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The Scribe of the Akademiya is an intelligent man. He has deeply-rooted expertise and knowledge in various kinds of topics. He accomplishes his job as a Scribe incredibly well and if he wanted to, Alhaitham would even have spare time to give his subordinates and Akademiya scholars a helping hand with their theses, but they’d stopped coming to him after he’d turned down a request for help one time. That scholar had run away in tears, his papers and books leaving a trail behind him as he’d left the Scribe’s office wailing. Nobody else came to ask him for help after that, which Alhaitham was quite proud of. He didn’t even intend to be impolite to the scholar.
Alhaitham is an intelligent man, but his ability to analyse the emotions of other people is subpar.
Which leads to this moment: Kaveh sits on the floor, a glass of water in his hand instead of some alcoholic beverage (Alhaitham had thrown them all out), and Alahitham lounging on the sofa, leaning his head on his head.
“Let me tell you one thing,” Kaveh starts, visibly annoyed. “If you don’t make a move or even hint to him that you’re interested, you’ll die alone. I’m not kidding.”
“What does my death have to do with this?”
“I’m saying,” Kaveh glares up at him, aggressively swirling his glass of water like it’s wine. “That only someone like Cyno would be able to find it in his heart to think of you in a romantic way, let alone want to spend the rest of his life with you. Cherish this, cherish him , and just go for it.”
“I’ve realised that by now, what I’m trying to seek advice on is how I go for it,” Alhaitham drones, rubbing his temples. “That’s easier said than done.”
Kaveh snaps his fingers. “Exactly. You could tell me that you want to show up at his doorstep with flowers, but would you actually do it? Would you?”
“Yes,” Alhaitham replies. “But I never said that.”
“It’s a suggestion, Alhaitham. You should be thinking of your own ways to court him.”
“What do you think is a good idea, then?”
Kaveh makes a disgusted expression. “Blergh, I can’t imagine you being a romantic. Gross.”
“That is exactly why I came to you in the first place.”
“Oh,” he says, “That’s a compliment, right? Well, you could try helping him with simple tasks.”
Alhaitham leans forward in his seat. “Like?”
Kaveh scoffs. “Whatever you folks at the Akademiya do all day!”
“You mean, matters relating to work?”
“Something like that. Simple things like lending him stationary or printing documents, it doesn't have to be impressive or monumental.”
Alhaitham nods, understanding. That didn’t sound particularly difficult, maybe this would go smoother than he’d initially thought…
***
Alhaitham gets up two hours earlier and reaches the Akademiya at six thirty. There’s hardly anyone around, so he heads to the Matra’s office and looks for Cyno’s desk. It’s cluttered with papers and stationary untidily strewn everywhere. By the looks of it, Alhaitham guesses that Cyno has had to rush off from his desk to missions quite often.
He starts by reorganising the stationary. Unashamed, he steals someone else’s stationary holder and compiles all of Cyno’s stationary into it. Then he gets rid of all the crumpled up pieces of paper in Cyno’s drawers, one of them being a detailed drawing of a Sumeru rose.
Finally, Alhaitham gathers up the reports that remain unfilled on Cyno’s desk, and with one last look at his now clean desk, he leaves the office. One of the Matra does see him leaving and shoots him a curious glance, but he simply nods politely and she doesn’t question him.
He completes all of Cyno’s reports by eight thirty, and he’s about to stand to look for Cyno when there’s a knock on his office door, and a familiar figure stands before him.
“Hello,” Alhaitham croaks out awkwardly. “I was just about to go looking for you.”
Cyno hums in acknowledgement, sliding into the chair across Alhaitham’s desk. “What for?”
What he wants to say is, Oh, I’ve completed all your reports for today, so you should take a break . Instead, he remembers Kaveh’s words that he has to ‘seize all opportunities given to him’ and says, “Are you available this evening?”
Cyno furrows his eyebrows. “Yes, why? Is there someone you want me to look into?”
“Would you like to have dinner with me?” Such a simple request, yet Alhaitham cannot understand the rapid pounding of his heart. If Cyno rejects his offer, he knows that their relationship would never be the same again. What was once a friendship established on the grounds of trust would be forever tinged with awkwardness and avoidance. Alhaitham hopes that never happens.
“You never initiate these meet-ups, why the sudden change of heart?” Cyno teasingly asks, his tone light. “I don’t know if Tighnari would be available… What about Kaveh? Is he working on another project?”
“I meant just the two of us, actually.”
Alhaitham watches as the shock registers on Cyno’s face, the surprise that makes his eyes go wide and the blush that slowly creeps up his face. “That’s… Yeah, sure. Dinner, then.”
“I’ll come look for you in your office at five, then?” Alhaitham asks, feeling as though his head and heart are about to burst. He never planned for this to happen so abruptly: the words had come naturally.
