Work Text:
Albedo is working at his desk when the memory hits him, hard and fast and so out of left field that he drops the pen in his hand, ink splattering on the pages beneath. It was a day like this, a chill surrounding him while he worked, trying his best to focus on his research even as his attention was swept away by the adeptus he met.
It’s rare for him to be distracted, for someone to gain his attention so much that it pulls his head out from the cloud of information, of research, of experimenting that Albedo turns his focus onto them instead. It’s rarer still for him to find himself distracted by the person when they’re not even there in the first place. But Xiao has always been an unaccounted for anomaly that has changed Albedo throughout their years together.
It’s strange, he thinks, that someone is able to pull him out of his thoughts for long, rarer still that Xiao has been able to catch his attention for long enough that he stopped using research as an excuse to visit Liyue on the off chance that they would cross paths while he roamed the fields, the mountains, the levels of Wangshu Inn each winter. The long chase , he thinks. That’s what their relationship started out like .
Albedo looks down at the ink splotches littering his papers, blocking out key pieces of information needed for his latest experiment, and the realization that he’ll have to rewrite the whole page washes over him. But he finds that he doesn’t mind all too much, especially when he feels the weight of Xiao’s head drop onto his shoulder when he least expects it.
The first time Albedo meets Xiao is in Liyue.
It’s Sucrose’s suggestion to visit the country. I’ve heard that the area is full of foliage that we don’t have here , she says, it could be helpful for your research . A part of Albedo knows that the girl is trying to force him into taking a vacation, into a much needed break that he’s put off for far too long all in the name of science. The bags under his eyes scream at him in the mirror, reminding him that if he doesn’t rest soon, he’ll regret it later. And so he agrees. He allows Sucrose to tell him which shops in Liyue Harbor to visit, allows her to circle areas on his map so he can gather materials for their research, allows her to pack an extra scarf in his bag even though he doesn’t need one after all of the time he’s spent in the cold of Dragonspine. He allows her these small moments.
He spends the better half of the week exploring the area surrounding Mount Aocang, taking notes on the local flora and the effect the colder air has on them.
It’s only when Albedo rounds the edge of the mountain and spots a child behind held in the air that he stops. The situation is ridiculous for any number of reasons, the main one being that the person holding the child isn’t that tall himself. The two of them combined can barely touch the herbs she’s reaching for and, from what Albedo can tell, the man is standing on his tiptoes in an attempt to reach higher. Albedo can see both of their visions from his hiding spot, revealing that the man was gifted an anemo vision. Which makes the whole thing even stranger because why wouldn’t he simply use that to get the herbs for the child?
He’s about to offer his help when a voice cuts across the space between them. “Adeptus Xiao, there is more over there.”
An adeptus.
Albedo thinks back to what Sucrose told him of the adepti before he left. It wasn’t much other than to be respectful of them if he happened across one. They’re beings that have roamed the earth far longer than he has and have no issue reminding him that he’s a child in their eyes. He watches for a few minutes more, his brain working through different methods of approaching them without insulting them.
And yet, the best he can come up with is, “I don’t think you’re harvesting the herbs in the most efficient manner.” Albedo reveals himself to the two others with a soft smile. The man instantly stiffens, shoulders going rigid at the sound of someone else’s voice. Albedo tries his best to smile at the questioning glare sent his way. “I’m Albedo, a researcher from Mondstadt. Perhaps I can help?”
Both the child and man stare at him as if he’s some sort of slime, some sort of enemy encroaching on their adventure to the mountains on a chilly day—chilly for Liyue at least, since Albedo would consider this a comfortable fall day in Mondstadt. Even this high in the mountains, he feels a bead of sweat drip down the back of his neck from the weather. The adeptus— Xiao , his mind helpfully supplies—narrows his eyes at him.
The child tugs on the adeptus’ hand, a purple braid swinging behind her as she twists to look up at him. “Adeptus Xiao, we still need more qingxin.”
“You should leave this mountain,” Xiao says as he grabs her hand. “This is no place for someone like you.”
