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threegodkings · 2 years ago

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alhaitham/cyno [2.5k]

quick lil warm up for the other fics i gotta finish this weekend (ok this spiralled out of control a little but it's fine it's cruisy LMAO) --- as a general rule, things i write for tumblr on any of my blogs stay here and don't get transferred elsewhere but this is long enough that i will Possibly put it on ao3 later... possibly

edit: ao3 link

The Liyue night sky isn’t the overwhelming expanse found in the desert, where the stars are so distinct that they’ve been used for navigation for as long as stories have been told, but the moonlight plays over Cyno’s skin all the same, so Alhaitham will take it.

He watches as Cyno looks over the land. The General Mahamatra is always a pleasure to watch in action, moving with lethal grace and pulling his punches with precision every time.

Once, a week or two after Dehya returned from Fontaine with a samurai who had recited poetry that made Lumine smile and handed her a bag of gifts for mutual friends that was roughly the size of Paimon, the three of them had ended up in the desert. Lumine had offered to join them, but Cyno had sent her on her way with gentle hands and a request to stop by Gandharva Ville to let Collei know he might be a little late for their TCG training session, but he wouldn’t miss it.

He had said it with such steady conviction that Alhaitham felt it, bone-deep. But he hadn’t been able to look away from Cyno’s hands.

That particular trip had ended in Dehya cussing out a group of Eremite-breakaways while she used the hilt of her claymore to knock one out before flinging it to the side to sock someone else in the stomach, Alhaitham translating the runic carvings as fast as he could while flicking dendro shards towards the stray attack that got past Cyno, and Cyno whirling his staff around with such deft precision that Alhaitham wished he could turn around and study him instead.

Everyone survived the ordeal, of course; Dehya said she doesn’t believe in punishing thickheadedness with death, or else the two of them would have ended up at the other end of her weapon that first fateful day in Aaru Village, and Alhaitham had done his part in unlocking the key to spit all of them from the tomb.

And Cyno, well --

It doesn’t need clarification, Alhaitham thinks. The oath of the General Mahamatra is writ in stone and hasn’t changed since its genesis, but Alhaitham doubts anyone has held to it as intently as Cyno. It’s not a slight against his predecessors; it’s just that Cyno’s dedication to justice and his oath is second to none.

The Akademiya looks at the General Mahamatra and sees a punisher, but in truth, he’s always been a protector.

None shall come to harm under his watch.

So -- the General Mahamatra is always a privilege to observe, with his unparalleled tenacity and exacting movements.

But here, tonight, beneath the full force of the Liyue night sky, Alhaitham does not observe the General Mahamatra, but Cyno.

With a swallow, Alhaitham takes a step forward.

“Finally,” Cyno says. Alhaitham raises an eyebrow, but does not speak. It’s not really a surprise. It’s a rare beast indeed that manages to get the drop on the General Mahamatra (or Cyno, or the Wolf of Spantamad, or the Judicator of Secrets, or any of the thousands of things he’s been called over the years, as if to name a thing is to define it), and Alhaitham is nothing so unique. He is but a feeble scholar, after all.

“Your thoughts are so loud,” Cyno adds. Alhaitham looks down at him as he steps closer, closer, all the way until they stand side-by-side. There is a space between them that Alhaitham only knows how to define as the absence of touch; he’s so aware of Cyno’s presence, his skin prickling with Cyno’s errant warmth, that if he could not see the small distance between them, he wouldn’t believe it there at all.

“They only seem loud relative to the dearth found in others,” Alhaitham retorts. There’s a smile glimmering at the edges of Cyno’s lips before he rearranges it into a frown. Alhaitham maps the path of it in his brain.

“I didn’t expect to see you here,” Cyno says, and it feels like something else. Alhaitham doesn’t think about that, doesn’t think about anything at all except for the way Cyno’s hands look right now, resting on the railing of Wangshu Inn’s balcony, moonlight spilling over each ridge and groove.

“You weren’t surprised to see me,” Alhaitham points out, and Cyno shrugs.

“That’s not the same thing,” he says.

After a moment, Alhaitham nods, a slow thing. Like honey, or the way Lumine smiles when her eyes are sad, or Cyno’s breathing when it’s late at night and there’s nothing in the world except all the stars to guide them.

“What brings you to Liyue?” Alhaitham asks. He looks at Cyno, drinks him in unabashedly. It’s a recently-discovered benefit to interrogation: a free pass to look directly. Recently-discovered isn’t quite correct. Recently-valued, maybe. It’s not a new thing, after all; it’s just that Alhaitham has never cared about it before.

(Cyno’s gaze is always unflinching. Sometimes Alhaitham thinks about the way Cyno always looks at him, no matter the circumstances. Cyno does not hide behind excuses. Nor does Alhaitham, usually, but there are some honesties easier to swallow when clothed in rationale.

