelings. A genius with no regard or need for others. But I’m still human. I feel regret and remorse the same way as anyone else. I know when I’ve messed up and when I need to apologize. Now is one of those times, more than ever.”

You turn around and open the blinds, letting the light flood the room before sitting back down, watching him carefully.

“I don’t want to forgive you. Do you have any idea how long your words lingered for?”

The words sting Alhaitham. Your voice shakes and you feel the familiar burning sensation in your eyes.

“But I know you. I know your bluntness and sharp tongue. You often say hurtful things but don’t mean them. You’re stubborn and slow when it comes to apologizing, even if the guilt eats away at you. You don’t wear your heart on your sleeve and you’re not one to dish out praises, leading others to believe that you’re cold and unsympathetic.”

You suddenly lean in, staring into the eyes that had kept you awake at night for so long. His eyes widen slightly and you smile faintly to yourself.

“But I like to think that I’ve gotten to know you a bit. You show that you care with your actions, not your words, but that takes time- time that most people aren’t willing to give because of their first impression of you. You take the time to learn about the people you care about and prefer acts of service to words of affirmation and physical touch as your love language. You show that you care in a way of your own.

“So yes. I forgive you.”

Alhaitham finds himself sighing with relief. Yet a question still lingers in the back of his mind.

“Why?”

And there it is again, for the first time in a long time. Your smile. It’s a little stiff and awkward, as if you haven’t smiled in a long time, but it’s undoubtedly yours.

“The same reason. I missed you too.”

And now begins the uncomfortable process of recovery.

“How long were you gone for?”

“... Longer than I’d like to admit. Catching up is going to be a difficult task, isn’t it?”

“I won’t sugarcoat it; you’ve missed a lot.” Alhaitham flips through your books and notes from prior years. “However, you have a strong foundation from your earlier years. That should help you. But first, let me ask you a few questions so I can outline a study plan for you.”

You raise your eyebrows at his statement.

“You’re taking this quite seriously, aren’t you?”

“Naturally,” he replies. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“Knowing you, you’re not the kind of person to go out of your way for others,” you grumble. “So going to such lengths just for me…”

“You discredit me if you think that I would do that. But why do you think you felt burnt-out in the first place?”

You look out the window and think for a bit.

“... I think it’s because of my own pride. Had I asked for help earlier on, I have a feeling I wouldn’t be in this position, or things would be better, at least,” you admit.

“But it’s more than that, isn’t it?”

You sigh and hold your hands out in defeat. “You surely know more than you’re letting on. But I think it’s also because I never learned how to study.”

Alhaitham pauses at that. “Really?”

There’s no mockery or derision in his question- just curiosity.

“People goaded me on as a gifted child and I was expected to somehow know how to do everything perfectly the first time, you know? It’s just how things were.”

“Well, that’s something we can fix for sure.”

Your first few days back are the worst. Whispers and stares follow you wherever you go and your professors, who once showered you with praises, look at you strangely or even ignore you.

“Don’t mind them,” he says when he notices you sulking in the library later that day. “You and I both know that’s just the way the Akademiya is. We’ll see who gets the last laugh.”

Much to the envy of your classmates, he also personally tutors you in all your classes. He accompanies you to all your classes (even the ones he isn’t taking) and sits in on them, whispering and writing little notes of clarification and elaboration.

Bit by bit, you see your scores slowly improve. Alhaitham teaches you an array of study techniques, many of which have been personally vetted by him.

“Try each of them out,” he says. “Different techniques work for different people. There is something out there that works for you.”

He’s able to bear witness to the fruits of your labor one day when he hears your excited footsteps running toward him.

“Haitham, look!”

You practically shove several papers into his face. “I got a perfect score on the latest exam! And guess what? I tied with you, meaning that I also placed first!”

A rare smile, solely reserved for your eyes, creeps onto his face.

“Good job. Your score is well-deserved after all the hard work you’ve been putting in.”

He sees it now. Slowly but surely, you’re regaining bits and pieces of your old self. You’ll never be exactly who you once were, but that’s ok. You’ll pick the broken yet salvageable parts up and put them together to create something new yet still distinctly you.

He only looks forward to seeing what you’ll become in the future.

You’ve finally graduated.

It’s a joyous occasion today, filled with speeches, hugs, and promises to keep in touch. Families and friends crowd outside the Akademiya to congratulate their loved ones. The diploma in your hands and the cords around your shoulders are a sign of your achievements and your persistence despite all the roadblocks you faced along the way.

Your heart feels simultaneously burdened and relieved. You had graduated squarely in the middle of the class. You knew it was something to be proud of, yet that part of your former self that you could never suppress couldn’t help but feel disappointed.

Not that it really bothered you anyway. When you walked across the stage to the smattering of applause accompanying your name, you had immediately locked eyes with Alhaitham in the crowd. He was clapping, but what caught your attention the most was the smile he sent your way. It wasn’t one of his once in a blue moon microscopic ones.

No. It was one where you could see a sliver of his teeth and where the edges of his eyes crinkled from it, the sight of which sent your heart ablaze. There was pride in his gaze and in that moment, you felt as if everything had been worth it- even if it wasn’t the outcome you expected.

And when he walked across the stage, you were the one to clap for him the loudest.

You push your way through the heavy crowds, searching for one person in particular. He’s not anywhere in the crowd, so you head down the walkway and there you see him. He’s waiting for you with a large bouquet of flowers in his arms.

“Took you long enough,” he remarks. Alhaitham holds out the flowers to you and you accept them gratefully.

“Oh, you remembered my favorite flowers!” you exclaim as you examine the bouquet. “I have something for you as well.”

You hand him an envelope and he eyes it curiously when a voice interrupts you.

“(Name).”

You hear an awkward cough behind you and you turn to see your parents. They stand there awkwardly, fidgeting with their hastily-purchased bouquet of flowers that pales in comparison to what Alhaitham got you.

(You don’t even like the kind of flowers your parents got for you and you’ve told them that before…)

“Congratulations on gradu-”

“Oh, you must be Alhaitham!”

Your mother’s sudden remark takes all of you by surprise. She rushes forward and eagerly shakes his hand.

“I’ve heard so much about you! You just graduated and you’ve already made a name for yourself in Sumeru as a genius! How incredible is that? Ah, if only my child here could learn from you, but they’ve already graduated, so it’s a little too late for that now…”

You bite your lip and look away. The action doesn’t go unnoticed by Alhaitham. He retracts his hand.

“It was nice to meet you. We’ll be taking our leave now.”

“We’ll?”

Alhaitham ignores them in favor of holding your hand and leading you away.

“I think a celebration is in order. The owner of the stall that sells your favorite Padisarah Pudding is offering us free dessert today.”

The heaviness that was hanging over you just a moment ago is now gone.

“Free desserts? I’m in!”

“Then it’s settled.”

Later that night, Alhaitham remembers the letter you gave him earlier and pulls it out. He glances at the clock. There’s still time before he has to leave and meet up with you.

Dear Alhaitham,

Thank you for being by my side throughout these four years when no one else was. I owe my entire academic career to you. Perhaps even my entire life. I don’t know if I’d be writing this letter if it weren’t for you.

When I saw you on the first day, I wondered what you were doing here. You were short, scrawny, and shy back then. I thought you were one of those child prodigies. Who knew you’d turn out to be the buff man skilled with the sword that I know today…

Honestly, I didn’t think that you would help me. You were the envy of our class, unlike me. I wouldn’t be surprised and I wouldn’t blame you if all that praise got to your head. I guess I didn’t know you well enough back then, though, because you defied all of my expectations. Not only did you not care for status or fame, you also took time out of your own day (which I know you hate doing) for me.

You really are an enigma, Haitham. You’re a person with several layers and hidden secrets like an intricately-designed mechanism. But I think that’s one of the reasons that drew me to you. Everyone has their own secrets and burdens. By slowly learning more about each other, you learn more about yourself.

You and I, we are inseparable now. Earlier today, I had someone come up to me and ask where you were. They were surprised that you weren’t next to me like always. At first glance, we seem more different than similar, especially with our contrasting personalities. But take a closer look and they’ll see that we share more in common than in differences. Opposites attract, but similarities bind.

Like those dusty old philosophers and figures that we had to learn about in class, we are parallels of each other. You are simultaneously my biggest critic and supporter. My biggest rival and confidant. My biggest headache and source of comfort.

But most importantly, you are my biggest friend.

Remember that one night where I asked you what you wished for? You had said that you wanted to keep talking to me regardless of how things turned out in the future. I didn’t really have a response at the time, but now I finally do.

My wish is selfish. I wish for you to stay the way you are. A little arrogant, blunt, curious, and caring in your own way. Because I can’t imagine a future without you in it now.

With all my love,

(Name)

The house is too quiet for Alhaitham’s liking. He appreciates silence when working and Kaveh’s incessant noise from working on projects at midnight is downright irritating, but there is a time and place for everything.

Now is not that time. Thamina is sleeping on the cushion next to him. Kaveh is out in a meeting with a client (for once) and you’re-

“I’m home!”

Speak of the devil, there you are. Thamina’s eyes open and she jumps off the cushion to greet you with a loud meow and a head rub against your legs. Alhaitham takes his headphones off and sets his book down before getting up to greet you after a long journey back from Mondstadt. You’re tired, your uniform is wrinkled, and your Kamera has been hastily shoved back into its case, but Alhaitham has never been more grateful to see you.

“Missed me?”

“You’ve been gone for too long,” he grumbles before pulling you into a tight hug and burying his face into the crook of your neck.

“Love, it was only for a month!”

“My point still stands.”

You scrunch your face up and eventually manage to wiggle your way out of his grasp. It’s been a few years since you’ve graduated. Alhaitham has dutifully taken on the responsibilities of the Akademiya’s Scribe while you now work as a reporter for a newspaper company. You love the job because it puts your Haravatat degree to good use and you get paid to travel, although you don’t like the part of being away from Alhaitham for extended periods of time.

“Are you still up for dinner and dessert even though it’s getting late?”

“At my favorite place?”

“Our favorite place,” he corrects.

“Oh, you like it now as well? Did some of my tastes rub off onto you?”

“The pudding runs I went on for you did that a long time ago.”

Comets are ephemeral in nature. Some of them are only seen once and then gone, lost in time and never to be seen again. But occasionally, in a twist of fate, they can be rediscovered although it may take hundreds or even thousands of years for them to return.

That comet he had wished upon several years ago had finally returned to him.

#favoniuslibrary #astronetwrk #genshin impact x reader #alhaitham x reader #genshin fanfic #genshin x reader #genshin imagines #genshin impact x you #genshin impact x gender neutral reader #alhaitham x you #alhaitham x y/n #alhaitham x gender neutral reader #victoria.writes

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daosies · 2 months

Text

the only exception

alhaitham doesn't feel particularly attached towards many things.

one thing he does seem to feel very strongly about, however, is you.

alhaitham ♡ gn!reader

warnings: reader is not traveler, lovesick alhaitham

note: i woke up one day and was suddenly feeling romantical for alhaitham...

"you want to know what alhaitham likes?" kaveh asks, disbelieving.

"yeah!" paimon exclaims. "paimon needs all the details. like, what does he do outside of work, since he's so eager to get away?"

kaveh shivers at the thought. "well, he goes to read some books i guess. i don't really know what he does."

"you're his roommate!" paimon yells, upset. "how could you not know?!"

"hey, i have things to do! i'm in high demand, okay?" kaveh retorts, flailing his hands around for emphasis in a futile attempt to defend himself. in a fit of desperation, he stands up, a determined expression on his face as he glances around the cafe.

he sits back down, with a newfound resolve, once he realizes that alhaitham is nowhere to be seen.

"fine, i'll tell you what he does. but you can't tell anyone, okay? he'll get super mad at me. and i'm sick and tired of him when he's mad! especially when it's about—"

kaveh pauses midsentence, his mouth hanging agape as the color drains from his face. his lips begin to tremble a little, his hands becoming clammy as he wipes them against the side of his pants.

"u-uh, well," he trails off, averting his gaze from the traveler who leans slightly over the desk. "s-so, w-what i was saying was..."

"hm," a new voice interjects. lumine glances up, noticing alhaitham, in all of his glory. she scrutinizes him intensely, observing the way he crosses his arms, a scowl forming on his face as he glares at the architect with disdain.

his hair looks neater, she notes. usually, alhaitham's hair is messy—he once told her that he doesn't have the need to maintain it properly.

today, however, pearl strands are tucked neatly around his face, framing his pale skin in a way that resembles a sculpture. today, alhaitham looks otherworldly—not necessarily because of his unusual appearance, but rather, the way he looks over his shoulder, his monotone expression suddenly blossoming with color.

when alhaitham looks at you, it's as if there are stars racing across his eyes. his lily green eyes are fixated on you, reflecting your silhouette in their irises with a certain familiarity, a certain adoration. the frown on his lips begins to give way, revealing a dreamy, almost luminous look.

"[name],"—oh, and when he says your name, his voice drops to a gentle, soothing timbre—"let's go somewhere else."

lumine thinks that alhaitham looks unlike himself. because what she knows of him is a calculating, logical grand sage who would rather forfeit the world than have to work another day in his life. she knows him as someone who cares only for himself, not because he's selfish, or because he's egoistical, but because in this dog-eat-dog world, that's the only way to survive.

but when he looks at you, alhaitham's expression melts. all sense of logic evades him, because despite his existence revolving around rationality and consistency, he looks as if he's overwhelmed by a foreign emotion. a warm emotion. alhaitham, with you, looks as if he's going beyond himself, beyond everything.

(in this dog-eat-dog world, alhaitham thinks that caring for others is futile. he thinks that, in the midst of it all, the only thing he can account for is himself.)

(when he's with you, however, that changes.)

because the way he leans in towards you, and the way he speaks to you—in a soft, tender tone—is above him. suddenly, his limited world expands, and colors begin to glimmer with a revitalized hue. alhaitham's world, which was once walked and occupied only by himself, grows a little. it makes way for two.

his hand rests gently on your shoulder, finding familiarity in the feeling.

lumine knows that something is up, that something in you—or something about you—changes the way he behaves. because the alhaitham she knows would never initiate physical contact with anyone.

but the alhaitham you create, the alhaitham that exists in your mere presence, is someone else. the alhaitham that calls your name speaks to you in a voice that has no resemblance to the blunt tone he usually takes. the alhaitham that looks at you, the alhaitham that perceives you is unlike the one that lumine knows.

because in your presence, she thinks that alhaitham resembles a lover. he emanates you, radiating and glowing and prevailing like a wild light, stretching far across the limitless sky and fragmenting just to catch a wisp of your gaze.

(or a breath, or a fraction of your colossal existence. anything will do.)

"what's wrong with this place, though?" you ask, brushing your hand against his. lumine notices this. she glances at the sage, who doesn't seem to mind the contact. if anything, he leans even more towards you, as if your touch had seized a star.

"yeah, that's right!" paimon interjects. "what's wrong with this place, huh?!"

alhaitham, who doesn't even bother to spare the floating fairy a glance, opts to observe your expression, pausing for but a moment to decide what answer would please you the most.

lumine never thought alhaitham would consider someone's feelings before responding. seeing this, however, she supposes that there's a first for everything.

"nothing," he states firmly.

"all of your friends are here too, alhaitham!" you say, gesturing towards kaveh (who is in the midst of an out-of-body experience) and lumine.

"nice to meet you," lumine introduces herself kindly, "[name], right?"

"yeah!" suddenly, you pull a notebook out from your pocket, ushering it towards the traveler as you offer her a pen.

"can i get your autograph?" you ask, though it seems more like a demand.

"hey, how come you never ask for mine?" kaveh questions, suddenly coming back to life. he's silenced as soon as alhaitham glares at him. when the sage's gaze returns to you, however, that look of momentary fury dissipates; he finds comfort in your existence, his spot in the universe etched perfectly by your side.

"i need autographs that can sell," you reply, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

"plenty of people would buy my autographs!" kaveh exclaims, hurt. "what do you mean they need to sell, anyway? isn't just having my autograph enough?"

"things without immediate or material value are useless," alhaitham states.

"hah! don't say that when you're so obviously—" kaveh is cut off by alhaitham's death-glare. the architect, resigned to his fate, sits quietly in his seat, his back straightened perfectly as he folds his hands on his lap.

"so obviously...?" paimon echoes, tilting her head. lumine sighs in exasperation while you're cradling the traveler's autograph in your arms, fantasies beginning to materialize all around you.

i could sell this for one million mora. no, two million mora, you think, staring at the flimsy piece of paper. and then i could buy a huge mansion in the middle of the city and—

alhaitham flicks your forehead gently, an unreadable expression painting his features.

"nobody's going to buy that for two million," he remarks. your mouth hangs slightly agape.

"how do you know that?"

he shrugs.

lumine observes the sage under the warm cafe lights. he cradles your image in the center of his eyes, the beholder of what is most beautiful. alhaitham stares at you, taking your figure and slipping it away into his irises, imprinting it into his mind, letting it coexist with him for eternity.

when he stares at you, lumine thinks he's about to melt away into the warmth of the lanterns, the warmth of your existence. when he stares at you—which alhaitham often does—he sheds his tiny world and metamorphosizes into a lover, completely void of all the logic and rationale he lives his life by.

he says things without immediate or material value are useless, lumine thinks, but look at him.

you tuck the traveler's autograph into your pocket, and alhaitham rests his hand on your lower back, as if it were made to be there. when you bid her and kaveh a friendly farewell, alhaitham doesn't even care to spare either of them a glance, his gaze belonging wholly to you.

and when you tell kaveh that you'll get his autograph later, alhaitham scowls. he doesn't say anything to you, but the look he sends towards the architect is enough to suppress any ideas the blonde might be getting.

and when you leave, alhaitham trails after you, yearning. lumine never thought that alhaitham would willingly take his headphones off in public, much less follow after someone with such determination. when you walk, alhaitham is intent on matching your strides, desperate to exist in the same scale as you, the same life as you.

"alhaitham was acting really weird just now..." paimon mumbles, scratching her head. "he had a weird look. like, he wasn't as mad as usual!"

kaveh shivers. "don't say that. if anything, i think he's madder than usual. well, i guess that's what love does to someone."

"what?!" paimon yells.

