Archive of Our Own

The sheets were still warm when Kaeya slid out of bed.

He moved quietly, careful not to disturb the body behind him, though part of him suspected that was pointless. Childe was a light sleeper, too cautious to rest deeply in unfamiliar places, no matter how often he ended up in Kaeya’s bed. Still, Kaeya didn’t check if he was awake. He didn’t look back.

He didn’t flinch when he felt the bed shift behind him.

But he did freeze when Childe’s arm wrapped slowly, deliberately, around his waist.

The touch was careful. Almost hesitant. Like Childe thought too much force would scare him off.

Kaeya didn’t breathe.

“Why are you always so eager to leave?” Childe asked, voice low and still touched by sleep.

It wasn’t an accusation. It wasn’t even a question, really. More like a thought said aloud, the kind people usually kept to themselves.

Kaeya’s eyes flicked down to the hand resting on his stomach. It was warm. 

And it made something cold coil in his chest.

Why are you pretending you want me to stay?

He didn’t say it. Of course he didn’t. He wasn’t that kind of fool. Still, he didn’t move. He let himself linger in that moment just a second longer than he should have, letting himself feel the ghost of what it could mean if he were someone else. If this were something else.

But that wasn’t how this worked. That wasn’t what this was.

Kaeya reached up and brushed his hair over his shoulder absently, buying time, steadying himself before turning his head slightly to glance back.

Childe was awake. His eyes were open, clear in the dim light. He wasn’t smiling. He didn’t look amused or smug, like he usually did when Kaeya tried to leave without a goodbye. He looked… like he was trying to memorize the shape of Kaeya’s silhouette.

Which was worse, somehow. So much worse.

He hated it.

Or maybe he didn’t. Maybe he hated that he liked it.

Kaeya smiled at him anyway. That same lazy, half-lidded smile he always used when he needed to deflect. “Didn’t realize I was such excellent company,” he murmured, tone playful. “Is this a hostage situation now?”

Childe didn’t laugh. His hand didn’t move.

And Kaeya’s smile sharpened slightly at the edges. “Or maybe you’ve developed a habit of clinging. Dangerous, for a Harbinger.”

Still nothing. Just silence, and the rise and fall of breath against his back. Kaeya could feel it now—Childe pressing closer, forehead hovering near the nape of his neck, hand still firm around his middle.

This isn’t real.

He could hear his own thoughts echoing in his skull, loud and stubborn. Does he touch everyone he brings into his bed like this?

But gods, he wanted to fall for it.

He could admit that, at least. Privately. 

He reached down, slowly, and peeled Childe’s hand off his waist one finger at a time.

“It’s late,” he said, too softly. Childe let go without resistance. But he didn’t look away.

“You always act like I’m going to disappear,” he murmured.

Kaeya paused, glancing over his shoulder again with a tilted grin. “Aren’t you?”

That earned a blink. And then—nothing. No argument. Just that quiet, unreadable gaze.

Kaeya turned the rest of the way, shrugging his coat over his shoulders. “This isn’t forever,” he said lightly. “You’ll be recalled to Snezhnaya or sent off to cause chaos somewhere else, and I’ll still be here, stuck doing whatever the hell I want. The usual.”

He looked at him like it didn’t matter. Like none of this mattered.

Like he hadn’t memorized the shape of Childe’s smile, the quirk of the corner of his lips. Like he hadn’t spent the last week replaying every strange, half-thoughtful, half-affectionate thing Childe ever said.

“You make it sound like you’ve already written the ending,” Childe said after a pause.

Kaeya let out a laugh. It was too sharp. “It’s not the kind of story that needs one.”

And then, because he couldn’t help himself, he added, “You can leave whenever, you know. I won’t hold it against you.” That was a lie. But he was good at those.

Childe hummed. Didn’t argue or reach for him again.

Which was what Kaeya had told himself he wanted. He pretended not to notice the faint scent clinging to him—that coppery, foreign scent that was starting to feel like a whisper of something he didn’t want to specify.

He didn't look at Childe as he dressed. Didn’t let himself linger. Just got his boots on, straightened his collar, and flashed a careless little smirk toward the bed.

“Sleep in,” he says. “You look tired.”

Childe didn't smile back.

Kaeya left before he could make the mistake of staying long enough to see what that meant.

He stepped toward the door, each step feeling heavier than the last. As he reached for the handle, he paused, just for a second. He thought—hoped—Childe might say something. Ask him to stay.

Make it real.

But the room behind him stayed silent. Kaeya didn’t let himself sigh. He just left.

_____________

It hadn’t been raining when the night began, but by the time they made it back to Kaeya’s place—drunk and exhausted—it was pouring. Mondstadt’s late summer rains liked to creep up out of nowhere, curling around the edges of the sky before you had time to take shelter. They stumbled through the wet streets, laughing like idiots, coats soaked through and boots squelching in puddles.

Childe had taken his gloves off halfway back, claiming they felt disgusting when soaked, and Kaeya had tossed some meaningless teasings over his shoulder about him looking like a drowned rat. The kind of banter they always fell into, easy and shallow, like stepping into warm water. It wasn’t meant to go deeper than that.

They collapsed on Kaeya’s couch first, wet coats strewn across the armrest, shirts clinging to their skin. There had been wine, cheap one. Childe poured some, Kaeya complained about the taste, and then they drank it anyway.

What came next wasn’t sex. Not at first.

It was Childe sitting cross-legged on the floor, fiddling with a knife Kaeya kept for show, spinning it on the table with a distracted look on his face. It was Kaeya leaning over the arm of the couch, head resting on folded arms, just watching him with that slow, careful gaze he didn’t let people see.

“You do this with everyone?” Childe asked eventually, not looking up.

Kaeya arched a brow. “Sit around wet and miserable with them? Only the special ones.”

Childe’s lips twitched, but he didn’t smile. He stopped the knife’s spin and ran his thumb along the dull edge.

“I meant bringing them here.”

Kaeya shrugged, pretending not to care. “Do I seem that exclusive?”

Childe looked up at him then. Really looked. Like he was trying to peel something back.

“You don’t let people see where you sleep.”

It wasn’t a question.

Kaeya’s expression didn’t change, but something about the air in the room shifted. He hated how that sentence sat in his chest like it belonged there. Hated that Childe noticed. That he noticed too much.

He tried to change the subject. He always did.

“You planning to psychoanalyze me now? Because if so, I charge double.”

But Childe didn’t play along this time. He set the knife down, got up, and walked over to the couch without saying a word. Kaeya expected a kiss. Expected hands at his waist, a tongue in his mouth, anything to drag the moment back into something he could handle.

But Childe didn’t touch him.

Instead, he crouched in front of him, reached out, and—

“Hold still.”

Kaeya blinked. “What—”

He went quiet when Childe’s hand rose, slow and sure, brushing a damp strand of hair off Kaeya’s cheek. Then another. Then another. He wasn’t rough. He wasn’t teasing. He just… gently combed through Kaeya’s hair with his fingers, gathering it away from his face like it was something precious, like it deserved care.

“You’ll catch a cold if you keep sitting around like this,” he murmured. “Your hair’s freezing.”

Kaeya stared at him.

Not because he was surprised by the words. Not really. But because of the way Childe was looking at him—completely focused. No flirtation. Just that unshakable, quiet concern that Childe always wore like armor, except now it was aimed at him.

He didn’t know what to do with it.

Didn’t know how to not ruin it.

So he laughed. It came out sharp, brittle. “Don’t tell me you’re one of those people who think affection means playing nursemaid.”

Childe’s hands stilled for a second, but he didn’t let go. He gathered Kaeya’s damp hair at the nape of his neck, twisted it loosely, and pulled it over one shoulder, away from his skin.

“No,” he said. “I just hate seeing you shiver and pretend you’re not.”

Kaeya didn’t laugh that time.

He didn’t say anything at all.

He let Childe finish fussing with his hair, let him reach for the dry towel slung over the back of a chair and press it into Kaeya’s hands. He even let him tuck a blanket around his shoulders without protest, which—on a better day—he would’ve mocked relentlessly.

When Childe finally sat down beside him, still not making a move, Kaeya felt something catch in his throat.

Not a word. Not a joke.

A confession.

He should’ve pushed him away. Should’ve said something cruel, something easy. Instead, he leaned back against the couch and let his head tilt until it landed against Childe’s shoulder.

Just for a minute.

Just long enough to remember.

_____________

The sky outside had settled into the soft color of bruised porcelain by the time Kaeya reached his office—pale blue steeped in thinning clouds, the kind that looked like they might vanish if he blinked. He stood at the window for a breath too long, half-perched on the edge of his desk, arms folded as though he were bracing against a wind that never came. The city below stirred in gentle rhythms—vendors calling half-hearted greetings, carts creaking down cobbled roads, laughter already curling through the alleyways like steam. It was all so normal.

And Kaeya, ever the dutiful captain, slipped into it like smoke through keyholes. He looked composed, elegant, and whole.

He didn’t feel any of those things.

The silence of the room pressed against him—not stifling, but steady. Familiar. He exhaled quietly, then slid fully into his chair and began flipping through the reports Jean had left behind. Trade route revisions. Militia drills. A diplomatic notice from Liyue, red-stamped and unopened. He stared at it until the words blurred, then tucked it beneath the others like burying it would delay the inevitable.

The truth was painfully simple: Childe wasn’t cruel. Not intentionally. He didn’t offer empty promises or wrap his intentions in pretty words. And somehow, that made it so much worse. Because Kaeya couldn’t point to any lie. There was no betrayal to dissect. Just gentleness, scattered carelessly like crumbs from someone who had never learned to be careful with fragile things.

No matter how badly Kaeya wanted to be fragile for once. Just this once.

It hadn’t been meant to become anything. No promises. No expectations. Just a body that fit too easily beside his. Childe never said it was more. Never acted like it was.

So Kaeya never asked.

But then… he did things like that. Wrapped an arm around Kaeya’s waist and murmured half-asleep, stay a little longer. Looked at him like he was memorizing him. Brushed his thumb along Kaeya’s hip like it meant something.

Kaeya clenched his jaw and let the memory pass through him like a wave. Sharp. Fleeting. He didn’t chase it.

He didn’t need to be told the truth aloud. He already knew it. He wasn’t the one Childe wanted once the sun rose. He was just the warmth between the sheets, the easy distraction. He knew what it looked like when someone meant it—he’d seen it in the lives of others. Read about it in books. This was nothing like that.

