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“I can’t create anything,” Venti says, looking dejected. Even his hair is flat, at least moreso than the gravity defying ‘bullshit’ the musician says it does on a daily basis, where it sticks up in all directions, out of his headphones, poking up out of his head like someone took a balloon over the top.
Albedo usually is more than happy to indulge his thoughts, but this evening his eyes are half-lidded. His hearing is just about the only sense still working fully, his hands cupping a mug of warm milk, discontented between the horrible decision of if it’s too hot, or too cold. Too scalding, it’ll burn his hands, and his tongue, and he won’t be able to drink or eat anything until the feeling leaves. Too cold, and he'll feel the ache down his throat, and he’ll toss his head back to escape it. Maybe sleep a bit. Maybe not.
“I can’t feel anything,” Venti says.
Albedo’s head snaps up. The mug is in his hands, trapped between his numb fingertips. “Burned out?”
“No,” Venti says quietly. A hum, a murmur. The same volume and cadence of a mother wiping her son’s bangs off his face.
Albedo has a moment of recollection, of a calloused hand, of the smell of oil and grease.
But when he tries to recall the face, all he can see is Alice. And she smells like sunflowers and golden light and mischief.
When he opens his eyes again, the edges of his vision are dull with exhausted loneliness. “Tell me,” he says quietly, but he’s not sure if he said it on the right wavelength for Venti to hear him.
The bard sighs, a controller in his hands. He tosses it behind him, onto the bed. It has a sticker on it, of a little grass creature with a flower.
Albedo sighs to see it. It’s likely Klee-certified.
“I just...can’t feel anything anymore,” Venti says, falling back on the bed. His braids slap the blankets around his head, but they’re so soft that no sound falls out. It’s absorbed, just like the force of his fall.
His eyes squint with the pain in his back.
“I already did the being mad thing,” Venti says, lifting his hand. For a moment he resembles a painting Albedo can’t quite recall. The man’s pointer is ever so slightly curved, nail polish smudged. He’s pointing at the wall, but looking far beyond it, all the way to the stars.
He swallows hard, and the moment fades. He doesn’t let his arm down slowly, choosing to drop it to the bed, where it bounces, silently.
The Fallen Angel, Albedo thinks, the thought causing him another wave of migrainic pain within his cheekbones, reaching up along his ears.
“I tried thinking it was funny,” Venti says, sitting up. He readjusts his shoes, really just moving because if he holds still for too long, he’ll start to feel wrong in his body. He lifts up his boots, setting them side by side, ignoring how he feels like a bug stuck inside of a shell, unable to molt. “But nothing about it was funny at all.”
He’s miserable for a moment, setting his elbow on his knee. Looking off to the side, blatant misery on his features.
They’re never plain, Albedo thinks, remembering all the times he’s tried to sketch Venti. How, often, when he paints him, the watercolors run together. How they blotch, because Venti isn’t a simple person.
“I want to go home,” Venti says quietly, “but there’s no place to go.” For a moment, he remains sitting there, the sun slanting in through the window. It’s so hopelessly bright. It’s too bright, and Albedo squints further, pain stabbing through his forehead.
Right as Venti is moving, Albedo’s brain slows the man down, feeds on the image, reading through the movement. Turning the wind sprite to stone.
David, Albedo thinks, and for a moment he’s deciphered what always bothered him about the masterpiece’s expression.
The misery, hidden even from his own friends. Being king must be awful.
Or is it just having so many people dependent on you?
Klee is sleeping somewhere in the house at the moment. She’s exhausted, but soon she’ll be up.
Kaeya is working hard. It’s been a rough week for him, as an EMT.
“Too many people keep dying,” Venti says, and Albedo cannot tell if this is part of ths conversation, or if he missed something.
The bard is sitting in front of the comptuer, fingers clicking away on a controller. His figurine on the screen is moving.
“Are you streaming?” Albedo is surprised at his own voice, at the croak.
Venti smiles over his shoulder at Bedo, thanking him with his own green eyes, just for the simple pleasure of his voice. For working so hard to keep him company.
They need each other, in this moment.
Venti slaughters something on screen, without even needing to look, his fingers moving for him, auto lock on.
“No,” he says tenderly. He sets the controller down, and turns to Albedo. His smile disappears, and for a moment he stares, intent.