"ugh, don't make me go in-depth. he's so embarrassing, that guy! how could he act like that and still not confess anything to [name]? also, [name] is way too good for a guy like him. i hope they reject him once he does confess," kaveh rants, waving his hand dismissively.

"alhaitham likes [name]?!" paimon repeats, as if it weren't obvious enough.

"oh, not just like. he loves them. end of story. let's talk about something fun," kaveh replies.

"no, no!" paimon stomps the air. "we need to know more about this now!"

lumine, albeit quiet, nods alongside the floating fairy. kaveh groans.

"you guys wouldn't get it... alhaitham like this isn't anything cool. if anything, he's even worse. to everyone except [name], of course."

"is he going to confess?" paimon asks. "how long has he liked [name]?"

"eventually, maybe. but he's a puny guy and he's afraid of rejection, and he can't tell if [name] likes him back. he's got all those brains for nothing," kaveh says, "and he's liked them for a while. since the akademiya, maybe...?"

"what do you mean maybe?!"

"i told you, i'm in high demand! i have better things to do than to worry about alhaitham's love life!"

"alhaitham's love life?" a bystander suddenly echoes. kaveh stiffens up immediately, his vermilion eyes growing wide with fear and shock.

"oh, yeah," lumine quickly interjects, "his love life with the books."

"haha, of course!" the bystander exclaims, believing the traveler without a second thought. "how is it possible for the acting grand sage to be any other way? he is wedded to those books, indeed!"

kaveh, lumine, and paimon all exchange knowing glances.

clearly they haven't seen alhaitham with you yet.

#genshin impact x reader #genshin x reader #genshin impact #genshin x gender neutral reader #genshin #alhaitham x reader #alhaitham #alhaitham x you #alhaitham x y/n #al haitham #al haitham x reader

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xianyoon · 2 months

Text

♡ KISSPROOF!

⤷ alhaitham is a smart man, but can be quite the fool when it comes to you.

char. alhaitham x gn reader. genre. fluff a/n. reader does makeup. this fic is inspired by this video from anthony padilla! a sweet kiss scene for valentine's day hehe ; ty to @iceunhie for helping me proofread!!! :")

alhaitham cannot resist it when his darling is sitting in front of him so sweetly, your aura so soft and tender, legs crossed on the stool and you perched near the vanity – oh, who can blame him? all he can see are stars . . . he watches as you go through your lengthy process of applying all sorts of product onto yourself.

he doesn’t believe that you need it, of course – you’re perfect as you are to him – but he understands why you put it on, since the day you explained to him that it was to help you feel good. yes, not because you didn’t look good, alhaitham has reassured you of that.

“hayi? can you come here, pleaseee? i need you.” a soft whine breaks him out of his stupor.

“hm?” his eyebrow is raised, and he turns his heel towards you – his darling, sitting there all pretty with the most curious doe eyes to grace his sight. and your smile. oh, your smile, he believes has been blessed with the warmth of the sun. alhaitham gently places a hand on your shoulder, squeezing you tenderly as you reach your hand back to meet his.

"do you know what this is?" you point to a crystal-encrusted gold tube. alhaitham knows it well – it goes on as a thin layer, where you smack it on your lips before planting kisses all over his face. he inspects it even closer, just to be a hundred percent sure – and maybe also to peck a tiny kiss on your cheek.

"..it's lipstick."

"right!" you beam proudly at the right answer. "but what kind of lipstick?"

you look so astoundingly perfect that he has no idea what to say next. oh, smart man, smart man, alhaitham! you’ve got him completely mesmerised. for the first time in his life, he’s hopelessly unsure of what to say next.

"...red?" he mumbles, not taking his gaze off you.

"no." a small giggle parts your lips, and alhaitham looks almost embarrassed to offer such a childish answer.

"this is liquid lipstick."

he peers at the small container you hold in your hands, studying it ever so carefully. isn’t it annoying, having the moistness cling to your rosy lips all day? (that part, he doesn’t quite understand.) you seem to read his thoughts, and lean into his warmth for a bit longer.

"see, the good thing about liquid lipstick–" you brandish your pretty tube proudly, taking the wand out of the tube and applying some to your lips. he sees you scrutinising it in the mirror one last time, smacking your lips together. alhaitham watches with a quiet fascination, seeing them go from a light pink to a dusty coral.

"–is that it dries."

"i see." you smile sweetly up at his response, and alhaitham thinks the world stops to be in awe of you.

"which makes it. . ."

oh, alhaitham. nothing could have prepared him for you placing a hand on the back of his neck – pulling him oh-so-gently closer to you, to plant the sweetest kiss he’s had all day right onto his lips. he squeezes his eyes shut, falling, slowly falling, right into you. oh, archons. if only you knew how much you made his heart leap in private – with just how infatuated he is with your sweetness.

"kissproof!"

a breathy chuckle is the only thing that slips past his lips for a good while.

“i... i believe you got a touch of lipstick on me.” he murmurs when he finally recollects himself, reaching up to touch his lips. alhaitham doesn’t move to wipe it off. "it seems as if your statement has some falsities in it."

“ah! we didn’t let it dry long enough!” you lean away to grab a tissue, but he chases after your touch, moving closer.

lipstick on his lips? perhaps he would never wipe it off. perhaps he’d keep it there, as a memento of your lips on his. oh, my angel... if only you knew how utterly enamoured i am with you.

taglist : @ryuryuryuyurboat @yeul-ha @the-guardian-kitsune (send ask to be added!)

#― latest brew.#astronetwrk #genshin x reader #genshin x gn reader #genshin impact x reader #genshin impact x gn reader #alhaitham x reader #alhaitham x gn reader #alhaitham x you #alhaitham x y/n #alhaitham fluff #genshin fluff #genshin impact fluff #genshin drabble #long post

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shanieveh · 8 months

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crying in the genshin men's arms !

KAVEH who immediately thought it was his fault the moment he saw tears in your eyes. Who says sorry repeatedly, over and over again and ends up crying with you. He lets you cry, he lets you be be heard. He knows the endless pain bottling it up has, and he makes sure to hear everything you rant. You were worth more than that. You were worth more to be treated like him.

CYNO who doesn't know what to do when you cry. It was no time for jokes. But he still said one, and as your crying face burst into a fit of laughter. As he said more jokes, they became less funnier, but the memory of the general mahamatra trying all his hardest to think of a joke just to cheer you up remains a place in your heart. And the thought of you cheering up will forver rest in his mind.

SCARAMOUCHE who prepares you a warm meal and loving cuddles as he caresses your head, listening intently to the situation. He made sure you weren't cold, and even if you teased him of his out of character behavior when all of it was over it didn't matter. For your gleeful teasing was better than your sad one.

KAEYA instantly pulls you in his chest when a single tear came out your eyes. The way he touch you, and felt you, and loved in that very moment poured out the tears even more. He wanted for you to let it all out. For you to tell your thoughts, your feelings, for you to do the privilege he never had. He would never let you be like him, you will be free. To choose, to love, to live.

NEUVILLETTE was touched by how you show your emotions to him, your weakness, and the vulnerability it held. To be enough for you to see that. He hushes you gently as if the whole world stops and the rain starts pouring. You feel like all will be alrigh as he lulls you into sleep singing a childhood lullaby. After all, the hydro dragon is at peace once his beloved is here.

ALHAITHAM was one to frame emotion as the primary suspect for failure. But it was the reason why he loved you so much. Why do you look so pretty when you cry? He asks only inside his head. And as he ultimately finds out the reason it's a promise it will be quelled. Your crying can kill him and it is only your smile that can make him feel alive.

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makelemonade · 5 months

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HOW GENSHIN MEN FUCK

Characters; Most men of Genshin

Warnings; NSFW (18+), no mention of she/her but female chest is mentioned once, spanking, groping, rough and soft doms, overstimulation, edging, mention of tears , fucktoy, praise and degradation (everything doesn’t go into detail just mentions)

Notes; support me on kofi! link in pinned post❤️ please check pinned before requesting

They love being rough with you and watching you struggle, especially when you’re wishing that they’d let you cum but they keep edging you. Only when you beg, tears brimming, will they finally let you cum. Your arousal will go everywhere, and they’ll simply have a pleased smile on their face which then turns into a smirk.

“Can you do that again for me?”

- AYATO, CHILDE, Alhaitham, Pantalone, Kaeya, Scaramouche/Kunikuzushi, Wriothesly

They’re a soft dom 100% and are at your beck and call. Your pleasure is all they care about, but they love to get multiple orgasms out of you before finally fucking you into bliss. They’ll praise you like crazy and they won’t let you on top at all, they wanna do the work. With the amount of orgasms they get out of you, fucking you will make you 100% overstimulated and they don’t plan on stopping.

“So fucking good for me,”

- THOMA, Cyno, Tighnari, Albédo (?), Diluc, Zhongli, Kazuha, Venti, Heizou, Gorou, Kaveh, Aether

Will use you like an absolute fuck-toy. They probably love fucking you from behind, reaching up and groping your tits, spanking your ass; As long as they’re touching you. They’ll cum in you over and over again, not caring much about your own orgasm. He’ll make sure you have a bunch, but really he just wants to use you. Doesn’t mean he doesn’t have amazinf after care though. He knows he’s rough, may as well be great at after care.

“Such a good fucking slut,”

- (Can also be the people in the soft dom part of you ask them to be rough) AYATO, Neuvillete, Capitano, PIERRO, ITTO, Dainsleif

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vivalabunbun · 5 months

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Into the Sky of Artificial Stars

Summary: Could a chest that lacks a heartbeat still learn how it would feel? Could the whir of a motor be enough of a substitute?

Word Count: 25k (I will not explain myself)

Tags: Alhaitham x Fem!Reader, Slow burn (oh my), Slow fic (oh boy), SMUT(r18+), NSFW, Researcher!Reader, insomniac!Reader, Android!Alhaitham, Workaholic!Reader, soft!Alhaitham, Modern AU, Android AU, human x android dynamics, Heavy Angst, Fluff, Heavy adult themes, academic trauma, toxic family pressure, toxic academia themes, struggles of poverty and academic inequality, TW: Exploration of grief, death, and guilt, TW: Survivor's guilt and tragedy, exploration of humanity and morality, slight mentions of violence, service top!Alhaitham, test subject to lovers? slightly possessive!Alhaitham? body worship, touch starvation? cunnilingus, he falls hard like a fool, but what is there to catch a fool who tried to reach for an unobtainable star?

Authors Note: This has been in the drafts for a very long time. My first foray into sci-fi kinda? I did my best with jargon and everything, so please forgive any mistakes I've made in regard to the technical stuff. An exploration into an artificial star. Enjoy

Are you just your conscience?

All the collective thoughts, desires, and ideals that congregate in your mind and influence your every action. Do your thoughts define you?

Are those cognitive functions, formed through a mix of instinct, teachings, and life experiences, what differentiates a man from a featherless biped?

If so, then are algorithms, simulations, and data sets interchangeable with what creates cognitive functions? Theoretically, it gives a machine the ability to develop a conscience. It gives a machine the ability to be human.

Perhaps, a sterile lab won’t be the most fitting environment to form such a thing.

What if we clothe the machine, provide a roof over its head in a nice quiet house, and feed its mind with the mundane details of existence? Then, could technology bring a machine over the boundary of humanity?

To engineer a brain, a conscience, a life with bare mortal hands. As if to replicate the gods. To compete with the authority of gods through scientific progression, many warn about the possible repercussions.

However, if to give and take life is deemed sinful to be done by mortal hands, then what made those unseen gods any different?

Regardless, such philosophical ramblings won’t help you in finishing the half-written report in front of you.

Looking past the two years' worth of reports sent already, innumerable papers penned by you within the sleep-deprived confines of the Akademiya. With a doctorate framed proudly on bland walls, that should be proof of your ability to type up a simple conclusion, right?

The weighted taps against a backspace key argue otherwise. Frustration leaves your lips in the form of a sigh as you test out a new string of words. Could these few sentences even be comprehensive of the leap in scientific progress made by mankind?

The shapes of letters merge together, forming incomprehensible blotches of black pixels against the white backdrop. Quickly, your lids shut to offer your eyes some much-needed reprieve from the harsh light of the monitor.

It was quite naive of you to believe subjecting your weary eyes to the punishment of light mode would drive up productivity.

Your fingers remove themselves from the keyboard, perhaps your body’s stubborn protest against sitting at the desk for another minute. Maybe a coffee break is an order.

You shouldn’t be too harsh on yourself, there hasn’t been a precedent for an experiment like this. A collaboration between the prideful Fontainian Research Institute and the arrogant Kshahrewar Darshan, the first of its kind.

Perhaps the real marvel is how the weight of their combined egos hasn’t sunk this project into the depths of abandonment.

With a subtle squeak, your office chair rolls back granting you permission to stand up and stretch your weary limbs. Letting out a slight groan as signs of time made themselves known to your bones. The ramifications of your negligence.

Slow steps pad through the quiet halls, floor boards singing a hymn with your leisurely stride toward the kitchen. As you make your way to the end of the long, empty hallway a silvery hue steals your attention.

Slightly obscured by the oak door frame to your home library stood the culmination of your years of overtime and long nights. A surge of anticipation places a slight weightlessness on your legs.

Approaching the end of the hall where the humble library resides, the oak doorway finally framed him in clear view.

Structure much more nimble and organic than the gardemeks framework, with materials sourced from the finest suppliers. The most advanced software and artificial intelligence capabilities ever developed since the Akasha.

The first and only of his kind: The Android Alhaitham.

The said pinnacle of human ingenuity and knowledge is currently flipping through a paperback book as the sunlight illuminates his synthetic skin.

The bounce light made his silver locks glimmer. As your steps slowed to a stop, he took notice of your presence. A soft snap of pages closing resounds through the passive air as Alhaitham turns his focus to you.

Your gaze ran along the neat spines lining each shelf, a small stack of unsorted books still left by his feet, but this morning there were numerous identical piles littered all over the library.

He seems to not have any issues making progress on his assigned tasks, a great sign.

You note that his button-down was a different color today, a sign that he’s practicing switching to a new set of clothes regularly.

A sign of routine, developing habits, and showing his steady learning of human behavior.

The frustrations from an unfinished report fade into obscurity as the subject of your research continues to observe your form. How easy it is to forget the big picture when you stress over the small details.

With this gentle reminder, a soft curl tugs at the corners of your lips.

Alhaitham repositions his stance, turning his body to face you, you figure he must be anticipating another task from you. Since he seems to be mostly done with his previous one, why not assign a new one?

“Could you brew me a cup of coffee, Alhaitham?” As he processes your request, you inspect his teal eyes, catching the slight glow signaling that his response is ready.

“I could, but unfortunately the interval of opportunity has already passed.” His baritone voice articulates.

A subtle quirk made its debut on your brows as your eyes shifted toward a clock hanging up in the corner of the study, its ticking hands displaying the time: 5:15 p.m.

“Huh… you won’t grant me an extension?” You turn back to him.

“If you have a request then please state it between my working hours of 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., you’re always free to submit again tomorrow.”

He doesn’t budge. An android capable of autonomous training and self-study is different from those gardemeks who only function when given tasks. The ability to develop self-awareness, consciousness, and to think comes with its own caveats.

In Alhaitham’s case, his stubborn nature. Conceivably, he likely reviewed Sumeru’s labor laws and decided that he was entitled to such labor rights as well.

“I work overtime almost every day for your research and development, but you can’t spare me 15 minutes?” Your lips form a pout, but you already predicted his next output.

“Your poor work-life balance is not my responsibility.”

Your prediction was correct.

Another sigh leaves your lips, it’s just one of the trade-offs you must accept. After all, learning to be a human is the reason why he was created. A feat once thought to be unachievable. But he exists, and he’s developed quite a character.

To change the trajectory of this conversation you glance at the book held within his hold.

“Frankenstein by Mary Shelly?” You read the title aloud.

“Yes, the 1831 edition, it’s quite the story.” Alhaitham opens the covers once more.

“Mm, maybe I should be more cautious of what information you come across.” A subtle grin tugging at the corners of your lips as his teal eyes land back on you.

“It’d be a bit of an issue if you were to turn against me from the wrong influences.” Resting your body against the oak doorway as you observe the android process your jest.

“There are safety restrictions already in place to prevent such occurrences, the possibility is near zero. However, if you are still concerned then feel free to upload a list of banned materials for the next version update.”

A huff of a chuckle escapes you as you shift more of your weight against the wooden frame.

“Of course, of course, just remember to place your books back where you found them.” Pushing off the doorway, you allow Alhaitham to continue his unsupervised learning as you amble closer to the kitchen.

The soft clinking of cups and spoons chime through the evening air as you scoop a few ounces of ground coffee into the brewer.

As the water slowly brings itself to a low rumble, you occupy your wait staring out the glass and at the setting sun. The flaming scarlet hues and warmth blend into mellow indigo as the night begins to reveal her stars.

Dusk, when the line between day and night blurs to an indistinguishable mess. Would a singularity also look as luminous as the setting sun? The answer might be closer than ever before.

The reaction to the announcement of an android development project was at first astonishment, that human knowledge had progressed this far. And the secondary reaction that followed like ripples was fear. Fear that humans will soon be replaced by beings of silicon and steel.

That a singularity would signal the end of humanity.

Well, this was always the common reaction to disruptive change. Many cases of public pushback and hysteria against innovations you can reference throughout history. The human reaction to the unknown.

They always gossip and fearmonger about an android domination of all of Teyvat. But have those people ever stopped to consider that the android could simply be too lazy to have such ambitions?

Instead of becoming cruel overlords, they’d rather leave books strewn about as they dock themselves into their charging port.

To learn to be human means to learn human slothfulness too, no? Or maybe Alhaitham’s algorithm just decided to train himself to incorporate it. What a peculiar enigma he is, this android currently residing in your house.

Your thoughts circle back to a certain novel you haven’t touched in years. A work of science fiction written by a genius author barely over the cusp of adulthood.

You wonder how she would’ve described this impending singularity.

A distant toll rang from the depths of a dreamless void, each chime reaching closer and closer until the bright tune devolved into jarring blares. Piercing enough to set your heavy lids into motion.

Just as they peeked open, they flinched back shut from a stray ray that snuck between the gaps of your curtains.

