Thread by @RanLuna13

#haikaveh 🌱🪶 "Silence".

Contrary to the popular belief, Alhaitham hasn't always appreciated the silence.

Yes, silence is useful when you want to read. Yes, he knows it's logical to think that he loved silence since he was a child, always seen with a book in hands.

The reality, however, is another one. Alhaitham's house was never silent when he was a kid. His grandmother used to put her old music player on every single day at the exact same hour. It also turned off at every night at the same hour, and it was his signal to go to bed.

He never questioned his grandmother choices. He enjoyed the music, and he didn't questioned the reason of this routine. It was as natural as everything was: she cooked, she sewed his shirt and she put on the music player.

When she passed away, he knew why she did that.

Alhaitham didn't cry in her funeral. Everyone thought he was making himself an armor, and maybe he was. But he just didn't feel the urge right there. It was too irreal, it was like a nightmare. His mind, logical as he claimed he was, didn't accept the fact of her death.

It took three hours after the funeral. When he ended the paperwork regarding his custody on the hands of the Akademiya until legal age, he returned home.

He opened the door with his key and then he noticed something was wrong.

There was no music on. It was silent.

Dead.

Of course there wasn't any music. His grandmother wasn't there anymore.

But it was just then when everything downed on him.

The silence wrapped him. It was him, himself and the silence.

He hated it.

He was alone.

And he hated it.

So he ran. He ran to the music player.

He killed the silence.

He was alone, the silence said, in the small intervals that it was present between song and song.

The music killed it once again, and that night was as it should be.

Except the music wasn't turned off to sleep.

Except he cried until falling sleep.

But even with music playing, with every light on, it didn't change the fact that the house was too big, and he was too small.

There's no cooking smell. There's no sewing sounds. There was no one there to talk. No voice but his.

Loneliness wrapped him.

He hated it.

So he killed it, or at least tried to. He went to the Grand Bazaar, where the sea of people and the constant noise made him feel part of something.

He went more frequently to the House of Daena, where the books can save him, and silence never is absolute with the students there

He embraced the voices of Sumeru, and weaponized them against the loneliness.

But someone noticed his weakness, and as he will learn later, there are those who enjoy to point out the weak, so they can be strong.

And then, the voices turned against him.

Whispers filled of venom. Laughter meant to hurt. Constant glances, constant rumors about the boy who was always alone. Who had no family, who was condemned to solitude.

Somehow it was extended he was cursed. That it was divine punishment for his previous life mistakes.

And Alhaitham hated it.

He hated to be the center of attention. He hated to be the focus of all those voices, all those glances.

He started to reply, and each time his tongue got sharper. His patience lessen. Eventually, he questioned himself if it was worth to even go there.

The House of Daena that once has been a refuge became a torture. A constant wondering if someone will come again to get him out, if he will have the bad luck to hear another deprecating comment.

If he was cursed to be alone, why then didn't they leave him alone?

And he was stuck between his house full of memories and loneliness and the House of Daena full of voices and eyes directed at him.

Silence was terrible, but voices were too.

He hated both, and had to choose. So he chose the voices, because at least he could get a discussion.

At least he could embrace the satisfaction of leaving the other without arguments. With silence, with himself, that couldn't happen.

But a solution came as a gift from heavens. Searching a disc to put on the music player, he found an invention from his grandmother.

Headphones

A music player was attached, and a small notebook about its use. Alhaitham ran to find her Ksharehwar books in their library, and in a matter of days he could wear them.

He was unsure if his grandma knew this could happen. He will never know. Either way, he was grateful.

He could turn on music in the street, in the House of Daena, and read without having to care if someone is screaming at his ear.

The voices couldn't affect them anymore. The silence will never be fully there while music keeps playing.

It was perfect as he embraced loneliness.

Eventually the rumors about him dispelled as he didn't even bothered in recognizing or deny them, neither engaged in meaningless discussion. Still, he got a reputation of being harsh and unfriendly.

Better that way. At least, people wouldn't come again to bother him.

He didn't need them. He was fine, with his books, music and his classes. If something was learnt about his experience was that he was better alone.

And then, an hurricane came into his life and showed him, who thought himself wise in his young ingenuity, that he knew nothing.

The hurricane had pretty red eyes and a shining smile.

