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Mondstadt’s storms are a menace.
The cold that pricks at your skin is expected, if unwelcome. Rain is to the city as sugar is to tea: regular and homey, its taste lingering in your mouth long after you wash it down. It’s a relentless thrum against the roof and streets outside; you can feel it through your skin and muscle and into your bones. Raindrops lash at the windows of your apartment and slide down the warped glass.
The sheets rustle as you turn to the other side of the bed. Your boyfriends are curled into each other, Kaeya with his hands tangled in Albedo’s hair. Last night’s candles are still dripping with wax. Their flickering light throws the whole room into soft shadows.
You nearly move to join them, your hand grazing Kaeya’s shoulder, but you pause. The two of them look so peaceful together, so at home with each other, so comfortable together that you draw your hand back.
They’d probably be upset that you woke them, you think.
A bruising ache unfolds in your chest. Even looking at the two of them feels like an intrusion of some kind. Something that you’re only allowed to see, only permitted by them to view. Their sleeping forms send a clear message: Look, but don’t touch.
You watch droplets of water slide down the window and sink into the red brick of the windowsill. You watch the flames of the candles flicker, light dancing across the walls. You do not watch Kaeya and Albedo, despite Kaeya stirring in his sleep and half-turning towards you. You watch anything but Kaeya and Albedo even when there’s nothing else to watch.
Especially when there’s nothing else to watch.
Your side of the bed is still cold, although the word doesn’t do justice to reality. The space is barren — empty, your body the only landmark for miles. You shut your eyes and imagine the ocean, dark and unforgiving, around you. It’s almost more comfortable than the frigid sheets.
Albedo yawns and shuffles around. You wish you could shut your ears, too, so you don’t have to hear the noise.
There’s probably a reason you woke up alone.
The breath you let out is more of a sob than anything else. There’s a lump in your throat and you won’t cry, crying won’t fix anything. Your chest burns.
Fingers brush against your shoulder. Albedo’s other hand cups your face, thumb catching your tears. His voice is level, if a little raspy, when he murmurs, “What’s going on?”
You shake your head. “‘M fine,” you mumble. You can feel his eyes sweep up and down your form.
He clicks his tongue. “You’re not,” he says, tucking an errant curl of hair behind your ear. “What’s wrong?”
“I,” you start, and then stop when Kaeya sits up and glances over at you. His face quickly becomes concerned as your throat constricts and you look away.
“Are you injured?” Albedo tries again, rubbing even circles into your back. You shake your head. He sighs, relief evident in his gaze. “Can you tell us what’s going on?”
How could you even begin to say it? How could you voice that constant feeling of being outside of their world, that knowledge that you are an awful and irreconcilable other ? How could you tell them that you panicked over something as small as waking up alone?
“It was cold,” you finally mumble, “and I thought you might be mad if I woke you up.”
The room is silent for a few moments. “Archons, this is stupid,” You laugh, but it comes out wet and broken. “You looked so comfortable, and I wanted to join you guys, but I didn’t want to disturb you,” you say, “plus I’m not even really dating you, I just third-wheel a lot, and—”
This time, it’s Kaeya that stops your talking. His arm is slung over Albedo’s form, his fingers rubbing across the curve of your outstretched wrist. “Hey, no, that’s not true at all,” he whispers. “You’re as much a part of this relationship as either of us are.”
The words don’t entirely register until Albedo strokes your cheek. “We love you,” he says, his other hand sliding to rest on your hip. “We wouldn’t be with you if we didn’t want to be.”
“But you were already together,” you say, not bothering to hide the bitterness in your voice. “Before I was even an option, you had each other, and you were fine.”
Kaeya shakes his head, bringing his hand back to skate over your shoulder. “But we wouldn’t be fine now, ” he murmurs. “Because we have you now, we aren’t whole without you.”
His voice goes quieter, pressing his lips to your hand. “We could show you, y’know, how much we love you. If you wanted,” his calloused fingers rest on your pulse point, “we could let you know exactly what we feel for you.”
The storm roars outside. You almost hope that it’s too dark for the two of them to see you when you nod.