And yet he stayed.

He let Childe hold him like he mattered. Let every kisses and embraces happened, which was very unusual especially for Kaeya. Let himself pretend, just a little, in the seconds before he slipped out of bed, like maybe he hadn’t misread everything again.

Because what else could he do? Walk away?

Don’t be ridiculous.

Kaeya pressed his fingers to his temple. His thoughts spiraled in that tired, familiar rhythm, trailing back into the same unanswered questions. He thought of how Childe never said his name when they were alone. Not Kaeya. Not even with tenderness. Just “you,” or motherfucking “Alberich,” it wasn’t like he was out here blowing Kaeya’s back every night—or nothing at all. He never lingered after. Never stayed long enough to be someone Kaeya could reach for.

And still, Kaeya let him return. Again and again. No questions asked.

He leaned forward, arms braced against the desk, and let a breathless laugh escape. It was hollow. Humorless. He had nothing left but disbelief in himself.

You’re pathetic, he thought. Not bitterly. Not even unkindly. He knew exactly what he was doing but he didn’t know how to stop.

He signed his name on a report he hadn’t truly read and set it aside. Outside, the rooftops had begun to glow under the climbing sun. The day had already moved on without him.

_____________

Kaeya was already expecting the knock when it came.

Not a polite one. Not even hurried. Just a sharp double-tap on his balcony door—distinct, familiar, shameless. Like a man who knew he wasn’t welcome but came anyway. Kaeya didn’t even flinch. He just closed his eyes, let his pen pause mid-report, and waited for the door to creak open.

The wind followed Childe in like a second shadow, brushing cold fingers along Kaeya’s ankles where his pants had ridden up. Still, he didn’t look up. He knew the routine. Knew what Childe would do next—lock the door behind him, kick off his boots, strip off that stupid gray coat and let it drop wherever he stood.

He always came late. Always with that same casual smirk. Always without warning.

And Kaeya, ever the gracious host, always let him in.

But tonight he didn’t move. He just sat there at the desk, shoulders slightly hunched, fingers still curled around the quill like he hadn’t decided yet what to do with it.

Childe’s steps slowed behind him.

“You’re still working?” he asked, voice light, while pressing his nose against Kaeya's hair, inhaling. The way he always spoke when he was in a good mood, maybe expecting Kaeya to turn around with a smile and say something barbed and flirtatious. The usual.

Kaeya didn’t.

He swallowed. Let the silence stretch a second longer. Then another. His tongue felt dry in his mouth.

“…I’m tired.”

He said it simply. 

He heard Childe stop walking. That alone said more than anything. Usually he’d be over by now—hands already at Kaeya’s waist or back, mouth already finding skin like that was the only conversation they needed. But tonight, nothing.

Kaeya waited. Still didn’t look up.

The silence curled at the edges of the room like smoke. Kaeya felt it creeping into his lungs. Into his spine.

“Tired?” Childe echoed. Not incredulous. Just… confused.

Kaeya nodded once. Then, softer, as if trying to explain, “I don’t think I can… tonight.”

And still, he braced for it.

For the shift in Childe’s tone. For the joke that would make it go down easier. For the retreating footsteps. The door unlatching. It wouldn’t be cruel, he told himself. Childe never was. But it would be clear. He’d smile, maybe, and shrug. Say “next time” in that warm, casual way. Kaeya would nod, let him go, and sit in the quiet again.

Because if there was no sex, there was nothing left to offer. That was the rule they never said aloud.

Only—it didn’t happen.

Childe didn’t leave.

Kaeya heard him walk forward, slower than usual. He felt a hand settle lightly on his shoulder. Then another, curling gently along his upper arm. And a voice, quieter now, closer “You alright?”

Kaeya stared at the paper in front of him. The ink had pooled in one spot, bleeding out into a soft, ugly smear. He hadn’t even noticed his hand had been shaking.

“I’m fine,” he lied, softly. Then added, because he knew how it sounded, “Just… tired.”

“You’re never tired.”

Kaeya smiled, faint and bitter. “Doesn’t mean I don’t get that way.”

Childe didn’t reply. Not right away. But his hand stayed, thumb brushing slowly over the fabric of Kaeya’s shirt. It was too gentle. Too present. It didn’t make sense.

He wasn’t supposed to stay.

“Want me to go?” Childe asked, and it wasn’t a dare. Not even a little sarcastic. Just that strange tone he used when he was feeling around in the dark, not sure what he was supposed to say next.

Kaeya couldn’t answer.

Because yes. That’s what was supposed to happen. That’s how this worked. But the longer Childe stood behind him, unmoving, the more something in Kaeya’s chest started to ache again. And not in the usual, tolerable way. Not a scratch. A bruise.

He wanted to say of course. Of course go. He wanted to say this was never supposed to be anything more, remember?

But instead, what slipped out was a tired, bitter little, “You don’t have to pretend to care.”

The hand on his shoulder stilled.

“I’m not,” Childe said. Then, after a second, “I do care.”

Kaeya closed his eyes.

He didn’t say anything after that. Couldn’t. He didn’t know how to believe words like that. Not from a mouth that had never spoken them before—not unless they were tangled between gritted teeth, fangs stabbing his skin or laced with teasing. Not unless they came after everything else.

But Childe didn’t push. He just gave Kaeya’s shoulder a light squeeze and stepped away, not toward the door, but toward the couch by the fireplace. A beat later, the soft creak of cushions as he sat.

Kaeya sat frozen at his desk, staring at nothing. The cold breeze from the cracked window kissed the edge of his face. Childe was still here.

Kaeya didn’t know what to do with that.

His quill was still in his hand, poised as if he might continue writing, but the ink had long dried on the tip. It scratched uselessly against the parchment whenever he twitched. He hadn’t meant to keep holding it. But letting go felt like permission to feel again, and he wasn’t sure he could survive that just yet.

The fire crackled softly from across the room. Childe had stoked it. Of course he had. That was the kind of thing he did—domestic gestures with no warning, no commentary, as if he lived here, as if this were something more than a recurring accident. As if Kaeya wouldn’t be the one left staring at his own ceiling when the man vanished again come morning.

He could hear him now. Sitting back against the arm of the couch, booted feet propped carelessly on the table. A rustle of fabric. A small sigh. Childe settled in like he had every right to be there. Like this wasn’t strange.

Kaeya exhaled through his nose. Carefully. Slowly.

It wasn’t fair. That was what gnawed at him most.

It wasn’t fair that Childe got to look so comfortable here, when Kaeya still hadn’t figured out where to place him in his life. He didn’t fit any category. He wasn’t a lover, not really. Not a friend either—not with how little they talked, how deliberately they tiptoed around the parts of each other that mattered. And yet here he was. Again. Sitting on Kaeya’s couch like the cold didn’t bother him, like the fire had always been his.

Kaeya hadn’t told him to stay.

He’d expected Childe to leave the moment things stopped being fun. And he should have. That was the entire point. That was the rule Kaeya had made up to keep himself from getting this attached. They didn’t do quiet evenings. They didn’t sit through silence. They didn’t sleep next to each other without touching. There was no point if they weren’t using each other.

And yet.

Here they were.

He stole a glance over his shoulder. Just for a second. Just to check.

Childe was half-reclined, arms folded across his chest, eyes closed—not asleep, Kaeya could tell, but somewhere close. His expression was unreadable in the firelight. Less dangerous. Almost… peaceful.

Kaeya hated how much he wanted to crawl over there and press himself into that stillness. Not even for comfort. Just for warmth. Just for the illusion of belonging, even if it was only for a few hours.

He turned back toward the desk with a soft sound in his throat. Not a sigh. Not quite anything.

Why are you still here?

He didn’t ask. He wouldn’t.

Because if Childe said “I wanted to”, he wouldn’t know what to do with it. And if he said “Because you looked like hell”, Kaeya would snap. And if he said nothing—well. That would be the easiest to deal with.

Kaeya finally set the quill down. His fingers ached from holding it too tightly. He hadn’t even realized.

He stood slowly, stretching out each joint like they had rusted, and moved toward the fire on instinct alone. Just to warm his hands. That was all. Just to warm his hands, because the window was still cracked open and the night air never really left him alone.

Childe didn’t open his eyes when Kaeya passed him. But his head tilted slightly, tracking the movement. Not reaching out.

It would’ve been worse if he had reached.

Kaeya knelt by the hearth, letting the heat lick at his palms, and hated himself a little more for wanting to ask why. Why he was still here. Why he hadn’t left when the routine cracked. Why he hadn’t even made a joke to soften the silence, like he always did.

He almost whispered, You know this isn’t real, don’t you?

But what would be the point? Childe would probably just smile that infuriating smile and say, “You tell me.”

Kaeya shut his eyes.

It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair how badly he wanted something he didn’t even have a name for.

He stood slowly, his joints ached.

Childe looked half-swallowed by the firelight, all long limbs and lazy posture, head tilted just so as though sleep had been trying to claim him. His eyes were closed, lashes fluttering faintly like they might open any second, like he was still listening beneath the quiet. And Kaeya just… stopped.

He stood beside him, not touching, just observing, like he could memorize the curve of his mouth, the careless slope of his brow, the way his hair curled damply around his temple. The light clung to him in gold and shadow, too soft for a Harbinger, too beautiful for someone Kaeya wasn’t supposed to love.

His hand moved before he thought. Fingers brushing gently, reverently, through a tangle of unruly ginger strands that had fallen across Childe’s forehead. He wasn’t sure what he was doing. It wasn’t seduction. It wasn’t even comfort.

Maybe it was comfort for himself, sure.

He lingered there, fingertips barely touching, and felt a quiet panic bloom in his chest when Childe’s hand came up—warm, certain—and wrapped around his wrist.

“I thought you don’t get sentimental,” Childe murmured. His eyes were open now, half-lidded, but still catching every part of Kaeya like he could see deeper than he should.

His voice wasn’t teasing. Kaeya didn’t respond. He didn’t know how to. His throat felt dry, like he’d swallowed ash.

Childe didn’t wait for an answer.

He pulled Kaeya down, hand still warm around his wrist, and kissed him.

There was no urgency in it. No hunger to devour or dominate. Just the bare press of mouth but for whatever reason it felt even more intimate than the other ones. He stiffened for a heartbeat, unsure, instinct screaming that this was wrong, that this wasn’t what they were, that this would hurt more than it already did.