He decided to make himself a space in his life. He was too blind to see that it wasn't the others who rejected him anymore, but Alhaitham who did it. It wasn't even hard to, few wanted to hear the mistakes Alhaitham pointed.

He also did with Kaveh. He pointed his grammatical mistakes in his essays about architecture, he pointed out his hat wasn't in the correct position. Common things that anyone, enraged, would try to point his own flaws and would never talk to him again.

It was fine for him.

But Kaveh did the reverse. For each mistake he pointed, Kaveh showed interest. If it was about his writing, he asked why. If he wasn't convinced, he tried to argument his position. When the debate ended with Alhaitham winning, Kaveh would admit his defeat and even praise him.

If it was something about his aspect, he would blush and correct it. And then laugh about it. Maybe complaining he was being rude to say it that way, and teaching him a better way to point out.

And he didn't understand why, but with Kaveh music slowly started to be unnecessary.

He couldn't hear Kaveh if he was with music, so he turned it off. And Kaveh filled the silence with his voice, kind and sweet. He showed him aspects of the world he didn't consider relevant until then, and engaged in debate after debate.

Somehow, Kaveh's voice became his music.

And it was just in an afternoon, with the exam period near, in the House of Daena most silent period, when he realized that even when Kaveh wasn't talking, he didn't turn on his headphones.

He didn't realize it.

Because the silence didn't come for him as it always did.

He looked at Kaveh, invested in the pages of an old book about Inazuman architecture, and he realized.

Kaveh's voice was not the only thing that became music.

Kaveh himself was his music. No, even better.

He killed silence. He killed loneliness. He killed the darkness.

He was music, but also he was the sun.

He was everything Alhaitham has been told he didn't deserve. He wanted to reach it and save that light.

But the sun not only shines. Alhaitham knew, but he still got burnt.

And, in his stubbornness, he lost the sun.

He didn't even know how it happened.

They argued. Kaveh wanted to maintain the unnecessary students that all they do is just adding more workload on him and lower the whole project. Alhaitham failed to understand. Why couldn't he see what he was seeing? Why he insisted on it?

Kaveh was just wasting his light on them. Why couldn't he see?

Maybe he got greedy. He got ambitious. Maybe he wanted to keep the sun only for himself, and the sun wasn't meant to be retained by anyone.

Things got worse. Words went out without barriers.

"Why do you care about them?" Alhaitham asked, rage starting to fire

Why. Why is he standing for them when /Alhaitham/ is his best friend? Why couldn't he see they don't need anyone else?

"Have you ever thought how they feel about not being able to continue? How awful is that?"

Why that is /their/ problem? Did anyone think about how Alhaitham felt when everyone else judged him without being able to do nothing? How awful is that everyone is giving you empty words when the most important person in your life died? No one cared, why should he then?

Did anyone think about Kaveh's feelings when everyone was criticizing him about his father's death? They didn't. Why then is Kaveh /caring/ about those who would never care about him?

Why couldn't he see that Alhaitham would always care ten thousand times more than them?

But of course Kaveh wouldn't understand, he thought. He was the sun, and the sun is loved by everyone. He also still had his mother, he was always still surrounded by those who loved him. He never experienced pure loneliness itself. Not as Alhaitham did. And he should never.

Kaveh wanted to save everyone because he never knew loneliness. He never hated everything. He never hated the silence because he never experienced it.

How can the sun know the darkness?

So he said, trying to make him see that he can't save everyone just by wasting himself.

He was right.

But Kaveh heard everything with a hurt face.

"So that's what you think?" He laughed. For the first time, he didn't like his laugh. "Then, you don't know me at all. That's it, then."

Alhaitham heard the words. Heard the tone. Saw the tears. But still, he asked.

"What do you mean?"

Silence. Even when it was quickly broken by a dry laugh, he could feel it there. He could feel it lying in wait for the music to be gone.

"So now you need a graphic explanation?" He said, grabbing their thesis. "You... really don't have a heart, right?"

And just like the ending notes of his favorite song, after the sound of paper breaking and the slam of the door. He stood there, again as that lost kid who only had silence.

Where did he go wrong?

He analyzed that night in his min. He went over those words once and once again.

He read thousands of words, he tried to understand.

His answer came in the shape of a fairytale. The moon was sad because she was too high in the sky to play with humans, and she felt hated because everyone loved more the sun, so Celestia gave her the stars who can play with her

Then he realized.

