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being the cavalry captain of the knight of favonius means kaeya must entertain a variety of different disasters, from jean telling him off for letting klee out of solitary confinement early to various ah, situations regarding the monsters surrounding mondstadt.
however, of all the crises that kaeya has ever dealt with, or has been trained to take care of, looking after the chief alchemist of the knights, the captain of the investigation team, and kaeya’s own boyfriend, albedo, who has inexplicably given himself cat ears via a failed experiment, is not one of them.
he knows something’s up the moment sucrose comes running up to him. they don’t talk much, because sucrose thinks he’s weird or something. at least, that’s what albedo told him. so for the alchemist’s assistant to be looking for him of all people means there has to be something that’s gone horribly wrong. for one second, kaeya’s heart jumps into his throat when he thinks about blood on a forest floor and the night a vision materialised in his hands while pouring rain doused the fire on a black and red claymore.
“sucrose,” he nods in her direction, being sure to stay a respectful distance away from her, lest she feel uncomfortable. “is everything okay?” she’s breathing hard from running all the way from what kaeya assumes to be albedo’s lab, which is all the way up on dragonspine. for someone who doesn’t run, that must be quite the struggle. kaeya cocks an eyebrow and waits for her to respond.
“something happened... up in dragonspine... and albedo’s been asking for you...” she wheezes, fixing her glasses while her ears flick up in distress. kaeya’s body is cold, courtesy of his vision, but his hands are colder when he grabs sucrose’s hands and looks her dead in the eye.
“what happened, sucrose?” she looks at him, still gasping, before pointing to her ears and then back to kaeya. he resists the urge to laugh when she responds.
“he gave himself cat ears.”
maybe kaeya should quit being albedo’s boyfriend. he can’t keep doing this.
— —
“date albedo, they said,” kaeya grunts as he launches himself across the broken bridge that’s on the way to the alchemist’s lab. “it’ll be fun, they said.” he’s lying. no one told him to date albedo. after lisa had witnessed kaeya’s wistful glances at albedo whenever the alchemist would walk by with sucrose behind him, taking notes or discussing their newest experiment, she’d patted him on the back and assured him that she would do something about it. kaeya just hadn’t expected her idea of help to be setting him and albedo up on a date after she had explicitly told him that kaeya liked him.
he still freezes her personal belongings sometimes to get back at her for that. albedo, had admitted, after a few dates, that he too had feelings for kaeya, but he had been so over the moon that it took him a good few days to realise that it had not, in fact, been a prank, and that albedo had been serious. call him dense. kaeya may be a flirt, but hey, he does have a romantic side to him. while his idea of confessing to albedo had been on starsnatch cliff, surrounded by cecelias and the power of the anemo archon, confessing in front of diluc in his bar hadn’t been a bad idea either.
kaeya curses to himself wen he barely makes the jump, fingers digging into the frozen dirt as he pulls himself up onto the ledge that he’s sure will break one day and send someone falling to their death, with one of the extra results being a load of paperwork for both him and jean. not the way he wants to spend his days. at least albedo’s lab isn’t far from the bridge, though he wonders why albedo would choose this place to set up a lab, of all places (he knows it’s because of the dragon’s heart in the valley below them, but he decides not to focus on that fact for now).
“albedo?” he calls out, walking into the oh-so-homely rock cave that albedo has made into a third lab. there are potions bubbling on the table, including a pale blue one that’s half gone and uncorked. kaeya ventures to say that this was the one that albedo drank before he sent sucrose on a running errand that she may never recover from. “where are you...” he remembers exactly what sucrose told him had happened, and a grin spreads over his face - the same kind he gets when he lets klee out of solitary early – “kitten?” he finishes his sentence, sitting on the floor and playing with his vision, letting frosty patterns spiral out on to the floor.
a whine comes from behind one of the many tables and chalkboards scattered about the lab, and kaeya’s head snaps towards it, near one of the braziers in the front of the room. “kaeya...” he hears albedo say, and he gets up, leaving fractals in the shape of hearts on the floor. not very appropriate behaviour for the cavalry captain of the knights, but what is kaeya going to do, use the pyro vision he doesn’t have to get rid of it? “did sucrose tell you what happened?”
“yeah,” he says, still with the same shit-eating grin on his face. “now come out and let me see what you’ve done to yourself. i promise not to laugh, kitten.”