All rationalities left his head when Childe’s lips left his and there was this obscene sound of kisses left behind.

And then Childe pulled him in tighter, burying his face in the curve of Kaeya’s neck like it was home, breathing in the scent of the shampoo Kaeya used at Childe’s room. Unnatural, unfitting, unsuitable for such a scent to linger on Kaeya’s hair, just like how out of place it was for Childe to still be here right now.

“Let’s go to sleep,” he murmured, voice low and drowsy, words pressed into skin like prayer. “Didn’t you say you were tired?”

Kaeya didn’t answer. Couldn’t. His mouth had gone dry, and his body had gone still, like the entire world was holding its breath just to see what he’d do.

He was supposed to say no. That was the role he played.

But he didn’t.

He let Childe guide him to his feet. Let their hands brush. Let the silence stretch between them, warm and familiar in a way it had never been before. They didn’t speak as they crossed the room, and Kaeya didn’t resist when Childe pulled him into the bed, arms winding naturally around his waist, like this had always been the ending.

He lay there, stiff at first, caught between panic and longing. But Childe didn’t press further. He just settled behind him, chest rising and falling against Kaeya’s back, his breath warm where it touched the nape of his neck.

And then, almost unbelievably, Kaeya’s body began to relax.

He didn’t remember falling asleep. Only the stillness. Only the warmth. Only the way the room no longer felt empty.

When morning came, he was still there. And so was Childe.

And Kaeya, the fool that he was, stayed still for just a moment longer, eyes shut, selfishly soaking in the feeling of not waking up alone.

Just for a little while.

Just this once.

_____________

The morning sunlight had been cruel in its gentleness. It slid over the floorboards, slipping through the curtains in soft, forgiving rays that made everything feel warmer than Kaeya could stand. The room still smelled like Childe—sea salt and pine, cold metal, something lighter beneath. Kaeya had woken up in his arms for the first time ever since they started hooking up, and that was been the problem.

They’d never done this. Childe always left before the city stirred, and vice versa. Kaeya always pretended it didn’t bother him. Pretended he preferred it. Last night was the mistake. He’d let Childe see him vulnerable, let him stay, let himself fall asleep with someone else’s hand resting on his hip.

And now his bed was too full of everything he didn’t want to name.

Childe had kissed his temple like it was something he did often, like they were something. Then he’d said, “See you tonight,” so casually Kaeya nearly laughed.

He didn’t say anything back. Didn’t even look at him. Just closed his eyes again and let the quiet stretch between them like it was easier that way. When the door clicked shut behind him, Kaeya exhaled. Long and slow. As though he’d been holding something in all night.

By the time evening came, he wasn’t home.

He hadn’t planned it—he just didn’t want to be there. Not in that room, not with the sheets that still smelled like Childe’s skin and the ghost of his hands lingering in the pillows. Kaeya wandered instead. Through the rooftops, past sleeping chimneys, into the night haze. He took up a double shift at the city gates even though no one asked. Walking the perimeter like it might give him answers. He didn’t return until the sky was tinged grey with dawn and the city had already begun to stir again.

The next night, he was gone too.

It was self-preservation. If he let this continue, if he let Childe stay and pretend, Kaeya was afraid he’d start to believe it was real. That the way Childe held him when he thought Kaeya was asleep actually meant something. That the small smiles, the way his fingers lingered at Kaeya’s wrist, were anything other than distractions from the truth.

Childe didn’t love him. He was just… playing with him. The way Kaeya had invited him to.

So Kaeya made it easy.

He slipped out early in the morning. He buried himself in patrols, in reports, in the comfort of things that asked for nothing but discipline and distance. He drank with Rosaria until he couldn’t taste the wine anymore and let Venti lean against his shoulder while he stared past the empty drink in his hand, wondering if Childe had noticed the absence.

And then Childe knocked.

Kaeya had just returned, boots still dusted with mud and rain, when the knock came. He froze, barely having enough time to shrug his coat from his shoulders. He didn’t open the door. Didn’t breathe.

“Hey?” came the voice. A little muffled, but unmistakable. “You left your coat in my room the other day.” He knew exactly which one Childe was talking about

He stared at his closet, still smelling faintly of Childe.

A pause. Then, almost like a joke, Childe added, “I guess you don’t need it.”

He could imagine the way Childe scratched the back of his neck then, probably chuckling to himself, trying not to sound disappointed. And when the silence stretched too long, he sighed and turned away.

Kaeya waited until the footsteps faded down the pavement. Then, only then, did he let his shoulders sink against the door.

He didn’t know why his chest ached.

The coat was hanging in his closet.

_____________

Kaeya had taken the long route home, boots crunching through the drier grass past the outskirts of Springvale, too tired to deal with knights or noise or whatever halfhearted mission Jean might remember she meant to assign him. He’d gone out alone, as he often did now. Not because he had to, but because lately, he couldn’t stand the way people looked at him—like they knew something he didn’t. Like he was becoming the ghost of someone not quite gone.

The sky was the color of ash. The clouds hung low and bloated, and Kaeya thought, distantly, that maybe he liked the way it made the light look softer. Muted. Easier on the eyes.

He was walking through Windrise when he heard it.

A laugh—low and warm and unmistakably his. Kaeya’s body reacted before he fully registered it, turning toward the sound like a compass needle finding north. His boots paused mid-stride, breath caught like a snag in thread. He followed the voice without thought, like he always did. Like he couldn’t not.

And then he saw them.

Childe stood beneath the large oak, one hand tucked casually in his pocket, the other gesturing animatedly as he spoke to the woman beside him. She had the sharp kind of beauty Kaeya always noticed—long limbs, confident stride, cheekbones high enough to cut glass. Foreign, clearly. Familiar with him, unmistakably.

What caught Kaeya off guard, though—what made his breath hitch, just for a moment—was her eyes. Ocean-blue, crisp and cold. The kind of blue that made you think of winter tides and broken promises. They weren’t exactly like Childe’s, but they were close enough that something in Kaeya’s chest twisted. The tilt of her grin was familiar, and the way she leaned in when she laughed, easy and unguarded, felt like a cruel mimicry of something Kaeya thought belonged to him alone.

He didn’t know who she was, and for some reason, that made it unbearable to look at. He didn’t know why she looked at Childe like they shared a language no one else spoke, or why Childe leaned in to listen like it was the most natural thing in the world. There were no lingering touches, no flirtation, but Kaeya still felt his skin prickle with a heat that wasn’t jealousy, not exactly—just a deep, irrational ache.

She said something and touched his arm. Childe laughed. Not his public laugh. Not the reckless bark he gave when his subordinates failed a task or someone insulted his homeland—no, it was the other one. The one Kaeya had memorized without meaning to.

He was smiling in that careless, easy way Kaeya had seen exactly once. The first time Childe came to him without asking for anything. No sex. No intimacy. Just… sat beside him on the rooftop and offered him half a bottle and solitude.

That smile had unraveled Kaeya a little. The same one was on display now, and Kaeya wasn’t the one who caused it.

Something in his chest twisted.

Maybe he stayed too long watching. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe it took only seconds to gather every terrible, intrusive thought and tie them into a noose inside his ribs. He turned before Childe could look up. Before he could see Kaeya watching and offer him that same smile, or worse—not.

He walked the rest of the way back to Mondstadt without remembering the path.

It wasn’t supposed to mean anything.

Kaeya knew that. Childe was friendly. Charming. Too many smiles for too many people. He’d always known that. He liked that, didn’t he? It meant he wasn’t special. It meant there were no promises to break.

And still, when he sat alone that night with the curtains drawn and his dinner untouched, the image came back again and again.

He didn’t even realize he was clutching the wine glass too tightly until it cracked in his hand.

_____________

One week after Kaeya started avoiding Childe, the gifts also began to show up.

Kaeya first noticed it on a morning that had begun like any other. He’d returned from an early patrol to find something sitting on his windowsill: a neatly wrapped parcel, tied with deep red twine, faintly steaming in the cold. He stared at it for a long moment, the stillness of the room pressing in around him.

It was mochi. Fresh, slightly sweet in the air, wrapped in a paper stamped with a Inazuman merchant seal. Not something local. Not something someone in Mondstadt would casually drop off without a reason.

He hadn’t told anyone he liked mochi. In fact, he didn’t even remember liking mochi. Maybe once, in passing, he’d made a joke about it to someone—probably while deflecting from something else. He touched the edge of the paper like it might reveal something hidden. A note. A name.

There was nothing.

He left it on the table and didn’t touch it. By noon, it had gone cold. By night, he threw it out.

A few days later, a scarf appeared. Draped over the back of his desk chair at the headquarters. Not flamboyant, just elegant and warm—softer than anything Kaeya owned, woven in a pale periwinkle that mirrored the color of his eye on overcast days. There were no initials, no tag. But Kaeya knew, the moment his fingers brushed over it, that it wasn’t his.

He looked around the room. Empty.

He folded the scarf in half and shoved it into a drawer.

The part that disturbed him most wasn’t the gesture. It was the accuracy. The way it wasn’t grand or flashy, but specific. As if someone had taken the time to figure out what he might actually want. Kaeya didn’t know how to take that.

And then came the books.

At first, it was a title left out on the desk. A pressed forget-me-not tucked between the pages of the book—one he had mentioned months ago during a night walk with Childe, when the sky had been too clear and Kaeya’s walls had been too thin. He remembered saying something about it.

Kaeya touched it. Then closed the book and left it untouched.

It would’ve been so much easier if it had been obvious. Something he could laugh off and walk away from. Flowers. Gifts. Drunken declarations in the tavern. But this—this creeping, careful courtship—was nothing like Childe.

This was patience coming from Childe.

Childe didn’t do patience.

Except… he was starting to think maybe Childe did. Maybe that brash exterior was armor, and underneath it was someone Kaeya had never quite seen properly.

Kaeya didn’t know how to deal with that.

He didn’t know how to let himself believe it.

Because if he did, and he was wrong—if this was all just a game, if Childe was playing with him like he’d suspected from the start—it would break him in a way nothing else had.

So he convinced himself it wasn’t real.

A coincidence. A bad joke.

Even when a fresh bottle of Firewater was waiting for him at his usual table at the tavern, the rare delicacy he always said he wanted to try—uncorked, just how he liked it, condensation beading at the neck—he refused to accept it. He turned away from it. He sat at another table and drank something else, even though his fingers itched to reach for it.