“I feel...disgusted,” Venti says, and his nose crinkles.
For a moment, Albedo can see it. Can see the green spreading on Venti’s nose, the way the man seems to hunch over. How his sickness stems from the feeling causing turmoil in his stomach.
“Did you eat today?”
Venti picks at the blankets, intending them no harm, only cleaning them. “Yes.”
Albedo’s gaze shifts to the rug. It’s new. He remembers when it wasn’t, when this room was filled with a man who shook the house, and when he found Venti, leaning over the sink, covered in sweat. With bruises down his cheek.
He was green then, too. Green, but angry. Purple with rage. He looked like he had violets on his face. They should have been drawn on. Painted.
He deserved to be painted on, to be kissed, to be adored.
Not that Albedo thought about kissing him, but he wanted that for the man. He wanted the man to be adored thoroughly. To be loved.
His brows crease, his stare steady.
Venti sighs, flopping over on the bed, stuffed animal in hand.
Albedo takes a long sip of his drink, then hands it over.
Venti sits up, taking it. His fingertip is freezing. He chugs the mug, loudly. Obnoxiously. Throwing some sound into the room.
Albedo stands, grabs a blanket. Falls down onto the bed beside Venti. “This okay?”
“Yeah, come join me.”
Albedo throws a blanket over his friend, and lies back.
Albedo groans. “What the fuck is that?” His voice is all mumbled, and he swats the hand off of his cheek.
Venti pouts, even in his sleep. But his eye opens quick, thick lashes framing an iris that has no right to look so good.
Albedo, for his part, is sure he looks like a million bucks. That’s been thrown into a wood chipper. And shit on by a neighborhood dog.
He sits up, clutching his head.
Somewhere in the house, someone is singing. And he can smell food cooking.
“Kaeya?” Venti sits up, frowning.
“No, he’s having a bad week.” Albedo slips a bit too far out of bed, stumbling to his feet. He looks through an open door, to see Kaeya there.
The man is pale, and tired. His eyepatch has been dragged off, his lost eye shut with exhaustion. He has a bit of blood still slipping out of the bottom of his nose, and immediately Albedo is approaching.
They meet just outside of the bathroom, Kaeya refusing to speak until the fan is on and the door closed.
Venti stumbles out of the bedroom, into the kitchen. “XIAO!!!”
The radio over the sink is turned up, way up.
Albedo frowns, clutching Kaeya’s face between his hands. “What did they do to you?”
Kaeya sniffles once, then just drops. His head hits Albedo’s shoulder, hands lifting to wind around the man, slowly. To cling to his shirt, tugging at him. Tears slip off of his split lip.
“Shh, honey. I’ll clean your wounds so you don’t get an infecton,” Albedo says, swallowing down the spit welling in his mouth from waking. He has to turn awkwardly and spit into the sink, groaning.
Kaeya lifts his sweaty forehead from Albedo’s shoulder so the man can move more easily, though he’s crying profusely. Both tear ducts, which means the right side of his face has become sticky and painful.
Albedo grabs a wash cloth, suddenly extremely thankful that Diluc stopped by the other day and did laundry when he drove Mona over to watch Klee. He turns on the sink, keeping his wrist under to feel when the water turns warm.
Kaeya watches him, sniffling with pain. His sinuses are fucked. “Your fingers are numb, aren’t they?”
“Yeah,” Albedo says. “Was it cold last night?”
Kaeya nods, and Albedo wets the cloth, pressing it to the man’s eyes. Cleaning them carefully, murmuring to him.
“Someone died again,” Kaeya says. “It was awful. And then one of the last guys he...he didn’t like me.”
“So he attacked you? Did your boss do anything?”
Kaeya just looks to him, so sick and tired of the world treating him the way it does.
Albedo sighs, out of anger, not resignation. “Of course not. I’m contacting the board Monday.”
“Do whatever you want,” Kaeya says, wrapping his arms around the man. He sniffs again, right in Albedo’s ear.
The painter rolls his eyes, clutching the sweaty man close. He lifts himself onto the sink, so that he can wrap his legs around Kaeya, pulling him until he’s pressed against him. Until they’re crying on each other. He wouldn’t have it any other way.