The pair turns their backs on Albedo, leaving him to his own thoughts as he turns to head back down the mountain, heeding Xiao’s advice and happy with the knowledge that he found something— someone more interesting than the herbs that day.
They meet again in Liyue, but not how Albedo expects. Xiao’s entrance soaked both of them to the bone when he materialized and knocked them into the river.
A year has passed since their first meeting and Albedo is grateful that it’s just the two of them this time. Those gold eyes burned in the back of his mind, in the back of his dreams as if he was haunted by the adeptus, never to forget how they glared at him all those months ago. They showed up in the margins of his notes, absently drawn while his mind wandered back to how they shined in the mountains, how they reflected the oranges of the cor lapis as the sun shined through the trees.
Albedo’s own eyes keep roaming over Xiao’s back as the man strips in the small campsite, and he has to remind himself that this isn’t some scene out of Sucrose’s books she imports from Inazuma, that he’s simply offering reprieve for the adeptus while he dries off, that he shouldn’t get ahead of himself with thinking that something might happen.
He really needs to stop reading those books.
“There were whisperings of a strange man in Guili Plains,” Xiao breaks the silence, his back still facing Albedo. “I did not expect it to be you again.”
It surprises Albedo enough that he has to cover his laugh with a cough, a hand flying to his mouth like he’s some child that got caught speaking when he shouldn’t have. There is something about encountering Xiao again that brings the immature side of him out, the fun side of him, one might call it. A voice in Albedo’s head tempts him into biting back, into saying something about how Xiao seemed more than willing to see just who the strange man roaming the Plains was.
And yet, Albedo bites down on his tongue, refusing to tease Xiao if only out of fear that he wouldn’t appreciate the joke, wouldn’t understand the humor and lead to the two of them to sit in silence for the rest of the afternoon. He doesn’t know much about Xiao, only the way he acted last time, the way his eyes burned into Albedo as if trying to learn who he was from that alone all those months ago.
Albedo doesn’t want to let this chance slip through his fingers if he can help it.
“I’ve been looking for something,” Albedo finally replies, tearing his eyes away from Xiao’s back and toward his own soaked clothes. “I need it for research.”
The feeling of eyes boring into Albedo makes him turn back.
“You shouldn’t go into places you don’t know well,” Xiao states. It’s matter-of-fact, as if the advice is enough to stop Albedo from going wherever he pleases for the sake of research. “It can be dangerous if you’re not careful and I have better things to do than save you.”
Laughter bubbles out of Albedo, who doubles over, his hands landing on his knees to hold himself up. He must look insane to Xiao, laughing at advice that anyone else would follow, advice that anyone else would heed when someone as experienced as Xiao mentions it, and yet, he can’t stop the laughter. It takes more than a few moments for him to get himself together, chuckles slipping out as he catches his breath. He looks up at Xiao, a grin on his face.
“Is that a promise, Adeptus Xiao?”
Wangshu Inn is unlike any other hotel Albedo has seen. Not that he has stayed at many hotels before. On the one hand, they don’t typically like when he runs experiments in the rooms, which has put more of a dent than he would like in his bank account. He also prefers not having Sucrose yell at him for dipping into their research funds to refill his personal accounts. The last thing he wants after this trip is to deal with her anxieties with his overspending.
On the other hand, Xiao was the one who invited him to the inn.
Which, well, it’s something new for the two of them. If Albedo didn’t know better, he would think this was a date—which is exactly what it seems like since they happen to have the top level of the inn to themselves. The single table set up for them is filled with plates full of different dishes, of multiple kettles of tea for the two of them, each of them reaching over one another to fill their cups. It’s romantic in Albedo’s mind—and he’s sure it would be in Sucrose’s if she could see the situation. But it’s risky to call it that, to call it something that it might not be and ruin the friendship the two of them have.
He tables that thought for a later day.
“I did not expect you to show up on time,” Xiao mumbles around a mouthful of almond tofu. Like this, he looks relaxed, looks as if he isn’t worried about the monsters roaming the lands, about the karma that seeps into him, about all the things in his past that he has yet to reveal. It’s a nice look on him. “You tend to show up late at times.”