The next day, he passed the Goth Grand Hotel on his walk home and didn’t look up. But he felt it—the flicker of a candle behind the curtains on the third floor. The way the light shifted, like someone had been watching for him and stepped away too quickly.

He didn’t let his steps falter. Didn’t glance at the window.

But that night, when he undressed, he touched the drawer where the scarf had been left. Opened it. Closed it again. Didn’t wear it. Just sat on the edge of his bed, staring at his bare hands like they were unfamiliar.

Was this… was this what affection looked like?

No. No, it wasn’t. Maybe guilt. Whatever it was, it wasn’t real.

And even if it was—Kaeya didn’t trust himself enough to reach for it.

_____________

The gifts had stopped.

He hadn’t noticed, not really. He’d simply assumed it was a pause, a hiccup in routine. Childe was unpredictable, after all. Maybe he’d gotten caught up with the Fatui’s business. Maybe he’d gotten bored. Maybe he was just giving Kaeya that space he’d asked for in a moment of rare honesty, where Kaeya had finally admitted that he was tired.

He hadn’t meant leave.

But the windowsill was bare now. The folded notes, the small glass bottles with ribbons, the absurd foreign sweets he pretended to hate—gone. No new scarf tossed over the back of his chair, no stupid reasons to knock on his door at ungodly hours. Nothing.

No trace of him in Kaeya’s room. Not anymore. Not even the ghost of citrus and steel in his sheets.

He sat at his desk that morning and stared at the untouched quill in his hand for an hour, unable to write a single word.

When he closed his eyes, he could still feel the warmth of Childe’s breath at his neck, the arm slung lazily over his waist, the stupid grin against his shoulder.

Gone.

So he did find someone else.

The thought came unbidden, cruel in its plausibility.

It wasn’t that Childe couldn’t—it was that he would. It was always going to be a matter of time. Kaeya had known from the beginning what this was. What he wasn’t. He was never going to be enough to hold someone like that down. Not with his moods, not with his masks, not with the way he curled around his solitude like armor. Not when he couldn’t even say what he wanted. Not when he’d asked for space like it was a test, knowing—knowing—that Childe didn’t owe him the answers he never gave.

Kaeya had been waiting for the hurt. But when it came, it didn’t arrive like a clean break. It came like torture. Like the fading warmth in sheets that didn’t feel like his anymore.

And this was supposed to feel good, wasn’t it? This was supposed to be freedom. The boundary he had drawn with his own hands, the healthy distance he’d tried to enforce before he lost himself completely.

But it didn’t feel like freedom. It felt like being abandoned mid-sentence. Like waking up from a dream where someone loved him, only to find that he’d said too much and now the person was walking away, deciding yes, he was too much after all.

He finally moved on, Kaeya thought bitterly, dragging his fingers along the smooth stone ledge where the last bottle of dandelion wine had once waited. Congratulations. You got what you wanted.

He stared at his reflection in the glass—tired eyes, untamed hair, the faintest creases around his mouth from too many half-smiles and sleepless nights. He should have looked relieved. He didn’t.

It got worse when he saw him.

He didn’t plan on going to the tavern. He told himself he just needed a drink—a single glass to stave off the ache behind his eyes. 

So when he stepped into the tavern and saw him there, his heart didn’t leap, it twisted. His eyes found Childe at a table near the back, half-shrouded in shadow. Alone. The amber light caught in his hair, outlining the slope of his neck, the fine shape of his hands resting on the table. He wasn’t drinking. His cup sat untouched, glinting faintly in the dim light, the surface of the liquor smooth and unbroken. He looked different somehow. Not in any obvious way, still the same tousled hair, same sharp features, same wolfish posture that made him seem too big for a normal table—but something was closed off about him. Tense in the shoulders. Not smiling. Not even pretending to enjoy his drink. His eyes were lowered, staring at nothing in particular.

Kaeya’s breath stilled.

He thought, maybe. Maybe he hadn’t walked away completely. Maybe the silence had just been noise turned inward. Maybe this could be fixed. This scene could still be for him to enjoy.

He moved before he could think better of it, boots clicking softly against the floor, fingers tightening slightly around the strap of his glove. He didn’t plan on saying anything dramatic. Just a soft hey. Just a smile.

But Childe looked up.

And something in his eyes shuttered.

He didn’t smile. He didn’t move like he usually did, all swagger, pretending he didn’t want to see Kaeya even though he always, always did.

Instead, he stood. Reached into his coat. Dropped a few coins onto the table with mechanical precision. More than enough for the drink. Then, without a word—without even a look—he turned and walked out.

His drink was still full.

Kaeya didn’t move.

He watched the door swing closed in slow motion, watched the last trace of Childe’s coat vanish into the night. Something inside him tightened, sharp and breathless. He didn’t know if it was anger or grief or guilt.

Maybe all of them.

Maybe worse.

Kaeya sank into the chair Childe had just left, heart thudding like a knock he refused to answer. He looked down at the glass, the ring of condensation, the coins still warm from his palm.

Then he thought, so that’s it. He’s done.

He drank the liquor in one swallow, hoping it would burn. It didn’t. Nothing did. Nothing ever did anymore.

So he sat there in silence, surrounded by laughter he couldn’t hear, and let the cold in his chest spread slowly, steadily, until it swallowed even the hope he hadn’t realized was still there.

_____________

Shivers. He’d pulled the collar tighter, pressed a hand to the back of his neck as though that would chase the cold away. It didn’t. Still, he had gone on with his day. Piled up reports, late afternoon drills. His fingers trembled a little when he held the report. His legs ached more than usual. None of it was enough to make him stop.

He’d survived worse, after all.

So when the pain bloomed deeper—behind his eyes, in his ribs, in the fragile stretch of muscle down his back—he chalked it up to exhaustion. Nothing a stiff drink couldn’t cure. And it wasn’t as if anyone was keeping tabs on him. Not anymore. Not since Childe had stopped showing up.

That was the thing about absence: it didn’t arrive all at once. It filtered in gradually, like fog, like smoke. It ended with silence. With Kaeya standing alone in the corridor outside his office one night, coat in hand, staring out at the street and telling himself he wasn’t waiting for anyone.

And now, days later, he was still alone.

The fire had long gone out. It had burned low sometime during the second night, when he was too feverish to move, much less feed it. Cold air crept in from the edges of the windows. He curled in on himself beneath the blanket and breathed shallowly, every inhale a slow burn in his chest. He hadn’t eaten. He hadn’t stood up. He wasn’t sure how much time had passed.

Outside, the wind whistled against the roof tiles. The sound was distant, like it belonged to another world. Kaeya’s head pulsed. His lips were dry. He stared at the dark ceiling and tried to focus, but it was like thinking through molasses. He kept forgetting where he was. His fingers kept reaching, blindly, toward the empty side of the bed, like they expected to find a familiar body there.

But Childe was gone. Even though dawn hasn’t even creeped up yet.

Maybe it was better this way. Kaeya had always known it would end. He just hadn’t expected it to feel like this  

Somewhere in the haze of hours, he tried to sit up. The room tilted. He made it halfway before the nausea coiled deep in his gut, dragging him back down. His elbow knocked the glass of water from the nightstand. It hit the floor and shattered, the sound far too loud in the silence.

He lay there, breathing in shallow stutters, watching the shards glint faintly on the wooden floorboards. His throat hurt. His chest burned. He wondered, vaguely, if this was how it would happen—if he’d simply fade into fever, alone and pathetic, not even dramatic enough to make it look tragic.

He closed his eyes. The fever was climbing again.

He dreamed of something soft and disgustingly tender. Of snow melting in the palms of his hands. Of Childe’s hand on his wrist, gentle and firm, pulling him out of danger and into the warmth of something Kaeya had never dared name. He dreamed of his own voice saying something cruel just to see if it would make Childe flinch. It hadn’t. He’d just smiled, infuriating and soft. “You never stop pushing, do you?”

Kaeya didn’t know if he was asleep when the door banged open downstairs.

He thought, at first, it was thunder.

But no—the air didn’t smell like rain. It smelled like wine and ash and something far more familiar: leather gloves, snow-wet boots, and the distinct spice Childe always carried with him, like the sea itself and a sickly stench of blood. Footsteps thudded up the stairs, uneven, but calm, far too loud for a dream.

He couldn’t open his eyes. Couldn’t lift his head. His heart fluttered once, weak and fast, then stuttered back into its exhausted rhythm.

Then the door to his bedroom creaked open.

There was a sharp breath, like someone had just been punched in the stomach. Silence followed—heavy, stunned.

“…Kaeya?” It was about time he called his name.

The voice cracked. 

Another step. The floor creaked. The bed dipped as someone knelt beside it.

Kaeya barely managed to tilt his head. His vision blurred, but he saw a flash of orange, the pale lines of a familiar face, a hand hesitating inches from his cheek.

“You’re burning up,” Childe said, voice low and too steady to be real.

Kaeya didn’t answer. His lips were too dry. His mouth tasted like ash.

He heard rustling. Then the cool press of a damp cloth against his forehead. The touch startled him. Not because it hurt but because it was careful.

Childe’s voice came again, barely above a whisper. “What the fuck happened to you?”

Kaeya, caught between consciousness and fever, thought he might cry. But nothing came. Just a cracked, broken sound from the back of his throat.

Childe stayed beside him. Silent now. Breathing hard. His hand didn’t leave Kaeya’s skin.

The fever blurred the hours, melted the lines between dream and memory. Kaeya couldn’t tell if the hand pressing the cloth to his forehead was real or just another hallucination. He’d imagined softer things before, Childe’s mouth at his neck, the press of his hand at Kaeya’s lower back, lingering a little too long. He’d seen that same look a hundred times in the dark, lying on his side with his back turned, trying not to want more.

This touch wasn’t lust-driven, and wasn't careless. It was gentle in a way that made Kaeya ache deeper than the fever did. Almost reverent.

Something brushed his hair back. Then stillness. Then a voice, hushed and bitter.

“Of course you wouldn’t tell anyone,” Childe muttered, like he was scolding him, voice ragged with something like fury held barely at bay. “Idiot.”

Kaeya didn’t move. Couldn’t. But he registered that tone. He hadn’t heard Childe sound like that in… gods, how long? Not since the early days. Back when Kaeya had still thought this might be more than a fling. Back when Childe had laughed too easily, stayed too long in his bed, left behind a piece of himself each time and didn’t seem to realize it.