This feeling really is a vexing thing, Alhaitham thinks, to compel him to explain his behaviour, even just to himself. The lack of explanation provided for anything he does unless demanded has always been one of his most charming qualities, in his opinion.

(Okay, so Dehya had laughed in his face when he said as much to her in Lambad’s Tavern once, but he’s decided to ignore it. Peer review is an important part of scholarship, but unfortunately for him, he can count his options (read: people he respects) on one hand, and given that one is a god and another makes his chest ache unintentionally, he ends up with Dehya laughing at him a lot.))

“The pursuit of treasure,” Cyno says, tone completely serious, which --

Alhaitham blinks. What a completely unexp—

Oh. Scratch that. He does know what this is, courtesy of Dehya dragging him and Lumine out to drinks after the Traveller’s return from Mondstadt. Cyno had joined them later, having been in Gandharva Ville with Collei and Tighnari, but he’d been a popular topic of conversation prior to his arrival.

(Alhaitham is not above soaking up all information he can, and certainly not about subjects of interest—if Cyno was such a thing back when all he learned of him was through distant observation and the sages’ record of him, he is something all the more important now. Still, for the record, it wasn’t him who pressed for further details—that was all Dehya. Of course, Paimon was all too happy to oblige, immediately launching into an indignant recounting of a joke about ground nuts. Alhaitham was entirely innocent in the matter, thank you very much.)

He recalibrates. “Makes sense,” he says casually, nodding slowly. Cyno’s eyes flick up, scanning his face, and Alhaitham continues, “Just as I would expect from such a renowned adventurer.”

There’s a smile glimmering on Cyno’s lips, and that makes this whole thing worth it.

“And you?” Cyno the Adventurer asks, looking at Alhaitham like -- like he’s a memory in the process of being made, maybe. Something worth tracking the motion of, worth learning by heart. It makes Alhaitham’s cheeks heat up, just a little. “Are you an adventurer too, to have heard of others?”

“Me?” Alhaitham asks, tilting his head. “Oh, no, nothing so exciting. I am just a feeble scholar.”

Cyno’s expression does something complicated, goes somewhere between wry and -- something just shy of disappointment. It makes Alhaitham’s bones ache.

“I see,” Cyno says.

It’s not born out of rationality, what Alhaitham does next. One might even be forgiven for thinking it uncharacteristic, although they would be incorrect. That’s not their fault, though; Alhaitham suspects that most people in Teyvat would come to the same conclusion.

Increasingly, however, he thinks some of the citizens of Sumeru—mostly those who float around the Akademiya, like a handful of the matra and maybe two or three of the scholars who regularly haunt the (Acting) Grand Sage’s office with their endless paperwork, but also the various people who burrowed their way into his life (despite his best efforts) through camaraderie and a successful coup against the autocratic geniocracy that tried to make a new god—have started to notice these shifts in his behaviour. It’s not that he eschews rationality, exactly; it’s just --

Alhaitham looks at Cyno’s hands again. Recurring theme.

There’s something about Cyno that recalibrates Alhaitham’s worldview. That sounds more dramatic than it is, he thinks. It’s not like he’s changing, or that logic falls wayside; it’s just that if Cyno is in the room, Alhaitham is always aware of it, in a way that feels so much more present than his normal (already stellar) observational skills. It’s not just information he registers to sort and sift through. He wants to know. If Cyno is there, Alhaitham wants to know.

If Cyno is there, Alhaitham wants.

That’s the only reason he can think to provide for why he reaches out and captures Cyno’s hand, sweeping his thumb gently over the back of it. One, two, three.

Cyno sucks in a breath, but he doesn’t pull back, just trains that endless gaze on Alhaitham.

“Yes,” Alhaitham says. “I’ve been contemplating two areas of study in particular for my newest paper.”

“Oh?” Cyno asks. He sounds -- in all honesty, he sounds almost exactly the same as ever, but Alhaitham knows him well enough now to detect the glint of amusement in his voice, the way it wars with a touch of wariness. He thinks there’s affection too, or fondness, at the least, but he’s sent back enough documents for review to overzealous scholars to acknowledge that he’s not an objective enough observer to make draw such a conclusion.

Still, he hopes.

“Mm,” Alhaitham hums. “The usage of the Liyue nightscape for both guiding and illuminative purposes,” he says, eyes dropping back to Cyno’s hands. Years ago, Alhaitham read a book suggesting that the triangulation of stars in Liyue does not obey the same rules of equations as the night sky in Sumeru. The implications of such an argument were fascinating and thorny, the exact sort of thing he likes to muse upon, but right now, in this moment, Alhaitham finds his attention much more occupied with the way the moonlight plays over Cyno’s knuckles, spilling over each ridge and faded scar.