“Alright lovebirds,” Venti says, knocking hard on the door. “Breakfast is ready, and I have to pee,” he mutters at the end.
“There’s a bathroom upstairs,” Albedo says, redoing Kaeya’s braid for the fifteenth time, trying to get it perfect. Feeling has almost returned to his fingers.
Kaeya has makeup on. He’s exhausted, but he didn’t want Klee to notice the split lip. So he took time to put on lipstick that’s at least a similar shade to blood. And to put on one of the many, many, many eyepatches that they keep in the bathroom. It’s one of those disposable ones, that stick on to his irritated skin. But Klee designed it, and later on he’ll have a nice skincare routine, at home. In soft silk bedsheets. With Addy nearby to make him some tea whenever he wakes up.
For now, Albedo reaches over, turning the handle.
Venti bustles in, keeping his voice down. “Wanted to make sure you were okay,” he says to Kaeya.
“I feel like my face got smashed by a dude twice my size,” Kaeya says. “Oh wait!”
“It did?” Venti’s lips quirk.
“No, he was smaller than me,” Kaeya says.
“Hard to believe,” Venti says.
Kaeya tries to smile, but none of them are much in a joking mood.
“Xiao’s here,” Venti says.
“I’m so glad,” Albedo says. “I missed him. I was hoping he’s been safe out there.”
“His wrist is broken,” Venti says quietly, leaning in. “So please be super nice to him, okay?”
Kaeya and Albedo exchange a look, glancing to Venti for an explanation, their eyes wide and demanding.
He shrugs, though of course he knows where Xiao has been, and what he’s been doing. And how he got hurt. “Or sprained.”
“I’ll check it,” Kaeya says, though his mirth is buried in worry for his friends. He has to take a deep breath before even exiting the bathroom.
Xiao appears behind Venti. “It’s sore, not broken,” he says, not as quietly as they would like. But Klee is on one of the dining room stools, singing loudly, her crayons all over the counter. She’s fine.
“It would be better if it weren’t hurt at all,” Venti mutters. He’s trying very hard to carve the pancakes into teddy bears.
Klee laughs with glee, trying to flip the pancake Xiao has handed her. Some of the dough lands on his nose, slipping off.
Venti reaches up a finger, swiping it off and eating it.
Albedo is half asleep on the counter, his head in his arms. The sun is coming in the front windows too, somehow. He doesn’t understand how it can hit both sides of the house.
There’s clouds and fog outside, that’s how.
There’s a knock at the door, and then Diluc comes in. He holds the door open for Lumine, setting some bags of groceries at the foot of the stairs. He’ll put them away later.
For now, he heads over, greeting Kaeya, eyes widening in surprise at the marks on the man’s face.
Lumine is not surprised. She sets her purse on the grocery bags, recyclable of course, and heads over. She slides onto the stool beside Klee, offering her a tired smile.
Klee pays her no mind, grabbing her arm to start drawing on her with the markers Xiao hands over. “Picked em up on my way.”
“Yeah, me too,” Diluc says, staring in horror at Kaeya. His face is torn between “who did this?” the gentle version, and “who did this?” the version that stares long hours at cold steel.
“A patient,” Kaeya says.
Diluc lets out an angry sound, swallowing hard. “Do you need anything?”
“No, just some sleep. I’m taking the next day off.”
Diluc bites his lip.
“And I’ll need help with the paperwork,” Kaeya admits, knowing Albedo is proud of him even as he says it. The breath that the blonde sucks in tells him as such, and Kaeya is able to smile a bit. “Please,” he adds.
Diluc stares at him, lip curling, before reaching out to feel his forehead. “Are you dying?”
“Diluc there’s a kid here!!”
“She’s fine,” Lumine says, drawing on a paper Klee hands her.
“I need you two to design one of my hoodies,” Xiao says.
“Oh? You got another photoshoot?” Venti sidles up to him, finished with one pancake and patiently awaiting the next. Xiao slips a spatula under the one on the griddle, flipping it, and it arcs through the air, landing on Venti’s plate.
Everyone stares for a moment.
Klee laughs in glee, turning so the camera she’s holding faces her. Her nose fills the screen. “Hey!! We did a lot of cool stuff today, and I just woke up!” She hits send, and Albedo looks up briefly just to ensure she’s sending it to Alice.