He remembered how it felt to be held by him in those days. Not just in the physical sense—though that too—but the emotional gravity of it. As if, for once, someone had chosen him without being tricked into it.

But those days were long gone. Kaeya had learned better.

He shifted slightly, a half-conscious murmur slipping from his lips, incoherent. The pain flared, his body reminding him just how fragile it had become in his stubborn solitude. A sharp inhale followed—not his own.

“Shh. Don’t move,” Childe said quickly, and this time his voice cracked for real, all pretense stripped away. “You’re okay. I’ve got you. Just breathe.”

Kaeya wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it. You’ve got me, as if that was ever true. As if anyone ever had.

The bed dipped again, fabric rustling as Childe adjusted something—Kaeya’s blanket maybe, or the pillows. A flask was uncorked. The cold metal touched his lips. He managed to crack open his lips, barely.

Something bitter touched his tongue—thick and acrid, curling in his throat like smoke from a dying fire. It bloomed slowly, coating his mouth with the taste of herbs, something bitter and disgusting. Kaeya gagged almost immediately, the reflex sharp and panicked, but Childe’s hand was already there, firm at the back of his neck, steady at his jaw, tilting him forward just enough.

“Swallow,” he commanded, not cruel, but resolute. Not letting him escape. He could’ve said something vulgar, if he wasn’t close to spit the abomination in his mouth into Childe’s face. Wait.

Kaeya tried to turn his head, but Childe wouldn’t let him. The bitterness crawled deeper, sharp at the edges, a punishment wearing the clothes of care. He felt his stomach revolt, his throat tighten, but Childe was relentless, coaxing the medicine down with a low murmur and fingers that held him too gently for the way they refused to let go. It felt like drowning in something meant to save him. 

His throat burned as he forced the last of it down, jaw clenched tight, every instinct screaming to spit it back out. But he swallowed—barely—and breathed through his nose, ragged and uneven, chest trembling from the effort. The taste lingered like a cruel memory, curling under his tongue, staining everything else in its path. His eyes were damp, not from tears but from sheer discomfort, his body recoiling even now, long after the ordeal was done.

Childe didn’t speak. He just set the flask aside with a soft clink, and then there were arms around him.

Not tightly—no, it wasn’t a grip. It was a cradle. A slow, sideway pull until Kaeya’s head rested against the warmth of Childe’s shoulder, his face half-buried in the familiar roughness of his coat. Childe’s hand slid up the back of his neck and into his hair, fingers spreading at the base of his skull like he was holding something fragile. His thumb moved in slow, careful circles, massaging the tension away one breath at a time.

Kaeya let himself be held. Just for a moment. Just until the bitterness stopped crawling.

And maybe a little longer after that.

When he coughed, Childe’s hand slid behind his back, supporting him with quiet strength. There were fingers on his lips, wiping away the spilled water, how badly he desired for those fingers to be replaced with something else.

Kaeya opened his eyes, just enough to see the silhouette beside him. There was no smugness on Childe’s face. No teasing. Just something raw and open, alarm carved deep in his features.

“You’re delirious,” Childe said softly. “Burning up and still trying to be dramatic about it.”

Kaeya wanted to say something witty. Something with the intention to hurt. But the fever was dulling everything. So he let his eyes drift shut again. It was easier this way, floating between moments, caught in the strange warmth of being cared for when he’d never asked for it.

He drifted.

And Childe didn’t leave.

He sat there in silence. Sometimes he wiped Kaeya’s brow. Sometimes he adjusted the blankets. Once, Kaeya woke to the sound of Childe pacing the room in the dark, muttering under his breath like he was trying to decide whether to call for a healer or carry Kaeya to one himself. In the end, he’d stayed.

Kaeya’s voice cracked the silence, hoarse and papery, like wind over dry leaves. “…Why are you still here?”

It wasn’t biting the way it could’ve been. It sounded more desperate, more like pitiful disbelief than anything.

Childe had been sitting again, elbows on his knees, fingers loosely tangled. At the sound, he lifted his head slowly, as if waking from a thought he hadn’t wanted to admit he’d been having.

He didn’t answer right away.

Instead, he leaned back slightly, watching Kaeya with something unreadable in his gaze—something caught between guilt and frustration, tenderness and something deeper, something more dangerous.

“…You think I’d just leave you like this?” he asked finally. Not accusing. Not offended. Just… disappointed. “You really think that low of me?”

Kaeya looked away first. He didn’t mean to, but his eyes betrayed him—sliding to the ceiling, the window, the shadows. Anywhere but Childe’s face. He didn’t know what answer he’d been expecting. Maybe none at all.

“People leave,” he murmured.

Childe sighed—not with annoyance, but that sounded like it came from somewhere deep and bruised inside him. Like he’d been holding it in for days. Maybe weeks.

“Kaeya,” he murmured, his hand moving with practiced tenderness, brushing Kaeya’s fringe from his damp forehead again and again like he didn’t know how else to touch him. “You’re not exactly in any state to argue with me right now. And even if you were…” He paused, lips curving into a smirk. “You’d still lose.”

Kaeya’s throat bobbed, but he didn’t speak. He didn’t have the strength. Or maybe it was just that Childe was infuriatingly right, and he knew it.

Childe sighed once more, softer this time, and leaned back a little to take him in—his flushed face, the way he shivered under the blankets, the way his breathing still came uneven. The kind of sight that made Childe’s heart twist with helplessness, like something inside him was being crushed under invisible hands.

“I told myself I wouldn’t do this again,” he said quietly, not looking away. “Wouldn’t chase you down every time you pushed me away. Wouldn’t beg to be let in just to watch you shut the door anyway.”

Exhausting honesty. Something laid bare. He wasn’t asking for anything now, just offering the truth the way Kaeya so often refused to do.

“But then I saw you like this and…” He trailed off. Shook his head. “What do you want me to do? Walk away? Let someone else sit here? Let someone else wipe your brow and hold your hand and pretend it doesn’t kill me to allow anybody to see you like this?”

He exhaled sharply through his nose, voice rough.

“Go to sleep,” he said again, this time with more tenderness than before. “We’ll have this conversation when you can properly look me in the eyes. When I can be sure you’re not just saying things to make me leave.”

And then—soft as breath—he leaned in. The brush of his lips against Kaeya’s eyelid was feather-light.

He kissed the other eyelid just as gently, his breath fanning across Kaeya’s cheek.

“You don’t have to say anything,” he whispered. “Just let me stay.”

He eased himself down beside him, not curling in close, but close enough. His arm rested on Kaeya’s shoulder, and Kaeya just wanted to cry.

When the worst of the fever broke sometime near dawn, Kaeya felt it in the lightness of his limbs. His body still ached, but the fire was gone from his veins. He was damp with sweat, the sheets twisted beneath him, but his mind was clearer.

He blinked slowly.

Childe was still there, curled beside him on the narrow mattress like he belonged there, like he’d always belonged there. His arm was slung around Kaeya’s waist, loose but sure, fingers resting just above the dip of his hip as if even in sleep, he knew exactly where Kaeya was.

His body was warm, solid behind Kaeya’s back, their legs tangled as if it had happened naturally, without either of them thinking too hard about it. Like it had been instinct. Familiar. The rhythm of two people who didn’t know how to sleep apart anymore.

It was disarming, the way he held him—like he hadn’t been worried about overstepping, hadn’t even hesitated. As though his place here had never been up for debate. As though wrapping himself around Kaeya in the middle of the night wasn’t an act of boldness, but of absolute familiarity.

Kaeya stared at him for a long time. His face was turned toward him, softened by the hush of sleep, mouth slack with exhaustion, a faint crease between his brows that hadn’t disappeared even in rest. The sunlight was just beginning to spill through the window, pale and gold. It caught in Childe’s lashes, the soft curve of his mouth, the strands of hair falling out of place.

He looked younger like this. Less like a Harbinger. More like someone Kaeya could have loved, and more like the man who’d kissed Kaeya’s cheeks with a voice made of sin.

Kaeya’s heart twisted violently. He looked away.

What was he supposed to make of this?

If it had just been a back and forth, if Childe had grown bored, if the gifts had stopped because he’d found someone else—that would’ve made sense. That was something Kaeya knew how to handle. But sitting at his bedside all night, hands gentle, face tight with fear? That didn’t fit the narrative. 

And now Kaeya didn’t know what to believe.

He shifted, trying to sit up or at least untangle the sweat-soaked sheets, but the movement was sluggish, his limbs trembling with the effort. Before he could get far, Childe stirred instantly—the kind of jolt that didn’t come from deep sleep, but from shallow rest and constant alertness. 

Blue eyes blinked open, glassy and bloodshot and filled with a sharpness that had nothing to do with grogginess. Childe looked at him like he’d been waiting for this exact moment.

“How’s the fever?” he asked, voice rough with sleep but still urgent.

Kaeya opened his mouth to answer—something dry and witty on his tongue, something deflective—but Childe was already moving. His hand was on Kaeya’s forehead before Kaeya could form a single word, fingers cool and steady, brushing past damp strands of hair.

Childe frowned, leaning in a little, his brows furrowing. “Still warm,” he muttered, more to himself than to Kaeya, and his palm lingered against Kaeya’s temple like he could will the heat away with touch alone. His hand lingered on Kaeya’s cheek, cool fingers brushing lightly down the side of his neck, the pads of his fingers tracing the pulse there as if to reassure himself it was still steady. He didn’t pull away.

Instead, he tucked the blanket up again, higher this time, like he thought Kaeya might be cold. His knuckles brushed Kaeya’s collarbone, then withdrew just long enough to reach for the flask at the bedside. He twisted the cap off without looking, the motion smooth, practiced. Kaeya didn’t say a word—only opened his mouth when Childe brought the flask near, and let the water settle on his tongue.

“You look like shit,” he said roughly, but his touch betrayed the words. He stroked Kaeya’s cheek with his thumb again, like he could smooth the pallor from his skin if he tried hard enough. “Should’ve called someone sooner. I didn’t see you anywhere for 3 days—nowhere—not even the fucking tavern, and I was trying my hardest to ignore you yet I still noticed somehow.”

He was muttering now, half to Kaeya and half to himself.

He sat up slightly, blankets rustling, reaching for the flask again, uncorking it one-handed. “Here. Just water. You need to keep drinking. Don’t be difficult about it.”