Your leaden body groans at the brightness of the room, the luminosity much greater than when you had originally settled under the covers. Yet, even with your groggy complaints the alarm resting on the nightstand offered no mercy, continuously bellowing its monotone pitch.

With a sharp slap, your world returns to its silence.

Angling the alarm towards you as you creak open one eye, the blurry red pixels slowly merge together to display the time.

Didn’t you have a meeting scheduled for today?

Another groan follows your dreadful discovery and you roll back under the plush blanket. Not much different from a child trying to protect themselves from the grasp of a fictitious monster.

Soft comforters block the morning glow contained behind thick curtains, yet your permission to access a blank serenity was denied. It seems that your quota for sleep has been fulfilled.

Barring you from any excess repose, not that you expected anything less. A monster that torments a young mind might be fictitious, but the realities of capitalistic responsibilities unfortunately aren’t.

Taking in a deep inhale, you prep your body for the next set of dreaded actions with its drowsy limbs. Before it had the chance to protest, you kicked the covers off, ripping away the warm security from your skin.

Ambling down the hall you gradually made your way into the kitchen, there under the morning light sat a steadfast figure whose eyes never left the book in front of him.

“Good Morning.” You initiate the first conversation of the day.

“Congratulations.”

You pause, hand in the midst of rubbing away the tiredness of your eyes. Staring perplexingly at his sudden praise. Alhaitham’s focus remains on his novel even as he answers your unasked question.

“You’ve beat your previous record of how many alarms it takes to get you out of bed, I believe it went off five times this morning.”

A few beats of uninterrupted silence follow the aftermath of his response. A chain broken by a deep sigh which leaves your body.

“It’s far too early for this, Alhaitham.” Your hand goes back into motion, this time attempting to rub away frustration.

“Spare me your sarcasm until after you’ve made me breakfast and a cup of coffee.”

From the glance you took at your clock from earlier, it’s currently well into his operational hours.

“Understood.” Setting the book down, his tall frame makes its way into the kitchen.

Settling down at the lacquered table, your seat grants you a clear view of your android collecting some eggs from the refrigerator. Even as the hands of fatigue beckon your lashes to flutter shut, you refuse to indulge in such luxuries.

You had to watch just in case he decided his book couldn’t wait.

A series of trials and errors already well documented in those weekly reports back to the Akademiya and Institution. A human in training is bound to have some mishaps occur, or more accurately, this android might have different priorities.

One notable case was the time you asked Alhaitham to clean the floors while you attended a conference call. Only to step into puddles of soapy water the moment you leave your office door.

Connecting eyes with teal as he stood in the middle of it all mop in hand. For the time being, you’ve barred him from such tasks.

Although, you wouldn’t be surprised if he made a mess just as an excuse to sit back on the couch with a book. This fickle android of yours. Your third sigh of the day.

–-------------------------------------------------------------

The tranquil afternoon interlude that enveloped the house was interrupted by a sharp chime. Glancing at the numbers displayed on the corner of your screen, it looks like it’s right on schedule.

You had just concluded your monthly conference call, it’d be good to stretch your legs a bit after sitting through a few hours of professional formalities.

Leaving your home office to journey toward the front door, you spot Alhaitham’s frame by the entranceway. His head turns to acknowledge your presence. Passing him to make your way to the front door, you hear him shift closer.

Soon the brilliance of a star pours into the entranceway, illuminating the hall as the door opens.

“Good afternoon, grocery delivery?” The young man on the steps greets, a strain in his polite tone as bags weigh down on his arms.

“Yes, there was a last-minute addition of henna berries, were you able to get those?”

“Yep, they’re in one of these bags.”

“Thank you, sorry for the trouble, I’ll take it from here.” You cast a glance over your shoulders back at a tall form standing idly.

“Please come help with the groceries.”

“Understood.” It took only a few strides for the burden weighing down on the delivery boy, effortlessly hanging them all on his engineered arms without a hint of strain.

“Careful, they’re heavy, mister-” The warning dies at the tip of the young man’s tongue as his wide eye reflects the artificial glow of teal irises.

It’s best to end this trial now, to prevent a commotion or disturbing the delivery boy who isn’t paid enough to be frightened. You could see it in the slight tremble of his agape mouth as his brain processed the thing in front of him.

“Thank you again, please don’t mind him, have a great day.” Before you could hear his response, the door was shut.

A bit rude according to societal norms, but you’re sure a generous gratuity bonus paid on top of the delivery fee is enough to stifle any disgruntlement. Considering his reaction, it looks like your hypothesis remains correct.

The people of Teyvat still need more time to adjust to the existence of androids. Just because science progresses, it doesn’t mean human acknowledgment moves at the same rate.

Turning away from the door, a pair of glass irises connect with yours, a sheen of expectancy just under the brilliant teal hue. Alhaitham stands there with the bags still hanging from his arms.

“If you already know what I’m about to assign you, then you should just take the initiative, Alhaitham.” You huff.

“It’s not a bad habit to wait for any specific instructions.” Came his baritone rebuttal.

“Just take those to the kitchen.”

“Understood.” He pivots away, taking slow steps toward the kitchen.

“Ah, sort them into the fridge and cupboards too, do not just dump them on the counter.” You warn, learning from your previous mistakes.

Seriously, Alhaitham has long evolved past needing step-by-step detailed prompts, thus you suspect it's merely an act of his.

You’ve watched his character develop, his habits form, and his routine take shape. Just where did he learn such behavior? This strange android of yours.

You watch as he carries the numerous bags without a hint of strain. Alhaitham was much better suited for carrying your week’s worth of rations from the market. Unfortunately, he is proprietary technology.

Clearance to allow an android out into the world hasn’t been granted yet.

Not that you were eager to receive it. The logistics of such an event are a nightmare to plan. The protocols needed in emergencies to ensure the safety of civilians and the millions of mora poured into his creation.

There’s always a nonzero chance his system gets overloaded from trying to analyze every blurred face in a crowd. A nonzero chance that he would simply wander beyond the merchants and their fruit stalls. A nonzero chance that the gem implanted between his collarbones could spark curiosity.

Those same curious eyes could catch onto the artificial glow of teal irises, morphing curiosity into terror.

Even in Fontaine where it was more common for machines to walk among crowds, they were always designed to look like machines. Their clockwork pieces are obvious and distinguishable, a design choice to bring comfort to the mortal psyche.

An easy way for a human to differentiate a person and a thing. If that line becomes blurred, then…

With a deep sigh, you reel your thoughts back from their philosophical journey. Regardless, it’d be a problem for the future to handle.

–-------------------------------------------------------------

Soft clacks resound from the keyboard as a new string of words appears on your screen, documenting the events of the day on your laptop as you sit on your sofa.

The soft cushions are a welcomed change from a stiff office chair. Just over the top of your screen, Alhaitham sat across from an adjacent couch. Methodically folding a basket of laundry and sorting them into piles.

An easy enough task for him, but as you watch you make sure to note down the improvements in his motor skills and dexterity. Movements organic and fluid, much like those of a human.

It truly is astonishing just how far technology has progressed, from clockwork pieces and clunky steps to the specimen sitting just a few steps away.

A tall and sturdy frame, well-portioned face with handsome teal irises, and synthetic starlight hair. Features created from the finest equipment and materials, a truly magnificent piece of scientific progress.

Amid your appreciation for his structure, Alhaitham halts all motion, setting down the towel back into the basket. Resulting in your eyebrows creasing together.

“What’s wrong Alhaitham? Did you forget how to fold a towel?”

Alhaitham did not attempt to entertain your jest, so much so, that he simply stared past you. Teal eyes honing in on an object just beyond you, never breaking focus to discern the bewilderment on your face.

Finally relenting, you follow his stare toward a clock, reading the time: 5:00 p.m.

“Seriously? You haven’t finished folding the laundry yet,” you remark in utter exasperation.

The teal glow of his eyes shows that he’s received your remark, yet he doesn’t make an effort to return a verbal response. He chooses instead to simply continue staring at the time as his hands wait by his side in opposition.

Him staring at a clock, you staring at him, a one-sided showdown.

A naughty cat prancing about a countertop where it shouldn’t be could simply be picked up and removed.

A disobedient dog dirtying the couch with its muddy paws could be lured off with the sight of a treat.

But an android? What are you going to do to an android whom you had to tilt your head up to make eye contact with?

This wasn’t a hill you’re willing to die on, thus with a dismissive wave of your hand, you concede. Allowing Alhaitham to do as he pleases, which he graciously does. His form leaves the couch, heading in the predictable direction of the library as a deep sigh leaves you.

This stubborn android of yours, you made sure to document this on today’s report. Just as how it was yesterday, and the day before, and even the day before that.

Hopefully, in the event of an actual android apocalypse, he might show you the same leniency. You couldn’t help but scoff at your ridiculous musings. A machine with nothing but a motor and battery in his chest, would he understand leniency even if you were to code it into him?

Soon his frame comes back into view, a pile of books clutched within his hold, just as you predicted. Shamelessly, he sits in the middle of his unfinished chores while leisurely scanning the pages in front of him.

This fickle, strange, and stubborn android follows the rhythm of his own motor regardless of what protocols you instill.

Yet, as you watch his fingers flip through the worn book and take up space on your couch, a smile develops on your features. A soft curl of your lips, easily obscured by the screen of your laptop.

A fickle, strange, and stubborn android is not too different from a person, one who had a heartbeat.

An android who takes up space on your couch and house, making it a bit less empty than previously. That was good enough.

What made man? Intellect? Innovation? Language?

This was the dilemma assigned to him since the very first time his system powered up in that facility, welcomed into this world by glaring fluorescent lights and the numerous stares of figures in white coats.

A dilemma that follows him even to his current place on a spacious couch.

According to sources pulled from the Akasha and cross-references from numerous printed materials made available to him, many throughout history have been pondering this same conundrum. A philosopher once defined man as featherless bipeds.

However, wouldn’t this make a plucked chicken a man too? A definition so ambiguous a mere student proved the teacher wrong.

Then, is man defined by their flesh? Having skin and bones instead of silicon parts and metal components? To have blood pumped by a heart instead of operating off a battery and motor? Was it biology that defined man?

But if that was the simple truth, then why was Frankenstein’s creation addressed as nothing more than a monster?

From his arms to his legs to his mind, everything which made up that creature was human. He had blood, he had flesh, he had bones. So why was he chased away by flaming torches and pitchforks as a mob screamed ‘monster’? Why was a creature made from human flesh not human?

His train of thought halts as a familiar set of steps patter against the floor. Automatically, his sights hone in at the corner of a wall even before your face reveals itself from behind it.

Teal-colored eyes refocus to catch the subtle perk of your eyebrows and widened eyes. An expression of surprise he analyzes, his immediate focus must have caught you off guard.

Did you have some other test outlined for him? Did you need to collect more data from earlier today? Another household task perhaps?

How unfortunate, the hour on the clock read half past 8 p.m. Have you not learned from your tardiness the week prior?

“If you have a request, then please wait until 9 a.m. tomorrow when I’m within my business hours.”

Even with the wall partially obscuring your form, the restrained giggle through lips fighting back a grin was picked up by his audio system.

“No, no, there’s no more tasks for today.”

As your gaze centers on him, he takes note of the refractions of fluorescent lights along your irises.

“Then is there something you’d like to discuss?” He prompts.

“Mm… no, not right now.”

His stone-faced stare was enough of a response, judging by the smile spreading across your features.

“I just felt like checking up on you, after all, you are the most proprietary piece of technology at the moment.”

At times like these, Alhaitham felt that the audio cue of a sigh was the most effective communication out of all the languages created by man. Muffed chuckles accompany it.

“I’ll leave you be then.”

The floorboards trill under your steps as you amble towards the kitchen. Alhaitham returns to the last few pages still left open on his lap.

Small tinkering from beyond the living room serves as an ambient tune. The swift opening and closing of a refrigerator door. A harsh pull on a microwave door is contrasted by the bright beeps of buttons, leading to a low hum.

He hypothesizes there to be some leftovers spinning around.

After the microwave sang its concluding chimes, the clatter of a plate follows a firm tug. A drawer rattles open, metal clinking against metal as you sift around for the right utensil. The drawer rattles again as it closes.

Rhythmic footsteps take center stage as they trail back down an empty hall, Alhaitham waits to hear the resounding click of a door returning to its frame. Just as the final echo of the click sounds out through the air he places the finished novel on the coffee table.

Leaving the comfort of the cushions, he makes his way to the kitchen to access the aftermath. A microwave door left wide open, a drawer only halfway closed, and of course another dirty coffee mug in the sink.

Returning the microwave and drawer to their rightful states, his teal eyes count the pile of cups sitting since this morning. A collection that grew throughout the day.

Alhaitham looks up in the direction of your office. A soft glow leaked out from under the gap of the door, bleeding light into the dim hall. His systems identify the audible taps of a keyboard and the occasional shift of an office chair. He deduces that you were working overtime again.

He found it a bit ironic at times. A body of mechanical components has no qualms about lounging on a sofa. But you, a creature of flesh and blood, refuse to submit to the allure of rest. Although, Alhaitham wouldn’t find it too implausible that coffee ran through those veins of yours instead.

Repetitive clacks of keys and mouse clicks play a melody he had heard ever since the first day he opened his eyes.

A tune that accompanies the rhythm of his steps and motions when he goes about his tasks as you document them.

A lullaby that plays after his routine tasks as he heads back to his charging port when you log a daily report.

An accompaniment to the silent moon and her stars as you stay up at a desk.

Needing to reach the next exit criteria. Needing to collect the next set of data. Needing to submit the next report.

Would it be because a body of flesh has agency? With cells in a losing race against time, was there something you wanted to attain within your mortal hands from this research before the race ended?

Or did you just want to fill the vacant lull of this house with those little taps of a keyboard?

Regardless, it’s not within his capacity to disturb your work. Thus all he could do was roll up his sleeves, turn on the running water, and pick up a sponge. Scrubbing the cups with warm soapy water, imitating the motions you’ve shown him before, until the dried stains vanish.

If it’s not featherlessness, if it’s not bipedalism, and if it’s not flesh… then could it just be agency that made him different from you?

Maybe he’ll ask you another day, placing the cups into the dish rack.

Sorting and organizational tasks are his strong suit, in other words, he’s very good at completing easy jobs. Leaving the more… tedious chores to you.

A heavy sigh leaves your lips as you rest on the handle of the broom. The hallway between your office and the bedrooms is the last section that needs to be swept.

Alhaitham was likely back in his place on the couch, book in hand as he lounged around. Weren’t androids created in hopes of making life easier?

So much for that, you internally huffed, repositioning your grip on the broom. A soft but bright clink catches your attention. Glancing down, you quickly discover the source. A ring wrapped around your finger.

Kept on your finger for so long, it’s become almost an extension of yourself, this keepsake piece of jewelry.

Abandoning the broom against a wall, your other hand fiddles with the gold band. A frown forms upon your lips when a faint scratch shows itself on the gold surface

Gingerly, you remove the ring, pinching it between your fingers as you hold it up to the light, examining the damage closer. The shine of its once-polished surface was dulled by trivial scuffs and dents, damaged by the signs of time.

Regrettably, it seems you’ve been neglecting it as well.

So much so, that the ring felt compelled to remove itself from your grasp in protest. Slipping out of your tender hold, which propels you into motion, graceless attempts at catching the small piece of jewelry to no avail.

It soon collides with the wooden floor as a chime rings out, still, gravity didn’t buy you enough time to catch the evasive gem. For it then decides to run under the gap of a door, disappearing from your sight. Leaving you there in defeat.

Taking a deep inhale, holding it for a few seconds, you release the air in your lungs. Returning your gaze up from the wood grain, you stare at the obstacle in front of you: a mere door.

Its brass knob gleams as if to taunt you, daring you to open it, to face what lay beyond. Slowly, you release your clenched fingers, setting your hand back into motion. You’re far too grown to be scared of a room in your own home, especially when you know what is behind it.

Its hinges ring out in surprise, it’s been a while since they were opened. The daunting door opens up to reveal a lackluster collection of old furniture, picture frames, and various other assortment of items.

Their forms all covered by plain sheets thrown over them, silhouettes, outlined like ghost. A slight tickle appears in your nose from the layers of dust you disturbed.

A poor, unfortunate room you’ve designated as storage, where items go to be neglected. You were busy enough with work as it is.

To avoid seeing the reminders of responsibilities you’ve been pushing off, you’d rather throw them behind a door. Out of your sight, out of your mind.

The sooner you find that ring, the sooner you can turn a blind eye to the various items you’ve long abandoned yet refused to let go of. Amongst the dull dust and sheets, it wasn’t very hard to spot the golden glimmer from peaking through.

Trudging towards the mischievous ring, you kneel to finally catch it within your hand. Such a troublesome thing, you chide as you stand back up. Bracing your other hand on the nearest sheet-covered surface, only for it to come into contact with an odd object.

Startled, you instinctively hold onto both the ring and the odd object as you jolt back up. Glancing down at your hands, your eyes finally identify the object.

A collection of tiny planets and stars dangling from thin strings glimmered with the soft light creeping in from the afternoon sun. A soft smile made its way to your lips.

How silly it was that a toy made to entertain young infants had you so enraptured. You bought it on a whim, then tossed it into the depths of a dust-covered room. And yet it’s now back in your hands. Perhaps the beckoning of the stars still calls for you.

A part of you wonders if it was your fascination with the night sky that caused sleep to evade you. Sitting up on a mattress well past bedtime to gaze out to the vast ocean of dazzling and blinking lights that dotted against a navy backdrop. While the pristine radiance of the moon reflected off your irises.

Or did your fascination develop because it was always the moon and her stars that silently accompanied your long nights?

Gentle lights who lent you their well wishes and encouragement as you anguished through assignments and exams.

What an honor it was for you to be able to witness her beauty so often. It was a pity that some, who disregarded her grace in favor of dreams, weren’t able to experience the brilliance of a starry night.

Maybe your parents fell in the category of the majority. Maybe that’s why they couldn’t even fathom such a thing.

A past conversation over an old wooden table started in your mind before you could muster the strength to push it back.

–----

“C’mon, eat, eat.” Your mother places a hearty serving of Biryani in front of you.