Albedo slips out of Kaeya’s embrace, stretching in the half-formed shadows that pool at the foot of your bed. “I’ll be back,” he whispers. The wooden door groans as he opens it and steps out of the bedroom.
You bite down on your tongue to stop yourself from reaching for him. Kaeya gives him a nod and wraps an arm around your shoulders. One hand rests at the base of your neck as he touches his forehead to yours softly. “Can I kiss you?”
The words hang in the space between you, silvery things that twist in the cold air. Kaeya’s lips are still slightly parted.
You swallow the whispers as you press your lips to his and pretend you don’t feel the chill as they rest on your tongue. The air is almost as cold as Kaeya himself — he’s always been lower temperature than you and Albedo, and you feel the cool of his skin as you slide a leg between his thighs.
“Eager,” he says teasingly.
You shrug and murmur a soft, “Yeah.” Your lips find places to rest in the planes of his neck; his free hand slides one finger down your spine until it meets the curve of your ass.
“Let me?” he says. It’s a question, an invitation, something requesting a response.
“Of course.” You punctuate the words with a squeeze to his thigh and he inhales sharply.
Kaeya makes quick work of your underwear as he reaches over your shoulder with his free hand, grabbing a small bottle from the bedside table behind you. It takes a moment for him to uncork it; you laugh softly as he fumbles with the vial.
He huffs as if to chide you for laughing at him. Your lips map a path from his chest to the column of his neck, and you don’t miss how his dick twitches against your thigh when you suck a mark into the skin over his Adam's apple. He’s littered with bites and bruises by the time that his fingers press against your hole.
Kaeya lays a kiss on your forehead. His fingers sink into you slowly and you groan, biting down on the bruised flesh of his neck. He stiffens — barely perceptible, the slightest string that pulls taut in his thighs and hips — and breathes out a curse as you lave your tongue over the mark. Kaeya’s blood is a coppery tang in your mouth, and he licks it from your lips hungrily.
You kiss Kaeya like the world will crash down around your ears if you don’t; sweet and oh so messy, pulling back for air and diving in within the same moment. He rocks down against your thigh and throws his head back, baring his neck out.
In the flickering candlelight, Kaeya is thrown into stark contrast against the rest of the room. Chest heaving under your hands, hair undone and spilling over the pillow, he’s a sight to behold as you settle your hand over his hip and thumb at the line where his thigh meets his torso. At some point he’d gotten his underwear off, exposing his cock as well as the unmarred expanse of his hips and thighs.
You want to mark that skin too, you realize. You want to rip this man to shreds, and you want to make sure it shows.
Kaeya’s eye is half-lidded, his pupil blown wide enough that hardly any of his iris remains. Something dark and glimmering stirs in that eye — something that you don’t fully understand and could never hope to. It holds an unknowable infinity inside it, as do Albedo’s hands; these are the parts of your lovers that you know you won’t ever see.
You don’t know what it’s like to face the Abyss. That knowledge, those things that are just out of the grasp of the spoken word, are things that are learned only by rawness and reality and experience. These things are reserved for Kaeya and Albedo to share between themselves.
One marked man to another, a secret that dies with them.
You can’t help but wish that you knew that unconquerable vastness too. Bitterly, you think that you’d do anything to see even a fraction of what Kaeya and Albedo whisper to each other when they don’t know that you’re listening.
(Some bone-deep part of you knows that you wouldn’t be satisfied with a single fraction — or even a thousand fractions — if there was still something that Kaeya and Albedo would keep from you.)
Kaeya reaches for you, and you’re brought back out of your thoughts. Selfish.
He doesn’t have to say anything — he doesn’t even have to move. You tilt your head downward and hope he has the mercy to not mention the way you shake as you kiss him. His fingers have long since slipped out of you, instead gripping the sheets as his free hand entwines itself with yours.
He jolts when you wrap a slow hand around his cock, the lines of his body melting into something sharp and angular. “Do that again,” he says, staring up at you with that endless black-moon eye, and you keep your gaze locked to his as you squeeze him, ever so slightly.