“Okay Albedo?”
“Okay,” he says, after squinting to read the name. Everyone else checks too, used by now to the rules Kaeya wrote out about internet safety.
The pancake Xiao was cooking starts to burn, and he swears.
“Glad that wasn’t in the video,” Diluc mutters, finishing a text to his lawyer.
“Cause you talking about death is better,” Kaeya complains, and Diluc takes the empty seat between him and Lumine.
“Lawyer’s been notified. He’ll contact your employer Monday about the standard procedures and time off.”
“You’re gonna get me fired,” Kaeya says.
Diluc flinches.
Kaeya sets his juice down, licking his lips. “I um...was looking for a new job anyways,” he admits. “Help me find one?”
“I thought you’d never ask.”
Albedo passes out on the stairs. He doesn’t make it fully up them, not to his room with his bed which is waiting patiently. He makes it out of the dining area, past the living room, up a few steps, and then just...slowly...lowers himself. Sets his head on his arm.
“And he’s out,” Venti says, stepping on him to see if he’s truly unconscious.
Xiao clicks his tongue at the distaste, pulling Venti off. “Come on,” he says, to the giggling musician. “We don’t need to bother sleeping people.”
“But he looks so cute!”
“You’re adorable,” Xiao says. “I fucking missed you.”
Albedo opens his eyes, long enough to see pink spread across Venti’s nose and cheeks. That’s a good color on him, he thinks.
When he wakes again, he’s staring at blue. Blue hair, tangled around him, dyed a beautiful hue. Impossibly soft.
He groans, sitting up. His arm is around someone who’s curled against his shoulder
"Morning, love,” he whispers, pressing a kiss to Kaeya’s forehead.
The man has cooled down to a comfortable, cool temperature. Kaeya smiles, and wonderously, despite his split lip, his lips remain soft.
He smiles over, looking gorgeous.
Albedo presses a kiss to his nose. “How do you feel?”
Kaeya snuggles against him, craving comfort. “Loved.”
It’s the first time, in a long time, he’s been able to admit that.
Albedo spends a long time with an arm around the man, feeling their heartbeats entwined, thankful for this moment.
Venti sighs into Xiao’s ear for the fifth millionth time.
Xiao had tried to play a game at some point while holding him. But he ended up like this, lying back on the improperly made, large bed. Blankets bunched under him, his head and shoulder at a weird angle. Venti lying half on him like a cat, making him sweat.
He curls his aching fingers into Venti’s hoodie, clutching to the man, and hopes for a few more years. Decades, even.
Why not be selfish, when asking for the unlikely?
But boy does he love tempting Fate to give him all the things he didn’t have before.
“Give me love,” he whispers, hoping there’s a god who hears him.
“I’ll give you everything,” Venti promises, his breath like a kiss on the curve of Xiao’s ear.
Xiao keeps listening to his heart, for a long, long, long time.
“Read me a bedtime story,” Klee says, dropping another book in Diluc’s lap. The Hobbit.
He stares with wide eyes at the broken binding, turning over the loved book in his hands. “Albedo lets you read this?”
“Yup! He reads it to me every night.”
He’s psychotic, Diluc thinks, but smiles nonetheless.
Klee stares up at him. She’s lost another one of her baby teeth, probably one of her last. She has a little gap in her bottom teeth at the moment, but the adult ones have grown in healthy. He’s relieved she won’t have to go through years of braces, before remembering that Alice doesn’t need anyone to be perfect.
She just needs them to be themselves.
He gives the kid a tiny, small smile, trying his best to be happy. To be kind.
“I liked your first one better,” she says. “When you were laughing.”
That cuts him to his core, and he’s not sure why.
Later, he’s finally able to cry.
Lumine is asleep on the couch. She’s been asleep since about the time that Xiao was helping Kaeya to drag Albedo upstairs, right before Diluc stepped in.
She hasn’t found her brother. And Xiao came home. Beat up. With no leads.
And Childe’s been gone for a long time, with no word. “Which,” Lumine had said on the drive over, wiping her nose, “I suppose isn’t so weird.”
She sat back then, and Diluc regretted how loudly he had turned up the radio. He felt that if he heard her cry, at least he could be doing something.
