Chapter Text
Rain had always sounded louder in penthouses.
Aether noticed that the first winter he moved in.
The windows stretched from floor to ceiling, turning the city below into a smear of silver lights and blurred movement. Thunder rolled somewhere beyond the skyline while warm ambient lamps cast gold against marble floors too pristine to feel lived in.
The place had never felt like a home at first.
Too large.
Too quiet.
Too expensive for grief.
Back then, Aether had still expected his parents to come back eventually.
Children were foolish like that.
Even after the funeral.
Even after the condolences stopped.
Even after reporters lost interest in the accident that killed an award-winning director, his screenwriter wife, and their daughter all at once on a rain-slick highway outside Inazuma City.
Aether remembered none of the funeral speeches.
But he remembered Zhongli.
Black umbrella. Black gloves. Calm voice.
The only person in the room who never looked at him with pity.
Years later, that somehow remained worse.
“Aether.”
He looked up from his laptop.
Zhongli stood near the dining table, one hand loosening the knot of his tie. He had returned less than ten minutes ago from a press conference judging from the faint traces of studio makeup beneath his eyes.
He still looked unfairly composed.
“How long have you been awake?” Zhongli asked.
“Not long.”
A lie.
It was nearly one in the morning.
Aether had a paper due tomorrow morning and three missed calls from classmates asking if he was still coming to the afterparty near campus. He ignored all of them.
Zhongli placed his phone face-down on the counter with visible relief, as though silence itself were a luxury.
“You should sleep soon.”
“You too.”
A small smile crossed Zhongli’s face at that.
It was brief. Tired. Real.
Not the polished expression he wore on magazine covers.
Those smiles belonged to the public, elegant and measured and impossible to truly know.
This one belonged to late nights and loosened sleeves and exhaustion hidden beneath civility.
Aether hated that he noticed the difference.
“You have class tomorrow,” Zhongli reminded gently.
“I know.”
“And yet you continue to stare at your screen without typing.”
Aether blinked before glancing downward.
Right.
His document remained blank.
“You caught me.”
“Hm.”
Zhongli moved quietly through the kitchen, setting water to boil with practiced motions. Watching him always felt strangely intimate, not because of anything dramatic, but because the world rarely got to see him like this.
Not the famous actor whose face covered billboards across the city.
Not the industry legend praised for his restraint and elegance.
Just Zhongli, standing barefoot in his own kitchen at one in the morning making tea because neither of them could sleep.
The tabloids would lose their minds over something this ordinary.
Aether looked away before the thought could settle too deeply.
“How was the press conference?” he asked instead.
“Tedious.”
“That bad?”
“One reporter asked if I planned to settle down soon.”
Aether’s fingers paused above the keyboard.
“Oh.”
“I informed them my personal life was not part of the interview topic.”
His tone remained calm, though Aether recognized the subtle exhaustion beneath it. Zhongli had always hated invasive questions. Fame tolerated very little privacy, and the longer his career lasted, the greedier public curiosity became.
Rumors followed him constantly.
Secret lovers. Hidden scandals. Affairs with co-stars.
People built entire fantasies around a man they had never met.
And Zhongli endured all of it with impossible patience.
“You know,” Aether muttered carefully, “most celebrities just pretend not to mind.”
“I do mind.”
The honesty startled him enough to look up.
Zhongli poured tea into two cups slowly before continuing.
“There are parts of life that should remain untouched by public consumption.”
Something tightened quietly in Aether’s chest.
Because Zhongli had always been like this.
Careful.
Private.
Protective.
Even when Aether was young, reporters had never once photographed him. Zhongli had fought for that privacy relentlessly. No public appearances together. No interviews discussing family. No exposing Aether to an industry that devoured vulnerability whole.
At the time, Aether thought it was merely responsibility.
Now he wondered if Zhongli simply wanted one thing in his life untouched by performance.
“You didn’t have to take me in.”
The words slipped out unexpectedly.
Zhongli paused.
The rain pressed harder against the windows.
After a moment, Zhongli carried both cups over and placed one beside Aether’s laptop.
“You say that every year around this time.”
Aether stared silently into the steam curling upward.
Because tomorrow was the anniversary.
The accident happened six years ago.
Six years since the late-night phone call.
Six years since Zhongli drove to the hospital himself despite cameras waiting outside an award ceremony downtown.
Six years since Aether woke up alone.
His parents had been reserved people. Brilliant, but quiet. His father directed stories people remembered long after leaving theaters; his mother wrote scripts that made critics cry. They were respected in the industry without ever truly becoming consumed by it.
Zhongli used to visit their apartment sometimes.
Aether remembered laughter over wine glasses. Script pages scattered across tables. Lumine steals snacks from catering boxes while their parents argue passionately about film endings.
And Zhongli listened quietly to all of it with fondness hidden behind composed eyes.
His mother once called him an old soul trapped inside a beautiful face.
Aether hadn’t understood it back then.
Now he understood too much.
“The hospital records said your mother called me three times,” Zhongli said quietly.
Aether looked up slowly.
Zhongli rarely spoke about that night.
“The last call connected,” he continued. “I was too late to answer.”
Aether’s throat tightened.
“I don’t remember much after the police arrived.”
“You were in shock.”
There it was again, that calm gentleness that made grief easier to survive and infinitely harder to escape.
Sometimes Aether wondered if Zhongli realized how dangerous kindness could become when given to lonely people.
“You still chose me anyway,” Aether said softly.
Zhongli looked at him for a long moment.
Then:
“Your parents were important to me.”
Not obligation.
Not responsibility.
Important.
Aether lowered his eyes quickly toward the tea.
Because something inside him reacted too strongly to that answer.
The problem was that he couldn’t remember when things started changing.
There had never been a single moment.
Just years.
Years of growing up beside someone the entire world admired from a distance.
Years of seeing the exhaustion hidden beneath perfection.
Years of late-night conversations, quiet understanding, shared silences that somehow meant more than words.
Years of becoming horribly aware that Zhongli was not merely kind.
He was beautiful in the devastating way honest things often were.
And Aether—
Aether was trying very hard not to become a terrible person because of it.
“Aether.”
He blinked.
Zhongli was watching him carefully now.
“You seem troubled.”
“I’m fine.”
Another small lie.
Zhongli said nothing for a while after that.
The rain softened outside.
Far below them, the city continued glowing endlessly, unaware of the quiet tension sitting inside a penthouse hidden above its noise.
Then Zhongli reached over suddenly and brushed his thumb lightly beneath Aether’s eye.
Aether froze.
“You’re tired,” Zhongli murmured.
The touch lasted barely a second.
Gone immediately.
Yet warmth lingered anyway.
Aether forgot how to breathe properly.
And Zhongli, oblivious or pretending to be, simply stood afterward and gathered his untouched tea.
“You should sleep,” he said gently. “Your paper will not finish itself.”
Aether stared at the table long after Zhongli disappeared down the hallway.
Only when he heard the distant sound of a door closing did he finally press shaking fingers against the place Zhongli touched.
The realization came slowly.
Quietly.
Like grief had.
There were lines in this world that existed for a reason.
And no matter how lonely Aether became…
No matter how soft Zhongli’s voice sounded at midnight.
No matter how much this home sometimes felt like something dangerous masquerading as comfort.
There were feelings that should never be allowed to live.