Chapter Text
From the throat, deep within its trenches, this is how water laughs: Tickling, tilting, tricking. Kaeya keeps one eye closed, the other hidden as he floats on his back in Starfell Lake. Summer is a bridle too loose on his neck, it pulls. And pulls, and pouts. Nothing gives. What was it expecting; what does anyone else?
He hears nothing as he floats, ears covered. Only when he turns on his stomach and starts swimming, the day returns to him. Cicadas insist on yet another tale in the shadows of the bushes, hidden in the browns of tree barks. The water is a cool blue, precious as a grape's belly. Moving his arms, Kaeya moves in the water. Reminds the linen shirt and black pants on him to remain soaked. The brown trouts beneath him swim lazily until they catch sight of him again and scatter away. Then they forget. It is a good day, one could say. There were worse days, definitely, even if nothing bled. He dives. The eyepatch shifts up. Just a smidge. When Kaeya lifts his head up to the plain valley, he abruptly notices the gold. August doesn’t pull its punches, nor does it polish its poison. The heat comes quiet. Then sags the greenery, yellows the patches of grass. It is a good day. Kaeya is slow.
His horse has his spotty neck lowered, ears hanging to the sides. Completely relaxed, munching on what butterflies would like to land on, he is freed of his saddle for Kaeya’s indulgent detour.
“Someone is having fun at least.” Kaeya says. The battle stallion’s ears flick to him for a moment. Hearing no rush, he keeps grazing grass. A good day, decidedly. Doesn’t feel much like it. The sun hung high on the sky whistles the reminder: Sleep escapes Kaeya like Huffman once Kaeya figured out he is swapping night guards with Lawrence without so much of a word to him. This is the third day. Only hours after the moon reaches its treacherous peak does his vision dim black. Only for a couple of hours he dreams. It isn’t restful, the bed becomes a coffin. Not his, Archons above, no. It's his parents’. Both fathers, and the mother he never met. It’s his brother’s. The grave is for every hilichurl dead and yet not done on the tip of a sword. Kaeya lays on soft white, imagines everyone dead, imagines himself as a tree for hours.
“At least one of us had his fun, no?” He says the same jab again like an ignored errand boy. He climbs out of the lake, mud and grass soft under bare feet. His horse lifts his thick neck, throws his long head back in greeting. Kaeya hugs him, water dripping from his clothes. The horse scoffs. “Shush you,” He murmurs. “I’m cooling you down.” He gathers his hair, dark as midnight now it's wet, and wrings the water on the broad back of the horse. Laughs. It makes his head ache.
He has never wanted to be Lisa before this. What wouldn’t he give for sleep so strong it makes one snore on a desk.
Sun sets with a snicker. Kaeya enters his kitchen only once the stars blink awake, confused and cold now the day wiped their memories clean again. The cantaloupe, carved hollow of seeds, sliced sharply, sits on the table. Noelle should know better by now. Most she brings him to eat ends up on other’s tables or in the stables. Kaeya scratches the bug bites as he walks. The chair is still three legged. Hanging over unlit wood, the pot is heavy with soup he didn’t get to finish two days ago. The innkeeper’s wife screamed with the pulls and seizings of flesh then, belly heavy for the last time in nine months. Someone had to fetch the midwife. Kaeya was already jumping down the stairs, sword ushered back into its leather sheath. He stayed until the shrill cries of the newborn soothed everyone. He didn’t bother eat when he returned home. He should probably throw it out now. The soup must be long past sour and sullen. Another time. After he fixes the chair.
Brothers in arms, armed in bruised metal: When Kaeya pulls open the window, the hushed conversation of the knights below muddle in his ears. There is no air. Not a single leaf moves. The knights make each other laugh, Kaeya looks up at the lookout towers. A shadow is on top of each one, swirling in the August heat. Good, he thinks. At least that. The bottle of wine he hid is still half full, and he is tired enough to skip the glass. At least that.
The world quiets outside his window, and disappears at the edge of his bed. He is convinced that he will die tonight, just like any other night: Under suspicious rubble, between the fingers and blade of an assassin. Tonight. Definitely. The tall lantern spits light and lethargy into the room. The curtain is pulled back, stopped from wrangling the shy breeze dead before it reaches him. Even still, it isn’t enough. Sweat pools on all that is folded. He spreads limbs thin on the sheets, huffs as he throws his hair away on the pillow. Nothing helps. The ceiling is too close. The map Master Varka gifted his then lieutenant self and captain brother hangs on the ceiling like a framed innocent man. Under it is a masterpiece. Scribbles of a blue haired stickman, and a shorter figure with long long ears catching frogs together. Kaeya turns on his side. Faces the closet instead. The tobacco pipe that merchant from Natlan sent him for helping his men import goods through Whispering Woods rots unused in it. He should swap it next time he is in a business meeting. Polished, curved wood in exchange of the next excavation the treasure hoarders will hit marked on his map. He should, indeed. Sitting up, Kaeya scoffs, wipes a hand down his clammy face. It is no use. Behind his eyelids is smoke and fire. Perhaps he should have been a witch instead. No steel, no ice; only strained wrists tugging down gloom. How easier it would have been, how luckier. Idly, Kaeya moves to where the seashells watch him. Holds the empty shields, imagines the animals that once called them home. Should he leave too? Is his end so easily avoidable?