The window fogged up.
“He’ll be alright,” Diluc said, unsure of how his voice sounded. Why couldn’t he sound like his dad? Sure of himself? “He’s more than capable. And he knows he can come to us for help if he needs it.”
“Can he? What help can I really provide?” Lumine stared at her fingernails, sniffling.
“You’ve helped all of us,” Diluc said. “And he would come to you,” he turned the car then, fighting the urge to flip off the driver who nearly caused an accident. He didn’t want to see Kaeya like that. “He would come to you because he knows you’re a truthworthy friend.”
“Not capable, but trustworthy,” Lumine said.
“Capability can be taught,” Diluc said, pulling into their spot and seeing that Kaeya was already there. He could see the man through the front window of the house, the curtains not being closed properly. “Trust is something you choose to give people, and everyone who knows you appreciates what you’re willing to do for them. Regardless of what anyone makes you think you’re capable of.”
He choked up a bit saying it, and she swallowed hard hearing it. Her hand flip over his quickly, and then she dashed out the car door.
For a moment, it filled with sunlight, with golden light. He was reminded of the moment when Crepus died. When his vision became filled with the light of oncoming traffic. Of people finally arriving, to save them, to save him.
They were only able to save him, but didn’t they come for both of them? Hadn’t they rushed through the rain to save them both? Hadn’t first responders tried their damn best?
Hadn’t Kaeya been in the ambulance, praying when he heard it was a redheaded male in his early forties? Hadn’t he been clutching his hands together when he saw them?
Didn’t he, too, scream?
Diluc snaps out of his memories for a moment, sniffling. He blows his nose, tosses the tissue, grabs a glass of water. Opening the fridge reminds him of how empty it is. He goes back and grabs the groceries, praying the milk hasn’t gone bad. He forgot it was in there.
He smells it and it’s fine. He takes a drink before remembering this isn’t his house, and he shouldn’t be doing that. He screws the lid back on.
He can picture Venti standing on the stairs, staring at him. He can picture his friends laughing at him.
But the house is still. As if all of them were entrapped in the Fair Folks’ dances, lost to time and space, exhausted after much revelry. As if only he is the guardian who is left.
He screws the cap back on, and puts the milk away. Puts away the other groceries. Drinks more water.
Heads back to the living room, where Klee is frowning. He grabs her a stuffed animal, handing it to her. She curls around it, just like one of his cats. He puts a blanket on her shoulders and she settles down easily enough. She’s on the chair, Lumine on the couch under the window. He already pulled the curtain closed.
Diluc settles onto the couch facing them both, his back to the kitchen. The radio is off. It’s beginning to rain outside, a soft sound. There’s cars in the distance. Their sound bothers him a bit, but he’s learning to live with it.
He grabs The Hobbit, staring at the cover. Sighing.
His father used to read this to him and Kaeya, when they were kids.
Back then, Diluc didn’t understand it. He opens the book, hearing the binding snap at him, in happy little crackles. Delighted to be read once more, to be appreciated, to get the book’s messages across.
Diluc, in the calm and quiet of the house, smiles. His gloves slip over the pages, fingertips scarred.
He didn’t know why Crepus would sit between them. Kaeya couldn’t sleep alone back then, and Diluc had a habit of leaving his room to get into mischief. So Crepus would end up in bed, one arm around each of his boys, reading to them. Usually The Hobbit, because Diluc’s incessant, “why” and “what’s that word mean” meant he would only get through a page and a half before Diluc fell asleep.
Kaeya would take longer, but he liked the descriptions anyways. He would be sucking his thumb, sometimes his eye uncomfortably bandaged because he didn’t have the muscle strength back then to hold it closed, and the iris would become too dry. Crepus would spend hours describing the characters’ clothes, their jewelry, their hairstyles. Making them up, of course, based on the movies. And art commissions he ordered for the boys.
Diluc would wake up a few times, hear them talking. His father’s voice became a comforting drone, and he would fall back asleep.
Sometimes Kaeya would whisper a question, but then he’d sleep.
Diluc understands, as an adult, how terrified Crepus must have been.
Kaeya was abandoned, and adopted as quickly as Crepus could get him. But he must have feared what would happen if Kaeya’s biological father came back for him. He must have had an inkling of what the man who had left his child in the fields could be capable of.