Kaeya rolled his eyes weakly, but parted his lips. The water was lukewarm now, but it slid down his throat without resistance. He hated how obedient he felt under that gaze, how easily he let Childe press the flask to his lips, tip it just right, wipe away the dribble at the corner of his mouth like it was second nature.

“You’re burning less,” Childe murmured, more to the curve of Kaeya’s neck than his face. His hand ghosted over Kaeya’s chest like he wanted to check his heartbeat next. “Still not good, though. You’re staying in bed.”

Kaeya snorted faintly. “Didn’t plan on running a marathon.”

Childe didn’t laugh. Instead, he tucked the blanket tighter around Kaeya’s shoulders, then leaned over to adjust the pillow under his head with careful hands, still moving like he might break something if he wasn’t gentle enough. “I’m serious,” he said.

He reached for Kaeya’s wrist next, his fingers wrapping lightly around it, checking the pulse like it would calm something in him. He held it there a moment longer than necessary.

“Next time you feel like collapsing alone in that godforsaken office,” Childe murmured, eyes not leaving Kaeya’s, “you come to me instead. Or I swear to the Tsaritsa, I’ll drag you by the hair next time.”

His voice cracked a little at the end—not from anger, but from how close he’d come to losing the chance to say any of this.

Kaeya didn’t answer. He just stared at him.

Childe sat up, rubbed his eyes, and looked like he wasn’t sure what to say.

Kaeya beat him to it. Voice barely more than a whisper. “You didn’t have to stay.”

The words hung there. Neutral. Almost casual.

But Childe’s face twisted like they hurt.

“I know,” he said. Then quieter: “But I wanted to.”

Childe had been patient. More patient than anyone gave him credit for. He let Kaeya ice him out, let the side-glances and half-answers pile up like snow around them, let the silence stretch taut between visits—because he thought maybe Kaeya just needed time. Maybe it would pass.

But it didn’t.

And now, standing in the middle of Kaeya’s dimly lit living room, a storm caught in his eyes, he’d had enough.

“Why did you start avoiding me?” His voice was low, even, deceptively calm. “Tell me.”

Kaeya didn’t look up.

He couldn’t. Not with Childe standing there, practically shaking with unspent anger, frustration, confusion.

Finally, he muttered, “It would’ve ended anyway.”

Childe’s breath hitched—like the words were a blow. “What?”

“This thing,” Kaeya said, lifting his eyes at last but keeping his voice flat. “You and me. It never had a future. Don’t look at me like that.” His smile, when it came, was sharp around the edges. Defensive. “You don’t need to act hurt. I know how it goes. We have our fun, you get bored, we drift. It’s fine.”

“It’s not fine,” Childe bit out.

Kaeya tilted his head, feigning innocence. “Then what is it?”

“I was seriously trying to court you.”

The words stopped Kaeya cold.

It felt like the whole room tilted for a second—like he’d misheard, or hallucinated, or maybe slipped into a dream without realizing it. He blinked, and for a single, delicate moment, something close to hope stirred in his chest.

Then he crushed it.

Kaeya laughed. It wasn’t cruel, but it was bitter. It sounded like someone who had learned the hard way never to believe what they wanted to hear.

“Who only comes to the person they want to court when they want to fuck?” he asked, voice dangerously soft. “Who doesn’t stay the night unless it’s by accident? Who flinches when I touch their cheek, but not when I’m on my knees? Don’t feed me that line, Tartaglia. You don’t have to lie.”

“I’m not lying.”

“Right.” Kaeya folded his arms, leaning back like he was perfectly relaxed but his heart was hammering, and his chest ached like something had caved in. “You just have a very unconventional courting method. A gift here, a visit when it’s convenient, and oh—of course—breaking into my bedroom at two in the morning like some cat burglar. Classic.”

Childe’s hands curled into fists at his sides.

“I thought you hated grand gestures,” he said quietly.

Kaeya stared at him.

And stared.

“I thought,” Childe continued, “if I didn’t push, if I didn’t scare you off, maybe you’d get used to having me around. Maybe you’d want to keep me. So I showed up when I could. I brought you things you’d like. I stayed out of your business. I didn’t—didn’t make it too serious because I thought that’s what you wanted.”

Kaeya looked at him like he’d just spoken in another language.

“That’s not courting,” he said.

“It was the best I could do.”

Childe’s brows drew together, his jaw ticking like he was chewing on something sharp.

Kaeya looked down at his hands, flexing them slowly like he could wring the tension out through his fingertips. His voice came quiet, too quiet, like something meant to be said only to himself. “You look at me like you feel nothing at all,” he murmured. “Like you’re just… watching. Like you’ve already made up your mind about me, and you’re just waiting for me to prove you right.”

Childe blinked. His entire expression froze, startled—not because he didn’t expect the accusation, but because it cleaved so close to a place he didn’t have words for. His hands twitched at his sides like he didn’t know what to do with them.

“That’s not indifference, Kaeya,” he said at last, his voice low and rough. It sounded like something stripped of armor.

Kaeya’s eyes lifted to meet his. “Then what is it?”

His jaw flexed. He wasn’t looking at Kaeya when he spoke again.

“You think I don’t feel anything when I look at you?” His voice was too calm. Tight. Like it had been chewed down to its thinnest edge. Kaeya didn’t answer. Didn’t flinch. Just watched him with those infuriatingly unreadable eyes.

Childe let out a small, bitter laugh. “That’s rich.”

He turned back, finally, and this time his expression cracked, sharp angles and a tired twist of his mouth that didn’t look like a smile at all. “Do you know how fucking hard it is not to scare you away with how much I feel? How much I want? Every time I look at you, I have to bite down on this ridiculous urge to kiss you stupid or to touch you until you get it, until there’s no room left for doubt.”

Kaeya’s brows twitched. The shift in his face was subtle, but there—like he hadn’t expected the words to land with so much heat behind them.

“I have to swallow it down, Kaeya. All of it. Every fucking time you glance at me and then look away. Every time you pretend this doesn’t mean anything. I sit there and nod like a good little idiot because I thought maybe if I’m careful, maybe if I don’t say too much, you’ll stay.”

His voice cracked. Just slightly. Just enough.

“I held back because you looked like you’d bolt the second I told you the truth. So I played it safe. And you took that as I don’t care.”

He laughed again, but it was a hollow sound. It landed between them like a stone.

“I’ve never cared about anyone like this. Not like you. And I’ve never hated you more for how easy it is for you to miss that.”

Kaeya opened his mouth, but Childe didn’t give him the space.

“Every single time you push me away, I just take it. I take it because I get it. I know you’re scared. I know you think you’re too much. But Kaeya, gods—have you seen me? I was born with my hands stained in worse things. Do you honestly think I’d flinch at yours?”

“I thought I was being careful,” Childe said. “I thought I was giving you what you needed.”

He laughed—soft, hollow. “And now you tell me I look at you like I don’t care?”

He shook his head, his eyes glassy with something Kaeya couldn’t name, couldn’t look away from.

“I have to treat you like you’re made of glass and you still think I don’t want you.”

Kaeya couldn’t speak. His throat felt tight, like something was caught there. His breath hitched, and he pressed the heel of his palm against one eye, hard, like pressure could force the emotion back down where it belonged.

“Oh, Kaeya, don’t cry.”

“I just—” Childe’s voice dropped again, stripped bare. “I didn’t want to break you. I didn’t want to grab on too hard and watch you shatter. I didn’t know… space was the thing hurting you.”

There was silence again. No longer brittle, but thick with breath and heat and the kind of knowing that hurt in its tenderness. Kaeya swallowed around it, his eyes burning, his mouth parted like he wanted to say something but had no idea where to begin.

And Childe didn’t press him for it.

Kaeya didn’t move.

He didn’t know what to say to someone who meant it.

Kaeya turned, slowly. His body moved before his brain did, because retreat was muscle memory by now—he always left first, always made the goodbye easier by pretending it didn’t matter. A flicker of that bitter smile was already forming on his face, the one that said of course, I’ll play the villain for you if that makes it easier.

He didn’t get the chance.

Childe caught his wrist—not roughly, not even tightly, just enough to stop him in his tracks. “Stop pretending this means nothing to you.”

It wasn’t a command. Not quite a plea either. Just tired. Just aching.

Kaeya stilled.

He didn’t look back. His voice, when it came, was quiet. Measured. Dangerous in how careful it was. “You’re not that important, you know.”

It was a lie. A flimsy one. He could feel it crumbling the second it left his lips. Maybe Childe could too, because he didn’t flinch. Didn’t say anything for a moment. Just kept his hand there, warm around Kaeya’s wrist, anchoring him in place.

And then—softly, unexpectedly—Childe asked, “Why me?”

Kaeya froze.

He hadn’t expected it to be turned around, to have Childe asking the question he’d been quietly bleeding over for weeks now. He had a lie ready, of course. Several, all lined up and ready to go, all of them clever and disposable. Because you’re convenient. Because you’re good in bed. Because it’s easier than being alone.

None of them would come out.

He swallowed. His throat was dry.

“I could ask you the same,” he said, finally. “Why me?”

Childe let out a low breath, like he’d been waiting for that question.

“You were the only one who never looked at me like I was a monster,” he said. “Even when you should have.” Kaeya’s lips parted, but no words came.

“I thought,” Childe went on, a little more quietly now, “if anyone could understand what it’s like—it’d be you.”

Kaeya turned his head slightly, just enough to catch a glimpse of Childe out of the corner of his eye. His lashes lowered.

“That’s a terrible reason to want someone.”

“Maybe,” Childe said. “But it’s the truth.”

The feeling that followed wasn’t anger. It wasn’t even sorrow.

Kaeya didn’t answer. Not yet.

He laid there, hands at his sides, and gazed somewhere distant.

“…I used to think,” he murmured, “that if someone loved me, I’d ruin them. That if I asked for more, it would all fall apart.”

He finally looked back at Childe then. Not smiling. Not smirking. Just looking. “And now?”

Kaeya’s voice was barely above a whisper.

“I think I ruined it anyway.”

Childe didn’t reach for him immediately. He just sat there, eyes fixed on Kaeya with a look that was far too open, far too human. But eventually, slowly, Childe raised his hand forward, his body inching closer.

Then closer.

And then he was close enough that Kaeya could feel the warmth of his body, could see the faint line of tension in his jaw, the way his hands twitched as if unsure what to do—whether to touch him or let him go.