It turns out not so much of an escape. Leather, worn into exactly how he walks over time, makes no sound. His soles beat the familiar path like a heart. Kaeya finds himself in the Knights’ Headquarters once more, quiet as a cat, neck held up and flat. Wratt paces by the library door. Skids to a stop and greets Kaeya stiffly.
“Captain,” He says. “What brings you here at this hour?”
Kaeya lifts a hand up to ease him, dropping it lazily like nothing matters. “Nothing urgent. Something I want to check in my office, keep to your guard here.”
“Yes sir.”
Upstairs is silence. The darkness smears broken, belatedly rotting faces onto the idyllic swaps of green and blue brush strokes. From the occasional windows tumbles in drunk moonlight. Kaeya is bathed in silver one second, forgotten between limestone the next. He has no idea where he is heading. Doesn’t have his office keys on him. But fate isn’t a snail, soft belly bared to the teeth of cunning men like him. Not yet. If he stays awake longer, the sun might never rise again. Just to take revenge.
Something flashes in the dark corner Kaeya is turning. He forms a dagger out of ragged ice, uncovered palm already throbbing with the cold. It is all a moment’s work. Years of training’s worth.
Albedo steps out of the darkness. Big eyes holes on his paleness, catching the moonlight in the off blue they are. He doesn’t seem to mind neither the ice held to his neck, nor its sharp end.
“Captain Alberich.” He greets. Kaeya drops the ice, kicking it away when it breaks on the ground. He calls to him as if he is testing something.
"What the fuck are you doing here?" Kaeya asks. His pulse exhales back to how slow it was before. The only sound is their breathing. Albedo tips his head back, absentmindedly touching where it should have been cut. There is no drop of red on his neck. He smiles, in the faint way he carries expressions.
"This is the first time I've heard such profanities from you,” His smile stretches even. Kaeya has never seen his cheeks move this much. Certainly not in the meetings held for captains, at least. “Did I scare you?"
You wish, Kaeya thinks. You aren’t that undead yet. “Apologies for the crass language,” He drawls instead. “You startled me, Captain.”
“Albedo.” The other corrects. Takes a step closer as in solemn insistence.
“I know your name.” Kaeya huffs. He is too tired to stay and talk, not trusting enough to turn and leave.
“I know,” Albedo says, looking up at him. He is still in the attire he wears every day. Short sleeved, rich, dark blue. Hair a mess. “I was trying to be friendly.”
Kaeya hums, stepping away. He bites the urge to frantically fix his eyepatch out on the inside of his cheek, schools his expression into nothing. “I didn’t know you had it in you, Chief Alchemist.” Albedo crouches down to take the already melting ice from the floor. Shoots Kaeya a sour look.
“Why are you here, Kaeya? This late at night?” Then, after a moment’s consideration, “I would like to study the ice you create some day, if you’d allow.”
“Shouldn’t you answer my question first?”
With the way Albedo springs up, Kaeya wonders if his knees ever make clicking sounds.
“I tend to need less sleep than an average person.” Albedo keeps the ice in his gloved hand, letting it melt slower. “I, how would you say it? I haunt these halls when everyone is gone.”
Just as age softens the figs, and boats still carry on with water up to one’s ankles: Albedo looks at him in the way some men and women do as they finish their second glass. A slow fire, a firm scourge. Kaeya doubts Albedo wants the same thing as they do. Hopes not. He doesn’t have enough of him to share with another now.
“What for?” He asks, ignoring the star on the man’s throat. Albedo shrugs easily:
“For peace and quiet.” Looking away, he twists his spine just a bit too much to be natural, and gazes outside the window. “Your turn now, if you please. Keep in mind it is only three hours until the church bells ring now.”
Kaeya doesn’t rise with them. In summer, the roosters of the city chant the morning anew earlier than that. Isn’t the sun tired of it?
“I,” Kaeya starts, stops just for show. “Right, how would you say it? I am getting less sleep than I need on average, lately.” When Albedo turns to him, there is again a smile on his face.
“Did you know? Mirroring another suggests the interest is reciprocated.”
The world is quiet outside the window, and disappears at the edge of Albedo’s dusted shorts from wherever he was sitting. This is hardly better than the torture of his room. There is no armor here for Kaeya to carry except the roof of his tongue.
“It seems you like haunting hallways and flattering yourself in the dead of the night, Captain,” He says smooth as butter freshly churned, fearfully cared. “I am learning too much about you.” There is enough light, but Kaeya tells himself he didn’t notice the hurt passing through Albedo’s face in the darkness.