What about the sun? What about the kind sun who makes everyone feel better and everyone loves, but from a distance? Isn't he lonely, also, up there?

Humans won't ever wish to touch the sun, less they want to die. And the kind sun would never ask them for that.

So the sun will remain alone but still shining to the exterior. Still giving light, because he still loves the humans, even if he can never be understood, never be touched closer. When sad, maybe the sun will hide behind a cloud, but no one cared because the sun will return.

Not only that, but there will always those who will complain. In winter, because the heat was not enough. In summer, because it was too much.

The sun will never be perfect for everyone, and still keeps shining, keeps being there for them, because everyone deserves light.

Kaveh longed to be understood, but he's just a human. He can't even dream to touch the sun, nor the sun will allow him to. He tried and when he thought he did flawlessly, he got burnt.

Even if he was a moon, he'd just be a distant and opposite reflection. He wouldn't be enough.

So he had to become the sky.

A sky where the sun could shine properly and as wished. A sky that when the sun were gone will become dark, but will still trust for the sun's return.

If the sun hides behind a cloud, the sky will too. If the sun shines, the sky will too.

The sky can't fully touch the sun, the sky can't fully understand the sun. But as long as the sun stays, the sky will be there, letting him shine and hide in him.

Then, Alhaitham would become Kaveh's sky. For him to stay and to know that he'll always be there waiting for him.

But the process was not easy. Still, no one said it would be, right?

Alhaitham was condemned to be without the sun. He earned it himself. He thought the sun will never be gone, too.

The silence came again, and Alhaitham tried to kill it once again, but it was never enough.

How can you expect to use the same things that were broken in a hurricane and actually make it work? How can you expect to be the same after a meteor strike? How can someone still love the fire and its shadows after going out of the cave and knowing the sun?

It's impossible.

But he had to live with it. With stolen, distant glances in the House of Daena. With reading line after line every book that he knew it will have Kaveh's annotations, once and once again. With afternoons in Razan Garden, expecting for steps that never came.

During that time, Alhaitham learned many things.

Maybe the most important of them was realizing that Kaveh didn't kill silence. In music, silence will always be there. He hated it.

But when Kaveh became his music, he also became his silence. He just made him love the silence.

He was love but also loneliness, because no one can feel lonely without feeling loved before. He learned to love the loneliness.

He was light, but also darkness. Because there's darkness because there is light, it's only natural. Yet, Kaveh made him love the darkness.

To love Kaveh just because his light as he did was just bound to end in disaster when the darkness appeared. Kaveh knew, that was why he never talked about his problems and his imperfections.

To love Kaveh you have to learn to love all the imperfect parts that come with him.

Alhaitham loved them all, he realized, as long as Kaveh was there to make him love them.

But without him, silence was just as scary as he remembered. It comes, now reinforced, to tell him how lonely he was. How cursed he was.

How he had everything and he lost it in a heartbeat.

During that time, Alhaitham fell into old habits. He put on every light in his house, the same one that Kaveh renounced to but he refused to leave. He put on music every day, and some of his nights. He established himself a routine, which he followed at heart.

With a routine, everything is easier. Everything is expected. It's black or white, sometimes a gray but never unknown. Alhaitham hates not to know, he is a scholar in the end, and as every student, he despises to be ignorant. He just applied it to every point of his life.

The thing with knowing everything is that you don't get the excitement of the unknown. He hates to be ignorant, but as well, he also loves to learn. Knowledge itself is too vast for the human mind, so Alhaitham will never grasp it all. There's always something new in a book.

But his routine, when he was not reading books, was too well known. It was the same, over, and over again, just changed by meaningless things and the books he reads in his reading time. He didn't hate routines, but...

It was just like it lacked something.

Someone.

He compared his routine with the one he had when Kaveh was in his life and, even if he did the same things, even if he used the time he reserved to their meetings for reading, it was not the same. It wasn't enough.

Time didn't make it better, neither. Just duller. Colourless.

And silence laughed in his face, in the spaces where there was no music, in the interval before fully sleeping. He got to sleep many times even with his headphones, when the player wasn't enough to kill the loneliness. When he needed music loud in his ears to do so.