“Sure,” Cyno affirms, nearly colliding into a wall as he exits the Scribe’s office. “See you.”
***
It’s humiliating how Alhaitham is already walking to the Matra’s office at four fifty, keeping his footsteps light so Cyno doesn’t hear him. He leans against a wall and thinks of what he should say during dinner, how he should keep the conversation flowing. Kaveh mentioned the previous night he could go all in and just ask if Cyno has a special someone in his heart, but that would set off some alarms in Cyno’s mind, given how shrewd he is.
Perhaps he should keep the conversation light, then.
It’s four fifty seven when Cyno walks out of the office, eyes dancing around nervously till he catches sight of Alhaitham. He smiles, and approaches the man.
“It’s not five yet,” he says when he’s within earshot. “Did you wait long?”
“No,” Alhaitham replies, and hands Cyno the stack of reports he’d stolen this morning.
“It was you,” Cyno accuses, laughing, “A subordinate told me that a grey-haired fellow was sneaking around in the office early in the morning.”
“I wanted to help you out with your workload.”
Cyno laughs again, the laugh soothing Alhaitham’s nervousness. “This isn’t a lot, you know. I could get this done in a few hours.”
“You could be doing better things with your time.”
“Like?” Cyno asks, smiling and clearly entertained.
Alhaitham has to physically peel his gaze off his smile, and he clears his throat. “Whatever you Matra do all day.”
“Alright, sure. Thank you for waiting. Where to for dinner?”
“I wanted to let you decide.”
“Really?” Cyno says, and ponders for a moment before his eyes light up. “My place, then. I bought a new frying pan the other day, this would be a good opportunity to test it out.”
***
The whole way to Cyno’s home, Alhaitham’s mind is buzzing with endless possibilities of whether Cyno knew what the implications of his suggestion were. Cyno doesn't come off as the type of person who would be interested in romantic relationships, so maybe Alhaitham is merely overthinking. Besides, he didn't catch Alhaitham's cue about dinner being just the two of them as well.
Cyno’s home lies near the fringes of Sumeru city. Alhaitham tries to take in every detail: the flower pots of varying colours aligning with the flowers growing in them, the brown paint that reveals a bit of grey in the areas where it's been scraped off, and the small field of crops that grows behind Cyno's home.
“I didn’t know you were so interested in botany,” Alhaitham brings up.
Cyno hums in acknowledgement, turning the key in the lock of the door. “That’s mostly Tighnari’s doing.”
“It does seem like an interesting topic, though.”
“More interesting than studying ancient runes?” Cyno jokes, and Alhaitham barks out a laugh.
They enter Cyno’s home, and at first glance, Alhaitham gets a sudden visualisation of Cyno having lived here for so long, all on his own, needing to develop and customise this for the house he wants it to be. Alhaitham briefly thinks to himself that he wants to be a part of building a home with Cyno.
“Take a seat anywhere, dinner might take a while,” Cyno says, gesturing to the dining table.
“I’ll help you,” Alhaitham counters, heading to the kitchen with him.
“You know how to cook?”
Alhaitham smiles. “You’re underestimating the abilities of the Akademiya’s scribe, General.”
“I’ll be making Masala Cheese Balls. You know that one?”
Alhaitham nods, recalling the numerous times Kaveh had cooked it in the past. He'd made no move to help, but he had the steps memories just by observance.
“Good. I’ll prepare the cheese balls, you'll prepare the sauce,” Cyno instructs, and Alhaitham marvels at his commanding nature that he hasn't seen since they overthrew Azar and his sages.
They work in silence, and in between periods of time where he doesn't have to watch the pan, Alhaitham looks over at Cyno. He cooks with efficiency and steadfastness, the same way he grips his spear: precise and steady.
Cyno finishes cooking before Alhaitham does, and he practically hops over to him in excitement to check on his progress.
“Sorry, I gave you the more arduous task,” Cyno sheepishly says. “I can take over from here if you're tired.”
“This is honing my cooking skills,” he jokes, which brings a smile to Cyno's face. He almost drops the spatula.
“How’d you learn how to cook, anyway?” Cyno asks, hopping onto the counter.
“My grandmother taught me when I was young,” he responds. “She left behind a recipe book with detailed instructions, so I wouldn't call myself a mere amateur at cooking.”
Cyno chuckles. “You need water, don't you? I’ll get it,” he pours water from a jug into a measuring cylinder, then carefully pours it into the pan, skin grazing Alhaitham's.
Breath catching in his throat, Alhaitham can't focus on a single thing other than the point of contact where his skin touches Cyno’s, and it only gets worse when Cyno clasps Alhaitham's hand to guide the spatula to stir. He feels like a man who's been debilitated, the only thing he's able to do is to stand there stupidly with Cyno guiding him.