“Your mood surely speaks of how exhausted you must be.”
Downstairs groans door hinges hungry for oil. There is a hushed, apologetic conversation. A thank you for being allowed to use the library until so late. Good nights, whatever left of it, wished politely. A key. A lock. Turned and locked. Footsteps. Albedo is the one to speak up, again.
“Let us walk around to tire you, you might find yourself asleep easier then.”
What does a made man want from a cursed one? What part of the ravenous ruins do the blue eyes see in him?
“Ah,” Kaeya smiles. It makes Albedo tilt his head. “No need-”
The other interrupts him. Ever the sharpest tool, it makes one never reach into the box again.
“Were you planning to go to your office?”
Kaeya doesn’t have his keys. Because fate isn’t a snail.
“Since you insist, Chief Alchemist.”
“It’s Albedo.”
“I know.”
They leave from a backdoor. Both are shadows now in buildings their bodies decorate under sunlight. The night has a way of warping things. Kaeya says so. Albedo laughs. Silence fills all the way up their noses soon enough. There is a hint of a breeze, just enough to make one pity Barbatos, wherever he is. Kaeya doesn’t say so. Albedo keeps his eyes on the balconies, and stars. He has trouble matching Kaeya’s steps. Kaeya forgets to slow down, the brother he used to roam these streets with most often was the same height as him. Then, he wasn’t his brother. Now, he isn’t a stranger.
His thoughts are the price tags Dawn Winery attaches oh so carefully to their bottles: Fickle, heavy things that most don’t bother with; frightless, heartless things that scare away the few interested.
“What are you looking for?” He asks, just to hear something else. Albedo answers quickly:
“For what a friend sees.”
Kaeya tilts his chin to Celestia. Regards the stars for a second. That is all he will give them, nothing more. Casting his eye down, he sees a skinned and chewed bone. Wonders where the lucky dog is now, after such a treat. It proves better than the night sky.
“And have you found what they see?”
“No. They’re too distant to say anything back, I believe.”
Kaeya hums as answer, Albedo hums back. He slows down once more, thinks this time he can remember. It is the alchemist that speaks again, rebelling against his reputation.
“The city is unbearable in summer.”
Kaeya turns his head to look at the other. Blue eyes are already on him.
“It is.” At least as they walk, the air brushes up against sweat and skin. At least that. “Wouldn’t you prefer your mountaintop villa?” Not meant more than a passing comment, it rips laughter out of Albedo anyways. How strange, how slithering.
“I would, and I do intend to leave for it.” He sighs, the aftermath of his laughing shining on his face still. “I stayed this long because I wanted to spend time with Klee.”
They walk by the carpenter’s shop. Chairs, stools and one small table he can not sell anyone but refuses to admit is crooked watch them from the darkness. Kaeya imagines ghosts sitting in there. From left to right: His father, his tutor, the old man that rented the house to him, the young lady he was too late to save on his first ever mission as a captain. Albedo doesn’t seem to see them. Lucky him.
“But Klee left with Alice more than a week ago, no?” Kaeya asks. There is a dull throbbing behind his eyes. The moon is too big. Too close. “You should leave. Escape the humid air, now that you can.”
“Well,” Albedo says, too awake for the hour they chew together. “Klee isn’t the only person I care about here.”
Thunder above valleys, time is only for the vagabonds to rust over. There is something Albedo wants from him. Definitely. An unknown, unsafe, untested vial for an experiment, perhaps. His life to take, maybe. A secret to ask about, Archon forbid.
“You don’t say.” Kaeya hums, walking on. Albedo has to skip a couple of steps to catch up to him. He laughs. Again. Wonder why he never lifts his head up in captain meetings. The alchemist says something, Kaeya doesn’t catch it. Neither does he ask. They walk, the night their witness. As they are passing by the bakery, Albedo stops, stepping closer to the window.
“Which one would you like right now?”
Kaeya yawns. None. The few breads that are left must be dry and hard by now.
“This one, particularly, specifically, especially this one.” He answers, finger leaving a sweaty dot on the clear glass. He tells himself it is too dark to notice, the street lantern too far away. Albedo laughs again. How strange it seems to come so easy for him. Perhaps chalk has no one knocking on it from beyond the grave. How lucky. The round bread he pointed at happens to have a cross marked on it among flames that brought it twice its size. Because fate laughs in the crevices of life. Because it has no eyebrows to raise.
“Duly noted,” Albedo says, most probably joking too. “You’re yawning. Let us hope this worked. Can I walk you home?”
“There really is no need to tire you further.” Kaeya says.
“I know,” Albedo gives him back. “It won’t tire me.”
Kaeya wakes up to aching teeth the next morning. He doesn’t remember the nightmare. At least that.