At first, there was a huge investigation. A search for the man, since Crepus assumed that Kaeya’s father was hurt somehow. Robbed perhaps, or mentally unfit but lost, or maybe even had been suffering from a concussion.
But when tire tracks were found, and he had been noted as being in the next town over, alone and sober, joyously talking about the rest of his life, Crepus knew the truth.
Kaeya and Diluc didn’t. Not until they found the records, after Crepus had passed.
They didn’t know how terrified he was, of harm coming to Kaeya. They didn’t know that Crepus knew who Kaeya’s dad was, that Crepus had people searching for the man for a long time. That he was dangerous.
That Crepus was in their room because ‘that box’ he kept at the foot of the bed held his gun. That he was watching the windows, and the door, for any sign of someone breaking through their security. And that most kids, rich or not, don’t grow up with living, breathing guards on their grounds.
Diluc runs his hand over the text on the cover. Nostalgia overtakes him, and he sniffles once more, before beginning to read.
The morning is passed this way, rain falling softly, memories drifting from between the pages.
By the time Klee wakes, of course before anyone else, Diluc is energized once more.
She leaps up, ready to take on the world, demanding snacks and dance lessons.
Diluc sets down the book, remembering his father telling him that all of his hard work would come in handy someday. “In the ways you least expect!”
“Dance lessons?” He stands, retrieving the bag of chips held in reserve beside him. He gives them to Klee. “I think I can do that.”
Albedo wakes hours, and hours, and hours later.
Kaeya isn’t even in bed anymore, the man having gotten up and showered, then quickly getting roped into Klee’s ‘makeover’.
Albedo emerges from the room to find them in the dining room once more. Well, Diluc is on the couch he’s been on nearly all day. His shoes are off, feet up. He’s reading from The Hobbit, aloud for everyone.
Xiao is running background music from his stool in the kitchen. It looks painful to sit there, and Albedo frowns for a moment, wondering what he’s doing there.
But there’s cookies in the oven, and the smell hits Albedo, and he smiles, stumbling over.
Klee tackles him in a hug before running back to Kaeya. She’s putting clips in his hair, and Venti is helping teach her different braids.
Lumine is on the couch in front of the window, multiple pictures spread on the table before her.
“We had dinner,” Venti announces. “Hours ago. We’re making second dinner.”
A pang of loneliness hits Albedo, and his smile fades.
“No, no,” Kaeya says, hurrying up, before his hair is tugged by Klee, whose tongue is sticking out and who is in deep concentration at learning where the strands go. She’s counting them.
Kaeya sits. “We weren’t forgetting you,” he says quickly, and then smiles charmingly. “We’re having second breakfast.”
Albedo’s eyes slip to the book in Diluc’s hand. The man lifts his head, smiling over at Albedo.
“I see,” the painter says, offering a smile back. He nods to Lumine too. She smiles back. “Then,” he says. “what would everyone like?”
“That was delicious,” Venti says. His energy back, he’s leaning across the living room table, painting with Klee. They’re doing a portrait together, painting Lumine.
She’s on the couch yawning into Kaeya’s ear, the two of them showing each other cosplayer videos and talking about which ones Kaeya should try.
Xiao is curled up on the chair Klee was on earlier. He’s holding a stuffed animal, his sleeves pushed up, the brace on his wrist not stopping him from the game he’s playing.
“I agree,” Albedo says, showing a bit of cockiness at his own creation.
Kaeya smiles at him in rapt adoration at his confidence. “It was amazing,” he agrees.
Diluc is happily reading through The Hobbit, with something close to tears in his eyes. He sets the book down, and Xiao tosses him a second system. “I need a teammate, get on.”
“Yes sir.”
“Hurry up.”
The system is already up, but is dying. Albedo jumps up, grabbing a cord, plugging it in and dropping the end onto Diluc’s lap.
His deft fingers plug it in as he begins running across the map. “Co-op?”
“Ranked.”
“Got it. Whatcha going for?”
“Expert.”
“I got Expert,” Kaeya brags.
“Didn’t you start playing yesterday?” Lumine glares over at him.
Kaeya giggles, biting his tongue to tease her.
Venti looks up. “We should play Mario Kart.”