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Morning light, Kaeya registers, hazily, when he floats to the surface of consciousness. It swims behind his closed eyelids. The world is still, and warm. With a satisfied sigh, Kaeya curls closer into the blankets.
The sheets smell like Albedo.
Albedo, of course.
Memories of Albedo return, of the previous night, and other nights, and days, that they spent pressed against each other. Of the way Albedo looked at him before he drifted off to sleep; as though he wanted him, as though he wanted Kaeya to want him; skin to skin, ghostly infinities trailing between them.
A delicious ache throbs in his lower back, in remembrance of their previous night’s activities. In his sleep-soaked daze, hunger blooms in his chest. (Unspeakable. Unknowable. Like it does, every time he looks at Albedo.)
Needing Albedo closer, Kaeya reaches out, almost instinctively, to pull him toward him, and –
His hand brushes against cold sheets.
The remnants of sleep chased from his mind, Kaeya opens his eyes. The other side of the bed is empty. Plain sheets lie straightened across the frame, and Albedo’s pillow is tucked neatly before the headboard. There is no imprint of Albedo’s body at all. The bed is smoothened out, as though Albedo has never been.
Something in Kaeya dies.
The morning light is suddenly too bright – harsh, empty as the other side of the bed, where Albedo will never stay.
For how could he? Now that the cotton candy dreams have quite dissipated from Kaeya’s mind, he remembers, of course, that their arrangement is a purely physical one. One where this awful, monstrous emptiness that crawls through Kaeya’s throat whenever he thinks about Albedo touching him –
Needs to be swallowed.
Perhaps he has gone too far in his delusions, believing that there might have been something more: something in the way Albedo looked at him sometimes, when he was close; or in the way his lips lingered against Kaeya’s neck, a fraction of a second more than quite necessary, even after they were both finished. Memories, perhaps. Or dreams.
But he has always read more into it than there really is, with Albedo. A childish urge, really, to reach for wisps, for the tail ends of fantasies –
(As though they would not inevitably dissolve, like everything else that he touched.)
(Like the birdcage of his ribs, always quite fragile, that crumples inward, so easily, on the wastes of his heart.)
A beautiful fantasy it was, indeed, to be able to wake up beside Albedo and sift the strands of his blonde hair – sun-burnished, beautiful – from his face. Beautiful, and equally laughable.
The tears come before he can even quite register them. They are thick and fast, and he presses his face into his sheets, gasping for breath. It is pathetic, really, because Albedo has done nothing but keep to their mutual agreement, while he is the one with the monstrosity of this desire, howling within him.
But crying is no matter, because Albedo is not here to see him in this state. Because Albedo is not here.
“Kaeya?”
Albedo’s voice.
But Albedo is –
His body responding automatically to the sound of that voice, Kaeya turns toward it, peeling the sheets carefully from his tear-soaked face.
Through his blurry vision, he makes out Albedo standing at the foot of his bed, carrying two plates in his hands. The smell of freshly cooked pancakes wafts into his breath, warm and buttery.
“I made breakfast,” Albedo says shyly, and suddenly Kaeya can breathe again. Then, his brow furrows into a quizzical frown. “Kaeya, are you… what –”
He cannot explain this; cannot explain that irrational need that ate through him just moments before, and which Albedo has quelled, now that he is here. Now that Kaeya knows that he has been in Kaeya’s kitchen all along, an apron draped over a single oversized shirt. (Pathetic, really, for Albedo to see him in this state.)
“You’re crying,” Albedo says simply. He sets the food down on the table and approaches Kaeya slowly, cautiously. “What’s wrong?”
“Don’t ask.” Kaeya wipes his face almost aggressively against the pillow as he turns to look up at Albedo. “I’m – I’m sorry, Albedo. Forget it.”
Albedo, however, stays.
“Kaeya –”
“Shut up.” Kaeya reaches up to touch him, to the beautiful line of his jaw, illuminated by the morning light. “Just… just kiss me.”
A chuckle rumbles from Albedo’s chest as he crawls back onto the bed.
“The food will go cold, Kaeya,” he says, softly. “Are you so insatiable?”
And Kaeya is. He has always been, really, just not for what Albedo thinks.
Careful legs straddle Kaeya’s thighs. Albedo leans toward him, cupping his chin with a hand, and Kaeya wants –
He wants –
He wants.
They were not supposed to do this, in their arrangement. Not kiss like this. Not without it being a prelude for other, carnal things. Still, Albedo kisses him softly, lips sliding gently against Kaeya’s as his hand settles on Kaeya’s chest, and Kaeya wonders if there is something more there, after all.
Maybe later, after they have eaten, Kaeya will tell Albedo about his beautiful hands and the way they make him feel in places so much more untouchable than the flesh. He will tell Albedo about his mind, and his eyes, and the way he looks in the morning sun, and how Kaeya wants to wake up to the smell of his skin, every day, without crying.
For now, however, Albedo slips his arms around his waist to support him until they are both sitting up, before running a tentative finger across his cheek to wipe away his tears. And Kaeya wonders if, just maybe, he might just feel the same indeed.