Even when noon is yet an afterthought, heat makes his shirt stick to the small of his back. He pushes any and all training he will oversee way after lunch. Then spends hours thinking of already ruined buildings, a dying tree and the early mornings he spent with his father collecting morning dew from blades of grass for a drop of water on parched tongues. Noelle knocks on the door, sometime. Tea, she asks, perhaps something to eat too? Isn’t he peckish? Hours later, it’s Jean.
“You’re all holed up here.” She says, closing the door behind her. August scratched its claws on her too, it seems. She skipped the cape, corset, the gloves and arm braces. In a comfortable, snow white blouse, her eyes and sword are the only sharp edges about her.
“Paperwork?” Kaeya says, pushing his chair backwards. Jean lifts a hand, signaling that there is no need for him to get up. But every inch of Kaeya touching the leather is shining with sweat.
“You don’t have any papers to fill today,” Jean says easily. “Heard you changed the time of the sword training.”
“You got me,” Kaeya answers. He gets up anyway, and walks to the window. There is no air to move the curtains in front of it. “I’m just escaping heat.”
Jean hums, green eyes sweeping over his face. Her gaze flits down, she fiddles with the keys in her hand. Kaeya would be biting back a smile at her tells had nails haven’t been dropping inside his skull the entire day.
“I will be in the library. Do you mind greeting them if anyone comes for me?”
It is a miserable heat, heavy as a million bumble bees sick and sticky with yesterdays. It isn’t that awful that Kaeya would skip this part of the fun at least.
“I wouldn’t mind at all, Jean,” He says. An odd thing, his voice. It’s a soft carpet, caring not for how it has been trampled on. Jean rests a calloused hand on the doorknob. “After all, you’re going to see your girlfriend. It is of utmost importance”
She stops. Cheeks reddening, nostrils flaring as she exhales. It is the same expression she used to have when Diluc would defeat her in the play duels they had years ago.
“Kaeya.” She warns. The same way she used to when Kaeya would announce, once more, that guess she isn’t as strong as his brother after all. But, perhaps not. Not the same way. Her voice used to break awkwardly. It doesn’t anymore.
“Right, right, sorry,” Like all of their voices used to, back then. How simpler things were. Diluc would poke at the filling pimples on Kaeya’s face. Kaeya would flick him on the forehead, right where the ugly bangs didn’t cover. It would end the same way as most things ended when they were younger: Laughing as they raced to the beach where the winery gazes towards Liyue. How lucky they were. “Your betrothed , I should have said.” Not anymore.
Jean looks up, dropping her eyes in annoyance. The smile that lifts the pale scar on her cheek betrays her. “Kaeya,” She warns for the last time. “You know better than to say such things.”
Kaeya lifts a hand, gesturing towards the door. “I know. Go to her already, I have things under control here.”
Jean opens the door, swings one leg out already.
“Thank you. And open a window, don’t cook yourself here.”
“Both windows are open.”
“Oh,” She blinks, giving him a comfortable wave goodbye. “They say it might rain next week, at least.” At least that.
Night falls like a helmet that took a hit, twisted and bashed its wearer’s nose broken: Slow as torture. Kaeya lets the squires go earlier than they fear. Stops by the stables on his way home. Two men sit outside, around a table they had carried to the street for some air, most probably. Otto’s father, and Quinn’s grandfather. There are two glasses of wine, a plate of mashed potatoes and cut cheese, and a bowl of ripe figs between them.
“Sir Kaeya!” Otto’s father yells, lifting his glass in greeting. “Come join us.”
His friend needs more time. The oldest among them narrows his eyes, skin recalling years in wrinkles resting with a pout. Only after Kaeya takes a few more steps does the man smile.
“Take some fruit,” He says first. Then, turning his head, calls out to his wife. “Bring the lad a chair!”
It would mean food, readied at the cost of no mora, to stay. “Good evening gentlemen,” Kaeya starts. The conversation is not worth it. There is a delirious miner inside his head. The pickaxe hits everything it can, and the emptiness from his gums to the cavities behind his eyes, says: Once more. “I couldn’t possibly impose on your delectable dinner like that.” The men laugh. Such honeyed words, they say. They insist, Quinn’s grandfather calls to his wife once more, so she can lean from the window and insist too. Thankfully, it takes nothing more than saying his legs are killing him, that he has been on horse the entire day. At least that.
In an hour, Kaeya faces the sizzle of the iron pot over fire in his own kitchen. He hates it in this heat. Hates how faint he is feeling more. The mushrooms darken and shrink, away from his gaze. Droplets of sweat caress the lines of his face like no nightly love ever did. When they pool above his lip, Kaeya wipes the wetness with the back of his hand. Cicadas serenade him. The only stubborn, sly admirers he has as of late. Nothing else comes from the open window. Is Barbatos holding his breath above them? What a punishment, what restraint.