“stop that.” he hears albedo yell, and he can picture the alchemist stomping his foot on the ground, which is all but ruined by the fact that he can also picture cat ears on his boyfriend.
“i’ll stop it if you come out and quit hiding. come on, how bad can it be?” he’s trying not to laugh, but god, the image of albedo with cat ears is a little too cute for his liking. cuter than the way klee looks at him when she wants to go play with him, but kaeya is busy with paperwork or collecting knights to go on an expedition with him. most of the time, klee just ends up coming on the expedition with them.
“you have no idea,” albedo deadpans, but there’s movement behind the table where the pale blue potion is, and albedo’s head pops out, his hands covering his hair. “there were imperceptible side effects to the experiment that i did not factor into my calculations.”
“one of those being cat ears.” kaeya responds, and albedo huffs, coming around the desk to sit next to kaeya, his hands still covering what kaeya assumes to be his new ears. “i’m not going to laugh, why don’t you believe me?” albedo give him the stink eye before removing his hands from fluffy, white and black furred cat ears that poke out slightly from his messy hair. kaeya immediately falls in love, because oh my god that is the cutest thing he’s ever seen and did they just twitch- “it looks good, what do you mean?” he mumbles, before leaning his head on albedo’s and looking at the ears and how they react exactly in tune with the alchemist’s emotions.
“no, it doesn’t look good,” albedo corrects, rather vehemently. “how am i supposed to explain to the acting grandmaster that her chief alchemist suddenly turned into a being with trace remnants of non human DNA? she’s going to start wondering if something happened between me or sucrose, or god forbid, the minor from the cat’s tali bar. i have got to get rid of these.” he says, the faintest note of panic in his voice. “kaeya, hand me my notebook.”
kaeya raches out and takes albedo’s hand into his, adjusting himself until his head rests in the crook of albedo’s neck, and the alchemist’s hand is once again in his lap, intertwined with kaeya’s. “or you could, you know, keep them for a while. they do look really nice, i promise. and jean’s not stupid enough to think that you would do either of those things.”
“i still need to get rid of them, though,” he says, absentmindedly, reaching up to touch them. “i can’t go back to mondstadt like this. what would sucrose say? what would anyone say?” kaeya chuckles and reaches for his other hand as well, putting it back down where he can see them, tan against white, scars from holding swords and getting slashed by the other’s blades when they do combat training together. kaeya kisses his neck, all the way up to his jawline, and feels albedo shiver next to him, eyes fixed on the ears the flatten themselves against the alchemist’s head, white and black astonishingly clear against the pale, ashy blonde of his hair.
“they’re very reactive,” he comments, mildly interested in the way albedo is now blushing a furious shade of red and freaking out over the fact that with his ears comes the inability to hide the way his emotions show up on his face. “i wonder…”
albedo makes a vague hissing noise that kaeya registers as the same one diluc’s cat makes before yanking his hands out of kaeya’s and standing up, walking towards the desk where his notes and various potions of different sizes and colours sit. “stop wondering, kaeya. you always make the stupidest decisions when you use your brain.” kaeya shrugs, not denying the claim, before watching albedo sift through the piles of paper and diagrams before groaning, slamming his hands on the table, cat ears standing up straight on his head like they’re on end from electricity.
he can’t not laugh from the sheer absurdity of it all.
— —
it takes a little over ten minutes for albedo to realise that he has absolutely no idea what went wrong in his experiment, and that the resulting explosion the happened not only gave him cat ears, but also blew up half the papers on his table. with an annoyed sigh, albedo sits on the floor, ears flat aaginst his head in anger and hand against his forehead like that’ll help him beat out the knoweldge about the spell.
“it’s not that bad… right?” kaeya attempts to console the alchemist, who turns around and fixes him with a glare that would rival diluc’s, pale blue eyes meeting his own.
“it’s not bad, kaeya. it’s absolutely terrible!” he shrieks. “what am i supposed to do? i have to do something about this!” no, you don’t. kaeya thinks for a full three seconds. “if i go back to mondstadt like this, everyone’s going to laugh at me! klee will end up pulling them off and i’ll be sans one ear!” kaeya highly doubts that klee would pull that hard, but he’s not an expert on catboy anatomy, so he remains silent. albedo continues glaring at him like kaeya is the source of all his problems, pulling on his hair in an attempt to hide the ears. kaeya, with nothing left to do, scoots over from where he’s sitting on the floor and uses one hand to bring albedo’s hands back to his lap, and the other to begin scratching at the white and black fur.