“Heavy cream now,” Cyno states, his other hand pouring the liquid into the pan and continuing to stir.
Anxiously, Alhaitham chanced a glance at Cyno, whose ears are red and his eyes unfocused. It could be the heat from the stove, Alhaitham tells himself.
They finish off by pouring the sauce into a bowl, and adding the cheese balls one by one. Cyno hums in approval at their work, smiling up at Alhaitham.
“We did pretty well, don't you think?”
“It was mainly you, though.”
“Nonsense,” Cyno laughs. “Come, let's eat.”
“You could just tell him,” Kaveh says, staring at one of the papers on his desk. “Seeing you like this is annoyingly strange.”
“I agree,” Tighnari says. “He might feel for you the same things you feel for him.”
“Has he mentioned anything?” Kaveh asks, straightening.
“Yes, but he never explicitly says anything,” Tighnari says, thinking. “He did mention that he had caught feelings for a fellow coworker…”
Kaveh turns to face him, eyes wide. “And?”
“He didn't say anything about who the coworker could be.”
Kaveh slumps in his seat. “That’s unfortunate.”
A week after that dinner with Cyno, Alhaitham feels as though his head is about to burst at the seams. He's taken every opportunity he could to express his feelings for the man, but it just seems that his methods of execution are somehow never right.
When he tried to present Cyno with a bouquet of flowers at the office, Nahida had come looking for him just as he was about to enter the Matra’s office, and he'd just left the flowers on Cyno's desk. Later on, the Matra were spreading a rumour about the General having a creepy secret admirer who didn't dare to show their face.
Another time that week, he'd tried printing reports for Cyno, but one of his subordinates had mistakenly thought Alhaitham had gotten the documents wrong and put the reports through a shredding machine.
All in all, this was going nowhere, and Alhaitham wanted the aching hole in his heart to sew itself up.
“Are you going to come clean? Or will you continue to hide?” Kaveh asks him from across the room.
“It’s good to consider his chances of success before acting recklessly,” Tighnari chimes in. Kaveh had called him over three days after Alhaitham's dinner with Cyno to help progress the plan they had in mind. The plan, which hasn't really made any progress at all.
“Well, Cyno's quite adept at concealing his feelings, so it is possible that he does have feelings for Alhaitham but just isn't expressing it,” Kaveh retorts. “Have more optimism!”
“How are you planning to confess, then? Another romantic candlelit dinner?” Tighnari asks, and Alhaitham's face goes hot.
“You better not be thinking of that. Do something different, surprise him! You could take him to see the stars or something… and tell him something like my love for you is as infinite as all the stars in the sky ,” Kaveh suggests.
“That’s not bad,” Tighnari responds.
“I’d never say something so trite,” Alhaitham counters.
“Damnit, think of your own ideas! Nobody's asking you to copy mine!”
Sighing, Alhaitham buries his head in his hands whilst Tighnari and Kaveh continue chatting. This will be harder than he'd initially thought.
***
To his utmost surprise, Cyno asks to meet him the next evening, saying that he has important matters to discuss.
Work passes by in a flurry, and he hardly registers anything but the loud thumps of his heart as he climbs to the uppermost level of the Akademiya.
He finds Cyno leaning against the handrails, his jackal headgear removed, revealing his snow-white hair that flows with the wind. He's watching the sunset, golden and orange hues stretching across an endless sky.
Alhaitham approaches him, coming to stand by his side. Cyno looks over at him, then back at the view, sighing.
“Alhaitham.”
“Cyno, what's the matter?”
Cyno swallows, and for the first time, Alhaitham notices his hand which lies on the railing is shaking. “Kaveh told me about your feelings.”
Alhaitham hears his own breath catch, and he looks for any signs of repulsion or disgust in Cyno's expression. There are none.
“Were you ever going to tell me?” he asks, smiling a bit. “I assumed your feelings were only of a platonic nature, and you had extended your kindness to me as a friend.”
“Apologies. My attempts at conveying my feelings weren’t as successful as I had initially hoped for. If I’ve made you uncomfortable with this information—”
“You haven’t,” Cyno fiercely cuts in. “I feel for you what you feel for me, Alhaitham. I want to make it clear to you now that I’ve wanted you to be more than a friend for a while.”
Alhaitham feels as though his world has been turned on its axis, and Cyno’s hand gently nudges his own, and now he finally feels that ache in his chest dissipating and it’s replaced with a happiness that glows so bright he sees it mirrored in Cyno’s own grin.
“You’re smiling,” Cyno notes, thumb caressing his face. “You’re unnecessarily handsome.”
“But you like it,” Alhaitham smugly says, leaning closer.
Cyno smiles, warm and soft. “I do,” he replies, and seals their lips in a kiss.