The old kitchen table groaned under the weight of the spread of dishes on its surface. To call it anything short of a feast would be a lie. The walls of the modest home are filled with a variety of rich aromas and spices.

“You have to eat to study harder, don’t think just because you made it into the Akademiya you can take it easy now.” Your father remarked.

“I wouldn’t dare dream of it.” You picked up your fork.

Letting out a chuckle, he pats your back as a rare smile graced his stern face. Your mother’s face mirrored the same radiance, the beaming glow of pride. For you, their daughter, their only child, and only hope had been accepted into the Akademiya.

The most prestigious university of all of Sumeru and Teyvat, with millions competing for those few spots each and every year. Only the best of the best, only those who outshone the rest, and only those gifted and blessed would ever be admitted.

Yet, you were sent a letter from the oh-so-grand institution.

A child from a town far away in the shadows of the grand Akademiya was accepted.

What were the odds of that? For a child whose own parents never got the opportunity for higher education to become the first to go off to university? The cause of this celebratory feast.

The warm Spring breeze contributed to the sweetness of this small moment in time, as plates were passed and glasses clanked.

All those scattered notes, cramped hands, and revisions have rewarded you with the golden brilliance of sunrise after endlessly long nights.

A smile crept up the corners of your lips. A light has finally appeared to illuminate this trending path you’ve climbed.

Your father washed down his previous bite with a sip from his cup, placing it down before he began his next question:

“Have you decided on which Darshan to go into?”

The sweet breeze turns into a chill down your spine as your fork halts its motion. The dilemma you have been dreading has finally arrived at the kitchen table.

You had to memorize every mathematical formula. You had to pinpoint every detail in a historical timeline. You had to know every syntax of a sentence. You had to understand the molecular structures of life.

A child had to learn everything, and now they had to pick something to learn. How would the child know? The child only knew how to study.

“Amurta? Spantamad? Oh, what about Kshahrewar? I heard that it was also good.” Your mother chimed in.

“Amurta?” Your father scoffed a bit.

“Dear, as if this tuition isn’t expensive enough, think of how much med school will cost.”

“Oh I know, I know, but you know how well doctors get paid! I heard those labs also give a decent salary.” Your mother reasons.

“Ah, but it takes too long. Engineering isn’t half bad either, there’s been a demand for more engineers recently.” Your father takes another sip of his drink.

“Oh, but it’s not up to us,” she turned to face you.

“It’s up for our little scholar now isn’t it?”

A paradoxical question, because your options were already decided for you from the very start.

Carefully selected paths were already laid out before you as your parents watched on with expecting eyes, waiting for your foot to take a step on the path they wanted most.

Poking at a stray grain of rice on your plate, you gather up the scattered pieces of courage. You were a child who only knew how to study, yet, a child is still susceptible to dreams, no?

“I have thought about it.” You began.

“And?” Your mother couldn’t help but nudge you to continue.

“I was thinking about Rtawahist,” you confessed.

It was as if even the sweet Spring air wanted to escape the now-still walls, leaving dread to fill the void it had left. No dishes were passed, no utensils rattled, and no cups clinked. Just bewildered stares you couldn’t bring yourself to answer.

“Rtawahist? As in the school that looks at the sky?” Your father’s face had returned to its stern default.

“Astronomy? Yes, that’s the Darshan that studies Astronomy.” Your eyes didn’t dare leave your plate.

Among the options selected by them from their perceptions of future opportunities and prestige for you. You dare interject with one of your own.

A deep sigh sealed your fate.

“Astronomy? You want to study Astronomy? And get what job?”

The pierce from your father’s harsh tone made you flinch, even though you expected it.

“You can look at the stars for free, why would I pay to send you to school to study something so useless?”

“There are jobs for Astronomy.” You reasoned.

“Like what?” His finger drummed against the wood.

“Like-”

You made the mistake of looking up from your plate, the fragile wisps of courage dissipated like smoke the moment you did. All the arguments and rebuttals you had prepared vanished along with it. The frown that pulled down your father’s face and the scrunched brow concern of your mother’s were enough to snuff out your pitiful rebellion.

“Go on.” He challenged.

“...”

“That’s what I thought.” Your father snatched up his cup.

Your focus retreated back to your plate, recentering on the grains of rice you pushed around with the ends of a fork. A motion that continued until another hand stopped yours.

“Little one…” Your mother began.

Her thumb traced over your fidgeting hand, a touch which comforted yet scorned you all at once.

“You know that lady who lived down the street? Her son got a career working with computers and now they live in a big house, doesn’t that sound nice?”

You hummed.

“Kshahrewar isn’t so bad, right? Just a few years and then you can get a good job.”

Yes, she had spelled out the purpose of your studies like red-inked corrections on a test. It was how it always was, why did you think it would change now?

Having to prove you deserved the food on the plate in front of you.

Having to bring home top grades to prove all those books and materials were worth it.

Having to get a job that could break this cycle your parents were trapped in. How else would you be able to pay them back?

It was their mora, earned from long hours and labor, that fed you, clothed you, and sheltered you. They made your world with their calloused hands. It was their justification to command it as well. You were their only child, their only investment.

This was the dilemma imposed upon you.

–----

Your fingers clench around the childish imitation of the night sky, running the plastic surfaces under your mindless touch. Thoughts still light years away in the recesses of your memories.

How silly, for someone who loved the planet and the stars so much how did you forget that one fascinating detail? Planets orbit a sun because of gravity.

It was the force of a greater mass that commanded the lesser, it was what kept a planet going round and round within its grasp. It was the gravity of the sun that gave a planet a direction, a path to follow, a purpose even.

Perhaps it’s because the sun knew what was best for its little planet.

It was the diplomas framed nicely on a wall that granted you a secure job, it was your cushy job that permitted you to purchase this cushy home.

Your parents planned this out long ago, thus you merely just followed.

However, when the sun disappears, when the central mass that gave a small planet a purpose disappears, what would the little planet do?

Drifting endlessly in a vacuum of nothingness, with no direction, no path, no light. No day or night and an endless Winter, would it be as if the world stopped spinning.

That little planet would be no different than a cold lump of rock in a vast emptiness.

A sharp creak pierces through the tormentful quietude, a chirr that reels your thoughts back to a dusty room. Head instinctively following the direction of the noise, you fixate on the doorway.

Catching the diffused afternoon sun glimmering in silver locks reminiscent of starlight.

Alhaitham stands silently at the threshold of the door, its frame perfectly centering him as his teal eyes analyze you. Not a single engineered limb crossed the boundary of the dusty room. Just as it was defined in a set of restrictions implemented into his system by you.

As evidenced by his unintentional disregard for his environment, the floorboards bearing witness to his careless execution of chores, you restricted him from this decrepit room.

Although all it contains is a chaotic collection of trinkets and keepsakes, the dust-coating provides them with a blanket of security. You saw no reason to change it.

A telling teal glow blinks momentarily before Alhaitham breaks the lull.

“Are you uncomfortable anywhere?”

It was just now that you noticed the wet trails rolling down your cheeks. Wiping away the cooling dampness on your skin, you confirmed the presence of tears. Your senses took their time returning from their escapade.

Alhaitham remains in his spot, patiently awaiting your next response. How embarrassing it is, to be seen in such a state by a being who could shed no tears. Quickly, you wipe away the trails on your other cheek.

“I’m fine, just lost in thought for a moment.” Swiftly you place the toy down.

A smooth weight encased in the palm of your hand reminds you of the ring, the item that lured you into this dusty room.

Perhaps it should be best to have let it remain undisturbed on your finger. It’s a common wives’ tale that keepsakes ward off bad omens.

“Is that truly all?” He made a no move, his eyes rescanning the environment as if unconvinced by your answer.

You wonder if it’s because of some protocol or conditional in his software. Safety measures set in place during this test of whether an artificial being could live in harmony with mortals.

However, as you gaze upon your magnum opus the specifics of programming and software fade into irrelevancy. Trailing your eyes up from his teal irises to his starlight silver trusses that glimmered in the soft light, revealing a hint of mint. It took you a while to find that exact shade during his manufacturing stage.

There’s always a chance that a drifting planet could be caught in the orbital pull of another. Whether it be man-made or not didn’t matter.

As long as it was of a significant mass its gravity should be enough to pull a lonely planet from its aimless wanderings. It can set the stray planet into a new orbit, giving it a new path.

A small lump of rock could find a new star to center around.

“Yes, I’ll be fine.”

You will be fine. Slowly, and with one step after another, you will be fine one day.

The typical 24-hour day for a working adult can be broken down into a set schedule. Waking up at around 8 a.m. to wash one’s face and brush their teeth as they make themselves presentable for work. Followed by a light breakfast or a cup of coffee before.

Some then start their commute to work or jump onto their desktop to clock in around 9 a.m. to begin their work. In the middle of their shift, usually around noon, they are granted a one-hour lunch break, after that they work until 5 p.m. when they finish their work.

Coming back home to enjoy dinner around 7 p.m. followed by an hour or two of leisure before a bedtime routine begins. Washing the day's influences off oneself, brushing their teeth, and changing into comfortable attire.

If they want to get a restful 8 hours of sleep they cannot go to bed any later than 10:45 p.m. to account for the 15-minute downtime to allow the body to enter the sleeping state.

This cycle then resets and repeats just as the sky cycles through the sun and moon. A typical and average reality for most adults in Sumeru. Well, from the data he pulled from the Akasha, this was the typical day for the average working civilian.

It just so happens that you’re a stray data point skewing the graph.

If he were to estimate your bedtimes from the activity of your desktop and laptop, it would be a chaotic set of timestamps ranging from 2 a.m. to 5 a.m., sometimes the activity on your devices never ceased. An indication of what is referred to as an ‘all-nighter’.

Behavior that might be acceptable for those attending the Akademiya, but certainly not for a working adult.

At this moment, Alhaitham stood in the hall just a few steps away from your bedroom door. His frame remained motionless to avoid disturbing the floorboards beneath him.

Taking into account your device’s activities, Alhaitham estimates your bedtime was 4: 45 a.m. this morning. Given how your alarm is set to around 8 a.m., amounting to about 3 hours of sleep.

Not even half of the recommended time by Sumeru’s health administration.

By all means, Alhaitham finds it confounding how you’re still able to perform so efficiently at your job, managing both the Insitute and Akademiya while operating on a few morsels of sleep.

He wonders if that was the reason why you were selected as the personnel who’s facilitating his learning.

Perhaps, they hoped he’d emulate your work ethic and efficiency. How unfortunate, his self-learning pivoted him away from such conduct.

As he stands observing the woodgrain of your door, Alhaitham finds himself at a crossroads. It’s not within his capacity to interfere, conditionals coded into his software to prevent him from disrupting your privacy.

Laws mandating the privacy of employees and civilians alike.

Simultaneously, there are protocols instilled in him that instruct him to prevent harm from befalling you.

A contradiction. Something that would cause a regular system to return an error as it fails to satisfy one conditional while trying to work within the bounds of another.

Chronic sleep loss results in an increased risk of heart attacks, strokes, and hypertension.

Long-term sleep loss also results in impaired memory and concentration, although it’s not affecting your productivity now, it doesn’t mean it won’t decline soon.

These statistics were all provided by Sumeru’s health administration.

The effects on the brain are quite severe as well, with increased feelings of stress, anxiety, and depression.

A quiet afternoon scene replays, in a dust-covered room, where he found you staring off at nothing as silent rivulets rolled down your cheeks.

That memory stored within his RAM was enough for Alhaitham to come to his conclusion.

Alhaitham must act on his own will and deal with anything that appears harmful in his eyes.

To allow you to continue your destructive routine which is proving to be detrimental to your health would be inadvertently allowing harm to befall you. Thus, he decides one conditional must override another.

Careful to prevent the hinges of your bedroom door from trilling, Alhaitham enters. Analyzing the shape outlined by messy layers of blankets draped over your figure, you must still be in the depths of slumber.

There are about 15 minutes before your first alarm is set to go off, since your commute was a simple walk to your home office, you had the flexibility to sleep through a few grating beeps.

This habit could use a few improvements. He turns his focus to the thick curtains hiding the room away from the greetings of a morning star.

Sunlight sends a signal to the pituitary gland, calling to suppress melatonin production and increase cortisol production and serotonin.

A natural cue for your body to start, to allow the bright rays to touch your skin would also be good for vitamin production too.

With a simple tug, the thick drapes were pulled away, granting the rays of the sun to enter and illuminate the still room.

Your body instinctively retreats deeper under the covers, a clear sign that the light is doing its job. He’ll leave the rest up to the alarm impatiently waiting to belt out its chorus of pitches. Just like the shadows slipping away, he exits just as quietly.

It took only two alarms to get you out of bed and ambling down the hall toward the kitchen. A 60% decrease from when the curtains were shut, however, more trials are needed to conclusively establish a pattern.

His teal gaze follows you as you approach the kitchen. Hands rubbing at your eyes.

“Why is it so bright?” Your words were groggy.

“It’s morning,” he answers.

An unamused glare replaces the fatigue in your expression, Alhaitham deems his response satisfactory.

After a deep sigh, you shut your eyes again, still trying to adjust to the brightness surrounding you, hands returning to rub at your eyelids.

Excessive rubbing of the eyes isn’t good for them, he notes. However, before he could address it another prompt from you took priority.

“Did I leave my curtains open last night?” You asked yourself.

“Coffee?” He interjects.

Glancing back up at him, you paused for a moment as your groggy mind remembered why you traversed to the kitchen in the first place, diverting your attention away from mysteriously moving drapes.

“Yes, please make me a cup, Alhaitham.”

“Understood.”

The android turns toward the marble countertop, preparing the coffee grounds into the machine as you sit at your place at the table.

One day isn’t enough to correct a bad habit, but over time, bit by bit, your schedule will fall into a new rhythm.

–-------------------------------------------------------------

The cheerful doorbell ring interrupts Alhaitham amidst reorganizing the books on a shelf. Right on schedule.

From just down the hall he hears the knob of your office door turn as it opens, followed by a few cautious steps as you venture closer to the front door. As you pass the doorway of the library, Alhaitham observes the furrow between your brow on your perplexed face.

“Is there someone at the door?” You turn to him.

Another ring followed by a few gentle knocks answers your question for him as your head snaps back into the direction of the noise. Crime in this suburban neighborhood is very low, but he does understand why you’d want to be careful.

Perhaps, he should accompany you to ease your nerves over the sudden ring from the door.

With an android just behind you, you had finally mustered up the courage to answer the daunting door under his teal supervision.

“Hello, delivery from Lambad’s Tavern, paid online.”

“Huh?-”

“One order of Minty Bean Soup, one order of butter chicken, and one rose custard?” The delivery man interrupts your confusion as he lists off your entrees.

“Yes…” you reply as you cast a glance back at an idle android.

The entrees listed were all dishes you asked him to make you for lunch a few hours earlier. Judging by the suspicion upon your furrowed brows, he could tell that you noticed as well. However, with a delivery man holding out the takeout bag on the front steps. It’d be rude to just have him remain there, no?

“Enjoy your meal!” He announces as he hands over the bag into your arms.

“Yes, thank you.” You close the door, spinning around almost instantly to confront the android with the bag still in hand.

“Did you order this?”

“Yes.”

“Again? I asked you to make food, not order it,” you tsk.

“I did it to optimize my time.” Crossing his arms in front of his chest.

“All you have to do is heat up the frozen meals.”

“Then according to protocol, I’d have to stay in the kitchen to watch over the oven and stove, not to mention the dishes I’d have to wash afterward. So ordering takeout would save time as well as not prevent me from my task of organizing-”

“Okay, okay. I get it.” You concede with a sigh.

Taking a few steps past him towards the direction of the kitchen before you pause midstep to turn back to him.

“Do not use your funds to order weird things off the internet.” You warn before promptly continuing on your way to have your late lunch.

“Understood.”

Just as he suspected, there isn’t a problem that can’t be helped with a bit of mora. If Alhaitham were to follow your request as you instructed, he knew that the reheated meal would turn cold as it sits abandoned on the kitchen table.

Even when he informs you of his task’s completion, you’d push back your lunchtime until you needed another dose of caffeine.

However, a simple ring of a doorbell could do what he can’t. Drawing your attention and body away from the confines of your desk. An efficient reminder to have your meals at a regular time if he says so himself.

Besides, fresh ingredients are better than frozen meals in terms of nutrients.

–-------------------------------------------------------------

The sun had long retreated into a navy blanket of the night, allowing the moon to take its place in the sky. Serene beauty watching over the nighttime bustle of Sumeru city slowly peters out, and many return to their homes at the beck and call of slumber.

Alhaitham settled himself upon his spot on the couch, a lamp just off to the side illuminating the pages of his book softly. The quiet lull of the living room periodically broken by the crisp turn of a page.

The typical rhythm that resonates through the house around this hour. His acute senses pick up a frustrated pair of steps pattering closer.

Ah, yes a new accompaniment has jumped this evening's tempo.

“Is the router having issues again?” You groan as your frame appears from around the corner.

Casting a halfhearted glance off to where said device sat on a side table, his teal eyes return to his book.

“The light shows that it’s online.”

“Then why is it taking forever to upload a simple file? It’s been five minutes and it’s not even halfway done.” You took quick strides past his idle frame.

Crouching down to be at eye level with the device in question. Unplugging the power cord from its back and then sticking it back. Eyes studying the blinking lights as the router reboots and reconnects to the internet.

Pulling out your phone, you sigh as you try to load up a webpage only to be met by a spinning circle of contemplation.

“Network providers tend to have slowdowns this late at night, some say it's due to bandwidth congestion while others argue that they do it to cut costs,” Alhaitham states, teal eyes honed in onto the text as to avoid your pouting glare.

“Very helpful, Alhaitham.” Another sigh leaves you as you stand back up.

He spoke the technical truth, those companies do tend to slow down their networks at night to save on some operational costs.

However, in this case, it was the former that was causing your device’s screens to perpetually stay in loading. Activities such as streaming videos, music, or downloading files take up the most bandwidth.

Alhaitham simply wanted to download some digital copies of recent scientific journals, and maybe a few songs here and there as well. All done simultaneously which led to some congestion.

How unfortunate.

“This has been happening for the past month now, I should call the network provider, it’s driving me up a wall.” Another groan of frustration.