“shush.”
albedo stops mid rant as a whine escapes his lips, a low purring noise coming from his throat the longer it goes on, before he realises what’s happening and attempts to school his expression into an impassive one. kaeya laughs softly as he continues stroking and scratching at the ears, albedo’s face ranging from borderline delirious with comfort to angry small kitten in varying degrees of seriousness. “well, that’s the answer i was looking for.” he mutters to himself. he wonders whether albedo will kill him if he writes his findings down in one of the many sketchbooks he has.
“kaeya alberich… i swear to rrrrrr all the archons in teyvat that if you don’t stop that rrrrrrr right now, i’ll slip a poison into your food at night rrrrrrrr and smile as you choke on it.” kaeya can’t take anything seriously as the purring noises his boyfriend is making break through the threats he’s attempting to make kaeya take seriously. not that poison can hurt him, he’s spent years building up a tolerance to anything his homeland may put in his food or drink.
“kitten, i can’t stop. not when you’re so adorable.” he teases. albedo glares at him before unconsciously leaning into kaeya’s touch, which is still stroking his ears. “and you don’t even hate it.” he says.
“this is an unwanted side effect. it’s not supposed to stay like this.” he growls, crossing his arms. “i’ll have this sorted out by the end of the day. sucrose has already started working on a solution. i’m sure she’ll figure something out.”
kaeya leans in slowly giving albedo a kiss on the forehead that the other responds to with only a sigh, before reciprocating. “and until she does, what will you do?” the alchemist snorts, staying silent for a few minutes at the absurdity of the question. iti’s a valid question, though. kaeya does want to know what the now catboy captain of the ordo favonius will do while his assistant tries valiantly to find a way to get rid of the fluffy ears on his head. he goes back to absentmindedly playing with albedo’s hands as the other thinks.
“i suppose, i’ll let you do whatever you want while we wait. i certainly can’t do much up here, most of my materials are back in mondstadt, in the main lab.” kaeya’s face splits into a grin and he reaches to scratch albedo’s ears again, eliciting another round of purring from the blonde.
it is valentine’s day, after all. kaeya will take his time finding out what exactly albedo’s cat ears do and do not do in terms of catlike behaviour. “let’s just go take a walk. so you can take a break?” he asks, looking through eyelashes at a very red albedo.
“fine.”
— —
truth be told, kaeya only wants to get albedo out of his lab, because he looks like he hasn’t seen the sun in months, and kaeya thinks the alchemist will look very pretty out of the dim cave he calls a lab. that’s beside the point, but it’s an important reason nonetheless.
this hypothesis turns out to be correct, as the first rays of sunlight that hit albedo bring out the contrast between pale blonde hair and black and white cat ears better than the fire in the lab, and the blue-grey sky matches the colour of his eyes, a stormy sky after the rain has fallen, where stars dance and play in the celestial field. kaeya brushes a stray piece of hair from albedo’s forehead to behind his ear, and has to momentarily remind himself how to breathe because oh my god albedo is so cute.
“where do you want to go?” albedo asks him, halfheartedly kicking at the pile of snow next to him. kaeya thinks for a while, because he hasn’t been around dragonspine all that much. he only knows this is the place where albedo conducts his more... dangerous experiments, whereupon harm may come to mondstadt. kaeya doesn’t particularly want to know what albedo was planning on doing, but if it resulted in the other gaining a pair of cat ears, the original result can’t have been that bad. he dimly wonders if it’s not impossible to give his boyfriend a matching tail as well.
“starglow cavern seems like a good place.”
starglow cavern was discovered a few moons after people began exploring dragonspine, shortly after albedo arrived in mondstadt, and began investigating the snowy mountain by himself. ever the understanding woman, jean had provided a few groups of knights to go with albedo, kaeya involved, and they ad found starglow cavern almost by accident, breaking through a pile of snow a few metres thick to reveal the teal and blue cavern beneath them. upon falling in, the man had broken his wrist, but kaeya chooses to forget that part of it, because the expression on albedo’s face when he had first seen the cavern had made it all worth it. he also thinks that’s when he first fell in love with the alchemist.
he knows albedo is thinking of the same thing, a small smile spreading over his face along with the everpresent blush that sits on his cheekbones now. it’s adorable. “you’re such a stupid romantic.” albedo comments slowly, breathing out mist and ice as they descend into the cavern. “other people would bring their valentines to a restaurant, or buy something from a store, but no. you decided to bring me to a glowing, freezing cavern. very romantic.”