Falling into his old habits to kill loneliness, as the House of Daena was full of too many memories as stars in the dark sky, Alhaitham changed to Lambad's Tavern. It was okay, as it fulfilled the same. To be lost in the sea of people, in a corner, with his headphones and a book.

But that small change in said routine was what allowed him to grasp a chance to recover everything he lost.

One day, in his way to his habitual corner in the second floor of the tavern, he spotted his sun-kissed hair. His heart skipped the exact beat of the song he was hearing.

He raised a hand and killed it while approaching the blond, who looked troubles while drowning his cup of wine. How can a person do everything so graciously? Even if he spilled his wine over his white shirt, Kaveh still would look regal while doing so. It's just how he was.

Kaveh couldn't either believe his eyes when he saw him approaching. But he didn't push him away... Well, at least he didn't insist on it. Alhaitham proceeded with caution, choosing thoughtfully his words, and maybe it was due Kaveh's drunken state, but he trusted him again.

And while he talked and complained about how everything has going down for him, Alhaitham knew that he would renounce to any music, to any book-time reading, just to hear that voice and see those shining red eyes looking at him. That was the colour he missed, the piece he lacked.

And it was that night, when he couldn't even believe that Kaveh was right there, sleeping in the bed he rightfully owned and after pinching his arm three times to secure it wasn't a dream even knowing he can't dream any adult in Sumeru could, when he heard the silence again.

But this time, it wasn't about how lonely or messed he was. It wasn't about how everything he lost.

It was about Kaveh. About how if he was music, Alhaitham would become a composer.

About how if Kaveh was love, Alhaitham would become a love poet, just to admire him.

And then he could hear it. It was not a realization but a reaffirmation.

He has fallen in love with Kaveh.

And he loved the silence, the darkness and the loneliness of his room that night. Because he knew that tomorrow, Kaveh will be there.

And he loved to be in love with him.

And again, Kaveh brought a whole rainbow full of colours to pour into his life. And he changed his whole routine, his whole ordeal, he was unpredictable and spontaneous at the worst hours of the day, but Alhaitham wouldn't want it any other way.

Alhaitham loved his new routine. Waking up with morning coffee, and the music Kaveh was dancing to with an invisible partner in the kitchen. To get out of his work on clock to search for him under the excuse of returning him his keys or taking him back home from the tavern.

He loved the weekends with a sleepy Kaveh who wore his pajamas' shirt because his last one clean was tainted by painting at midnight. He loved the way Kaveh's things slowly occupied space, his taste in decoration showing after pushing some buttons for making him feel comfortable.

He loved the Sunday's unspoken plan to go to the Grand Bazaar to buy furniture, visit the theater and end in Puspa Café to hear stories from other nations. And in their way home, while Kaveh was commenting the story, Alhaitham will understand why wars were fought just for love.

He would fight the Dendro Archon herself if she dared to even dare to break Kaveh's dreams.

It is scary as it was fascinating the way Kaveh was like discovering always a new thing, hearing a new song, reading a new book and finding it interesting. Making you want more.

Even if the reality hurts, the lyrics are heartbreaking or the story has a sad ending, Alhaitham would go through it once again.

And he could see, while Kaveh looked at him silently in the front door expecting for him to open it, that this is the life he wants. Forever.

So he takes out his keys, which gets out attached to Kaveh's one, but he doesn't use it for the door and instead he holds Kaveh's hand and puts them on it.

Kaveh is confused, and his eyes show it as much. Then Alhaitham breaks the silence just to repeat its words.

"I love you."

A heartbeat.

Kaveh's eyes open widely.

Two.

He blushes.

Three.

He opens his mouth.

Four.

He closes it again, at a loss for words.

Five.

His lips taste like mint tea, his smile can light up the Chasm

And then the silence after the kiss tells him.

Kaveh is in love too.

// end!

Thanks for reading, I hope you liked it! For A/N, tbh I poured this time myself a bit in Hthm. I don't realte to him as I do w/ Kaveh, but I lost too my gradma who was like my mother in a young age, and I kinda blamed myself. Also I hate silence and I'm music lover so

I'm really surprised everyone who read embraced this so warmly I kinda expected to be told I was mischar him (which I tried not to but he's too complex for me to write I hate him /j). So, thank you all again for reading! Soon on AO3 when I recover my sleepin hours (I'll link blw)