You Love Him Ever So Deadly | ×Alhaitham x Kaveh× |

✦ 6 ✦ Rest With One Eye Open

"Mm..." Kaveh hummed into the goose feather pillow placed under his blonde head. To slip out of consciousness and be suddenly returned to full awareness made all the colors around him seem to mash into a blur. Incapable of deciphering his whereabouts, he rubbed his eyes, a pounding headache ringing in his head. "Where am I?"

Amidst the bright color of the yellow glass oil lamp hanging above and somewhere, in the shadows, he could recognize a familiar shadow. The silhouette moved its hand, an object resembling that of a book being placed down. "Purgatory." It said in a tone dryer the Hadramaveth desert.

It's that damn Alhaitham.

Kaveh groaned, using all of his drained muscle energy to sit up on the bed, his eyes still adjusting to the light. "Oh haha." He mimicked a laugh, though his tone was void of all playfulness. "Please, continue to kick me while I'm down."

"Not my intention. I just attempted to light up the mood. " Alhaitham responded in his signature "I refuse to show an ounce of emotion" attitude. He was sitting on a vintage chair, nested awkwardly against the wall of the room. Just from the furniture placement itself, Kaveh finally understood that he wasn't in his room.

It was that damn Alhaithams.

"Urk..." The blonde rubbed his eyes, the heavy weight of them refusing to disperse. Through a yawn and shake of his head, his messy blonde locks falling gracefully on his narrowly exposed shoulder, he muttered. "Where's Lisa? Is she okay?"

The air filled with that shocked silence. As though an electric static lingered in the atmosphere, all that Kaveh failed to register. Just like the way he didn't notice the scribes eyes at him soften, yet maintain an underlying stare of dread. "...Is that seriously your first concern?" He muttered, seemingly through a scoff.

"You left her at the cafe, didn't you?" As though it was common knowledge, Kaveh snapped back. Squirming like a worm in the warm sheets, he gathered every bit of strength in himself to keep his body up from falling into the pillow. "She's a guest, I can't just leave her hanging in Sumeru like that. I need to-"

"She's fine. She carried you here on her own."

Kaveh immediately Brough his eyes back up at Alhaitham. On one side, he failed to believe him. It appeared to be just another one of his jests, a derogatory way to keep him on his toes. But upon further consideration, he could sense nothing but concern.

And the concern was useless to him. "And you didn't think of inviting her in?" He groaned, a minor headache setting foot in his head. He gripped his messy locks, desperately trying to ignore the severity of his pain. "Archons, Alhaitham, you're a host too, you should've-"

"You fainted and were unconscious for an hour." Being as transparent as he possibly could, Alhaitham interrupted the latter's complaints. Seizing all room to continue whining.

It was like going back and forward with a wall. Neither of them gained leverage and neither of them lost credibility. But Kavehs unstable present remained persistent. He barked back. "That's not an excuse. She doesn't live in Sumeru. Who knows, she could've gotten lost or-" His vision started to get blurry, plagued by paranoid scenes of Lisa getting lost in the vastness of the city.

Alhaitham dropped the humility. "Kaveh." The name rolled off his tongue elegantly but foreshadowed a moral the architect had no interest in hearing. "You are malnourished, exhausted, and pale. If I didn't know better, I'd set aside my skepticism and assume you're a ghost roaming these halls. So I suggest you keep your mouth sealed and rest until you have enough strength to get back on your feet." His calculated manner was irritating, and though the latter was weak, he couldn't shake the feeling of wanting to scream in his face to shut up.