“you know it,” is the only thing kaeya says, very softly, as he puts a hand around albedo’s waist and leads them deeper into the cavern, down to where a fragment of celestia used to sit, wapped in a protective bubble, until the traveller came in, and, with the subtlety of a flying ruin guard, busted the barrier open and sent it flying back into the sky. kaeya thinks of that memory with a fond smile; both he and albedo had been present while it happened, and he remembers the low scream albedo had restrained in his throat when he thought of how aether may have damaged the shard.
they end up sitting in the water, with kaeya spreading his cryo vision over the two of them, so they can comfortably sit in the admittedly freezing water. there are pieces of ice drifting around on the surface, and albedo’s fingers slowly brush across the surface of one of them before letting it go, his head resting against the fur of kaeya’s collar. funnily enough, albedo can only stand three minutes in the water before hissing, drying off his legs and toes and shaking himself all over before walking over to one of the three warming seelie in the cavern and curling up next to it, an arm covering his nose and mouth, and the other resting on the pedestal of the seelie, which pulses slowly and gives off its gentle warmth.
coincidentally (or not, kaeya can’t tell), albedo chose the one seelie in the area where light reaches, all the way at the bottom of the cavern, a few thin rays of light shining and adding extra warmth to the already considerable amount the seelie provides. kaeya resists the urge to call him a kitten again, because the way he’s draped over the seelie, purring softly, ears flat against his head and shorts riding up his thighs, is so much like a cat that he honestly, in the end, can’t help it.
“hey, kitten, want me to come warm you up as well?” it’s a bad line, even kaeya knows that. but albedo sneezes, his eyes still closed, and hums agreement. wow. kaeya didn’t expect that one to work. he slowly walks over, legs dripping water from the pool (since he refuses to wear shorts, what is he, five years old?) and fingers freezing. “i didn’t think that would work,” he mumbles softly as he collapses next to albedo, both of them enjoying the warmth of the seelie in the otherwise cold cavern. the sun drips its rays onto both of them, and kaeya watches how it lights up the particles of ash and dust in the cavern, settling on albedo’s eyelashes and cheeks and hair and stupid cat ears.
he’s so beautiful.
kaeya wonders for a brief second how long they’ll be able to enjoy this tentative peace, and when they’ll have to pick sides, but albedo nuzzles his cheek slowly and softly, still occasionally purring, and the thought leaves kaeya’s mind. not right now. not right here. not when they’re both enjoying the world that other never go to and they don’t have to think about that yet. albedo’s ears twitch, and kaeya reaches out, slowly scratching at one of them while the other leans against the ground, bracing him against it.
“if you’re going to stare...” albedo mutters, yanking kaeya in with his free arm, “at least do it subtly, my prince.” kaeya almost combusts with that thought. holy shit did he really just call me my prince what is happening is it the cat genes is it the allergies what is an albedo what– albedo, probably still half lethargic from sunbathing like the fucking kitten he is, leans in and seals kaeya’s lips with a kiss.
it’s cold.
at least, that’s the first thing that kaeya thinks. it could just be the fact that they’re in a perpetually freezing place, or his vision is acting up and freezing everything around him again, as it tends to do when he get heated about anything. but maybe it’s also the fact that both of them have been sitting in cold water for the past hour and their appendages and lips are just freezing. it’s also very sweet. kaeya notices that albedo’s lips taste faintly like honey and sunsettias, which are a little too saccharine for the cavalry captain’s taste. albedo also smells like honey, which is weird, because is that honey on his lips or is it his shampoo, or is it just something kaeya is hallucinating because holy fuck, albedo is kissing him.
maybe it lasts for a few seconds, or maybe an hour, kaeya really has no way to keep track of time while the alchemist is kissing him senseless, and suddenly he’s on the ground with a half feline albedo on top of him, but it’s only when albedo whines and sits up that kaeya comes back to reality.