The soft smile on Xiao’s face as he chews makes Albedo want to kiss it off. And so, he takes the risk and says what has been on his mind all night.
“It’s bad form to show up late to a date,” Albedo says. He reaches across the table, taking his time cutting into Xiao’s almond tofu with his spoon as his eyes glance upward, warmth flowing through him as they land on the slight pink resting high on Xiao’s cheeks. “I wouldn’t want you to think I didn’t want to be here.”
The blush on Xiao’s face spreads, first to the top of his ears then lower, creeping down his neck and blooming over his shoulders. Albedo wishes he could break out his notebook so write down each of these reactions, to put pen to paper so he can remember what Xiao looks like the moment he realizes what this is, what the implications are now that they have known each other for years.
“A date.” The words sound breathless as they leave Xiao’s mouth, as if he’s unable to believe that this is what it is, as if this is the first time he’s been on one and can’t quite understand that that’s what is happening. “With you.”
Albedo grins at him. “Yes, a date. With me.” He slides his fingers across the table, lacing them with Xiao’s as Albedo closes the distance between them with a soft brush of their lips.
And oh, how sweet it is for Albedo to witness a new reaction from Xiao after all this time.
Suddenly and all at once, wind rushes into his campsite, papers ruffling and escaping Albedo’s grasp as he attempts to keep things organized. Annoyance pricks at his mind, whispering to him that everything is all messed up, that everything he worked so hard for in the last few hours needs to be redone. But it only lasts a moment, a barely there second when he realizes who made the entrance and warm recognition washes over him.
Albedo loves it.
“Xiao,” Albedo whispers into the space between them, soft and tender even though both of them are anything but. “It’s good to see you showed up on time.”
Xiao simply nods. “I was told it was bad form to show up to a date late. Especially when one has to travel.”
A smile spreads across Albedo’s face, slow and subtle like the promise he made to Xiao all those months ago. It’s silly, he thinks, to get so excited over something such as this. And yet, he finds warmth blooming in his chest where his heart is—where a human heart should be if he were a true human, made from the flesh and bone of others instead of on a workbench. He wonders if this ache that spreads through his bones is what humans call love.
And it’s with one glance at his lover that Albedo decides yes, it is .
Waking up in Xiao’s abode throws Albedo for a loop each time he blinks his eyes open and is greeted with humid warmth instead of the chill and the howling wind from his campsite on Dragonspine. It’s nice, in its own way. But one that he has yet to become accustomed to after a lifetime spent in the cold, spent waking up by himself while the snow piles just outside of his campsite.
He catches sight of the adeptus from the bed, watching as he trains. The muscles of Xiao’s back strain and twist as he moves, mesmerizing Albedo much like that first time he saw it all those years ago, wet and shining in the light. His eyes follow the movement of sweat as it drips down skin, leaving a trail of sticky salt in its wake that makes Albedo want to follow it with his tongue, to roll the taste around in his mouth before they set off for the day.
It’s ridiculous how easily desire comes to Albedo so early in the morning all because of a simple glance at his lover. Xiao has always been nothing short of beautiful, muscle crafted from hard work and dedication to his mission for hundreds of years, and it drives Albedo mad, how stunning the man looks in the morning light of the abode. Obsession used to be something that only came to him in his lab, trying to figure out how to make an experiment work the way he wanted, using every resource and method available to continue his work in the mountains. But Xiao somehow needled his way under Albedo’s skin and Albedo became fixated on the adeptus all those years ago, when they happened to meet on Mount Aocang.
And Albedo wouldn’t have had it any other way. Because his obsession with his lover isn’t unrequited in the least.
When Xiao turns to face him—no doubt due to the feeling of eyes watching him—Albedo mouths the words
I love you
. It’s with a flush on his face that Xiao mouths the words back, making Albedo’s grin grow even more as the covers fall from his chest as he rises out of their bed.