Kaeya has never been yours to touch like this before — never been yours to explore and learn — and you want to correct that as much as you’re able. Your hands spread out over his body and he shivers as you map him out. You’ve never been one for cartography, but with Kaeya underneath you, the appeal of charting your way across something so unknown yet so close to you isn’t hard to understand.
He’s got no shortage of scars. They’re light, raised things that curl around his torso and arms, and you kiss them until they bloom into wine-red islands against his dark skin. His eye goes wide at that, letting out a soft groan as you kiss a new mark into his hip.
“Love, c’mon, ” he breathes, squeezing your hand tightly. His hips stutter up into your grip; he outright shudders as you press your thumb just above his slit and smear precum over the head of his cock. “Stop teasing, fuck—”
You smile at him, bending down to press a kiss to his tip before taking him into your mouth in one smooth motion. Kaeya jerks and groans, something halfway between your name and a wordless admission of pleasure. His thighs tense, and one hand comes to rest on the back of your head. It’s a comforting weight as you drop your mouth to his base, burying your nose in the blue curls that taper off below his navel. He arches up into your touch as you work your tongue slowly over his length.
“Oh, fuck— fuck, you’re so good,” he whispers, almost too quiet for you to hear. His voice is hoarse, chest heaving with ragged breaths as you bring a hand to his hip and hold him down on the mattress.
The door to your room lets out a soft creak. Kaeya rocks into your mouth with a wordless cry, his hand tightening in your hair as he cums down your throat. He twitches for a moment afterward, a shiver running through his form as you pull your lips off of his cock with a wet sound.
Albedo stands in the doorway, holding a box of paints and a brush. His eyes flick from you to Kaeya and back, taking in the mosaic of marks on both your skin. When his gaze settles on Kaeya’s dick, he flushes slightly and sets the paints down gently on the bed before peeling off his jacket and pants.
“You’ve been busy without me,” he breathes, his voice quirking upwards at the last word. Almost a question, almost a statement. Some mixture of both. It’s how most things are with Albedo, ever the inquisitive learner.
His empty hand trails over the bruises Kaeya left on your chest. “It’s a shame that Kaeya’s already marked you up, but you still make—” he cuts off to set a kiss to your sternum, and then to your lips, “—a wonderful canvas.” His mouth tastes like coffee, rich and bittersweet, and you run your tongue over his teeth. “I brought my paints for that exact reason, in fact.”
You run a hand up Albedo’s arm and rest your fingers in the dips of his collarbones. “Why, so you can paint me?”
“So I can paint on you,” he corrects. He moves to the middle of the bed, working his underwear off as he moves. “Come and sit?”
You smile. “Of course.” His gloved hands follow the lines of your body as you move; fingers ghost over the scars on your chest as another hand comes to rest on your thigh.
Kaeya looks up at you, eyepatch discarded. In his gaze lie the flares of a thousand decaying stars. They cast a million beams of light onto your skin as he looks you up and down. Letting out an appreciative hum, he blinks, once-twice-thrice. You can almost taste the salt on his lips yourself when he licks them.
“Hold still,” Albedo whispers against your neck, one hand slicking his cock with the rest of the lube. “Wouldn’t want to hurt you.”
His head nudges at your hole and you groan as he tugs your hips down, sheathing himself entirely inside you. He’s longer than your or Kaeya’s fingers and curved, archons above. Albedo seems content to just sit there, feathering his hands up and down your body, until you grind your hips down and hiss, “ Move. ”
Albedo is surprisingly strong for someone of his size, the hand that he places on your hip is no exception. He’s stripped his gloves off — finally, you think — and you suck in a breath at the feeling of his smooth fingers against you. Albedo lacks fingerprints, but his hands are worn and scarred from years of use.
His grip can bruise with or without fingerprints, you muse.
“Stay still, darling,” Albedo hums, reaching sideways for his paints. “You too, Kaeya. I’d hate for the painting to be smudged.”
You still, begrudgingly, as Kaeya smirks into the muscle of your thigh.
The first stroke of paint is a brilliant green that curls over your shoulder and down to your opposite hip. It’s cold — maybe you’re just warm — and the texture of the paint is strange against your skin. Albedo kisses your unmarked shoulder and reaches for another brush in the same moment that Kaeya lightly mouths at the line where your thigh meets your torso.