“oh my god.” he says, and albedo giggles, eyes half closed and eyelashes flicking pieces of dust all over the space between them. kaeya wants to kiss him again. albedo winds a hand into kaeya’s ponytail and pulls, the hairtie coming off and blue hair falling all over his shoulders down to his waist. he laughs softly and lets abedo curl up next to him, head buried in the fur of his collar and ears flat against his head, butting kaeya’s neck every now and then. it’s really adorable. kaeya wonders if he can keep albedo like this for the rest of time, curled up in starglow cavern, far away from the people of mondstadt and far away from the dragon that might one day finish the job it started.
“stop, stop thinking so much,” albedo pleads, softly, like he can tell what kaeya’s thinking. “you’re frowning. that’s when i know you’re thinking about something serious. so stop.” kaeya smiles, and decides for the moment not to think about what might happen in the future.
it’ll be too late for both of them when it does, anyway.
— —
it’s late afternoon when they get out of the cavern, and he can see that, in the distance, barbara, the deaconess of the church of the anemo archon, is performing the daily prayers offered to barbatos, standing on top of the statue that looks a little too regal and a little too noble and serious to be the drunken bard who spend most of his time at diluc’s, singing about adventures and the dragon the traveller tamed. that is, until he begins singing about male genitalia or pining after the girl he likes and kaeya’s brother throws him out of angel’s share. kaeya tsks as the image launches itself with the force of a running hilichurl, into his mind.
“what’s got you laughing so much, kaeya?” albedo asks, a faint smile on his own face. they’re curled up on a ledge, shoes still drying a little ways behind them. the setting sun tosses gold instead of ashes into the air, and the liquid metal shines gently around albedo, sunlight and sweet flowers and the taste of dandelion wine. kaeya has one arm wrapped around albedo’s waist, the other in his lap, holding his boyfriend’s hand. albedo’s fingers are busy braiding kaeya’s hair, the blue hair strung through with cecelias that albedo had put away in his lab, for ‘experiments’, he said. white against blue, snowflakes against the sky. he hears albedo sigh.
“what’s got you so pensive, then, albedo?” he replies, smirking.
“you.”
“excuse me, what?”
albedo shakes his head like he can’t believe he’s dating the huge idiot that is kaeya alberich. “you’re very pretty. i know you don’t think so, but you are.” kaeya pretends to be hurt.
“i’ll have you know that i think i’m very attracti–“
“not really.” he says, tucking his head into the crook of kaeya’s neck, as they do with each other a lot. his breath is warm on kaeya’s cold skin, and for a moment, he shivers from the close contact. “you never really think that you’re pretty. not really, that is. i guess it’s my job this valentine’s day to tell you that you are very pretty. and that i love you, you idiot.”
yeah, kaeya can’t really breathe. albedo sighs, curling up again as the sun hits his skin. kaeya returns to scratching his ears, and soft, gentle purring continues, a soundtrack to the otherwise soundless landscape that is dragonspine. it’s comforting. while their butts may be freezing on the cold rock, and they’re liable to being attacked at any moment by anything that comes across them, kaeya chooses to ignore it, in favour of the softly snoring alchemist next to him, blonde hair catching the light of the setting sun and reflecting it into liquid gold, base minerals into precious materials, the essence of alchemy in mondstadt before albedo arrived.
he tilts his head so he’s also leaning on albedo, cat ears almost flush against his skull. kaeya hates saying he loves people. it hurts too much when they inevitably leave him, much like diluc, and master crepus, and his father and mother, and his unborn siblings he never got to see before they left the world. and adelinde. elzer. jean. lisa. klee. whenever kaeya thinks klee is in danger, something awakens in him he’s never really experienced before. but he also wonders, sometimes, when they’ll leave him. so he refuses to say those three words.
but in the silence of dragonspine, broken only by the sounds of rushing water somewhere far away, and the gentle purring of his boyfriend by his side, kaeya dares to say it, the first time he’s said it since he first arrived at the ragnvindr mansion, before his world was coloured as bleak and hopeless. he whispers it to the setting sun, hoping it will take his words with him to the other side of the world.
“i love you, albedo.”
and as he slowly falls asleep next to the catboy that his boyfriend has accidentally turned himself into, he almost misses the smile on albedo’s face, the small ‘nya’ of triumph, and the whispered words he gets back as pale blue eyes look into his sleeping face.
“i love you too, kaeya.”
his dream is blood and fangs and a circlet of ice around his head.