“That’s one,” Cyno says. His eyebrow is arched, but not as dramatically as Dehya’s would be, not like an accusation. It’s something softer. Alhaitham has the stray thought that playacting aside, he could quite easily spend his time studying the rhythms of Cyno, all his minute motions and barest tendencies. It’s perhaps the only similarity Alhaitham can find between himself and the former sages, although their motivations differ drastically.

“So it is,” Alhaitham says. He looks up from Cyno’s hands, lips tugging into something crooked. “Hands, then.”

“Hands,” Cyno repeats, and Alhaitham nods. The look Cyno gives him in response is incredulous. “Well,” Cyno says slowly, like that ajilenakh nut syrup Dunyarzad likes to drizzle on her breakfast, “as it would happen, I possess hands.”

He says it with such a straight face that Alhaitham almost snorts. Coughing lightly into his hand to disguise it, Alhaitham says, “So you do.” A moment later, he adds, “Ones currently illuminated by said nightscape.”

Cyno’s lips turn up at the edges, in that rare kind of smile that used to catch Alhaitham off guard. These days, he chases it.

“That’s two out of three,” Cyno says.

Alhaitham dips his head in agreement. “I’ve heard that a handful of the most experienced adventurers know how to navigate through the stars,” he says, looking directly at Cyno.

He’s looking back.

“Perhaps a renowned adventurer such as yourself…”

Cyno lets out a light huff of laughter. If Alhaitham wasn’t so attuned to his presence, he’d have missed it.

“And if I could?” Cyno asks, too casually.

Alhaitham tilts his head. He commits the sight to memory: Cyno, looking out over Bishui Plain, the night breeze rustling his hair, and moonlight spilling over his skin. He flicks his gaze away from Liyue’s landscape, back to Alhaitham’s face, and leaves it there. There’s a slight smile at his lips. Alhaitham’s heart aches, the way it does when you read something revelatory for the first time, and are immediately aware of the fact that it will never be new again. It’s not a bad thing; it’s just a pressing ache in your chest, the type that was always rare for Alhaitham, dotted only a few times throughout the timeline of his life.

These days, though, it is a recurring theme. Like being around Cyno, sometimes, is too big to hold.

“If you could…” Alhaitham says, drawing it out. He huffs a breath, a little wry. “I may be a mere scholar, but when my interest is piqued, I am quite resourceful, if I do say so myself.” A beat, then, “Once I start something, I always see it through.”

Sometimes that means exploring it to its limits, and then discovering it is not as intriguing as initially thought. In those cases, Alhaitham has no qualms about dropping it and moving on. That’s still seeing it through, in his opinion; he’s taken it to the extent to which it has value to him, and once that has been exhausted, he leaves it be.

There is not a single bone in his body that thinks Cyno will ever be that to him, not even for a moment.

Cyno’s breath hitches. He looks over Alhaitham intently, like he’s decoding all the things he did not say from the knot of his arms, the line of his wrist, the curve of his cheek. Who knows? Maybe he is. If anyone could, it would be him.

“You’re in luck, scholar,” Cyno says finally. He flashes a smile -- small and quick, but so warm and unexpected that Alhaitham’s neck feels hot. “I know how to follow the stars.” He turns his head back towards Bishui Plain, but Alhaitham can still see a glimpse of his profile. There’s something warm and easy in the set of his lips, almost teasing. “Does that pique your interest?”

Yes, Alhaitham wants to say, you always do.

In the back of his head, Dehya scoffs. You academic types have the worst foreplay, she grumbles. Can’t you just be in love like a normal person? ‘I am quite resourceful’ -- Kusanali save us, just ask him to dinner next time, I’m fucking begging.

Ignoring his unfortunately canny projection of her, Alhaitham dips his head again, resting his hand on the railing. They do not touch, but his fingers are close enough to Cyno’s that he can feel the warmth emanating.

“Yes,” he says simply. He exhales, a little teasing. “I do believe I will be seeing this through.”

In the back of his head, Dehya is groaning, banging her head against his skull, but Alhaitham can’t bring himself to care, not with how Cyno looks right now: eyes shining, smile glimmering at his lips, with the full force of the Liyue night sky shining behind him.

#haino #cytham #cyno #alhaitham #i started counting kazuha and lumine's mutual friends through various events and gave up after seven lmao #the pacing in this is probably as wild as most things i end up writing quickly for tumblr (or twt for that matter) tend to be #but i might put it on ao3 later Maybe i will figure it out later #i wrote this on tumblr so putting it in my wordcounter app made me like 😵‍💫#this was actually just a warm up to get me in the zone for this OTHER hainotham fic i'm writing lmao but... it spiralled...#it is 6am tho so i will decide abt putting it on ao3 later lol #mine

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