the alhaitham brainrot is so strong that i wrote this at work today. it's a lil snippet so I'll just place it after the cut because I'm quite happy with how it came out <3 i might continue it at some point.
Alhaitham stood still at the doorframe, his eyes glued on the small, sleeping figure on the couch. Unmoving, he almost seemed to hold his breath; he had grown used to seeing her angry and frustrated, happy and laughing, but this... This was different. He wasn't used to seeing her this vulnerable.
It amused him greatly, even if the only hint was the slight curve of his lips as he finally took a step inside. It was ironic; how many times had they argued in the past about this? He used to lecture her about not sleeping in the library, about taking breaks, and here she was now. Asleep on his couch. The materials of her research spread through his coffee table. It tugged on his heartstrings.
For a man who prided himself in being reserved and prizing his personal space, he seemed oddly content with having her like this. With her presence invading every inch of his home. As if he didn't mind her plaguing every corner of his space, like an infectious disease he had yet to find the cure for.
s. nostalgia fills alhaitham when he finds a certain letter from months ago.
cw. longing, slight angst if you squint, haitham being soft, stream of consciousness.
tw. named oc/self-insert.
wc. 1.9k
a/n. i did not proofread this at work because i was absolutely done and i did not want to be there anymore lmao. i just started writing and i didn't know where i was going, but i'm kinda happy with the result?? natsutham my beloved. (for context, the letter says his office because he graduated first).
credits. dividers by @/cafekitsune.
For the first time in his life, Alhaitham felt utterly powerless against the illogical thoughts spiraling within his mind. Had this been any other circumstance, he would’ve found a way to refocus—to forget this odd sickness that plagued his mind. This time, however, nothing seemed to work.
Not that he was surprised, though.
Nothing could surprise him anymore. Not when it came to her.
As he flipped open the book on his desk, his lips curved into an imperceptible smile. There were traces of her penmanship all over this book—it had to be that one essay Natsu had almost wrecked her head to find a thesis statement that convinced her enough, none of them were good enough for what she wanted to analyze. He had watched her pick up and discard book after book that week; she had looked less like the bubbly mess he recognized and more like those scholars slowly losing their minds to their research.
The memories flooded his mind effortlessly. As it so often happened with her.
He could almost see her in the quiet hallways of the House of Daena, standing on her tiptoes, trying her best to reach this book that now rested in his hands. She had flushed—the slightest shade of pink spreading through her cheeks—the moment he had reached it for him. Natsu had mumbled a small thank you hidden within a storm of complaints about his height. And yet, despite her half-hearted complaints, she still allowed him to remain close by—to listen to her rambling about her paper, about the newest text she was studying.
She still allowed him to observe her as radiant as she was whenever she shared her passion with him.
Before he could realize what he was doing, his finger was already tracing the soft dentures her pencil had left in the margins of the book. He could still see the shapes of her penmanship, forever etched into the paper, despite her attempts to erase it—she always did say that her thoughts were not important enough to leave for others to read. He disagreed, now more than ever. Alhaitham would give anything to have anything of hers; traces of her words in an old book about ruins and linguistic variations of the desert tribes, the echoes of her laughter that remained in the empty hallways of the House of Daena, that old scarf she had left at his place when she fell asleep during that all-nighter they had to pull…
He would give anything to have anything of her.
But he would give up the world to have her back.
With a heavy sigh, he left the book on his desk before closing it. These traces she had left behind were merely scraps—crumbles of her presence, enough to keep him afloat but not quite to keep him alive. The nostalgia and longing clouded his mind for a second as he wondered if she missed him just as much as he did her. If, perhaps, he paced around her mind as often as she did in his.
If she still thought about their last conversation.
He still thought of it.
“You’re still here?” She had said, with her doe eyes widening in surprise at his sudden appearance. Sudden. She had found it sudden. As if she did not know he would have followed her to the ends of Teyvat had she asked. He had merely hummed a reply—there were barely any words needed, after all. Even in his silence, Natsu had always understood him better than anyone. “I thought I was the last one here.”
“You’re always pushing yourself too far,” He had replied, matter-of-factly, as he had taken the book out of her hands. “It’s late. You should go.”
“That’s my book.”
“It’s the Akademiya’s, actually.” He had shrugged.
Natsu had rolled her eyes, amusement curving her lips into a small smile. “Smartass. You know what I meant.”
“I do,” Alhaitham had nodded, stretching his arm to place the book back in its place. Natsu had merely watched in silence as if waiting for him. She had always seemed to be waiting for something. “I am also right. You need rest.”
She had mocked him, then, as she so often did. Natsu had repeated his words back to him, then laughed. Alhaitham had not known it for years, but at that time he understood that her laughter filled him with warmth, like sunlight.
He had walked her out of the Akademiya after that—to make sure she made it home safe, to spend a few more minutes basking in her presence. When they had reached her door, dread had spread like weeds in a garden through his chest. He had known something was wrong the moment she hesitated. Natsu barely hesitated in front of him. She was always witty and sarcastic, always straight forward.
She never hesitated.
But that night she had.
“I’ve fallen in love with you. I…”
The words had left him before he could stop them, as if they had a mind of their own. Perhaps it had been the impact of her hesitation or the fact that these feelings had been growing steadily within his heart for the past decade, like a garden she had tended to meticulously with her sharp retorts and her bright laughter. Whatever it was, he had not been able to stop them.
“What I mean to say is I am no longer interested in pretending I feel nothing.”
“Haitham-”
She had hesitated, again.
Alhaitham had always thought that rejection would hurt, but it did not. The uncertainty in her gaze had hurt him far more than her lack of words.
And then she finally spoke.
“I’m leaving,” The words were poison on her tongue. “I… I’m leaving next week.”