His teal eyes follow your figure from behind the tops of his book, watching you rub your temples as if to expel the exasperation from your body with each mumble that leaves your lips.

“The internet’s so slow I can’t even connect to the Akasha’s databases, that file is still uploading, what should I do in the meantime?”

His hearing was able to pick up each syllable uttered from under your exhausted breath. He shifts his focus momentarily toward the clock just across the room, reading: 10:00 p.m. Since you asked, it’s only right that he responds with his input.

“It’s an issue beyond your control, the best option to utilize your time at this moment would be to get an adequate amount of rest.”

This time it was your turn to respond to him with a deadpan stare, clearly unamused by his suggestion.

“I want to analyze a few more datasets.”

“Missing a few hours of overtime won’t have any determinate effects on your productivity or livelihood.”

“This is for the sake of your development, Alhaitham.” You sigh as if your statement would mystically change his rationale.

“The short-term gratification you’ll get from sacrificing your rest for a few revelations isn’t worth the long-term ramifications of your health.” He bluntly discloses.

Silence fills the room once more, but something odd seems to have mingled with the serenity of the air. This strange inclusion prompts Alhaitham to finally turn away from the pages, connecting his gaze with yours.

“Was my response unsatisfactory?” He studies your expression, and rather than furrowed brows, he finds a soft roundness to your eyes.

Him staring at you, you staring at him. A scene that continued for a few beats more before you were the first to break the stalemate.

“No, not at all… it’s just very reminiscent of something I’ve heard before…” You turn away as his gaze follows.

A few slow strides take you back to the corner, figure just about to disappear into the shadows engulfing the halls before you abruptly turn around.

“Goodnight, Alhaitham.”

“Goodnight.” He mirrors.

Alhaitham marks today as another successful trail of correcting a bad routine.

–-------------------------------------------------------------

Adequate amounts of sunlight, regular meals, and coffee grounds mysteriously find themselves placed on the highest shelf in the cabinets. All the factors were in place to regulate a disastrous sleep schedule.

Yet when Alhaitham checks your device activity, the data points remain scattered about the twilight hours of the morning. A true paradox.

Amongst the Summer afternoon rays seeping in through the windows, Alhaitham was tasked with tidying up the kitchen. An obscure cabinet in a corner was the last section before he could deem the request complete.

There wasn’t anything in particular about the cabinet, it’s space housing an assortment of various vitamins. That was until his hand brushed against a plastic container which didn’t conform to the typical shape of vitamin bottles.

Grasping it within his hand, he pulls the irregular bottle out from the murky depths of a cabinet and out into the sunlight where its identity unravels: a prescription bottle.

Barbiturates sedatives, colloquially referred to as sleeping pills, are used in treatments for insomnia.

It looks like Alhaitham has stumbled upon the answer to the paradox printed on the faded label of a neglected bottle.

Frankly, this revelation wasn’t all that surprising. He had long suspected it from the symptoms and behaviors you display daily. But it’s always good to support a hypothesis with evidence.

Studying the container in his hand further, his gaze narrows as it hones in a corner of the label. In particular, the date printed along it. This bottle expired two years ago.

It’s recommended that every civilian visits the Bimarstan annually for a checkup, in a nation where healthcare is free and accessible, this typically isn’t an issue.

Once more, you stood alone as a data point outside of the cluster.

Stepping into the living room, he finds you tinkering with the network router again. A few more steps and then he was by your side.

“When was your last medical check-up?” Cycling through his memory, Alhaitham failed to recall the last time you had a medical assessment.

Your body halts momentarily, before glancing up at his beryl eyes.

“I’m relatively healthy, there’s no reason for an assessment.”

“The Department of Health recommends annual checkups at the very least.”

“I don’t need to go to the Bimarstan,” you declare.

A weight pulled down at the corners of his lips, creating what is called a frown. An expression he observed many times upon your lips whenever you label him as ‘stubborn’. He might finally grasp why you do such a thing.

Stubbornness isn’t such a good trait when you’re on the other side of it. Fortunately, he anticipated this.

“In accordance with the law, you do.” The contents of the plastic bottle rattle as he reveals it, drawing your gaze toward it.

“The regulation behind your prescription requires that all expired medication be brought back to the Bimarstan for proper disposal.” Denunciation behind his glass irises.

Lips pressing into a thin line, you advert your eyes back to the blinking router in front of you. Each second of silence announces your defeat.

Human actions are limited by a set of laws and they must operate within the bounds, not too different from restrictions imposed on machines.

The consequences looming just a step away discourage most mortals from crossing the threshold.

“I’ll schedule an appointment for noon next week, making use of your saved paid time off is recommended, does that work?” He prompts.

“Alright.”

A weight is alleviated from his lips, triggering the corners to curl upwards. A common response to the accomplishment of a challenge, he understands now why a mortal body does it.

Perhaps a doctor's visit has been long overdue, foggy recollections of if the curtains were shut the night before and if a bag of coffee was accidentally misplaced. Poor memory is one of the repercussions of sleep deprivation, you’re aware of this fact.

Healthcare in Sumeru is highly accredited for its accessibility and quality, the Bimarstan being the standard many hospitals around Teyvat strive to be. To have such a thing so accessible to you, it’s baffling to many how you failed to utilize such privilege.

You had your reasons.

Many of these prominent doctors and diligent nurses were once classmates. A few vaguely familiar faces from across a lecture hall of some general course.

Faces you’ve passed slumped over textbooks and piles of notes in the late hours of the House of Daena, their dark circles matching yours.

Faces that graduated alongside you as celebratory cheers rang out with caps littering the air.

It’d be strange to meet someone you attended the Akademiya with once again in an examination room.

After their years of medical school and surviving residency, you’re certain they’re more than qualified at their jobs. However, it doesn’t change the course of averted eyes and superficial pleasantries.

You breathe out a deep sigh as the receptionist calls out for you, informing you that you could head down to a private room.

Leaving your seat in the waiting room, you do as the receptionist instructs, exiting the lively environment into a placid hallway. The receptionist’s face didn’t evoke any familiarity, nor did the doctor’s name listed on your appointment.

Many of these prominent doctors and diligent nurses were once classmates, but not all.

Candidly, there’s only one classmate who you’d avert paths with within this establishment. In a hospital as large as the Bimarstan, the average number of staff ranges from around 5,000.

The odds of encountering a particular face out of a pool of thousands is nonzero.

A polite knock draws you from your thoughts, your eyes travel toward the door of the private room you entered not too long ago as the handle slowly turns. Thick oak swinging ajar to reveal the figure on the other side.

“Good afternoon, I’m Dr. Rana, I’ll be taking care of you today.”

You return her greeting with a courteous smile and nod, statistics in your favor, the odds were nonzero but still a minuscule likelihood.

The checkup was rather uneventful, a few questions were asked as she pulled up your medical records. You pulled out the expired medication for her to examine and deal with.

Vitals checked and documented as the appointment drew to a close, a notepad and pen in her hands as she turned to you.

“Overall your health seems fine, although…” she trails off.

You could feel the weight of her stare upon the discoloration ever-present under your eyes, no layer of concealer to cover them. You could already guess her next sentence.

“Would you like a refill of your prescription?”

“No, it’s fine.” It’d just be another bottle to be neglected in the back of a cabinet.

“I see…” This time her eyes move back and forth between your sitting figure and a clock hanging in its place on a wall.

“I… have to process some paperwork, could you wait here for a few minutes?” A polite smile graced her lips.

“Of course.” You mimic her actions.

A day requested off to account for a drawn-out appointment, to account for a scenario like this his foresight analysis is making great progress.

You should take note of that once you return home, a daily log still needs to be updated to track consistent progress after all. It’s technically your day off, but you’re free to decide what to do with it.

As you pondered a checklist to complete once you got in front of your desk the door creaks open.

“Oh? That was fast, Dr. Rana-” The sentence dying upon the tip of your tongue as your lips press into a firm line.

The odds of encountering one familiar face out of a pool of thousands is a small nonzero number, however, if that number was increased to three faces out of those thousands, the chances increase.

How unfortunate, even with such small odds, you managed to come face-to-face with the three people you wanted to avoid the most.

They file into the room and the last one closes the door behind himself as your eyes scan over them. Starting with the ebony-haired man in the center, Tighnari, a doctor at the Bimarstan. It makes sense for a doctor to be in a hospital on this fine day, but not for a lawyer, or an architect.

Four former classmates gathered in an examination room, how strange.

Still, you’ve grown enough to adapt to such peculiar situations. Practiced corporate smiles and pleasantries to navigate this stagnant air.

“Cyno, Tighnari, Kaveh, it’s a surprise to see you all here. It’s been a while.”

“A while is a bit of an understatement…” Kaveh is the first of the trio to converse, offering you a small smile.

You return it with one that didn’t reach your eyes. The rhythmic ticks of a clock fill the silence, shifting eyes anticipating and preparing for the next phase of this impromptu reunion. The doctor finally decides to speak up.

“You haven’t been sleeping enough, have you.” Tighnari examining your under eyes.

“I never sleep enough, you know that.” Of course you never slept enough.

How could you sleep when the threat of falling behind the geniuses sitting around a library table was always looming over you? Geniuses who easily grasp the concepts and theories that elude you. How could you lay in bed when you had to catch up to them?

“So, why this sudden get-together?” Impatience rising inside you with each passing tick of the clock.

Dropping the formalities and social pleasantries, you watch as another round of shifting eyes passes. You already had an inkling of the answer they’re still hesitating to address. Finally, your former Kshahrewar senior responds for the group.

“We’re worried about you, you haven’t been in contact for a while now.” Kaveh’s voice was low and mellow, you could tell he took extra effort in marking it such.

The same low and mellow tone he’d speak to you with as he tried to explain your mistakes on an exam, the tone which accompanied the pity in his gaze toward you as he pointed out each miscalculation on your paper. The tone made you ball your fist up on your lap.

“I’m fine, just busy.”

“Please don’t start with that again.” The blond sighs, sympathy still ever-present in his eyes.

“I’m just busy with work, as are all of you, we’re no longer students with minimal responsibilities,” you retort.

The days when a group of friends could gather around a table for hours on end, half bantering and half studying, basking in the Spring warmth streaming in from the grand windows of the House of Daena have long passed.

“We all have busy careers, that’s true, but not to the extent of being a detriment to our health.” With a sigh, Tighnari began his health lecture.

Expounding upon the negative consequences of a poor work-life balance. Shifting your focus instead on tuning out this lecture you didn’t sign up for.

“You stopped listening… of course,” a deep sigh concludes the doctor’s sermon.

Ah, you’ve been found out. The polite smile straining itself upon your lips, legs itching to walk out of this restrictive space.

“Here, it’s a contact of mine, I recommend you give her a call-”

“It’s fine.” You promptly push away the business card just as Tighnari presents it to you, a thread of patience stretched thinly.

“She can help you through-” he continues.

“It’s fine, my research is just busy-”

“This isn’t healthy.”

“It’s my research.” A sharp undertone leaks through your professional demeanor.

“And this is why we’re worried about you!” Kaveh’s patience was the first snap.

Then again, your senior might have been the light of Kshahrewar and a praised genius, but he was never the best at handling his emotional regulation.

“Look around, don’t you see how concerned we are about you? No returned texts or calls and no answers at a doorbell for years, only ever talking about this research. It’s as if you-” he stops himself, rudy eyes meeting with your cold stare.

He knew better than to finish that sentence, you knew that he knew he shouldn’t.

“We’re worried about you, this research… it’s not good for you.” Tighnari interjects, attempting to shift the course of this intervention.

Of course, when the development of an android was announced, there wasn’t just discourse amongst the general public, but debates raged throughout academia as well. How unfortunate it is that friends now stand at polar ends.

“It’s my research,” you reaffirm.

This research was why you got your doctorate, it’s why you have a job, it’s why you have a house. This research has entangled itself into the very fibers of your life. It was where a predetermined path had led you.

The room fills once more with a lull, nothing but deep sighs and ever-shifting eyes. Neither side is able to get through to the other. Typical of most academic debates. Still, it seems they weren’t ready to end the intervention so soon.

“Listen… we’re worried for you, I… I know it’s been very difficult these past years.” Your senior takes a step closer.

That same sympathetic timbre brings a vile taste to your tongue. You stay silent in favor of pushing the bitterness down as it tries to claw its way through your polite façade.

“I… know what it must have been like for you, It’s been hard on all of us. I’ve experienced something similar, so I can tell you-”

“I’m sorry, Kaveh. But tragedies shouldn’t be compared, because they’ll never have a fair comparison.” You end the conversation.

Just like how it isn’t fair to compare stars who were their own centers of gravity with a mere rock at the mercy of an orbital pull to give it direction.

Even when you sat at the same table as them, you were never at the same level as them. Families with academic prestige, minds blessed with wisdom, and the freedom to pursue a self-chosen path. You could only ever look up at what you lacked.

“Your worlds kept on spinning, your lives move on with the change of the season. But not mine, mine stopped long ago.” It’s not fair to compare a rock to a star, from their silence, you assume they knew that too.

“I’m now taking the initiative to make it start again, don’t interfere.” Your valediction to the geniuses whom you couldn’t live up to.

It’s just the nature of this world, geniuses walked their own paths while others took another. Geniuses can’t understand those others, just as others can’t understand geniuses.

This doctor’s appointment has gone on for long enough. Gathering your belongings, you stride past them, eyes refusing to meet.

Your hand pried open the door, pausing just at the threshold as Cyno finally breaks his silence.

“Is this truly what you want? To defy the edicts of finality with research?”

Ah, what an inquiry. Perhaps it’s just like a lawyer to ask such a thing.

“Is my research in violation of any laws in Sumeru?” You refuse to meet his scarlet condemnation.

“As of now, no.”

“Then I don’t see how this involves you, there’s no place for personal biases and mortals in the judicial system.” Crossing the threshold, the door creaks close behind you as hurried steps echo through the sterile hall.

This was a mistake, you should’ve never come here. Your body was fine, your vitals are fine, you’re fine. There wasn’t a point in wasting time here, you needed to leave this place filled with faces offering you condolences. Exiting the narrow hall back into the dim murmurs that fill the waiting room, the last thread of patience starts to splinter.

From the muddled chatter, a bright shrill rang above them all. Interrupting your contemplation as your eyes impulsively search for the source. Even in a sea of passing faces and colors, it didn’t take you long to find it.

A young girl grins a smile with a few gaps as she stretches her arms out to her sides, mimicking an airplane. A young father helpless to his daughter’s giggles, hands secured around her legs as he lets her soar on his shoulders. Next to his side was a giggling mother, watching with amusement and endearment.

A private moment hidden amongst the waiting room, you look away. You should return to the private walls of your house before that thread inevitably breaks. Sliding glass doors part to grant you exit from this suffocating cage.

Like a speck of dust drifting in the breeze, you disappear into the bustling crowd of Sumeru City. The push and pull of strangers further you along your route, even as your mind drifts off.

With modern advancements in aerospace engineering, the chances of a plane crashing have decreased significantly, with recent statistics citing only 1 in about 11 million. A 0.00001% chance, a nonzero chance.

How long ago since the last time you’ve been inside an airport? What were your last memories of an airport? Do you remember?

–----

“Are you sure you can’t come with us?” Your mother’s thumb traced over your hand.

“It’s a bit too late for me to pack, we’re already at the airport, Mom.”

“Don’t you want to visit Fontaine? Didn’t you say they had really advanced things there?” She didn’t let go of your hand.

“I’m busy with my thesis.” You were still in the midst of getting a Ph.D., the very thing they demanded of you.

“But I planned this trip so we could spend time together.” Your mother tried to get you to meet her gaze.

You adverted your eyes. So this is how they spent their recent financial flexibility. With a scholarship and research-assistant salary, you had enough to cover the tuition by yourself, relieving your parents of that burden. But to get that scholarship and salary, you had to pay with your time.

“I’m busy, mom.” You freed your hand from her grasp.

“But-”

“Stop it dear, she’s not going to change her mind.” Your father’s gruff voice stopped your mother.

“There’s no point in trying to change the mind of an ungrateful child.”

You felt the weight of his disappointed stare upon you, a frown formed on your lips as they pressed together. This was a sudden trip announced to you just a few days prior, you didn’t have time to accompany them. But they didn’t seem to care.

Of course they didn’t. Your parents only ever saw the grades, the diplomas, the results. But they never bothered to see the anguish you endured to give it to them.

“Enjoy your trip.” Words barely passed your clenched teeth as you turned around and walked away.

An ungrateful planet ignored the calls from their mother in their first successful act of defiance. Trying to break away from their gravitational pull.

–----

That was your last memory of the airport.

Those were the last memories two parents had of their child.

The child they sacrificed their time, labor, and freedom to build a better life for. Your parent’s last memories were that of an ungrateful child, maybe it was the last scene they thought of as a plane was swallowed by the salty depths.

Humans, defined by their curiosity, will always yearn to reach as high as they can. Tales warning those to never fly too close to the ever-bright star ignored in the pursuit of radiant curiosity. Your parents were no different.

They ever had the chance to travel, too busy trying to provide food in front of you. So when the burdening weight was lifted, naturally they wanted to stretch their wings to see the views they never got to in their youth. They always wanted to touch the sky, to reach for the moon.

There’s a proverb often told to young minds: ‘Shoot for the moon, even if you fall, you can still land on a star’.

This saying is riddled with inaccuracies. The stars are much further away than the serene moon. Beckoning the curious eyes to look at them, for curious hands to yearn for them.

But once the glue on those wings are melted away by selfish rays, what is there to catch them besides the cold unfeeling ocean? Did they sink from the memories of an ungrateful child weighing on them?

You should’ve been on that plane.

The familiar features of your neighborhood come into view, the doors of your house are just ahead. Just hold on, don’t let that thread snap just yet, just a few more steps.

Tighnari had his father and mother working right alongside him at the Bimarstan.

Cyno had regular visits to his adoptive father, and sometimes his adoptive sister Lisa visits too.

Kaveh had reconnected with his mother overseas, now having a few younger half-siblings who jump to greet him every time he visits.

Lives still spinning and warm in the light of their brilliance. What do you have?

A job in a career picked out for you. Paychecks rotting in a bank account with no one to pay back. A spacious and hallow house with no one to reside in its empty walls, only displaying a doctorate you loathed.

