Chapter Text
Childe awoke at the ass crack of dawn as he usually did to prepare his and Zhongli’s morning teapot of coffee when he tripped and landed face-first onto the carpeted floor of their living room.
‘What the f-’ he began, before noticing the Kaeya-shaped lump of blankets at his feet. Panicking, he frantically got on his knees and rummaged through the blankets until he unearthed an unamused looking Kaeya glaring up at him, his eye adorned with a terribly dark eyebag.
‘Uh…’ Childe was at a loss for words. ‘Why… why are you on the floor? Is that a Mondstadt thing or something?’
Kaeya huffed, somehow managing to look even more tired than five seconds ago. He flipped off the rest of the blankets with one arm, revealing a sleeping Albedo with tear-streaks running down his chubby face. Still a child , Childe observed with a sigh.
‘Bedo had a nightmare last night, so I had to parade him around the house at three in the morning to get him to sleep again. I would have slept on the couch but man-’ Kaeya closed his eye in tired frustration, ‘-it’s so fucking small .’
Blinking the dreariness from his eyes, Childe gently tugs Albedo from Kaeya’s arms and lays down on the floor next to him, the child resting on his chest. ‘Rough night, huh?’
He patiently waits for any kind of sarcastic response from Kaeya, but instead he hears quiet snores and looks over to find him dead asleep, an arm thrown across his eyes. ‘Wait, shit - Kaeya, what am I supposed to do with Albedo if you fall asleep like that?’ He takes a moment to nudge the bluenette with his elbow and look down at the sleeping boy in his arms. Groaning, he flops back onto the floor and closes his eyes as well. ‘You better not wake up any time soon, you menace,’ he whispers to Albedo.
However, just before he could fall asleep again, he heard Zhongli’s soft footsteps padding into the room. A pause, a gasp, and soon he heard the curtains being drawn closed and felt the love of his life lie down on the floor beside him after pulling a huge, knitted blanket over all of them.
And so they lay like that in exhausted silence in the dark, each one falling into a deep slumber once again.
**********
Kaeya wakes up to a pillow slammed in his face.
‘Rise and shine, Sir Kaeya!’ The voice of an all-too-familiar bard came from behind him. ‘Thank goodness you’re awake, I was about to resort to dumping this bottle of old osmanthus wine on you if the pillow didn’t work.’
‘And where have you been, O Great Barbatos?’ he retorted with a roll of his eyes. Sitting up, he winces at the pain in his back that came with sleeping on the floor.
‘Never mind me, what happened when I was gone? Why’s Albedo acting… like Albedo? Did you do something?’
Kaeya glanced over to see Albedo, who was sitting on the couch with the corners of his mouth turned down in a small pout. He stared off into a distance like he was daydreaming, his eyes only half open.
‘It’s… been a long night,’ Kaeya says, picking Albedo up and carrying him to the kitchen. He sets him on the kitchen counter before rummaging through the fridge. ‘He’s probably just tired. Or hungry. Hangry?’
‘Can babies get hangry?’
Kaeya emerges from behind the fridge door with his arms full of different assortments of fruit and breakfast-looking foods. He whips out his sword and starts dicing up one of the oranges. ‘I guess? I mean, don’t babies cry all the time? I’m sure at least half of that time is because they like… want crackers or something.’
Venti shrugs and grabs an orange cube to hold up in front of Albedo. His teal eyes widen a little before he leans forward for an experimental lick. However, just as Venti was about to push the entire cube into his mouth, Albedo scrunched his nose, sticking his tongue out in disgust before turning away to pout even more.
‘Maybe he just doesn’t like oranges,’ Venti says, scratching his head. ‘Try an apple, everyone loves apples.’
Albedo doesn’t love apples.
Or any of the other fruits, apparently. A watermelon, avocado, strawberry, grape, pineapple and banana later, Albedo still has yet to have taken a bite out of anything that would have been even remotely healthy for him. He sits like a stubborn, immovable piece in a museum with little arms crossed, his chin tilted up and lips in a permanent pout. The kitchen counter is a mess, with fruit juice dripping off the edge of the marble surface and onto Kaeya’s pants.
‘Bedooo,’ Venti forces through a smile full of gritted teeth, ‘why won’t you eat anything? These are yummy! See?’ he says, taking a huge bite of kiwi to demonstrate while still pressing a grape to Albedo’s lips. ‘C’moooon -’
‘What’s the matter?’
Kaeya and Venti lift their heads off the sticky counter to see Childe and Zhongli walking in, one with the worst case of bedhead they had ever seen and the other looking as elegant as ever.
‘Childe!’ Kaeya nearly yells as he scrambles to fix his juice stained shirt and hide his sword, opting to drop it onto the tiled floor. ‘It’s nothing, Albedo just doesn’t seem to like anything you have in your fridge,’ he says, his words dragging off to finish in a groan of frustration. ‘Do you know how to cook any baby food? The only thing I’m decent at cooking are my skewers.’
The ginger gazes at Albedo for a moment before calmly walking over to the fridge. ‘There’s no need for that,’ he yawns, pulling out a slice of blueberry cheesecake. Immediately Albedo’s entire face lights up as he begins to crawl towards the end of the counter to Childe, who had a terrible shit-eating grin on his face as he smirked at Kaeya and Venti.
‘That’s unhealthy,’ Kaeya says with a frown.
‘Well at least he’s eating something,’ Childe shrugs. ‘Would you rather he starve all day while you two wander around all of Liyue trying to find something he’ll actually put in his mouth?’
He opens his mouth in protest, but Kaeya decidedly slumps over the counter in defeat instead. Albedo scoots over and places a small hand in his tangled blue locks like it would bring him some form of comfort in his distress.
‘You’re lucky you’re cute,’ he mumbles into his arms as Childe feeds his little alchemist yet another slice of breakfast cheesecake.