Work Text:
"The wine tastes bland."
Charles almost drops the glass he's wiping behind the counter. There are many words to describe Mondstadt’s famous Dandelion Wine, but ‘bland’ isn’t one of them. "I beg your pardon, Sir Kaeya?"
Kaeya sighs and swirls the liquid in his glass. "It tastes bland," he repeats. "Shall I get you another glass?" Charles offers. The knight sighs and shakes his head. "No need, Charles, thank you."
Kaeya doesn't know what's wrong with him. For the past three nights from… that encounter with Albedo, he’s been out of sorts. He comes to Angel’s Share empty, and when he drank his fill of Dandelion Wine and Death After Noon with complaints to Charles about ‘bland alcohol’, he stumbles back into his home in a drunken haze, empty as he was when he came.
He takes a sip from the wine in his glass and a longing sigh escapes his lips. Wine usually tastes crisp and flavorful and all things Celestia has to offer on his tongue. But now, it doesn’t even leave even the slightest aftertaste.
Did Diluc change the formula for the wine? He looks around the tavern, at patrons enjoying their drinks. They don’t seem to complain.
Kaeya huffs. Maybe, Charles is playing tricks on him. Maybe Diluc is teaming up with Charles to spite him with a reject wine brewed from Dawn Winery.
Before Kaeya could even press Charles on with his hypothesis, the door to the tavern opens. His head suddenly whips to the direction of the door, excitement rushing through him as he waits for a newcomer to arrive. For a certain newcomer to arrive.
He visibly deflates when he sees someone different from what he expected.
"Timaeus," Kaeya greets. He holds out his glass in invitation to the alchemy apprentice who’d just arrived. "Care to have a drink with me?" Timaeus shakes his head, crossing his arms. "A tempting offer, Sir Kaeya, but I'm afraid I have to decline. I still have some work to do."
"Working at a time like this?" the knight asks, cocking an eyebrow at him. He sets down his glass.
"I'm afraid I would have to keep up with Master Albedo's ridiculous work schedule," the apprentice sighs, defeated. The knight chuckles, nodding at the apprentice. Albedo does work at such odd hours of the night, never resting until he finds his answers. "Your master doesn't rest, does he?"
"He's eccentric at most, but I am learning." Timaeus suddenly perks up. "Ah, I just remembered what I came here for," he says, fumbling with something in his pocket. After a while, he holds out a folded note. "Master Albedo wants me to give you this."
Kaeya takes the note gently from his hand and open it. Elegant cursive spells out, "Wine is best enjoyed with company."
Oh.
"Thank you, Timaeus," he says at the apprentice, patting his shoulder in gratitude. He turns to Charles, pushing the half-empty glass of wine to him, before standing from his seat. "I will take my leave. Offer the kind Timaeus a drink, if you please, and put it under my tab. I will pay for what I owe tomorrow evening."
"Leaving so soon, Sir Kaeya?" There's a knowing glint in Charles' eyes. Kaeya scoffs.
"Like I said, the wine tastes bland."
Most of the lights in the offices in the Headquarters of the Knights of Favonius are off, save for one on the second floor, the last door to the right. Albedo's workshop.
It's not an unusual sight for Albedo to stay up all night at his workshop to work on experiments about Archons-know-what. Jean had told him to take a rest on several occasions, but it seems like his stubbornness is not one to be defeated, even by the Acting Grand Master, so she let him be.
But, what’s peculiar, is his request for Kaeya to come in his workshop in the dead of the night, just to drink wine together. Kaeya hums, pondering on the thought as he knocks on the door.
“Come in,” a voice floats from within. Kaeya enters at the cue, eyes searching for Albedo in the chaos of his workshop. He doesn’t have to look for long, though, because the alchemist perks up at the sight of him from behind his experiment table and he waves. "Ah, Sir Kaeya," he greets. He stops what he was doing at the moment (another experiment, perhaps?) and retreats to his desk. He takes a bottle of dandelion wine that was sitting on it and procures wineglasses from a nearby shelf.
Kaeya narrows his eyes at him as he places the items on the experiment table in front of them. He ignores the fluttering in his chest as the alchemist takes his place beside him, their shoulders brushing just slightly. "What's the occasion?"
"Dawn Winery gave me a special brew because I helped them with research,” Albedo explains, uncorking the wine and pouring it into wineglasses. “I just wanted to share the wine with you, Sir Kaeya, since you are a connoisseur in these affairs. Is that unbecoming?"
"You could ask Huffman to do that," the cavalry captain huffs, but he still takes a glass anyway. He remembers a scene, just a day ago during his patrol, where he caught Huffman and Albedo at Starsnatch cliff, with the latter sketching the knight among the Cecilias. He shakes the thought away from memory, ignoring the weight that settles in his chest when he remembers how Albedo has sketched the knight with care and him… he seemed to be only encapsulated in three strokes of his pen. “He’s well-versed in wine as I am and holds good conversation, too.”
Albedo hums, sipping at his own glass. "I could, but I recall that I asked for you."
That’s interesting. He pushes his resentment with the three-stroke drawing away.
"Now, now,” Kaeya’s voice drops to a low whisper. A teasing smile plays on his lips. “Why would you do that?"
When Albedo doesn't answer, Kaeya smirks. "Perhaps, you wanted to continue where we left off that one night?" Albedo’s eyes squint at him, curious. "What did happen that one night?"
"Let me refresh your memory."
Kaeya downs his wine (ah, it's sweet and bitter, anything but bland) before he leans toward Albedo. Closer and closer, until he feels the familiar warmth of his breath on his skin. "Do you remember that we were this close?"