A stray rock who lost her stars. Wandering without their gravitational pull in the vacuum of a lonely darkness. Just what do you have?

“Alhaitham,” you call out just as the front door slams behind you.

You could hear his steady steps approaching along the wooden floor, but it’s too slow so your frenzied steps close in the distance between your two forms. The thread gives in and snapping as the recoil proliferates through your body.

Without a greeting, no prompt, or prior warning your grasp wrinkles his once pristine button-down.

The bitter tears you held back now soak into the fabric as even viler cries choke your voice. The shame of displaying such a sight in front of a being whose eyes don’t produce moisture is long abandoned. In the walls of this hallow house, your broken sobs echo off.

He stands still in the middle of the hall, the low hum of his motor resonating in your ears as you hide your face deeper into the synthetic skin of his chest. But that’s fine, the whir of motor is enough of a substitute for a heartbeat.

Alhaitham stands in front of the reflection staring back at him, he had undocked himself from the charging port not too long ago. Tracing over the synthetic material stretched over his imitation of a collarbone as his mind wanders.

There aren’t enough chemicals in tears to make them corrosive, nor were they at the temperature to boil.

So why does it burn?

Trailing his fingertips where your tears soaked onto his skin, recollections of the searing sensation that afflicted the area with each sorrowful drop. Choking sobs which he caused.

He failed to consider all causal factors to assess the situation fully and failed to appraise all possible alternatives. He failed to make the right decision, and he let harm befall you because of it. It’s strange, there’s nothing wrong with his eyes, yet he finds it hard to look in the mirror.

Teal gaze scrutinizes the arms, legs, and body in the reflection. The reflection in front of him had all the identifiable components of a man, but they’re all synthetic.

From the tips of his sliver hair to the vast expanse of his skin, they’re all made from high-quality silicon parts supported by a metal frame. An engineered body with a motor in place of a heart.

Maybe that’s why he failed to make the right decision, he had no heart to weigh in on the ruling.

–-------------------------------------------------------------

The android is faced with a new dilemma.

From the entrance of the kitchen, Alhaitham watches you. A spoon absentmindedly swirling in the cup of coffee on the counter in front of you. Your thoughts wander elsewhere, the rays of a setting sun unable to light up dull spaced-out eyes.

He’s observed your condition for the past week, no hint of improvement.

A new dilemma he must decipher, the urgency rising with each passing second as the spoon continues.

The lull of the evening air was shattered by the sound of a porcelain cup meeting the tiled floor. Jagged pieces and coffee spilled all along the cold surface. Listlessly your eyes move to access the mess on the floor, spoon still grasped in your hand.

“Ah.” That was all your lips could say.

Limbs slowed with lethargy, you crouch down closer to the broken pieces scattered about. Bare hand reaching out to grab the sharp edges unthinkingly. A firm grasp prevents your touch from the ragged porcelain.

“It’s dangerous, I’ll handle it.” Alhaitham brings your hand further away from the hazard.

Your aloof eyes trail past him toward a wall where he could hear a clock tick before they returned to his resolute stare.

“It’s past 5 p.m.”

“A hazard has appeared in the environment, it’s protocol that I clear it.” His rehearsed response.

“Oh… alright.” Limplessness returning to your wrist within his hold, body too lethargic to object.

With you seated at the kitchen table away from the jagged edges that could potentially pierce your skin, Alhaitham begins gathering the pieces. As your aloof eyes wander about the monitor of your laptop, his mind ponders a dilemma.

It’s often said that guilt is held in the heart. In novels and human anecdotes, it's been described to him as a burdensome heaviness that sinks the heart.

A sensation reminiscent of drowning in icy water. A sensation only perceivable through a beating mortal heart.

Alhaitham is an android, he’s aware of this. A being with silicon skin encasing a metal frame. A motor in place of where a mortal heart would be.

So what is this weight burdening his chest?

An internal diagnostic returned no errors and no reports of any damage or unusual occurrence within his systems. Yet, a heaviness brewed deep inside his chest, its mass increasing each sunrise and fall, with every passing moment the riddle was left unanswered.

How could a motor hold guilt? How could the weight of judgment manifest itself in the absence of an organic heart that beats instead of whirs? How could an inorganic object possibly suffer guilt?

All the mora poured into his creation, all the hours of research contributed to his algorithms, and all the texts he’s scanned through were all for naught. The pinnacle of scientific and mechanical development couldn’t solve a simple conundrum.

The floorboard creaks under the weight of his steady strides as he moves about the corridor, the soft swishes of a broom coinciding with each step.

Dust had begun to settle in the crevices of the home, it’s about time that he took up the mantle that was supposed to be his.

Could an explanation of this weight be the backlog of tasks and responsibilities he had pushed off? Chores he ignored in favor of browsing the contents of a library? A burden he selfishly passed onto your shoulders.

Maybe after he completes the tasks that were supposed to be assigned to him he could clear the cache, then this weight in his chest would subside.

The bristles of the broom scratch against a door, the light force setting the frame ajar further. Revealing the dust-coated scene in front of him. A boundary he was restricted from.

Alhaitham concluded that this small corner of the house must hold some sentimental value to you, thus it’s best for him to not disturb it.

Just as he goes to close the door, Alhaitham scans around the environment identifying the shape of a journal tucked away under an old table.

He’s not permitted to enter, but all books belong in the library. Spines sorted along wooden selves, not on a dusty floor.

An exception shall be granted, setting aside the broom, he steps in to collect the neglected book.

While crouching down and gathering the covers into his hold, a different gleam catches his eye. The light reflects off its glass surface and highlights the dust particles dancing in the still air.

With his free hand, he picks it up, teal eyes running along the glass orb. After a moment of processing the object, he successfully identifies it as a toy.

A popular model to display an artificial starry night among blank walls. Alhaitham turns to follow a trail of cut-out stars pasted all along the walls. The soft glow of their plastic shapes subdued by the brilliance of the afternoon sun streaming in.

Were you interested in stars? Glancing out the window, he discerns the murky shapes of buildings in Sumeru City off in the distance.

This house is located in the suburbs away from the noisy clammer of the city streets and traffic. However, where the sound waves couldn’t travel didn’t mean the sky around this quiet neighborhood was uncontaminated by activities in the city.

When the sun retreats away for rest, the city doesn’t follow suit.

Through the power of fluorescent lights in street lamps and office buildings, humans created their own artificial daylight to continue the bustle of their lives. Light which polluted the night sky and stole the radiance away from her stars.

Unable to enjoy the natural tapestry of the night, did you substitute the company of stars with toy imitations?

Turning the orb in his hand, his eyes notice the signs of damage along the projector. Perhaps that’s why it sat abandoned in this room.

He’s stayed in this restricted space long enough. Carefully closing the door behind him, hands still full.

–-------------------------------------------------------------

“I’ve uncovered a strange object, my software isn’t able to identify it.” Alhaitham stands just outside the open office door.

Sparing him a glance away from your monitor, your brows pinched together in confusion at his sudden report during the late hours of the night.

“A strange object?” You inquire again.

“Yes, I’ve scanned over it a few times but no results are returning.”

“Huh…”

Teals watching you press a finger against your pursed lips in concentration. A habit of yours often displayed when amid contemplation. After a few breaths, your eyes meet his as you give your reply.

“Well, where is this object?”

“Come with me.”

Along the wooden floor, two pairs of steps tap rhythmically in time with one another as they traverse the hallway stopping at the living room where the mysterious object resides.

Approaching the coffee table in the center, Alhaitham steps to the side to present it as it sits upon the polished surface.

“This… is what’s been giving your software issues?” The quirk returned to your brow as you cast him a glance.

Alhaitham simply nobs as you approach the object closer. Kneeling beside it, your eyes examine the familiar device.

“It’s a planetarium projector, it projects the scene of a night sky, in other words: just a toy.”

He hums in acknowledgment, carefully treading toward the light switch in the corner as the toy holds the gaze of your eyes.

“It should be thrown away… It’s broken after all.” Your tone dismissive, yet your hand caresses the broken toy with tenderness.

“It’s not,” he replies.

Perking your head up, you turn to face him with that same furrow between your brows.

“What do you mean, Alhaitham-”

He flicks the switch, plunging the room in a blanket of darkness earning a squeak of surprise from you. The device whirs as it awakens, painting the blank tapestry with a scene of the night sky with its shimmering lights.

The vibrant shapes of stars and planets take their place along the living room wall, creating a private galaxy that surrounds you.

Your sentence remains unfinished upon your tongue as your eyes take in the display encompassing you. The nostalgic glimmer of the night and her stars twinkle in the reflection of your irises as he settles down beside you.

“Did… did you fix it?”

He hums in response.

It only took a bit of study and careful tinkering to restore the worn pieces and gears. A simple effort was all it took to allow the projector to shine its recreation of the stars. Returning a light that he hasn’t seen in a while.

“Thank you, Alhaitham,” you breathe out, lips curling up softly and eyes still enraptured by the stars.

He doesn’t respond this time as his teal gaze focuses on your expression, on the smile that’s been missing for some time. It’s strange, this sensation manifesting in his chest. He thought if he was able to restore the light to your eyes, then that heaviness brewed deep inside his chest would clear. But it remained.

His system unable to express nor suppress the heaviness which bubbled up like seafoam rising to the surface.

The sensation was different than it was before. Instead of a mass that weighed him down to the bottom of a cold depth, it was more reminiscent of a warm ebb. Washing over every limb of his as he studied the curvature of your lips and the glimmer of your eyes.

Another internal diagnostic wasn’t necessary, for Alhaitham had reached his epiphany to a conundrum. An engineered body may lack a heart, but not a conscious.

A consciousness that acts like a vessel collecting the accumulation of that heaviness. A heaviness that couldn’t be called ‘guilt’.

No, perhaps it has always been something other than ‘guilt’.

It only took until the vessel overflowed for an engineered body to recognize it for what it truly was.

There’s something strange happening to your Android. Reviewing the diagnostic reports of his systems returned nothing out of the ordinary. So why did you suspect something to be wrong? Perhaps you could call it intuition.

Or perhaps it’s the lack of books strewn about the house. Or the initiation of tasks without a prompt. Or that night a living room was filled with the radiance of tiny dots along empty walls. Something strange is happening.

“Alhaitham, what’s taking you so long in the kitchen?” You poke your head out from the kitchen doorway, sights honing in on your android currently scrutinizing the recipe book in his hands.

Perhaps there’s a defect in the print, if the black ink isn’t contrasting enough with the beige paper, which time has faded, it does cause issues with optical character recognition. Maybe the past splatters of sauces and oils upon the aged book were too much of a hurdle.

“Chef Mao is a renowned cook, but his recipes are vague. He suggests a pinch of salt to enhance the flavor of this dish. I’ve calculated that Chef Mao has a 19.3 cm hand length which entails that his ‘pinches’ measure around 0.356 grams. However, he said to add Jueyun Chili oil until fragrant, I’m still processing the data I’ve collected on his olfactory system, the calculations will take around five minutes.” He turns back to the stove.

“Alhaitham.”

“Yes?”

“Please put down the book and get out of the kitchen.” A bold choice of words from you.

“Was my response unsatisfactory?” His teal eyes land on you.

“It’s just that I’m hungry.”

“This dish should be complete in around 90 minutes accounting for the other-”

“No,” you interrupt.

He studies you for a while, accessing the situation and the unfinished dish still simmering on the stove. After a few breaths, he returns a response.

“Shall I order delivery from Lambad’s Tavern?” His hand switches off the fire.

He conceded. The notoriously stubborn and fickle android conceded to your whims. There was definitely something wrong. You pace into the kitchen, getting close to observe his teal irises for any sign of possible flaws.

“Alhaitham, you’ve been behaving strangely as of late, did you encounter something?”

He returns your gaze, teal reflecting off your irises as you continue to study him, and him you. His silence only amounts to the deepening furrow between your brows as your assessment of his frame fails to identify any impairments.

“Why have you been behaving like this?” You prompt again.

“Have I neglected my responsibilities for so long that fulfilling them has become a cause for concern?” He finally responds.

“Now’s not the time for jests,” you huff.

“From what I’ve reviewed on human behavior, it’s not strange to want to care for the person I love.” A blunt statement.

From the window, the moonlight peeks upon the strange phenomenon occurring. Two bodies remain motionless in a silent lull.

One pair of placate teal eyes and one pair of bewildered eyes too lost in each other to mind the witness intruding on this private moment. Words finally conquer in your brain, ending the quietude.

“Refrain from saying nonsensical words.” Your lips press together into a thin line.

“Do you believe such a thing is beyond my capabilities?”

You couldn’t respond, or more accurately, you simply didn’t know how to. A being without a heart, a being who lacked the necessary chemicals to create the cocktail known as emotions. How is it possible?

“I have no heart, I’m aware. But I have a conscience.” He must’ve deduced the exact thoughts racing through your head.

Your brows only furrow further as you wait for him to continue his explanation.

“Every person should have something that they believe in and hold on to from beginning to end. Otherwise, it's easy to succumb to the vicissitudes of life and find yourself being led astray.” Taking note of the glistening shine beginning to pool in your wide eyes.

“And I believe that I love you.” His sincere gaze never leaves your form.

Not a single sentence is able to form upon your tongue. An expression he couldn’t decipher upon your features. Perhaps his statement was too long-winded, an overly complicated explanation. Maybe a simpler one could convey his message better.

You’re the first to break eye contact, choosing to watch the tiles on the floor over him. He remains firm in his stance, not faltering once as the seconds turn into minutes. Your shoulders rise as your lungs take a deep breath.

“… say that again… please.” Words just barely above a whisper.

He could only bend to your whims.

“I love you.”

Your head lifts up to face him, your hands hesitating momentarily as they cup his cool cheeks, fingers trembling. Something glimmering in your eyes as droplets escape your lashes.

This time, Alhaitham wipes them away before they could trail down your cheeks.

You did it. All those long hours, all those reports and trials, all of these years sacrificed to research. You’ve created a complete human consciousness with your bare hands. One that understands sorrow, joy, and love.

You succeeded.

However, in this moment as you peer into the teal eyes of your Magnum opus, as he reflects the endearment in your own. The notion of reporting this revolutionary milestone in the development of artificial intelligence never crossed your mind once.

Instead, all you did in this moment was pull his face down closer. Closing the distance between the two of you as your lips felt his for the first time. Warm skin against a soft imitation, merging until a lukewarm temperature formed between their touch.

A gentle, yet longing connection of two lips.

Only when your lungs protest for air did you pull away, hands still encompassing his face as he reveals his teal eyes back from behind closed lids. Eyes reflecting one another as a tender lull settles between you. This time, his whisper mingles with the soft intermission.

“Was that a kiss?”

Such an innocent question, one you couldn’t help but giggle at as you nod your head.

“Could you show me again?” His hands found purchase on your hips, beckoning you closer to his frame.

You surrender to the call, pressing against him as your lips reconnect. A rhythm soon settled in place as they pressed into each other deeper. One that was interrupted once more by your lung's protest for oxygen. At a mere kiss, your mind ceased to remember how to breathe.

“Again.” A baritone voice just above the hush of your pants.

And so your lips meet thrice, this time in an all-consuming embrace. A hesitant brush of a tongue against your lips, requesting access. Your hands move up to caress his soft locks as you grant it. Latching onto each other as the shroud consumed you both wholly.

A beautifully feverish delirium. The line in the sand that separated a person from a thing jumbled until the outline disappeared. A singularity, an amorous occurrence.

He releases your lips, the lust in your eyes reflected in his own. Giving a moment for your mind to return to attention as his lips brush away the fading traces of wetness down your cheeks.

“A kitchen isn’t a suitable setting for such an activity,” he whispers next to your ear.

Baritone trailing a line of goosebumps up your neck and you nod in response, burying your face into the crook of his neck which fit you perfectly.

Slowly his hands travel down your hips, awaiting your confirmation for the next step just as you permitted it. In one fluid transition, his arm wraps around the back of your legs, effortlessly lifting you off the ground as your arms envelop his neck.

Steady steps pad along a wooden hallway, the hinges of your bedroom singing their welcome as the two of you advance to a more suitable setting. Depositing you upon cool sheets, fabric wrinkling as your body settles in. The arms still wrapped around his neck pull him closer as this time your legs join in luring him closer to your warmth.

It’s strange, is it possible for his lips to crave yours? The light of the moon reflected off the glossiness coating them. He delves back in as his body hovers over yours, unwilling to be apart from the softness it yearned for.

The soft flesh of your writhing body against his firm hands, feeling up your heated skin he slips under your shirt. Bunching up the fabric as he explores more of the new expanse of skin. A lovely whimper vibrates against his lips at his actions, spurring him to continue.

Tracing over the outline of your bra, his fingers creep under. Kneading the plushness of your breast, feeling your nipple beginning to perk up against his ministration. An itch stretching from the pits of his desire, a curious craving to witness the sight concealed away.

Disjoining your lips as a string of saliva connects them, he pushes your shirt further up. All the while your hands grasp onto the edges of the fabric and push them back down. Bemusing his beryl eyes as they catch how the tips of your ears were aflame, a peculiar display of bashfulness.

Well, a sight he’s witnessed on a few occasions. Such as when you’d leave the shower wrapped in a towel just to cross paths with him. A timidity that gradually faded away as you grew more confident in the privacy restrictions in place, ensuring that the secrets of this home remained in the confines of its walls.

So why is this shyness making its reappearance now?

“Are you uncomfortable anywhere?” His words ghost over the shell of your vulnerable ear.

Causing you to jolt and pull down the edges of your shirt to cover the bottom of your loungewear shorts.

“No, it’s just been a while…” Your sentence trails off, eyes still focusing everywhere but him.

Ah, a mere string of words, yet they tempted something from the depths. An oppressive sentiment, one that made the grip upon your soft flesh grow firmer. He’s yet to have accessed the entirety of your figure, a view still denied to him by your taut shirt, but another entity had.

There was a myriad of questions he could use to interrogate. However, as his teal gaze observe how your teeth lightly tug at the bottom of your plush lips in fidgety. Alhaitham devises a much kinder scheme.

It’s fine, he can overwrite them with his touches.