Alhaitham shook his head, attempting to physically remove the memory from his mind. It had been three months since then—which meant that it had been three months since Natsu had left Sumeru, effectively leaving him behind. She had avoided him for the remainder of that last week; she had insisted on being too busy with her packing and whatnot, although she escaped the room whenever he stepped inside. He had respected her distance.
Kaveh had reached out, had insisted that Natsu was merely busy—that her lack of communication, now that she was somewhere across the sea, was due to her schedule and not her wish to distance herself from him. To separate herself from all the memories and dizzying feelings they shared. It bothered him, sometimes; the fact that he seemed easy enough to read that Kaveh felt the need to comfort him, even when it was not necessary.
After all, Alhaitham was a rational man—he understood that Natsu’s decision to leave had been made long before he blurted out his feelings that night. He understood that her leaving was not an answer to his clumsy words. He did not need Kaveh’s reassurance that Natsu was not angry at him. He knew that.
However, he was angry at himself.
Angry at the fact that he had been so clumsy with his feelings. That he had taken this long to tell her. That he had hurt her. That he had made her feel obligated to avoid him that last week. That he had made her feel as if she could not reach out to him anymore.
It was an odd feeling—to understand that none of these outcomes were really his fault but to blame himself anyway. Perhaps this is what Natsu meant when she said that love cannot be understood logically, only felt.
Alhaitham was not quite sure he liked it.
He took a deep breath, bracing himself for the day ahead of him, as he took hold of the reports he needed to process. He eyed them first as he sorted them—requests for more funds, formal requests for research projects, some complaints about the lack of copies of a certain book…
Mr. Scribe.
He paused.
He would recognize her penmanship anywhere—from the hardly-erased traces on books, the constant arguments they silently held in the margins of their papers, to this cleanly written letter addressed to him in that mocking tone of hers.
It was Natsu.
Mr. Scribe,
We will see how long it takes you to find this letter.
I know your organization skills like the back of my hand after all these years together, but I still pride myself in my ability to throw you off balance. After all, Kaveh did say it is my job to keep you humble.
I’m writing this letter while you think I am brainstorming for my linguistics paper. I am not—that paper was written a week ago, and I am just waiting to proofread it and make corrections. So, instead, I’m writing to you.
You’re sitting right in front of me, and though you’ve always been very observant, you don’t seem to notice my eyes on you. You’re focused on the book, writing on your notes the key points we will need for our final project. I don’t know if you know, but your eyebrows wrinkle just slightly when you’re focused. I like it.
I guess I don’t say that quite enough, do I? We’re always arguing, and I’m always getting angry at you, but the truth is that I do not dislike you, Haitham. If anything, I think I like you more than I’d like to admit. You’re stubborn and infuriatingly nonchalant, but you’re also caring and gentle, and I do not know how to act whenever you seem soft with me. I apologize for that.
You think you’re the only observant one in this relationship, though you’ll probably say this is not a relationship. And you’re right. But you are still my friend (don’t you dare correct my grammar in this letter), and I do observe you. Far more than you think. I see the way my struggle to reach certain bookshelves amuses you (you’re a terrible person, I did not ask to be short). I see the way you always let me walk on the side with fewer people on—you’ve seen too many people run into me by now. I also notice how you always ask for cinnamon and sugar for my coffee, even though you like it black—you know I don’t like bitterness. I’ve noticed that you always get yourself a coffee when you get me one, probably because you know I would feel bad if you only got one for me.
But, most of all, I’ve noticed that you’re always here with me.
What I am trying to say is thank you. Thank you for putting up with me, even when all we do is bicker. Thank you for pulling all-nighters with me when we were students. Thank you for always bringing me coffee and a snack when you knew I was too engrossed in my projects—you’ve always been taking care of me, even when I did not want to admit it. I may be an ungrateful woman, but I am not blind. I do see the way you care for me, even when I do not deserve it.
I’ll let you continue working for now while I write this nonsense that I kind of hope you will never find (I will hide this somewhere in your office, after all).
Love,
Natsu.
Alhaitham chuckled as he reached the end of the letter—this was so like her. To remain hidden for months only to come back and haunt him, to unsettle him once again. He wondered, then, if perhaps that was why her favorite novel had resonated so much with her. If the concept of haunting your loved one—if he could interpret this letter as such answer—even after death was precisely what she liked.
Whatever it was, it comforted him.
This was a piece of Natsu meant for him—not traces left for other people, not forgotten notes on the margins of a book. This was his.
Just like he was hers, begrudgingly and irrevocably hers.
Always hers, whether or not she remained at an arm’s distance.
I like to think that Haitham is always surprised by how clingy and touchy Natsu is. That he was so used to them bickering and she barely touching anyone in any way that once they are together and she's got this urge to always be around him (or on him, depending on her mood) he's just blown away by it.
He's mostly amused and he likes it, but he is always surprised whenever she comes home and the first thing she does is drop her bag and just sit in his lap and curl into him like a cat, like she just needs to feel him for a bit after a long day of not feeling him.
Natsu is more emotionally constipated than Haitham. Not that I ever thought he WAS, but she's far more in denial about her feelings than him. And he was so far gone and so accepting of his feelings that I just realized that's why he was willing to have the whole fwb thing.
He was willing to accept whatever she gave him, because he loved her.
At this point I need Haitham to hold my face in the "idiot sandwich" way and remind me that the fact that my brain can't differentiate uncertainty from certain death doesn't mean I'm actually in real danger just because a friend was mean to me.
I think the first time Natsu stays over in Haitham's bed (because they've been roommates for months) and he wakes up first, he's just in awe. Because she didn't run away this time. Because she's here, in his arms. Because after loving her for half a lifetime, she's finally his as he's always been hers.
So he stays in bed, watching her for a few seconds, before he starts dozing off again.