"Quite," Albedo says. His gaze lowers to his wineglass as he leisurely swirls the burgundy liquid. Kaeya smirks. Albedo being Albedo would be ignorant to certain advances at first and would act like he doesn't care at all, but that's a facade.
Look at me, Kaeya wants to say. And he does, as if reading his mind, slowly looking up at him under his long lashes. He breaks their eye contact just long enough for him to take a sip from his wine but his eyes return to gaze at his. "I still can't quite recall what you are trying to recreate."
Kaeya is irked. "Don't play dumb with me, Kreideprinz. I thought you were a genius?"
"I do not consider myself that, Sir Kaeya," Albedo says coolly. "Now, stop beating around the bush and get straight to the point."
If he was drunk enough, he would. But he’s still hanging on bits of his sobriety to restrain himself. Archons know what he would do if he were to get straight to the point. He’s been craving, he realizes. All this time, as he complains about bland wine, it dawns upon him that his tongue is looking for a different, familiar taste. A flavor that graced his lips three nights ago at Angel’s Share. A flavor he knows that a unique something… or rather a unique someone possesses.
“You wouldn’t want that,” Kaeya whispers in the little distance of their faces. His lips almost brush against the alchemist’s and he wants nothing but to kiss him breathless then and there. But, not yet. Not yet. Not until he’s said yes.
Just like that night, three nights ago, Albedo’s expression is unchanging. But his voice is taunting, even though his whisper is soft in the quiet of the workshop.
“And if I do?”
However, unlike that night, three nights ago, Kaeya isn’t flustered. Not anymore. He combats Albedo’s stoic expression with a smirk and a chuckle. “Then I will be getting straight to the point, Albedo,” he says. He lifts his hand to cup his cheek gently. “Just say yes, and I will.”
The alchemist hums. His eyes drop to look at his wineglass, still half-full. A corner of his lips turns up; the biggest show of expression he did that evening.
“Ah, but I haven’t finished my wine yet, Sir Kaeya. It’d be a shame to put it to waste.”
He pushes himself slightly away from Kaeya, widening the distance once more between them. Kaeya can only watch as the alchemist makes a show of putting the wineglass up to his lips, downing the wine in slow, deliberate gulps. The damned bastard even had the gall to look at him from under his lashes and… is he smirking at him?
He’s going to kiss that smirk away when he’s done with his whole show.
When the wineglass only has enough liquid for one last swallow, Albedo lowers it from his lips and swirls the liquid around. “The wine is one of a kind, isn’t it?” he murmurs. “Makes you want to savor it.” Kaeya catches a teasing glint in his teal eyes and he grits his teeth. Damn tease, he thinks. Had he no self-restraint, he would’ve wrenched the wineglass away from his hand and thrown it on the floor with reckless abandon so that he could finally sate his cravings. But he’s hanging on to the little self-restraint he has, consoling himself with the fact that good things come to those who wait.
Like wine connoisseurs would say, aged wine is the best wine.
Finally, Albedo lifts the glass up to his lips and downs the little liquid left in it. He sighs as he places the now-empty glass on the table and looks up at Kaeya, who’s practically buzzing in anticipation by now. “Now, where were we, Sir Kaeya?”
“If I recall,” Kaeya says, slowly moving to close the distance between them again. “You were about to give me permission to be straight to the point.”
“Ah, that,” the alchemist whispers. The lack of question as to what being straight to the point is, means that he knows.
“So,” A hand cups his cheek again, thumb brushing over his soft skin. “Will you?”
The reply comes upon an exhale. “Yes.”
There’s a different kind of hunger when one craves. Especially when one craves so much that everything that lands upon their tongue turns bland as it longs for a new kind of taste. This kind of hunger makes one go wild, unhinged, desperate, just to sate it. Such is this hunger upon Kaeya’s lips, as they descend upon Albedo’s in a feverish frenzy, in a want to imprint the flavor upon it on his mouth. It’s nothing compared to the kiss that they shared in Angel’s Share three nights ago; all soft, gentle, only a touch of lips and barely even a press. Kaeya had learned it the hard way that what the Kreideprinz only merely touches doesn’t linger, so now he’s trying to commit his taste to memory, with sloppy, hungry kisses upon his wine-infused lips. He’s positive that he’s going to bruise his lips once he’s done, but neither of them seem to care.
His hands find their way to his blond hair, which is soft as he’d imagined it to be. His fingers tangle through it, and slowly his braid comes undone, hair tumbling down his shoulders. He pulls on it just slightly, and the alchemist gasps in his mouth and Kaeya takes this as a chance to press his tongue against his to taste more of him.
In the moments that they remember to breathe, Kaeya whispers sweet nothings before he dives back in. At times, Albedo teases, pulling away just a bit but Kaeya chases after him, and their lips meet, again and again. Kaeya wonders if he can get drunk on the wine that he tastes on Albedo’s lips alone with how long they have been pressing against each other with deep kisses, pulling each other close with their arms, desperate to imprint each other’s taste on their tongues.
They pull away when they run out of breath, pants mixing with each other in the small distance between their faces. Kaeya brushes his thumb over Albedo’s flushed cheeks, over his kiss-swollen lips. His mouth tingles with a new taste, one that lingers even after everything has been done.
"You captivate me," Kaeya confesses, breathless. "You enrapture me in more ways than one, Albedo."
“I think I would say the same to you, Kaeya,” Albedo replies, equally out of breath. For the first time that evening, Kaeya sees him smile.
“What are we, then?” Kaeya links his hand with his, intertwining their fingers together one by one. He sighs at the warmth his hand provides — like it’s made to warm the frigidity of his own.
“Lovers, perhaps? If that’s what you want to call us.”
Kaeya laughs before he presses a soft kiss on Albedo’s lips. “Lovers. I like the sound of that.”