He looks up at you, licking a stripe up your length with both hands braced on your thighs. Behind you, Albedo brushes soft pink over the small of your back. He squeezes your thigh as if to say go ahead.
You wind a hand into Kaeya’s hair. He gives you a nod, mimicking your earlier movements as he presses a sloppy kiss to your tip.
“Can I,” you rasp. The words are less spoken than groaned as you lock eyes with Kaeya and rock your hips upward.
He smiles and you feel his lips curve up against your head. “Of course, love. This is about you.” His words make you shiver — this is about you — but you tighten your grip on Kaeya’s hair and run a thumb over his jaw. He kisses your hip again, murmurs soft against your skin, and you don’t have time to think about what he means before he takes you as far as he can into his mouth.
It takes all of your self-control to not fuck into Kaeya’s mouth immediately, because holy shit, is he good. His tongue works over your length, hot and wet, and his hands twist around what little of the base he can’t fit in his throat. He licks over your slit, humming, and the feeling makes you thrust up into Kaeya’s mouth.
He gags, his throat tightening perfectly around you, and you break. Kaeya swallows again, and fuck if that doesn’t do something to your mind. You can’t stop your hips from jerking upwards, can’t stop the way that your head falls back against Albedo’s shoulder. You moan softly, your voice cracking on a plea of Kaeya’s name.
Albedo draws another stroke across your back. “Sweet thing,” he whispers. “You look…breathtaking.” His thumb rolls over your nipple as he continues to paint, his brush sweeping soft white in circles over the knobs of your spine.
“Calla lilies,” he says suddenly, voice raspy. “I’m painting calla lilies on you. Lilies and cecelias— a garden.” Albedo’s voice pitches low when you roll your hips, his brush shaking against your skin. “Again,” he breathes.
Kaeya hums against your thigh, tonguing against your half-hard cock. “Our painter’s getting distracted, hm?”
You raise yourself off of Albedo’s cock, pulling a moan from the smaller man. He murmurs something soft, half-spoken and half-moaned as you slowly sink back down onto him. His brush is discarded in favor of groping at your chest, slender fingers skimming across your rib cage.
Kaeya pulls himself up, pressing his forehead to yours. His thighs curl close to all three of your bodies, bracketing both Albedo’s waist and yours as one hand trails down the middle of your chest. “Albedo isn’t wrong, you know,” he murmurs, kissing you softly. “You are breathtaking.”
He slides lower, wrapping his hand around you. Kaeya is a comforting weight against your chest, Albedo against your back, and Kaeya jerks you through Albedo’s orgasm. There’s a pulse, pure energy radiating from the point where Albedo’s cock disappears inside you, and you don’t miss the glimmer of newly-formed gemstones against the sheets.
Kaeya’s cum spurts over your stomach not long afterward; you press a kiss to his neck as Albedo pulls you both back into the bedsheets. His lips ghost over your jaw, legs tangled with yours. Kaeya throws an arm over both of you, kissing over the marks on your neck. Each press of his lips blooms dull and aching against your skin, flowering in burgundy across your collarbones.
“Love you,” he breathes against your neck. Albedo echoes it, and some of that small hurt sparks in your chest again until you realize they’re not saying it only to each other.
Love you, you don’t say. The words prick at your throat and you swallow them like glass.
You lay there for a while, and when you close your eyes, the emptiness of the ocean is gone. In its place rests loamy dirt and thick snow; you are laid gently between them, a lover’s grave that isn’t all that much about death anymore.
Kaeya hugs you tighter and Albedo buries his face in your neck. It’s an expected touch, and a welcome one. Your arms wrap around Kaeya and you turn your head to lazily press a kiss to the corner of Albedo’s mouth.
Outside, the rain slowly stops. The sun is setting through the windows. Mondstadt is waking up, a hurricane city stretching its windy limbs in the warmth of the rising sun.
“Thank you,” you whisper instead, soft as the light that dapples your shared sheets. Neither Kaeya nor Albedo stir, but you know they hear it.