— —
albedo shakes him awake a few hours later, ears pricking as he wakes up and a sneeze bursting into existence in the silence. “klee-!” he chokes out, before he remembers where he is and who he is and who he’s with. giant blue eyes stare into his, and there’s a very clear look of concern in albedo’s face as he gently brushes stray strands of hair from kaeya’s face and neck.
“morning, sweetheart.” he chides, ears twitching, and kaeya yawns, stretching before sitting up, realising they’re still sitting on the ledge, night has risen (and along with it, the moon that kaeya first revealed his secret to), and albedo is still a catboy.
“has sucrose figured out a way to get rid of your furry problem yet?” he asks slowly, hearing the bones in his back crack from the uncomfortable position he’s been in for the past few hours. albedo rolls his eyes like he’s still not sure why he decided to start dating kaeya.
“yes, but it will be a while before the potion is ready. we have a few hours before that happens.” the ears flick again and kaeya smoothes a hand over them, enjoying the whine albedo lets out as he ducks out of reach.
“and i can’t convince you to keep them?” he jokes, smiling at albedo. the other makes a scandalised noise and stomps his foot, ears flat against his head.
“no.”
“fine, fine. i just thought i’d give it a try.” he says, looking around. dragonspine is much different at night than in the daytime. where before the snow glittered like small diamonds whenever the light hit it, it now almost glows in contrast to the darkness that surrounds them. and the feeling of emptiness looms much larger above them now. kaeya hates this feeling. so when albedo takes his hand it comes as a surprise to him, tugging him towards the spires of dragonspine, where clouds nest and the shard of eternity, of celestia, that fell towards teyvat can be found. where aether left it after unearthing another domain.
“i thought we might go stargazing before sucrose sends for us,” albedo comments quietly, squeezing his hand, and kaeya smiles, ruffling albedo’s hair (and consequently, the ears) as they continue walking up the mountain and into the anemograna that swirl around them like miniature stars.
it’s only when they get to the top and albedo sees how high they’ve gone (they can see wangshu inn from here) that he begins freaking out, ears flat against his head and voice sounding more like a squeak than anything. kaeya finds this extremely amusing, and he has to spend a good five minutes calming the alchemist down before he’s coherent enough to talk. of course, the laughs and giggles kaeya is letting out in a miserable attempt to shut his own laughter up are a completely different matter.
“you. albedo, chief alchemist of the ordo favonius and captain of the investigation team, who single handedly defeated a resurgent cryo regisvine, are scared of heights?” he cackles triumphantly, watching albedo snarl at him, ears flicking back and forth uncomfortably as he tries to choke his boyfriend.
“i am not scared of heights. it’s merely the air up here. it’s thinner.” kaeya resists the urge to laugh at albedo’s new excuse, but finds that it’s a rather fruitless endeavour as another laugh bubbles up inside of him, resulting in a feral hiss from albedo that dissolves into loud rrrrrrr noises as kaeya runs a hand through his hair and around the base of his ears.
“okay, okay. keep telling yourself that, kitten.” kaeya teases. he’s not going to let this opportunity get past. albedo hiccups as kaeya runs over a particularly sensitive spot on his ears, and his sentence cuts itself off in a long, heavy deluge of purring and head butting.
“quit rrrrrrrr calling me rrrrrrrr kitten!!” he vehemently says, even as he shifts closer to kaeya and butts his hand yet again. “i swear to the archons of teyvat, kaeya alberich i will make you choke on a poison one of these days, and you won’t know what hit you- rrrrrrrrrrr~” albedo can’t even get a word in edgewise by the loud purring coming deep in his throat. kaeya screeches with laughter yet again but retracts his hand from the ears to instead place a kiss on albedo’s forehead.
“alright then, chalk prince.” he says instead, to a round of scandalised hissing from albedo. “anyways, are we headed up or not?” albedo stands on shaky legs and grabs kaeya’s hand, shooting him an ugly look through blue eyes as he does. kaeya only snorts, because albedo only comes up to his shoulder, and he has to tiptoe to kiss him. the snow crunches beneath their boots and kaeya watches albedo’s breath come out in fractals of ice and mist in the cool air, steaming as it meets the ice of dragonspine. kaeya’s breath does no such thing, being cold enough to match the temperature of dragonspine.
he smiles softly as he feels albedo’s hand clutch his tight, trying not to panic as they climb higher.
gods, he could live in these moments forever.