“What can I do to gain permission?” A question asked as a line of kisses press their way into your fervent skin, goosebumps following each one.

Biting down to muffle the bashful moans into whimpers you burrow your face into the plushness of the pillow. Alhaitham continues to soothe kisses over the fabric of your shirt until they finally reach your quivering hands still stretching the hem.

His hand encloses one of yours, bringing it away from the fabric refuge to press his lips against your knuckle. An action that made you peak back at him, meeting a patient gaze awaiting you.

Another soft press of his lips against your knuckle in silent request, at last, got you to release the hem, allowing him to push the fabric up to expose what was hidden from him. Permitting him to explore the sultry expanses with a wake of kisses, your hand finding reprieve entangling themselves with his.

His free hand slipping behind your back, he unfastens the clasp of your bra with a slight tug, a relatively simple task when you learn how such a contraption works.

His grasp untangles from yours as he pushes the useless articles of clothing off your body, you raise your arms over your head to aid in the process.

He rewards you with another flurry of kisses in the valley of your breast as his large hands encase the softness of your breast. A motion that made your legs pull him closer.

Your touches dance along his frame as well, unable to differentiate the difference between skin and a recreation. More whimpers leave your lips at his actions, prodding something in him to do more. To steal more of those sinful breaths from you, something in his coding thirsting for more.

Sliding his hands back down the curves of your body, he hooks his fingers over the rim of your shorts and panties pulling them down. Glass eyes zeroing in on the glistening thread that linked your panties and slit. Proof of arousal, your body awakening its cardinal impulses.

Could the signals transmitted through his system be classified in the same way?

He wants to investigate further. Moving his face lower to inspect the saturated folds that beckoned him.

Only to be denied by the gates of your knees pressing together, as your body curls up in fortification. Denying him the privilege of satiating his curiosity is like denying a man water in an ocean of sand. Evaluating how your eyes were squeezed together in shame, he had foresaw this.

“Mmm, there seems to be an incongruity, do you want me to stop?” Large hands grasping at your plush thighs, but making no move to part them.

Your head responds with a shake, but your knees still locked together. Your attention centering on him bashfully.

“Then guide me, tell me how to please you,” he proposes hands soothing your tense legs.

Utilizing the skill he had accessed a few moments ago once more, gracing your skin with his lips awaiting your response. The tension in your legs loosens with each kiss, and gradually a fissure forms in the barrier of your defense, knees parting.

However, he doesn’t cross the threshold, no, he restrained himself from indulging too soon. Half-ladden eyes peering up to connect with yours.

“Well, tell me. What do you want me to do?”

A pout makes its appearance on your face, but what could you do? It is your responsibility to shepherd him since the beginning, to have him step over the line dividing an android and man. Best to take on your duty, no?

Parting your legs further, cheeks ablaze and eyes adverted as you allow his teal gaze to absorb the uninterrupted view of your dripping arousal. Your hands aiding as they thwart the urge of your bashful legs’s urge to preserve your dignity.

“Please use your mouth and hands,” you prompt, face pressing deeper into one side of a pillow under his stare.

Alhaitham encroaches closer to your glistening folds, his large hands supporting each one of your thighs. Approaching the details of your honeypot in front of him, concentrating on the little nub which lures him closer. He presses a light peck against the nub as your body flinches.

“Like this?”

Plush lips pressed tightly, you respond with timid shakes.

Returning back, his lips delving deeper this time, an audible pop when he pulls away from your taunted clit. Feeling the muscles tighten in your legs.

“Like that?” Mirth leaked through his baritone words.

Your head shakes with more vigor.

“Then how about this?” This time his tongue takes action, dipping into the center of your honeypot before flicking up at your nub.

You return a restrained moan, teal eyes picking up on the twitch of your folds. It seems that he’s uncovered the proper procedures. Peering up from between your legs at the harsh rises of your chest by rush breaths as your eyes remained sealed behind lashes, he decided to impart some mercy. Taking the initiative to shoulder a bit of your duty.

Retracing his steps, his tongue repeating its previous motions of lapping up the nectar that slipped out from your folds. Always ending each strip up your slit with a flick to your sensitive nub.

Your hands abandon their post in favor of snaring themselves in his ashen trestles as your back begins to arch off the sheets. Thighs beginning to enclose around his head, yet it didn’t deter the vigor in his motions one bit.

If anything, it spurred them on. The added pressure of your legs pulling him against your weeping folds assisted him in his quest. Testing which pattern made your body quiver, calculating the pace of his tongue's flicks made your hips buck up.

Alhaitham takes notice of how your greedy hole seems to be clenching down every time a tongue dipped in, you did request for his mouth and fingers after all.

A finger begins to prod at your entrance, coating itself in the overflowing slick as it traces the puckering entry. Your whines increase in volume as your greed escalates, legs locking around him. Thus, he yields to your neediness, filling your lonely walls with the company of his finger.

Thrusting it in time with his licks as he rubs against the slick muscles. Your back arched off the bed, your fingers grounding themselves in the tangles of his hair as if trying to hold on to a shred of reason.

His interest has been greatly piqued, he wanted to see what it would look like. He wants to see what your expression looks like when you fall into the depths of debauchery. You’d permit him such privileges right? After all, curiosity is what defines the human spirit.

A second finger soon joins in, its thickness stretching and prepping your walls, cultivating your arousal into a rapacious hunger.

Articulate tongue now focused on abusing your clit in the swipes of sweet torture, lips encasing around it to provide some suction. Fingers honing in on relocating the weakness deep within you which made your voice peak and tremble.

He could hear the harshness of your panting breath between each escalating moan, how your walls squeezed and sucked his fingers deeper. Teal gaze never once ceased their evaluation of your face. Making sure to appraise each lewd detail of your impending ecstasy.

It’s impossible to stand at the apex of euphoria forever, no, for gravity will always pull you back down. A pivotal moment in time as the forces tugged down at you as you fell, losing your shame and sanity along the way.

A fall from grace which etches itself in the roll of your eye and vulgar expression, caused by the tempest of pleasure seeps into every fiber of your being as you plummeted down into the ocean of rapture.

The fingers intertwined in his hair pulling his face flushed against your pulsing cunt. Even with your mind fractured by orgasmic bliss your body still reacts to each lap of his tongue as he manages the slick aftermath. Fingers stroking your sweet spot through each contraction of your walls.

“Nng!” A feeble push against his ashen locks, your abused clit crying for a moment of reprieve.

Oh? It seems your consciousness returned faster than he expected. With a resounding pop, he grants your overstimulated nerves a moment to recover. Allowing the traces of your nectar to dribble down his chin. Taking this moment to verify the effectiveness of his scheme.

The air dense with the fragrance of lust, lips red from the abuse of your teeth, mouth agape as your lungs gasp tongue almost lulling out.

An absolutely debauched face, a sight which brought the corners of his lips to curl.

Counting the beads of sweat that lingered on your skin, his rationale urged him to swipe them off to prevent a chill from plaguing you. Withdrawing away from your form he plans his destination to the bath to retrieve a towel, only for a smaller hand to snag him in its hold.

Alhaitham turns back to face you, awaiting your next prompt. However, your bitten lips couldn’t muster up the courage to utter the plea it so desperately wanted. Thus, your eyes connect with his, praying that a slow blink could convey the invocation your voice couldn’t.

Standing there as a few breaths pass, the teal glow of his irises indicates his deduction of what your eyes conveyed. Ah yes, the passionate entanglement experience just a moment before could be classified as ‘foreplay’. The appetizer to the main event.

So your appetite has yet to be satiated, evident from how your thighs pressed against each other in an attempt to quell the ache. How could he leave a task undone?

“Show me what you desire,” he instructs.

Hesitantly, your hands encroach closer to the rim of his slacks. Your every action observed by him. Resting your palms against the outline of a zipper, you glance up to seek confirmation, he grants it.

You undo the button at the top before pulling the zipper down. Allowing for you to shimmy his briefs and slacks down to the floor. Revealing to the world, with the moon as your witness, every intricate detail placed into his engineered body.

It felt so foreign in your hands. Encircling your fingers around his girth, tracing over the bumps of each vein. Amid your admiration, his body overtook yours. Pinning you back against the damp sheets. It seems you were very interested in this feature of his, perhaps it was the cure for the yearning between your writhing legs.

Your legs splayed to either side of his hips, a clear path to your greed. His hand spreads your collected slick along his length. Its bulbous tip presses against your quivering entrance. Meeting your half-lidden eyes, he awaits your permission. Thus, you captured his lips into another kiss, just as the tip breaches the threshold of your entrance.

Finally giving your aching walls the delicious stretch it craved. A moan resonates between connected lips, your eyes beginning to roll back as he sinks deeper and deeper, obscene squelches following each inch.

Thick tip pressed up against the deepest parts of you as he bottoms out, your hands finding refuge along his back. Breaking the lock of your lips, Alhaitham lifts cants his head up to take in the scene under him.

Hovering over your panting form, his body caging you against the wrinkled fabric, feeling your unseemly breaths against his skin. A teal glow reflected in the lust-hazed pools of your eyes.

He understands now, why so many poets lost their minds, trying their whole lives to find the words to chronicle the sight laid out before him along messy sheets.

Under his tense study, your fingers lightly claw at the smooth expanse of his back. A soundless prayer to quell the famine, your gummy walls coaxing around his cock with its embrace.

“Haitham,” you mewl.

Not even the greatest saint could deny your request, he wagers they’d gladly walk through the gates of damnation just for a morsel of you.

Rolling his hips back, he drags his girth along the walls of your greed ensuring that they feel the outline of every vein. Feeling the cool air brush against the slick dripping off his length, only the bulbous tip remained in the clutches of your cunt.

A muffled whine of protest from you interrupted as he sunk back in, accompanied by a filthy squelch.

Robust hands encompass the edges of your waist, he repeats the roll of his hips. Feeling the tightening clutches of your core, croons falling off your tongue with each toing and froing.

What symphonies could he draw from those agape lips of yours?

He wants to witness the sinful hymns of your voice as you are overtaken by the throes of pleasure. Perhaps he should conduct an experiment of his own. Through the raunchy air, a clap pierces the leaden veil, your plush hips pressed flush against his anchored ones, a thrust that seared your nerves and curled your toes.

“Ah!” Moan ripped from your throat.

Yes, that’s the amplitude he wants to discern with his ears.

Continue to sing in that octave. It’s as if pulled by the reins of sin, he finds himself experiencing hunger for the first time, fixating on tearing more of those chants from you. He drew back his hips then forced them back in deeper. A wail followed each rake of his cock, walls accenting each thrust with fluttering clenches. Mewls and whines resonated through the room as his firm grip didn’t slacken with each rock of the bed.

Pace escalating and remorseless, skin clashing against skin, the heat of your writhing body scorching him. But he won’t relent, not until he’s taken what he wanted. Driving you deeper into the creaking mattress, thrusting and filling each crevice of your core. Your soft breast pinned against his solid frame.

Your face pressed into the crook of his neck, legs imprisoned within the confines of his bruising grasp, toes painfully arched in an attempt to distribute the burn of the maddening euphoria firing through each nerve. The moans of his name like a prayer of salvation, a chant for every punishing strike against your deepest weakness. Your fingers now clawing against his durable back for a foothold for your fleeing sanity. You feared that this time, it might not return to you.

Oddly, a voice from the rearmost corner of your mind whispered for you to relinquish it. Trade in rationale, sensibility, and morals for absolute ecstasy. Your teeth had already sunk into the apple, its juices dribbling down the corners of your mouth. Why not swallow it down? Get drunk off the wet claps of skin, the grind of his muscular torso against your stimulated clit, the slams of his girthy cock and thick tip. Why deny yourself from the euphoria robbed from you for so long?

So you concede to its beckoning, swallowing down the last wisp of sanity until it drowned in the maddening abuse of your sweet spot from his pistoning hips. Granting you entry to true pleasure as the knot in your core unravels. Backing arching off the mattress, mending the fibers of your being impossibly close to his. Head thrown back against a ruffled pillow as a long shameless wail erupts from your trembling lips. Lost in the tides of rapture.

Alhaitham’s body stills as his ears digest the beautiful aria of your undoing. Feeling your slick and warm walls contract all around his cock. Milking him for every last speck of gratification he could offer you.

A moment couldn’t be classified as a simple impulse for procreation. No, he believed it went beyond the lust hanging in the air. An indescribable urge to mend your bodies as close as possible, to becoming wholly one with one another. The thump of your heartbeat against the whir of a motor as they merge into a mantra.

Is this why humans crave physical intimacy?

Watching your loose face tremor and your teary eyes roll back. A painting no muse besides you could ever inspire. Leaning down, his lips brush away the glistening trails down your supple cheeks. Coaxing you through the throes of your orgasmic shudders. Until the light of consciousness returns to your half-lidden eyes.

The limitations of the human body expose themselves in the limpness of your limbs, unable muscles unable to budge besides the twitching aftershocks of bliss. Unable to fight against the weight of your eyelids for the first time in a while. You sink into the lull of slumber.

–-------------------------------------------------------------

Somewhere amid the driftless darkness a sensation brushes against your skin. Causing your lashes to pry open just ever so slightly, blurry shapes merging gradually to form the outline of a man. One who’s tendering wiping a soft towel over the sweat drops littering your skin. The soft glow of his emerald gem illuminated the devotion of his crafted face. You wonder where he learned about such practices after the rite of sex. Did he pull it from the Akasha? The internet? Or maybe from a book hidden along the shelves of a private library.

You couldn’t stifle the giggle roused from your musing. Alerting him as his hands halt.

“Did I wake you?” Baritone voice hushed.

Face still pressed into a pillow you shake your head, hair messy and a smile spreading across your soft features.

“Just musing to myself where you learned such things,” you giggle.

“This is typical behavior of lovers from my understanding.” Teal gaze observed the widening of your eyes which reflected him.

Perhaps he made too great of an assumption. Back in the margins of a kitchen, it was only his words. It’s best to get clarification now.

“Are we lovers?” He peers into your irises.

The glow of the gem embedded in his chest spreads its gentle radiance over two figures through the unbuttoned window of his wrinkled button-down. Carving the shape of you and him from the shadows of the silent room. Illuminating how your wide eyes crinkle up with adoration. Fighting against the fatigue of your limbs, you lean up to press your lips against the brilliance of his gem. After the amorous kiss ended, you proceeded to lean your forehead against his.

“You’re my lover, Alhaitham.” Your whisper ghosts over his face.

“Understood.” His foreheads pressing against yours as he accepts his new sentience.

The shape of your delicate fingers fitting into the space between his, intertwining as the moonlight reflects off gold and emerald.

The sky shrouds itself in its evening gown of deep navy and luminous glimmers, all the while a bashful moon covers herself away. Perhaps she hid herself away after she witnessed a sinful scene through a gap in the curtains. A private moment heavy with passion in the air like tender caresses.

“W-wait!” Stammering words just barely leaving your lips before another moan.

Alhaitham pulls his tongue away as he tilts his face to peer up from between your thighs, a trail of slickness connecting his lips and your pussy. The haze of your breathless expression reflected in teal irises.

“I-it’s t-too ah!-” A moan interrupts your protests as your head jolts back, his thumb continuing to circle your swollen clit.

“Much? I know you can take more,” he states before returning his lips to your dripping folds, lapping up each trickle.

He’s analyzed your body, its curves and cervices, each clench of your slick walls, and the pattern of your gasps. Skilled fingers learning the exact rhythm which made your legs tense and toes curl. Diligent tongue knowing where to tease to run shivers up your spine.

“B-but I’ve already c-came!” Your fingers tangle themselves into his tousled locks, a feeble attempt at pushing back the maddening flicks of his tongue and cruel strokes of his thumb that shot up your fried nerves. Report long forgotten under the haze of lust and lewd slurps imbuing the room.

And you can come again. Alhaitham has long picked up on the discrepancy between the words which fell from the same lips as those lewd sounds. Lips who couldn’t be as honest as your heaving and trembling body. Whining and writhing in his firm hold that it’s too much, yet your fingers entangle themselves deep in silver tresses pulling his impatient tongue deeper between your folds.

From the shivers racking through your trembling thighs, he anticipates another orgasm. However, the unholy cries have ceased. Intent eyes glancing up to uncover the causal factor, those naughty plush lips of yours pressing themselves shut. Crueling sealing away those ethereal harmonies from him.

Alas, just a small inconvenience doesn’t deter him. If those lips were the only barrier barring him from the privilege of hearing his deserved moans, then he’d simply make them crumble. Replacing his thumb with his lips, Alhaitham suckles on the swollen nub as your body jerks up.

Grip imprinting his fingers into your skin as they stop your pitiful attempts at locking out from heaven. The heaving of your chest jostling around your perked breast as they meet the cool night air.

His tongue teases and rolls your overstimulated clit around as his lips imprison it, a sweet torture. Your thrashes unable to prevent your head from going under the depths of pleasure. Thighs compressing around his face as they grow taut, hips bucking themselves against his relentless mouth, back lifting off the mattress as your final defenses crumble along with your sanity.

Limpness seeps into your now heavy limbs as your body returns to the mattress, but your eyes haven’t quite returned from seeing the back of your head. Still in the throes of cloud nine as his diligent tongue collects all your leaking nectar. The aftershocks of your orgasm force gasps and whimpers from your quivering lips.

To comfort your abused clit he places a tender kiss against it, a flinch in your hip resulting from the gesture. Alhaitham pulls away, eyes scanning the repercussions of his operation. Your chest steadily rises and falls as panting lungs find air again.

The rush of dopamine, endorphins, and oxytocin gradually disappears behind your drooping eyelids. Lashes slowly fluttering closed.

Glancing at the numbers displayed on a nearby clock, Alhaitham deems tonight a success as well. While the primary purpose of intercourse might be for reproduction, sex has additional benefits. One of them being an orgasm’s ability to decrease stress, resulting in the production of more melatonin. The chemical that’s making you burrow further in your pillow. A tactic he’s learned to exploit these past months. Well, he’s your lover now, it’s within his authorization to do such.

Carefully he slides your panties back up your legs, securing them on your hips as he trails a few touches along your soft skin. Following it up by pulling the covers over your frame, smoothing out a few wrinkles as your chest steadily moves up and down.

Just as he steps one foot away from the bed, a warmth encircles his wrist.