Perhaps fate has a thicker shell today. Later when Kaeya crouches down to push the basket of onions and potatoes away, all to wrap fingers around the bottle of Snezhnayan fire-water he hid behind it, his senses burn. Something is wrong, at the back of his throat. He stands up. It must be the heat. It takes him an embarrassingly long time to notice what alerted him: The cicadas are dead silent. Courtesy of the kitchen he was cursing just some time ago, Kaeya grabs a knife from the counter. On the very tips of his toes, he leans ever so slightly closer to the window. It is enough. Only a fool could not recognize the pale smudge in the very fabric of this world in front of his house. Albedo stands there, out of place. Alone in the empty street, the formal clothes of yesterday on him again. The only thing saving him from total awkwardness is the brown tabby rubbing against his legs. Kaeya huffs. His headache doesn’t leave him with the breath leaving his lips. Shame.
“Were you going to knock, Captain?” He asks, balancing on one forearm as he leans down from the open window more. “Or were you having second thoughts?”
Albedo looks up. Serene, slow, yet still stiff. He smiles, placing bare hands on his hips.
“I was having fourth, fifth thoughts even,” He says. “I didn’t want to disturb you.”
“I am awake.” Kaeya says. And you shouldn’t have learnt the way here just with one walk in the dark. “As you know, I am awake most of the time now.” Albedo tilts his head, the cat lifts on hind legs to rub its small head on his knee.
“I know,” Albedo answers. What does he want from Kaeya? What does anyone? “Would you accompany me on another walk? Did it help at all yesterday?” It didn’t. And it did. Kaeya recalls the last papers he required the alchemist to fill. A month ago, that was. He still hasn't received them. Could this be about it?
“Say, Captain-”
“It’s Albedo, please.”
“I know. Would you happen to have anything handy to cut down a headache?”
Albedo’s eyes flash like a cat’s. Or, the lack of rest properly and truly holds its belly and laughs at Kaeya. “I’ll find you fresh basil to chew.” He says finally.
“Let me lace up my boots.” At least that.
Kaeya is greeted by two sets of eyes wide as plums when he gets down. He throws the bit of meat he brought in front of the cat, wipes fingertips on his pants. Albedo gives him yet another smile, tilting his head.
“Shall we?” He says as if this is a journey to something more.
“We shall.” Kaeya says, telling himself that it can’t be. There is less breeze and more of a petulant rain hiding in the clouds today. The humidity leaves palm prints behind their knees, down their napes. Under the quiet air it is easier to think how Albedo is unborn. Made and bade goodbye with a mark from his maker, he walks as if he won’t exist if everyone covers their eyes and counts to ten. Kaeya looks away from the other, walking slow for shorter legs. Albedo keeps up. They walk through the bowels of the city tonight. Jealous of a maze, there is precious few that separates the gray stone alleys from the others.
“Have you ever visited Dragonspine before, Kaeya?”
Out of nowhere, Kaeya wonders what happened to the donkeys the Dawn Winery had carrying baskets of grapes. They were fourteen then, sneaking strawberries from the kitchen to feed the animals. What soft fur they had.
“No, can’t say I have.”
Does anyone remember the summer fruits they had when on their deathbed, Kaeya wonders. Why can he not forget them every night dying in his bed, he asks the Archons. Albedo looks at him. It is odd to do so this close.
“Would you like to?” He asks, takes his next step closer to Kaeya. Lifts a hand to reach up towards his face. Kaeya stops, turning to the other fully. It makes Albedo freeze, drop his hand like the joints have suddenly rebelled. It lands too still to be human. “I never noticed it before, your nose is crooked ever so slightly.”
Kaeya grits his teeth. His temples whimper with the added pressure. Perhaps he should have stayed home and begged the walls to cave in. But he hasn’t become who he is without blood and tears. His smooth tongue is no Archon gift. It can not be taken away so easily.
“Slightly you say?” He asks, tilting his head like Albedo does. “You flatter me. I fell on my face quite some time ago. If it healed only slightly crooked, all is well by me.”
Albedo stares at his face in pieces, making a mosaic out of him. Left eye, eyebrow, eyepatch, nose. When Kaeya swallows, blue eyes flick down. Stay there on his throat, just for a moment. Perhaps it is because Kaeya has been skipping tall collars and accessories lately. It should be.
“I can’t imagine you running or stumbling,” Albedo says finally. He looks up to the same diamond in Kaeya’s eye. “How did that happen?”
Kaeya rubs one of his wrists with just enough cryo called upon his fingertips. Then the other. It is the only thing he found that helps him chew August back.
“I happen to run and trip over my own feet when a wild stallion in training decides he has had enough,” Turning with an eye still on Albedo, he keeps walking. “Have you ever been around an angry horse?”
Albedo catches up easily. He is a genius, after all:
“Can’t say I have.”
“Would you like to?” Kaeya mirrors him from before. Albedo laughs, first time for tonight; oddly familiar with yesterday included. Laughter is something Kaeya gets just enough, just where he pulls it with strings. Albedo seems to not care. Kaeya doesn’t even have to pour him wine to get him to lean closer.