— —
the stars are silent and unflinching sometimes.
sometimes they are warm and welcoming.
and other times, they are far away and cold.
most of the time, they are either the first or the last. rarely has kaeya seen the stars welcoming a sinner among the lands of teyvat. he wonders if that’s because one of their brethren were plucked from the sky and set into his eyes when he was born beneath stone and fake gems that tried to imitate the glowing splendour of the stars. that they know he’s the one who took one of their own away. an imposter. so kaeya pretends not to notice the stars. not when diluc takes him stargazing on the roof of the ragnvindr mansion, not when he’s thrown out of the house the night he reveals his place in an age old plot, and not when jean and lisa try to get him to teach them the names of the stars.
but when albedo takes his hand and uses it to trace the peacock in the sky, majestic and powerful, pavo ocellus, kaeya’s pavo ocellus, he thinks that, for the first time, they are warm and welcoming. they smile at him and upon the creation of khaenri’ah next to him, like for some reason, growing a pair of cat ears is anything to celebrate. perhaps the tainting of the deceased nation’s greatest weapon by even cat genetics is cause for celebration in celestia.
kaeya wouldn’t know. he doesn’t think he’ll ever be welcomed into their ranks, alive or dead.
albedo sighs, leaning on his shoulder and shivering. kaeya takes his cloak off, draping the fur on albedo, leaving him in nothing but his dress shirt. “better?” he mumbles, looking at the stars like if he blinks, they’ll be nothing but dead husks of planets again.
“yeah.” at this point, kaeya is too focused on how yeah came out sounding like 'nyah' when albedo said it, but he doesn’t pay it any heed, hooking an arm around albedo’s waist and pulling him in gently until their hips are touching and albedo is almost on top of him. “are you okay, kaeya?” albedo asks softly, planting a small kiss on his jawline, his ear flicking kaeya in the face.
“they’re different tonight.” he comments, vaguely gesturing towards the stars. “nicer. warmer.” albedo laughs softly and kisses him again, and it tastes like honey and snow this time, the same fresh, clean taste kaeya gets whenever he accidentally freezes his tongue to the top of his mouth or something. the mix of the way albedo smells and how the kiss tastes is a pleasant surprise, and kaeya momentarily lets himself forget about the stars and the dragon’s corpse and everything surrounds him and albedo as possible pawns in a chess game.
it’s nice, forgetting.
and so albedo and kaeya lay side by side on the top of the spire of dragonspine, as close to celestia as anyone has ever been, legs hanging over the edge with albedo’s shorts riding up his thighs and kaeya’s hair in a tangled braid, cecelias frosted over with light blue and white frost. and kaeya slowly, hesitantly, with a shaky voice, describes the stars for his boyfriend, the owl in the north, the peacock in the south, the alchemist’s sigil on the east and the lion in the west. and kaeya traces the constellations with albedo’s hands clasped in his, until the alchemist can memorise the constellations his father, his sworn brother, his mentor, the acting grandmaster tried to get him to memorise and teach.
and for the first time, there is no burden on kaeya’s shoulders, the purring of albedo next to him resonates in his ears as he absentmindedly scratches them, his boyfriend letting him do so with no arguments, because he can tell that the cavalry captain needs it.
there are kisses laid on jaws and necks and lips that night, and a cryo vision taints the entire scene pale blue, calla lilies and cecelias, honey and dandelion wine, and the anemo archon’s feathers scattered over it all.
kaeya and albedo are fated to die one day.
but until that day, they’ll live together like this, pretending their lives are happy enough.
— —
early the next morning, kaeya carries albedo, still knocked out cold and purring in his sleep, ears twitching randomly, back to mondstadt, hair still tied in a braid and still caught through with cecelias.
“thank you, sucrose,” kaeya says quietly, as he sets the alchemist down in a chair, letting him sleep. sucrose smiles gently, knowingly, because the message she had sent that morning to kaeya had let him know that the potion had actually been ready ages ago.
“you make him happy, kaeya.” she says simply, and she tosses him out of the room to go wait for his boyfriend while they take off the cat ears and restore him to his proper manners and graces.
and as kaeya sits outside, tasting honey on his lips and a warming seelie highlighting the blonde hair, blue eyes, and black and white eyes of his alchemist, he smiles, closing his eyes.
thank god for albedo’s failed experiments, the snow of dragonspine, and a pair of cat ears.