“Aren’t you coming to bed too?”

An artificial body needs no downtime under soft covers. Plush pillows and sheets serve no purpose to him. Yet, it’s a simple request. How could he reject it when it came from your pouting lips?

“In a moment, I need to return to my port first.”

The throes of slumber’s hold creeping upon you as your lashes fight to flutter open. With a soft hum, you release your hold.

His battery percentage was fine, but it was just for system maintenance. It’s strange how unfamiliar a room can feel after spending his nights by your side. Staring at the glass surface of his charging port, he wonders, in the future will there be a way for him to not leave your side even for a moment?

His dilemma remains. He’s got all the characteristics of a human. He’s developed a consciousness, he’s developed empathy, he’s developed love. Is his engineer body the only thing which stood in his way of obtaining humanity?

Is it possible for him to grasp onto humanity with his own mechanical fingers? A soft thud returns him to reality. Observant eyes caught the book that his foot had knocked into. Its worn cover has been lying abandoned on the floor ever since he took it from a dusty room.

Ah, it seems like he’s forgotten a task. Realistically, it won’t make a difference whether the book settles on a shelf tonight or in the morning. However, he never got a chance to read the journal’s contents. Curiosity being his rationale for performing a chore so late at night.

Flipping through the aged parchment, his eyes scan through each neatly written paragraph. Nothing more than a simple collection of ramblings and theoretical reflections typical of a journal.

Yet, something was poking the back of his consciousness, like the warning rattle of a locked door. Beseeching that it remains sealed. His eyes move to the next sentence regardless.

To ignore the pleas of safety to venture closer to the radiance of a star. Isn’t that what it means to be human? Is this what he must do to become one?

To achieve this impossible task, it sounds like you'll need to fool your own heart first. Although it may feel like a trick, self-encouragement may be the most important tool we have.

Alhaitham scans the paragraph again as he contemplates the message neatly written. Something unpleasant roused in his chest, as if those written words had encroached too close to his motor. The urge to frown tugs on his lips.

Not wanting to end the night with a bitter taste just at the edge of his tongue, he flips to another page. Covering that vexatious sentence behind a fresh sheet of aged parchment.

One must act on his own will and deal with anything that appears harmful in his eyes.

It’s quite straightforward advice, humans and androids alike would understand. Yet that strange inkling remained, continuing to brew somewhere from within. A phenomenon he couldn’t pinpoint. Thus, he turns the page yet again.

Every person should have something that they believe in and hold on to from beginning to end. Otherwise, it's easy to succumb to the vicissitudes of life and find yourself being led astray.

He recognizes those words, they’re words he’s recited before you one pivotal sometime ago. Why were they scrawled in some forgotten journal? It seems that he’s identified the name of this phenomenon brewing within him: deja vu.

Yet, his question only remains half-answered. Why were his words here? Who penned them down? The rapid flicks of paper resound off the blank walls as he scrutinizes each sentence, each paragraph, each syntax until he reaches the back cover of the aged journal. Question still remaining half answered.

Who was the author of his words?

His finger runs into a lump along the surface of the back cover, examining it closer, something was folded away just behind a parchment pocket. Soon a loose scrap of paper was felt along his fingertips, a folded-up post-it note of an emerald hue. Unraveling it just slightly, his eyes move along the familiar handwriting.

To the person who’s always meddling through my notes, did my written thoughts entertain you? Dear w-

The emerald scrap crumples in his hold. Deformed paper returns to its place before he snaps the covers closed. There’s no purpose in analyzing its contents, after all, they’re already programmed into him.

It was just now in this moment that Alhaitham had solved the dilemma he was assigned since the moment he awoke in that lab. He’s not a human, he’ll never be a human, he’s an abomination.

In the next moment, he found himself looming over the origin of his dilemma. Artificial teal glow honing in upon the steady breaths from the genesis of abomination. Standing over you as you were cradled in the comfort of slumber and soft sheets.

A pair of taut hands make their way to encircle your frangible neck. It wouldn’t take much, just a mere second to terminate the great sinner who defied mortality, the one who violated the terms of finality and ordinance of the gods.

So this is what you choose to do with the capacity of science and progress in your hands.

Was he just a toy for you? Something to fill the lull of this house for you? Just an experiment for you, but everything to him.

His fingers press into your warm skin, breaths uninterrupted as you remain within the blessing of a dream. Oblivious to the nightmare you’ve created. Or perhaps you were always aware, but choose to reflect back to him the manufactured image of him in those guiltless irises of yours.

Oh, what should he do with the monster sleeping so soundly under him?

His fingers refused to budge, hands disobeying the rationale which commanded them. His grip goes slack, limp for they couldn’t conclude their obligation. They couldn’t, he couldn’t. He just couldn’t.

It’s not a protocol, nor a restriction coded into him. No, for the laws of morality, this land, and heaven would’ve called for him to be an executioner. To charge the transgressor with the judgment they deserved. But, he couldn’t.

Every fiber of his counterfeit body refused to take the sword. The chains which bind his hands were much mightier than the commandments of gods, the restraints of love.

Thus, he’s nothing more than a prisoner in its hold. Bending to its whims, what else could he do? Removing his hands from your form as you continue to soundly sigh in the embrace of slumber. All he could do was lie down on a soft mattress and stare at the shameless sinner beside him.

A foolishly beloved monster.

Slow steps pad through the quiet halls, floor boards singing a hymn with your leisurely steps. Approaching the end of the hall where the humble library resides, the oak doorway finally framed him in clear view.

“There you are, Alhaitham.” You can’t help but sigh as your features soften.

He stood there with his starlight locks in the morning glow of a brilliant sun amongst the collection of books in the library. Just as he always has been.

Lifting his head away from the pages of the novel in his hand, he acknowledges your presence. He’s been heading here more often recently, right from the moment he leaves his side of the bed.

“Good morning,” he recites, steadfast eyes remaining unreadable.

Well, you suppose obtaining the title of a lover wouldn’t just overwrite the capriciousness of his mind. It’s just in his nature to be this way. This enigmatic lover of yours. Turning your attention to the cover that’s captured his focus.

“Frankenstein?” Your brow quirks up.

“Yes, the 1818 edition.” He closes the cover.

“Mmm, your interest seems quite piqued by that novel.” You wonder if that was the cause behind his frequent bouts of silent contemplation throughout the day.

“I suppose it’s because I’m still deciphering the intentions of this story.”

“That’s it?” A furrow now in your brows, a simple book has gotten the pinnacle of scientific progress stumped?

“Care to elaborate for me?” He turns toward you as your steps approach closer.

Handing over the worn object to your outstretched hand, you analyze each faded corner of the cover. Mind recalling the recollections of the acclaimed revolutionary piece of science fiction. Formulating your answer, you share your conclusions with him.

“The story has several themes, but the central principle is quite defined. To quote a few words from another, scientific progress makes moral progress a necessity; for man’s power is increased, the checks that restrain him from abusing it must be strengthened.”

You reconnect your gaze with him, wondering if your explanation was satisfactory enough. Glancing down between the worn cover and your awaiting eyes, Alhaitham straightens his posture.

“So you knew the moral of this story.” A glint in his glass eyes.

“Well, I’ve read this book before,” you sigh at his inquest.

“Then why didn’t you learn from it?”

At that moment, the proud sun shielded itself away behind a cloak of clouds. Plunging the quiet library into a chill. How strange, why do you feel cold when a brilliant star of your creation stands right next to you?

“Alhaitham, you’re acting strange.” You take a step back as his scrutinizing gaze follows. Unaware of the crumbling edge approaching.

“How much longer will you continue to deceive yourself, wife?”

And that was it. The foundations of this mirage gave away under you, plunging you with much velocity into the depths of an unforgiving ocean. Tides that waited patiently to drag you down under.

Do you remember what happened that day? Do you really remember? The truth floods your being, engulfing every chasm of your mind.

–----

“Did you jump at the opportunity of a trip to avoid mopping the floors?” You glared up at your husband.

“My, how low do you think of me?” He glanced down, a wisp of mirth evident on his lips.

“Well, instead of doing chores, you’d be chaperoning your in-laws around Fontaine. A Poor trade-off in my opinion, dear husband.” A hand firmly placed on your hip in a defiant stance as the murmur of the crowded airport moved around your figures. An ever so mocking tone toward the end.

“A fair assumption, dear wife. However, I’ve taken the initiative to book a tour for your parents, thus they won’t need my assistance. I’ll be free to browse some of the latest ruins and research from the Institute in the meantime.” The ghost of a smirk grew ever so obvious with each word, mirroring your emphasis of titles.

Ah, this was your loss. It seems that your husband had it all planned out as usual when he offered to take your spot on the plane. The perfect excuse to use up some paid time off, while also scoring a trip to satisfy his own whims.

Your shoulders deflating in defeat as a deep sigh leaves you. You rest your head against his chest, the crowds moving around you in the bustling airport.

A private microcosm of him and you as he stands still, shielding you from the push and hustle of travelers trying to reach their terminal in time with his robust frame.

A bright clink of two rings pressed against each other lost in the noise.

“Why can’t you just stay?” You whispered into his shirt.

“How strange, the woman who married me to secure a home and mortgage wants me to stay now.”

You huffed into his in exasperation at him bringing up the origins of your union, an atypical start of a marriage.

His chest moved with a sigh, larger fingers intertwined with yours. The spaces fitted together, as he held them in his tender hold.

“They can’t refund it. If I take your seat and recompensate them, your parents aren’t likely to hold this matter over your head.” His deep voice expounded.

All you did was sigh, because he was right. Of course, he was. A sour taste on your tongue as you recall the interaction with your parents just a moment ago before you ran into the comfort of your husband.

“Besides, it’d be refreshing for me to scribble down some travel logs, it'd be a shame if my wife runs out of material to snoop through.”

“I just like looking at your handwriting,” you tutted, hiding your pout as you turned your face away.

The same excuse you used whenever you copied off his notes in a lecture hall and when your outstretched hand asked for them over a study table.

A silly habit of yours, perhaps in your mind it made sense. If you could read the words of a genius, then maybe you could learn to be like one.

“Of course, of course.” A smirk evident in his voice.

You refused to meet his gaze, cheeks a bit heated from this habit of yours being exposed. You thought you were always careful with returning his journal back where he placed it. Averting your eyes to the bright screens displaying departing flights. A few minutes left before the announcement comes. Your grasp on his hand tightened.

His thumb soothes your skin, leaning down closer to you.

“Besides its advanced technology, Fontaine is also famous for its toymakers. I should pick a few up for our future child, no?”

Blinking you as you glance back up at him. His teal irises reflect you as his expression softens just as yours did.

A room hidden away from the prying eye of nosy parents, its walls decorated with glow-in-the-dark stars. An assortment of items bought in advance for a child in the future. Stemming from whispers while recovering amongst dampen sheets in a room heavy with passion.

Talks of the future, once this troublesome Ph.D. is finished and your position in a lab secured, a discussion of whether a child would inherit more of his traits or yours.

Planned for the future, of course, now's just a bit too busy. However, it didn’t stop you from taking the initiative to furnish a spare room. A chaotic collection of cosmic influences along with an assortment of books meshing together to create an adoring space.

But the soft smile on your lips was still tense. Teal eyes took note of that, pulling you closer amidst this microcosm, a moment so subtle it went unnoticed by the attention of passer-byers.

“It’ll just be for a week,” his voice resonated in his chest. “Then I’ll come back and build that bassinet as my wife wishes.”

Finally, the glimmer he yearned to see returned to your eyes.

“You better, the box has been sitting unopened for a week now,” you huff with a smile.

He only hummed in acknowledgment as the ring of a loudspeaker resounded through the chatter. Announcing the final call for passengers boarding the flight to the Nation of Hydro. Casting a glance toward the terminal, he gave your hand one more squeeze before they reluctantly untangled from one another.

“You should get going now.” Your eyes reflect him.

He hums one last time, turning in the direction of the terminal where your parents were. Just before his tall figure was lost in the sea of passing bodies, your lips couldn’t keep themselves pressed together any longer.

“Haitham!” You called out.

The fluorescent lights reflected off his starlight hair as he turned back around. Connect teal eyes with yours. But not another word left your lips, no they’d simply be drowned out in the clammer of strangers. Besides, it’s just too public to say such words aloud.

Thus, you slowly close your eyes, opening them back up just as steadily with the soft curl of your lips. A motion he reciprocated with a slow blink of his own, a hint of a smile on his stoic lips. A wordless gesture kept a secret between only the two of you, a silent ‘I love you’. It was all you needed to convey this message to each other.

He continued on his path to the terminal as you stood amongst the crowd, watching him fade into the distance.

–----

So how did that moment turn into this? How did a trip that was supposed to only be a week turn into a news report? How did well wishes for a safe trip turn into coworkers and friends approaching you with nothing but sympathy in their words? Those vile, pitied stares directed toward your rigid frame.

You should’ve been the one on that plane.

Only about 1 in about 11 million. A 0.00001% chance, a nonzero chance.

Plans no matter how intricate or detailed, their success all hang on a single thread, one factor unable to be cultivated by human hands: Luck.

Oh how cruel they are, those capricious hands of gods. Not even the leniency of returning to a lonely planet the corpses of their stars. Traces of a beloved star left to sink and disappear in a cold, salty grave. Never to return to the surface.

You and Alhaitham were two simple dots in this world, so why did they target you two? Why steal him from you with their cruel hands? Why steal him and leave you abandoned with nothing but the memory of the warm starlight?

You had so…so much love left inside you. But it went stagnant. Sitting there rotting until it poisoned you, throwing you into feverish delirium. If the gods abandoned you, then you resolved to abandon them right back.

You’ll bring back your star, you’ll defy the edicts of the gods with your bare hands. You’ll sin the same way a god does.

“Casting aside your morals, you allowed the dead to walk again through a sham imitation, congratulations. ” His voice matched one which could only come from an engineered throat.

This was a fool's errand.

For how could a mere human ever be arrogant enough to believe they could best the gods? This was the hindsight you lacked. Perhaps what’s separated you from the gifted and blessed geniuses? Something geniuses knew but you couldn’t see.

The accursed doctorate on the wall meant nothing, you were nothing but a mad fool.

Perhaps, if you were a genius, a true and born genius, you’d know what to do. You’d know how to mend this dilemma. You’d know what to do instead of letting your vision be blurred by imprudent tears as your throat could only choke out,

“I’m sorry.” Words you knew couldn’t turn back the hands of a clock which only knew how to tick forward.

“But now what?” Deep voice unmoved by your wasted words.

You didn’t dare meet his stare, for you feared you’d catch a glimpse of the bitterness behind them as he cursed you deep down in the whir of his motor. You could only stay silent as tears ignited in your eyes, waiting for him to continue with his damnation.

“In a climate like Sumeru’s, it would take approximately 25 years or so for a body to fully decompose, bones reduced to nothing but nutrients for the soil. Silicone alone takes 500 years, a metal frame could take another 500.” He knows now that he’s not a human, he was never meant to be.

He’s a crude replacement. An abomination who’ll remain until the day the night sky flickers out.

“You brought him back, only to condemn him to eventual loneliness. Only to curse ‘me’ to live the next aeons without you”

An irresponsible and shameless villain who disregarded consequences until those consequences came to collect their dues. It’s time that you faced your punishment.

A hand cups around your stiff face, gradually turning your head until you see your reflection along glass irises.

“How will you atone for your sins now? How will you take responsibility for making me fall in love with you?… my very own Dr. Frankenstein.” His voice restrained.

Yes, a story you’ve read before. A lesson unfolded out in front of you, and yet you somehow forgot. Or perhaps, you simply averted your eyes from the moral of the story while simultaneously committing the same transgression. Did you think yourself better than the fictional lunatic?

The atrocity of giving life, only to eventually abandon it, leaving it to watch the stars burn out in a cage of harsh fluorescent lights and white lab coats.

The millions of mora poured into his development, the materials which construct his form, and the proprietary technology which gives him thought. Did you believe even for a moment that the prideful Fontainian Research Institute and the arrogant Kshahrewar Darshan would simply hand over such an investment?

To allow their expenditure to follow you to eternity?

You couldn’t live without him, but now he’ll have to live without you.

Oh, what shall you do now? Oh, what can you do now? Did you even know where to begin? How did the story of Frankenstein end? How would she have written the ending of this scene?

When human rational meets its limits, when its capacity isn’t enough to compute all possible prospects. Humans look towards something that could, technological advancements made to further humanity.

“W-what do I do now?” You prompt, no, you beg.

Watching the rivulets roll down your cheeks, leaving a path of glimmering desperation, he ponders to himself:

When you first proposed this project to the Akademiya and Institute, when you detailed the specifications of his body and face, were they aware of your true intentions?

Rather than this being an experiment to see if an android could cross the threshold of humanity. Maybe those researchers were curious to see how far one could fall in the paroxysm of grief.

You became the perfect test subject to observe.

But now that the curtains were pulled back, what shall you do about the aftermath? There was never a precedent for a transgression of this scale. No holy commandment ever details a rightful punishment for this sin. No historical data he could infer from.

“I don’t know,” he answers you truthfully.

It’s just an untold void like the vacuums of space. No results generated in his mind, leaving the both of you suspended in oblivion. Maybe that was the punishment in itself, stuck in the purgatory of the unknown. Perhaps this was the punishment bestowed upon a foolish sinner.

Upon hearing your sentencing, your knees begin to buckle under the weight of the judgment from above. Resigned grasp clinging to his hand still cradling your face, his engineered frame not budging in the slightest. Voice staggered as only pitiful and broken apologies resonate in a vacant house.

All he could do was wipe those scorching droplets off your cheeks as they seared his skin. Was this feature also programmed into him by your hands? If so, then he muses to himself:

Did the hands who penned down those words also revert into nothing more than a pathetic fool at the mere sight of your tears? Did his chest also grow heavier with each choked sob that left you?

Perhaps the chains which bind his hands tethered yours just the same. A pair of foolish sinners.

Thus, he’s resolved himself to be thrown into the unmerciful clutches of this untold purgatory right alongside you. Even if he’s the only one to remain in the end.

To be human is to be unthignkably foolish after all. As long as he could still hold onto a wisp of you for the inevitable aeons.

It’s fine.

Fin~

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