They walk into yet another alley as Albedo just opens his mouth to answer. He doesn't get to. The couple kissing, pulling at each other as the street lanterns cheer doesn’t notice them. But they are loud enough to silence the knights. Kaeya walks sideways, away and into another backstreet, gesturing for Albedo to follow.
“You were asking me about Dragonspine,” He says. “I haven’t seen the snowy mountain. Tell me more about it.”
The night ends closer to morning. Albedo presses fingers on the hinges of his jaw, and says he isn’t used to talking this much. Says he is aching now too. The night ends with them chewing fresh basil as stray dogs watch curiously, tails lazily keeping the seconds as they wag. Kaeya yawns, eyelids heavier than they have been before.
“You’re tired,” Albedo says. He seems to like talking to Kaeya, for some reason. “Let me walk you home before the sun rises. A few hours of sleep still is better than none.” Yes, Kaeya thinks. Nods exhaustedly. A few hours of thoughtless sleep. At least that.
The next evening Kaeya finds himself looking out of his window. And then the next evening too. There is no one waiting for him. He doesn’t crane his neck out and wait the third night, he still has some dignity. But fate is a frog, and that chin has a lot of space to expand. Anything for the mightiest croaks, of course.
The third evening Kaeya does not cook. The salad Noelle brought him, with the spicy red peppers she remembered to add, is enough. He sits on the stool and slouches. Because Crepus isn’t here anymore to scold that spine straight. Because Diluc isn’t close enough to visit and click his tongue at the chair Kaeya didn’t fix. How unfair his family is. How cold. More food is scraped into his mouth, only to almost choke on them: A butterfly, glimmering golden in the sickeningly hot night, waltzes into his kitchen. It is out of thin amber. Kaeya lifts his palm to make a sweaty home out of it. The butterfly lands, weightless, faceless; only known from afar, solely counted for its wings. It brims with geo energy. Kaeya stands up quicker than he would like.
Head out of the window, Kaeya remembers his hair is pulled up and tied away messily too late. Something no one has the misfortune to see these days. Had to, he should say. Not anymore.
“Should I be concerned over how easy it is for you to reach me, Captain?”
On the street, wearing all black this time, Albedo is glimmering gold himself. Or Kaeya is that exhausted. Then the butterfly breaks into shards of nothing. Shame.
“Call me Albedo already,” The alchemist says, looking up with a smile. “Care for another stroll?”
“Depends,” Kaeya hums, biting the inside of his cheek so he won’t try to fix his hair. Not yet. He will do that before he leaves the coffin on his bed behind. “What herb are you feeding me tonight?” Easily, too easily, Albedo quips back:
“I was thinking thyme.”
Hearts are fickle, heavy things that most don’t bother with. Good on them. But Kaeya snorts before he can help it. Albedo’s smile widens enough that he can see from his second floor window. At least Kaeya didn’t chuckle. At least that.
Once downstairs, out of the building, foolishly Kaeya expects relief. A breeze, a gust of cold air. There is only Albedo, and everything Kaeya couldn’t forget waiting for him. They don’t talk much at first. Steer clear of busier parts of the castle city. But there are no places ghosts and drunkards can't go. Nimrod stumbles into their field of vision, top of his shirt unlaced in hopes of escaping the heat. It didn’t seem to work. He is flushed as a sun scorn shoulder, unprotected all day working in a field; frowning like a secret swindled under stars. He looks up, blond hair sticking to his temples with sweat.
“Captain!” He says. Then, walking quicker, “Captains, actually.”
Kaeya hums, keeping his slow stride.
“Nimrod. Breaking your promises to your wife again I see.”
The man flinches, lifting a hand to push the hair that escaped the ponytail away. “No, no, it’s just… I couldn’t say no, you know?” In his haze, he looks at Albedo for support. “What should a man say when friends and alike insist on pouring a glass out for him? It’s rude otherwise, you know?”
There is no answer. A nightbird keeps a tired rhythm somewhere close by. Kaeya glances at Albedo, and sees someone else by him. Face of stone, fate on the back of a serpent; the alchemist has no expression, no interest, no existence. He stares at something above Nimrod’s shoulder, and doesn’t blink the entire time Kaeya watches him. Nimrod shuffles on his feet, trying his damnest to keep his burp in. He turns his eyes back at Kaeya.
“Right, Captain? Besides, you drink a glass or two after a hard day’s work, too, right?”
How strange, this silence on Albedo, now that Kaeya has seen other sides of him. He spares another glance at the other. Tells himself he isn’t surprised to find blue eyes already on him.
“Well, of course,” Kaeya answers Nimrod. “A glass or two, three or four, who knows? Are we all not children of Mondstadt?” At that, Albedo makes a sound like a gurgle. Perhaps because he has never been a child. Or, perhaps, because he was forged meticulously in Khaenri’ahn hands. Nimrod seems to not notice.