When Childe did reach out, it was tentative. He brushed a knuckle against Kaeya’s cheek, featherlight. Like Kaeya was something breakable. Like touching him too quickly would drive him away again.

“I didn’t know how to say it,” Childe said softly. “I didn’t know how to… be with you the way you wanted.”

Kaeya didn’t look at him. His eyes were somewhere over Childe’s shoulder, distant and unfocused. But he didn’t pull away.

“You’re not exactly easy either, you know,” Childe added with a crooked little smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “You act like everything’s a joke. Like nothing matters.”

Kaeya’s jaw clenched. His throat worked around a reply he couldn’t quite voice.

Childe’s hand finally settled, gently, on Kaeya’s waist. Not possessive. Not demanding. Just there.

“I wanted to be serious with you,” he murmured. “I was trying.”

Kaeya finally met his eyes, something shattered flickering behind his own.

“Then why did it feel like I was the only one who cared?”

Childe exhaled, and for once he didn’t deflect. Didn’t joke.

“I’ve never done this before,” Childe admitted. “Wanting someone. You made me—fuck, Kaeya, you made me care. And I didn’t know how to show it without screwing it up.”

Kaeya blinked slowly. His hands hung useless at his sides.

“This whole time…” he murmured, voice fragile, “I thought you were just playing along. That you’d get bored eventually.”

Childe didn’t move. His voice was low and hoarse.

“I was scared you’d leave first.”

Kaeya’s lips parted, but nothing came out. For once, Mondstadt’s Cavalry Captain had no clever retort, no glib escape route.

And then, as if something inside him gave way, he lifted his arms and buried his face in Childe’s shoulder. His fingers curled weakly in the fabric of Childe’s coat, and he stayed like that.

Childe held him back. No more words. No more pushing.

Just arms around him, steady and solid.

Kaeya didn’t fight it.

He lifted his head first.

Childe didn’t move, just watched him with that same soft wariness, his fingers still curled at Kaeya’s waist like he didn’t dare squeeze too hard, afraid that if he held on too tightly, Kaeya might vanish.

Kaeya stared at him, eyes low-lidded, lashes damp. His lips were parted slightly, his breath shallow and uneven. He wasn’t sure which of them leaned in first—maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe they both did, hesitant, like they were reaching for something just out of reach, something fragile and tentative and far more real than anything they’d touched before.

Their foreheads brushed again, lighter this time. A ghost of pressure. An unspoken question.

Kaeya’s hand found Childe’s jaw, tentative at first, then surer, his thumb stroking gently across the corner of his mouth. He felt the tension in Childe’s jaw, the barely-contained want beneath the surface but it wasn’t rushed.

When their mouths finally met, it was soft. Almost too soft. A whisper of a kiss. The kind that asked rather than took. It tasted like longing and hesitation, like all the things they hadn’t said curling together on their tongues. Childe’s lips moved against his with an almost reverent slowness, as if memorizing every angle, every shift, every breath Kaeya gave him.

It wasn’t a kiss meant to seduce—it wasn’t meant to lead anywhere at all.

Kaeya tilted his head slightly, and the angle deepened still unhurried.

Childe’s hand slid up his back, spreading wide between his shoulder blades, anchoring him. Kaeya’s fingers slid up into Childe’s unruly hair, carding through it slowly, as if combing through his own thoughts. Neither of them spoke. There was no need. Everything was here—pressed into the soft press of mouths, the trembling hush of breath, the way they didn’t pull away.

Childe kissed him again, deeper this time. His lips parted slightly, just enough for Kaeya to sigh into the warmth of him, and Kaeya could feel it—the slight tremble in Childe’s body, the restraint he was barely clinging to.

Kaeya broke the kiss first, but only to breathe. Only to rest his forehead against Childe’s again, eyes shut.

The breath Kaeya took was shallow, shaky, like he wasn’t used to air that tasted so warm. His hand remained in Childe’s hair, thumb brushing gently along the shell of his ear now, the edges of his fingers curled into the back of his neck. There was a tremble in his limbs that had nothing to do with nerves and everything to do with surrender. But he didn’t pull away—not truly. He stayed with their foreheads touching, eyes closed, as if resting in the pause between heartbeats.

Kaeya opened his eyes slowly, he could feel Childe’s breath, hot and uneven, brushing over his cheek. Their noses were still brushing, their mouths a whisper apart.

And then Childe kissed him again.

Not softly this time.

He surged forward with all the heat he’d been holding back, with a hunger that had been kept too long on a leash. Kaeya gasped softly into the kiss as Childe’s mouth slanted over his with purpose, his hand curling into the back of Kaeya’s shirt, gripping it like a lifeline. Their bodies collided, mouths moving with more fire now, more urgency, though still not frenzied. It wasn’t about conquest—it was about closeness. About wanting to be known, deeply, without speaking a word.

Kaeya’s fingers tightened in Childe’s hair as he kissed him back, fiercely now, matching the need with a kind of aching abandon. His breath hitched as Childe’s tongue brushed tentatively against his lower lip, a question Kaeya answered by parting for him—without hesitation, without coyness, just a quiet hum of welcome that made Childe tremble.

They kissed like people who had wanted to for far too long. Like something was breaking open inside them, something raw and delicate, and they didn’t know how to protect it without pressing closer. Every movement was deliberate—Childe’s hand sliding up Kaeya’s spine, Kaeya’s mouth opening wider beneath his, the gentle clash of teeth, the helpless, breathless noises caught between them like prayers too intimate to say aloud.

And when they broke apart again, it was slower this time.

Their mouths lingered even as the kiss faded, little half-kisses pressed into each other’s lips, as if reluctant to leave the warmth they’d found there. Kaeya’s eyes fluttered open slowly, and Childe’s were already on him.

Kaeya didn’t say anything.

And Childe… Childe was looking at him like he didn’t know how to stop.

His hand rose slowly to cup Kaeya’s jaw, thumb brushing against his cheekbone, a stroke so gentle it nearly ached. His breath was hot and unsteady, but his gaze didn’t stray, didn’t waver. Then, as if unable to help himself, he leaned in again.

Kaeya melted into him, helpless. His lips parted again, inviting more, inviting everything, and Childe took the invitation with reverence and hunger both.

He kissed him again. And again.

Short, open-mouthed kisses that stole Kaeya’s breath. One to the corner of his mouth. One against the swell of his bottom lip. One that dragged a quiet sound from Kaeya’s throat, one that made Childe’s fingers twitch against his side.

Then he moved his hands—slowly, with care—to Kaeya’s shoulders, undoing the first clasp of his shirt with trembling fingers. His mouth never left Kaeya’s as he moved, lips brushing, pressing, returning each time like a vow. 

Kaeya didn’t stop him.

Didn’t move to help, either. He didn’t think Childe would’ve let him anyway.

He simply let Childe undress him like he was something precious to be unwrapped, like every button undone was a moment to memorize. His shirt slipped off his shoulders, baring warm, tan skin that shivered under Childe’s touch.

Another kiss.

Lower now, at the corner of his jaw. Then beneath it.

Then the hollow of his throat.

Childe’s hands were warm as they slid over his ribs, splaying across his back to hold him closer, like he was afraid Kaeya might float away if he didn’t stay grounded to his chest. His mouth returned to Kaeya’s, hungry and sweet all at once, and Kaeya kissed him back with all the ache that had lived in his chest for weeks. Months. Longer.

He didn’t think. Couldn’t. Not when Childe was kissing him like this—like he didn’t care how slow they went, as long as Kaeya stayed. Like he wanted to etch Kaeya into his mouth, his skin, his memory. Like this moment was the answer to all his silences.

Kaeya’s hands found Childe’s face again, his thumbs brushing over his cheekbones, the motion trembling now. His shirt hung open, forgotten, and he was bare to the heat of Childe’s hands, his mouth, his gaze.

Childe kissed him again.

And again.

And again.

And Kaeya let him.

Childe’s hands were everywhere now—still reverent, still careful, but no longer hesitant. His fingers moved down Kaeya’s back, slow and deliberate, mapping the dips of his spine like he’d dreamed of doing a hundred times but never dared. His mouth, hot and desperate, found the edge of Kaeya’s jaw again, then lower—his neck, his collarbone, where he kissed and sucked and breathed like Kaeya was oxygen and he’d been starved.
Kaeya’s breath hitched. His head tilted back instinctively, eyes fluttering shut as Childe’s lips dragged over the hollow of his throat. His hands had found purchase in Childe’s hair again, gripping it tighter now, holding him close—not to stop him, but to ground himself.

Childe groaned softly against his skin, the sound sending a spark straight down Kaeya’s spine.

“Tell me to stop,” Childe murmured, voice ragged and low. “And I will.”

Kaeya didn’t say anything. He only pulled him closer.

That was all the permission Childe needed.

His hands slid to Kaeya’s chest, pushing his shirt fully off his shoulders, letting it fall to the floor in a forgotten heap. His mouth followed the fabric’s path—down his neck, across his shoulder, pausing at the place where muscle met bone. He kissed there, then bit, gently, just enough to make Kaeya’s breath stutter and his fingers clenched tighter in Childe’s hair.

Kaeya’s skin was warm under his tongue, tasting faintly of salt and something uniquely him—something Childe had always chased without knowing he was chasing it. He licked a stripe up the line of Kaeya’s throat, earning a soft, broken laugh that caught somewhere between disbelief and need.

“Thought you were being subtle,” Kaeya whispered, his voice breathless, laced with that usual thread of sarcasm—but it was thinner now, faltering, trembling.

“I was,” Childe said against his skin, teeth grazing lightly against his collarbone. “You weren’t supposed to notice.”

Kaeya laughed again, a quiet, bitter thing. But it turned into a gasp when Childe’s hand slid down, fingers skating over the waistband of his trousers, pausing—not teasing, not asking, just waiting.

Kaeya opened his eyes and looked down at him.

Their gazes locked—one daring, one trembling—and then Kaeya nodded. Just once.

Childe kissed him again for the hundredth time, as if this wasn’t normal already, this time harder, hotter, deeper. Their mouths slid together with more urgency now, breaths colliding, teeth scraping. Kaeya’s hands were no longer passive—they roamed down Childe’s back, curling under his shirt, tugging it up and over his head with quick, fumbling hands. The contact of bare skin against bare skin made them both shudder.

Kaeya let himself fall back against the mattress, pulling Childe with him, legs parting instinctively to make room between them. Childe settled over him, hips snug between Kaeya’s thighs, and the heat—gods, the heat of his skin.

