Work Text:
Sucrose had made a mistake, a severe one at that.
Drooling over her most frequented client's bare back whilst hiding in the fabrics of her workstation was not how she imagined her day to go. The tailor recoiled from the swath of sunlight peeking through the windows, backing away from the blond standing on the wooden pedestal. Her little workshop was neatly cluttered, a mahogany table with miscellaneous metal scissors and needles tangled with threads and ribbons pushed underneath one of the tall windows to allow proper lighting for detail work; a matching shelf made from the same wood, high enough to challenge the towering windows surrounding the roundish room, was overflowing with colorful linens and laces and silks that threatened to spill over if someone were so as to nudge it a tinge. There were small drops of sugary candy hidden in a few nooks here and there, courtesy of Klee. Sucrose tightened her hold on her threadbare white skirt, knuckles whitening at the bloom of red smudging her pale complexion.
Albedo looked back at her curiously, thick lashes falling and rising as he blinked with slight concern, the sun filtering through to outline the breathtaking aspect of crystal blue eyes. "Are you alright?" His eerily smoky voice didn't hinder Sucrose's gaze from navigating from the arc of his neck to the curving tracks of his shoulders, basking radiantly under the afternoon sun. Flawless and porcelain, she wanted to run her hands over the expanse of velvet. She coughed pointedly, wetting parched lips with an easy flick of her tongue, a flick that didn't evade Albedo's close scrutiny. "Oh-Yes, of course," stammered the girl hurriedly, taking brisk steps to once again take her old location, the violent blush that dotted her fair cheeks and marble neck never faded. "You-You didn't have to take off your shirt, Mister Albedo."
"Ah, I apologize," recited the male smoothly, the lie was as blatant as a cloudless sky, his eyes contained a spark of mischief. What a tease, Sucrose thought, hanging her head low as she started sulking. "The fabric on my shirt was rather stiff and heavy due to the embedded accessories, I was trying for the most accurate measurements. Again, I apologize for the trouble."
How did this happen?
Ah, right. The Annual Ball held by the royal divinity of Teyvat, high-standing social figures all the way from the singing sand dunes of Sumeru and capsizing waves of Inazuma, had swept over the common folk in a flutter of rumors and gossip. Everyone knew that the Monstadt Aristocrats would be present at the event. Despite many infamous and talented tailors and salesman flocking to the Chief Alchemist, offering their goods and time, Albedo still turned to Sucrose with the highest honor of all. "Sucrose, if I can't trust you with my attire, then who can I trust?" Albedo had murmured softly, though many would consider it a token of trust, a token of strengthened friendship, Sucrose had taken such a blow to the heart that she had feared whether she'd live to even follow through with the offer.
"You're evil," Sucrose muttered under her breath, leaning down to wrap the measuring tape around the other's waist and ignoring the way her breath hitched when her fingers grazed the smallest slip of skin, ignoring the way Albedo seemed to tense before melting back into that relaxed composure. Her long silken ponytail fanned out over the surface of her petite form, mint strands tickling her nose before she blew them away, pointed ear jerking once.
She fluttered from all angles, quick on her feet as her lithe form flitter from here to there, fur-lined ears hopping up and down at the constant fray of activity. Dancing fingers pressing and releasing from Albedo's slowly warming skin, his composure as serene as ever, a contrast to the beautiful specks of red blanketing his ears and body. Sucrose's touches and hushed whispers never stayed for long, already moving onto the next course of movement, as if bold but too shy to fully speak up, instead opting to throw signals from her veiled shadow. The girl had always seen herself as a timid and frightened mouse of little beauty or attraction, she didn't see the appeal of her brown eyes and pale skin or her unnaturally colored hair paired with lamb-like ears.
In Albedo's eyes, however, she was a goddess who didn't know better, one that had newly sprouted from the ground. Dewy skin that never failed to highlight the best of her features in the sun, the rimmed glasses perched delicately over her nose, looking like it was placed with the most thought in the world; amber eyes flecked with diluted caramel, dark at the edges, those eyes wallowed in grief and brightened at the slightest interest life threw at her. Did all that make Albedo poetic or was he merely, extremely even, entranced? It didn't matter, from the first day which he laid eyes on that quaint workshop, a certain girl carrying a handful of processed silks and stumbling over her own footsteps had become the sole focus of his future. She had caught his stare back then, immediately flushing and ducking behind a market stall in hopes he would go away.
He never did.
Instead, he had offered her assistance in carrying the mass of fabrics, having spent the afternoon listening to the hesitant Sucrose babble on about her ideas. How she wished to move to the bigger city where one of her close friends had galloped off to, how she got an apprenticeship and learned to distinguish fabrics, her hidden interest in how life worked, how she would incorporate facets of nature into her works, going so far as to do intricate designs by hand; countless hours had slipped by like a blur of seconds.
Sucrose wasn't aware that the taller had heard the endearing murmurs and clement insults, he had only smiled, amused and entertained and fascinated. She jotted down the measurements, concentrated, and focused before flinching as a callused hand slid through her lustrous locks of hair, thumbing a weft between fingers. Fingers that belonged to a chuckling blond, looking at her with a ring of gold around that perfect face. The way tufts of silverish white hair caressed his cheek, neatly braided and tied to the back of his head, somehow still looking complete whilst so tidy. "Now that's cruel, what have I done to be considered cruel?"
"You endless tease!" snapped Sucrose, the word containing no bite despite how close she was to snatching the latter's hand and breaking every individual digit just as he continued to break her heart. The most intense burning sensation coursing through her beating chest, giving fire to her brain and making her thoughts turn into fuzzy embers ", Mister Albedo, this is inappropriate."
"Really? I don't recall you saying that when you allowed me to lay on your lap, or when I gifted you several gifts for Windblume," purred the alchemist, still drawing fine patterns onto her scalp.
He must have gone insane! To have someone of such high power as himself to befriend a commoner so lightly, to treat their relationship so casually, as if all eyes wouldn't be watching their every movement and word. Though, his retort rang true. It wasn't just flat friendship and courtesy when Sucrose offered for Albedo to use her lap as a headrest, it was pure curiosity on how she would react to such contact, to see those beautifully framed eyes stare up at her. The result was catastrophic. For her heart at least, it was physically painful to breathe during those hours, yet she regretted none of it. The same could be said about the gifts during Windblume, she had planted the sweet flower seeds the moment Albedo was out of sight, they still sprouted and bloomed happily outside her window till this day.
"Mister Albedo, it's extremely unfair of you to raise irrelevant points, very much out of character as well," Sucrose reprimanded, her sweet and saccharine tone was so very strange to the foreign tone of sarcasm.
"You've gotten more daring, Sucrose," he murmured in response, finally kneeling to reach her eye level. Sucrose's eyes snagged on his sharp collar bones, the slight indents and grooves of his front, once again receding into that sheepish state, matching her lamb-like ears. He then flashed the smallest of smiles, enough to make her heart lurch and turn her staggering words into a sputtering mess. "I'm glad that you could trust me with this side of yourself."
"Let's just get back to work, I wouldn't want to be the reason your outfit is delayed," she huffed meekly, curling her fists at her side in an attempt to not run a finger against the blond's jaw.