“We are!” He agrees readily, stumbling ever so slightly when he steps quickly in his excitement. Kaeya makes no move to steady him. He has seen Nimrod shake off far worse. “You get me, Captain,” But the man is too sober, it seems. His eyes go back to Albedo, and he keeps addressing Kaeya. “But you’re not in the taverns lately.”
“I’m rather busy,” Kaeya says. If the moss on the buildings notice how quickly he breathes the words out, they don’t tell on him. “Shouldn’t you rush home? Poor Eury must be worried sick.”
At that, a faraway smile settles on Nimrod’s plain face. “Must be,” He muses, pushing away stubborn hair strands again. “Keep telling her to not wait for me, but she always does.”
Kaeya pats the man on the back. It is warm and wet enough to regret it immediately, but business isn’t always dealt in mora. Kaeya needs good graces, loose lips, curious eyes on the field. Everything he does matters. Anything he doesn’t do he can brush under a carpet. Albedo watches as a hawk does with a mouse, only sharper. Nimrod shakes his head, bids them goodbye. Tells Kaeya to come back and drink soon. Then hums a tune about a blue dragon to the limestone street.
The silence following his departure is different than the one they had before. Kaeya doesn’t like it.
“Quite the charmer you are, Albedo,” he says. His head isn’t splitting on itself today, but there is a fog between his ears. It swims and swirls. Spits and sobs. Kaeya finds himself grinning at the pout Albedo sends his way. “You have such a way with words.”
“That would be you,” Albedo huffs, keeping his eyes on their path. How come he doesn’t look sweaty? “I can’t imagine the energy it must take from you.”
That’s the first Kaeya is hearing. Whoever made Albedo must have scratched the observation into him with broken nails. It seems to only work for, and with, a select few.
“That,” Kaeya says, leading them off the streets and towards the steps reaching to the lookout tower. “Is where the wine comes to my aid.” Albedo laughs again, following close behind.
Once on the tower, with the city below and stars above, they belong to neither the cursed land, nor the nursed winds. Albedo stands next to Kaeya, in the gap left for archers to die and kill in times of war, and talks freely once more.
“Would you believe me if I told you I never climbed these towers before?”
“I would.” Kaeya says easily, keeping his eye on where the horizon will be, once the sun bites it blushing. Albedo turns to him.
“You would?” His voice is higher again. Face bright in a way, say, Jean never saw before. “Do I look that clueless?”
Kaeya yawns, wonders what on Teyvat does this man want from him. His help on an irksome, icy, irrational experiment perhaps. His other eye, maybe. A question about his feelings, Archon forbid.
“No,” Turning too, Kaeya faces the shorter man. The blue eyes on him are shining in spite of the stars. “That recommendation letter from Miss Alice made you jump over many steps, if you haven’t noticed.” Albedo blinks. Looks at Kaeya’s, apparently crooked, nose for a second.
“I didn’t ask her for that.”
“I wouldn’t mind if you did, I’m not the Grandmaster.”
“I know. Still. Know that I did not ask for such a favor.”
The night sky unravels their tongues like wool sweaters caught in a kitten’s claws. Here, Albedo says, pointing out to Starsnatch Cliff, is where I pick cecilias. Here, he says, is the spot I set my canvas down. There, he stretches his arm, is where I crossed to come here, all those years ago. This, and this, and that, he shows. How he draws, what he draws; how he cooks, what he eats; how Klee knocks on his office door, what excuses she says every night to make him read one more bedtime story. Albedo talks and talks, and talks some more of all he is, except chalk. Kaeya hums. Nods in the right places. Chuckles in more points than he thought he would.
“What about you?” Albedo asks. The moon glides down just a little to hear them better.
“What about me?” Kaeya replies.
“Tell me about you.”
He doesn’t mean to. But fate has a dagger strapped to its shell today, and it stabs Kaeya in the slowest way imaginable. He yawns behind his hand, leans on the blocks of stone making up Mondstadt. He doesn’t mean to, but Kaeya tells him. This and that. His horse’s name, where he likes to graze the grass most. How he cuts his own hair. Here, he points to the bridge, is where he used to wait for traveling merchants as a teen. They would often bring the new volumes of the books he and Diluc used to read. There, his finger goes towards where Starfell Lake should be, is where I swam this week. Didn’t help with the heat. That, and this, and those: The plains Kaeya has the squires mount the battle trained horses for the first time. The hunters of Springvale call for Knights’ help often. The path to Dawn Winery, where Kaeya finds himself walking, if Jean shoos him away from work.
“Winery.” Albedo says then.
Taken aback, tired, too warm; Kaeya repeats too. “Winery, yes.” Albedo has a grin brighter than a million fireflies when he faces Kaeya. His eyes glide down to his lips.
“Say it again, Dawn Winery.”
“Dawn Winery, why, what’s wrong?”