Kaeya felt every inch of it. Every point of contact. Every tremble in Childe’s hands, every quiet groan breathed into his mouth.

And for once—for just this moment—he didn’t think about what came next.

He just embraced him back, like the world was burning around them, and this was the only place left that didn’t hurt.

Childe’s clothes came off not in a frenzy, but in waves—tugged, shifted, peeled back with the kind of care that suggested reverence, not haste. Childe kissed Kaeya like it was his last chance to remember the taste of him, mouth trailing hot and unhurried along the curve of his collarbone, the swell of his chest, the dip between his ribs—and so did Kaeya. Every breath Kaeya gave him was answered with touch—fingertips ghosting along the edges of skin, pressing into the places where heat pooled and nerves sparked.

“Say something,” Kaeya whispered, barely audible over the rasp of their breathing.

Childe looked down at him—eyes wide, pupils blown, lips flushed and parted like he was struggling to catch up to his own body. “You’re everything,” he said, too quickly, too raw. “You’re—fuck. I don’t even know what to do with you. You drive me insane.”

Kaeya arched under him, just a little, just enough to chase more contact, more friction, more anything. His hands fumbled low along Childe’s back, nails raking lightly down as if to say don’t stop. His legs wrapped around Childe’s waist with a lazy kind of need, hips rolling in search of something firmer, something sweeter than just mouths and teasing hands. His head turned, cheek brushing the cool pillow, but he didn’t close his eyes—not yet. He wanted to see. Wanted to remember.

And Childe—Childe—looked wrecked already. Lips swollen, cheeks flushed, eyes dark and burning, like he couldn’t believe Kaeya was still letting him touch him like this.

He kissed down Kaeya’s stomach, slow and deliberate, open-mouthed and shameless. Each press of his lips felt like a confession: I missed you. He moved with a hunger he tried to temper, like holding back the tide, but every sound Kaeya made—every breathless sigh, every shiver—cracked his restraint.

“Fuck,” Kaeya whispered, barely audible, hands tangling in Childe’s hair again as his breath hitched. “You always do this.”

“Do what?” Childe asked against his skin, tongue flicking at the sharp bone of his hip. He was smiling now, that cocky glint softened into something devastatingly fond.

“Make it hard to hate you.”

Childe paused, looked up at him, then dragged himself back up Kaeya’s body, chest to chest, mouth to mouth. “Good,” he breathed against his lips. “Because I’m not done making you love me yet.”

Kaeya didn’t answer. When their hips ground together, the groan that spilled between them was helpless and low.

The rhythm started slow, patient, each roll of their bodies syncing with the next like waves. Skin to skin, breath to breath, nothing left between them now but the kind of heat that didn’t burn—it bound.

And Kaeya let it. Let the tension build and crest and ebb. Let himself be held, touched, seen. Let his name fall from Childe’s lips like it meant something more than just possession.

When Kaeya finally fell apart, it wasn’t with a cry, but with a soft, ragged breath, muffled into the curve of Childe’s shoulder, his arms locked tight around him. Childe followed right after, clinging to him like gravity itself.

They didn’t move for a long time.

Just stayed there, tangled, overheated, half-draped in rumpled sheets and fading moonlight.

Kaeya’s fingers lazily traced along the slope of Childe’s back, like he couldn’t help himself. His breath was evening out, but his chest still ached—not from exertion, but from feeling too much.

He wasn’t sure what this meant.

_____________

Kaeya lay half-draped across Childe’s chest, skin still tacky with sweat and flushed with residual heat. The storm of it all had settled—the sharp gasps, the insistent grip of fingers, the desperate kiss that had started everything—and in its place bloomed a silence so heavy it felt almost sacred. Or maybe doomed. It was hard to tell with Childe’s heartbeat so steady beneath his ear, unbothered, like he hadn’t just been inside Kaeya moments ago, murmuring things too low to catch but too gentle to forget.

Kaeya’s hand moved absentmindedly over his abs, fingers charting the edges of old scars he’d traced before, half-thoughtlessly, half-possessively, as if trying to memorize a map he already knew too well. Kaeya hated handsome men, made it hard to hate them with assets this fair.

That was probably why Kaeya ruined it.

“You’re really something,” he said softly, voice hoarse from overuse. “Already found another, and still shamelessly coming back to me.”

He said it like a joke. Like a throwaway line. But the quiet that followed cracked wide open.

Childe didn’t answer. Didn’t laugh. Didn’t even breathe, for a moment. The arm wrapped around Kaeya’s bare waist tensed, just slightly—almost imperceptibly, but Kaeya felt it. His eyes stayed trained on the sharp curve of Childe’s collarbone, refusing to look up.

Then, quietly, Childe asked, “What are you talking about?”

Still, Kaeya didn’t meet his eyes. His tone stayed light, but his fingers had stilled. “The girl. Tall, red hair, expensive coat. She looked like you.” A faint, humorless laugh escaped him. “Just enough for it to be a little pathetic, really.”

“You mean—?”

Kaeya gave a breath of something that wasn’t quite a laugh. “You used to leave things. Flowers. Sweets. Notes in awful handwriting. Then it stopped. I thought maybe you were bored. That you’d moved on. And then I saw her with you.”

Childe was silent. His chest rose and fell steadily, but Kaeya could tell he was thinking too hard. Too fast. Kaeya went on before he could be interrupted, each word delivered like a wound already expected.

“So I thought maybe…” His voice wavered just enough to betray him. “Maybe I was the leftover.”

Childe exhaled slowly, his hand tightening at Kaeya’s hip.

“You mean Vera,” he said finally, voice flat with disbelief.

Kaeya frowned into his chest. “She has a name?”

Childe groaned, pushing a hand through his tangled hair before dropping it over his eyes like he was shielding himself from the sheer stupidity of the conversation. “Yes. Because she’s my cousin, Kaeya. From Snezhnaya. Vera’s my blood.”

Kaeya pulled back sharply, looking up. “What?”

“She came here for a trip. I tried to dodge her for a week. She’s a nightmare. Dragged me to some awful dinner where they served nothing but bad herring and cheap vodka.”

Kaeya blinked. “You’re joking.”

“Do I look like I’m joking?” Childe stared at him, incredulous. “You thought I was sleeping with my cousin?”

“I didn’t know she was your cousin!” Kaeya said, scandalized, sitting up and only half-aware of the sheet falling from his shoulders. “You were sitting with her like it was a date!”

“Gods, Kaeya—”

“I mean, you even laughed with each other like—!”

“Because we’re related!”

The room rang with a strange mix of horror and mortification. Kaeya dropped his head into his hands and let out a groan so long and dramatic Childe almost laughed, except it clearly wasn’t funny.

“Oh, fuck me,” Kaeya muttered. “That’s so much worse.”

“Worse? How in the hell is that worse?”

Kaeya peeked at him through his fingers, cheeks flushed. “You stopped doting on me because you were too busy babysitting your cousin and I got jealous. That’s pathetic.”

Childe threw a pillow at his head. “You absolute idiot.”

Kaeya caught it with one hand, expression unreadable now as he looked down at him, face half in shadow. “So what was it then? Why’d you stop?”

And this time, Childe didn’t deflect. His voice came quieter.

“Because you told me you were tired.”

Kaeya froze.

“You didn’t say it directly. You never do. But that night, at your desk, you said it like it slipped out. And I thought…” He exhaled. “I thought maybe I was too much. That I was making things worse. So I backed off.”

Kaeya stared at him like he was seeing him for the first time.

“You always look at me like you don’t care,” he said. “Like none of this affects you.” Childe’s smile was faint. Sad, even.

“Since you don’t believe me,” he murmured, leaning in so close that his breath warmed the hollow beneath Kaeya’s eye, “let me tell you again.” His voice was quiet. Not playful, not smug—just steady, like he meant it with every piece of himself.

He tilted his head and kissed the soft corner of Kaeya’s mouth.

“I love you,” he whispered, like a secret.

Kaeya flinched—not from the touch, but from the words. They hit somewhere deeper than they should’ve, catching him off guard. But Childe didn’t wait for a response. He kissed the edge of his cheekbone next, then the slope of his jaw, then the space just beneath his ear.

“I love you,” he said again, a little slower, softer still.

Kaeya made a noise in protest—small, breathy, not convincing in the least—and turned his face away, half-hiding behind his palm. “Childe—” he groaned, as if trying to maintain some illusion of exasperation. His voice cracked halfway through his name.

But Childe only followed him, trailing behind like moonlight across water, unbothered by the distance Kaeya tried to create. “It’s Ajax,” he murmured, voice brushing against Kaeya’s skin like velvet. “Call me Ajax.”

Kaeya froze, turned his face back toward him, slowly. His eyes were a storm—too much feeling packed into too little space, and none of it had anywhere to go. “Ajax,” he repeated quietly, like trying the shape of it in his mouth. And then, in the smallest voice he had used all night, “Say it again.”

Childe smiled—no, Ajax smiled. He leaned in again, kissed Kaeya’s temple. Then the edge of his brow. The corner of his eye.

“I love you,” he whispered again, because now he could.

And Kaeya let him. Not just the kisses—but the words, too. His hand, which had been resting uselessly between them, moved—hesitant at first, then firmer—curling into the fabric of Ajax’s shirt near his collar. He tugged once, a silent, instinctive thing, needing him closer even though he was already right there.

Ajax stilled.

The silence stretched again, full of anticipation this time, and Kaeya finally looked up at him—really looked. His voice, when it came, was raw around the edges.

“I love you too,” he said.

His lashes trembled as he looked away again, as if afraid the words might shatter once they left his mouth.

Ajax exhaled like he’d been holding that breath for years. His hand lifted instinctively to cradle the back of Kaeya’s head, guiding him in until their foreheads pressed together. Nothing about it was hurried. He didn’t kiss him again right away. He didn’t say anything. He just stayed like that, breathing against his skin, his eyes closed like a prayer.

“Say it again,” he whispered.

Kaeya huffed—soft, reluctant, but not truly resisting. He tilted his head slightly and murmured it again, quieter this time. “I love you.”

Ajax smiled. Not with his mouth, but with his whole body, like something had finally clicked back into place. He kissed Kaeya’s temple once more, longer this time, lingering like he couldn’t believe he was allowed.

“Again?’’

“I love you.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” he said into his hair. “Again?”

“I love you.”

“One more time, please?”

“Ajaaax.”