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Whenever Cale meets with Alberu face-to-face, through communication devices but especially in person, these days, the Crown Prince peers at the brick wall of the Young Master's carefully fortified features the same way a demolition team observes a beautiful but crumbling building painted with graffiti.
Considering how to safely bring it down for something to be built anew where the rubble once resided.
Why? That's written in bold red ink with every flicker of telling expression that Cale reveals.
The tug of his mouth when his lips bend and rise into a smile a little too comfortable — too harmonious in synergy.
Too much of a perfect matching reflection of his. It's a polished mirror, clear to see, no mistake, revealing far too much.
The angry contortions, the evident fury burning a pyre in them, when he sees or finds Alberu hurt and in pain.
The crinkling next to his eyes, eyes like flaming bright orbs when he grins.
And better yet, when he laughs freely and without reservation. When it bubbles up like a wellspring, and he looks half-lunatic and half-too beautiful to stand.
Those moments his aristocratic nose flares, his pupils dilate, his eyelids sink half mast, lips unconsciously part and his irises become a thin dark ring, intensely concentrated on him.
Taunting him, haunting him.
That may be why Alberu looks at the former Commander's eyes the most. Not only because they have become the prettiest he's ever admired but because they are windows.
Which are way more wide open and vulnerable around Alberu than Cale most likely knows.
They betray a great deal of what he stubbornly guards inside those old, swaying walls he's constructed to protect himself.
A fixture the Crown Prince has watched gradually crumble into a state of decline for years now, and he suspects what is hammering it down is essentially the Young Master's efforts, Cale's people, which now includes Alberu — significantly.
Those beautiful eyes admire Alberu as if the Crown Prince is an unafordable treasure Cale can look at but can't touch.
Yet, Cale is the only one who has the key to unlock it any time. Any time.
His gaze seethes and scalds. It lingers on Alberu as if tethered, sometimes even when Cale is walking away.
The Young Master will rest on his heels and dig them into the floor.
His slender figure angled a little toward the Crown Prince.
Like Cale wants to stride back toward him, but the Young Master always continues in whatever direction he's going, anyway. Stubborn man as he is.
While Alberu stands still, trying not to extend the kind of hand towards him that he has no desire to offer anyone else, as he struggles not to confront it, him, them.
Alberu doesn't have those walls anymore -- he's just got a poker face, and even that is loose around Cale, like a door falling off its hinges.
It's the worst when Cale thinks Alberu somehow doesn't notice, doesn't care, or isn't bothered, like when the Young Master intently watches him pour tea with a visual fixation that crosses past the line of admiration and ebbs and flows straight into the territory of enamored.
Cale doesn't realize it takes the Crown Prince more effort than it used to just to remain poised under his attentions, to keep his own hands steady, with all that merciless temptation focused on a tiny sliver of his bared wrists alone.
Sometimes, no matter where they are, Cale will dare to hold his eyes when caught staring, without aversion, as if there is nothing forward about his scrutiny, and Alberu's insides twist, heart tumbling, sharp mind dulling — and god, he wants.
Eventually, he starts testing the waters. A hand on his shoulder here, lingering in his personal space, and it kills him inside when that pulse - hammering, thrashing - leaps in Cale's swan-like neck in response.
During those moments, Alberu sees the tension rolling in Cale's shoulders and arms.
He sees how the former Commander yearns painfully to touch and be touched, not just back, but more.
A hell of a lot more.
He notices that painful desire for intimacy, not just the sexual kind, that screams in his body language, eyes that long for closeness.
The same that Alberu does.
Yet, the Young Master doesn't reach out, and Alberu often wonders if Cale has ever let anyone that close at all.
So when that fascination cracks that layered face, in turn, surges a rush of hot blood beneath Alberu's skin and a certain level of determination.
Skin he is narrowly crawling out of because the Young Master is so close to him, but Cale is also as far away as the crazy good, but maddening bastard believes he needs to be.
Cale deserves all the patience in the world, but Alberu is not idly patient. He doesn't want to force him, not ever, but the least he can do is show that everything is returned, or he'll go nuts for real.
And Cale might just combust.
If it was just lustful desire on Cale's end, Alberu could've ignored it and let it be a fleeting fancy, he supposes, but it's feelings too, and the fact he feels for the Crown Prince, is what he can't ignore.
Until Cale's walls gently crumble down by his choice and enough to let him in, and nothing feels more right. So they build anew, this building.
From pieces of both their ruins they made of each other, and new things.
Big enough, solid, and beautiful, to fit both of them, a happy home that may not physically reside in the same place because Cale's got half of it, and Alberu has the other.
But it won't crumble -- not if they have anything to say about it.
And Alberu intends to keep it standing, day after day after day.