Albedo giggles.
“Nothing,” He says, touching his tongue ever so slightly on bitten lips. “ Wr ong. Say that again too.”
Kaeya clicks his tongue. A breeze, too shy, too late, sorely missed, tickles sweaty skin. A moment’s reprise. At least that.
“What is going on, Albedo?”
“Your Khaenri’ahn accent bleeds into your speech.” Albedo says. Happy as a duck in a pond forgotten by hunters and dogs. “Just goes to show how tired you must be.” He adds. Kaeya snaps his mouth shut, then clenches his jaw a little more. Just until his temples beg him to stop. “I must say, it sounds better than I imagined in your voice.” From the throat, deep within treacherous trenches, longer where common tongue isn’t, this is how fate laughs: In the forgotten language Kaeya carries on his fatigued tongue. How cruel. How crueler, Albedo is, to dig that up.
“I must leave now, Captain,” Kaeya says before there is another needless breath between them. “Step aside.”
Albedo, who hadn’t realized all this time he was standing by the only stairs leaving the tower, stays where he is. “Kaeya,” He breathes out. Shakes his head. “I hadn’t thought… I assumed this would not be such a sensitive topic with me.”
Sunken ships; a shamed snake swallows the sun. How dare you, Kaeya imagines saying. How dare? Who are you to notice the still open cuts? How dare you not bleed, he envisions himself spitting out.
“You’ve assumed wrong.” Is all he hisses, in the end. At least that. A mirror breaks on Albedo’s face. He has all the guilt he didn’t show when the other two people interested in learning from him had to leave crying. He looks every bit regretful now, vastly different from how he informed the other captains Sucrose and Timaeus are his only pupils left. Kaeya would have laughed. Had his gums not started aching. “Now, if you’ll excuse me,” He says, stepping already. “I will be out on a skirmish tomorrow. I must rest.”
Nothing works the way he wants. Albedo clamps a hand around his wrist. It isn’t sweaty. Not as human palms are in such heat. It makes Kaeya want to hurl dead birds down from the tower. He yanks his arm back instead. Surprisingly, Albedo doesn’t falter. He doesn’t let go either.
“Allow me to come with you.” The alchemist says. “I never meant to offend you. Let me come with you tomorrow, to make up to it.”
Kaeya yanks his arm back again. Harsher. With a soft gasp, Albedo stumbles closer but lets go. Figures. Kaeya had Diluc to play wrestle as they grew up, after all. At least that.
“I’m sure our Chief Alchemist has a lot to do. I possibly couldn’t.”
“It’s just Albedo, you know it.”
“Good night, Captain.”
Kaeya can’t leave. Albedo holds him again, this time both hands on his forearm, his eyes are wide and worried. For what, only Archons know. What does he want from Kaeya; what does anyone?
“I asked him just Albedo now,” The shorter man says, pursing his lips for a second. Searches Kaeya’s face. Kaeya has seen these seeking gazes before on lovers he broke ties and truths with. How odd. “Early in the morning, as dawn breaks, I will ask as the Captain of the Investigation Team. I will bother Jean as early as I can to join the skirmish mission.” Odd, indeed. What makes pale fingers hold so tightly?
Kaeya calls forth the cold, exhaustion and aches be damned. The skin under Albedo’s hands turns icy, but it seems to not bother him. Albedo only looks down to where he has grabbed him, then back up to his eye. The trick falls short on chalk men that live under perpetual snow on a mountain, he notes. Exhaling, Kaeya drops the magic.
“Why?”
Albedo takes his hands away.
“Because I broke something, and I fear the longer it takes to fix, the less success I will have in doing so.”
There is no skirmish mission. There is nothing to ask Jean’s allowance and guidance to join in. Kaeya was a cornered crystal fly, a cat with one too many steps on his tail. He sighs, looking away from blue blue eyes, towards the city below. The quiet air of the night bruises on his collarbones. There was a pin, rare and beautiful, of a jackdaw his father attached to his shawl. It was years ago, with the father he shared the curse, and eyes with. He wonders where that pin is now. Hopes nowhere, if the other option is attached to some stranger’s clothes. Perhaps it is tonight. The night that the bed eats him alive. It is tonight. But there is a wind, barely picking up, and Kaeya has to ask.
“What do you want from me, Albedo?” If the stars heard how tired he sounds, they look away. When he looks again, Kaeya isn’t surprised to find blue eyes on him already. He tells himself he is surprised by the solemn determination on Albedo’s face, however.
“Your time, Kaeya.” He says. “I want your time.”
“Why?”
“You know why,” Comes the answer. How dare you, Kaeya thinks even if his arms feel as heavy as sins. How dare. “Please, let me walk you home and apologize.”
“No need, be by the stables at sunrise.”
Albedo lets him pass, only wishing him a good night. Kaeya walks home alone. In his ears, a lullaby he made up more than he remembers. At least that.