Chapter Text
Albedo is woken up by a loud crash coming from the backyard.
He startles awake, heart beating fast in his chest and sweat dampening the back of his neck. At first he thinks he dreamt it, but then there is a loud curse and the sound of ceramic clanking together.
What the fuck. He slides out of bed, shivering as his skin touches to cool air. Albedo blinks a few times before his vision becomes clear. His eyes are dry and irritated. He fell asleep with his contacts in again.
His room is connected to the door to outside. Technically, it was supposed to be a sunroom, but he liked the natural light that filters in at all hours of the day. It only took a little bit of begging to get his father to agree to turn it into his bedroom.
Albedo grabs a cardigan hanging over the back of his desk chair and wraps it around him, opening the door and walking outside into the grass with bare feet.
He’s greeted by the sight of someone halfway slung over the fence, struggling to push themselves to the other side.
Albedo sighs. It’s far too early to deal with this. The sun is barely starting to lighten the sky and the grass is wet and cold with frost.
“Are you trying to rob someone or something?” he yells.
The person yelps, letting go of the fence on instinct and crashing onto the dirt. They groan in pain but Albedo is too distracted by the smashed flower pot to care.
“You destroyed my flowers,” he notes.
The person sits up, rubbing at the back of their head and finally turning to face him. He’s handsome. Warm brown skin and a strong jawline. Dyed blue hair falling down past his shoulders, pulling into a ponytail at the back of his head. Albedo might find him attractive if he hadn’t just destroyed his flowers.
“Ah- my bad. Also, no, I’m not trying to rob someone,” the man tells him.
“Care to explain then?” Albedo asks, feet starting to go numb from the cold.
The man laughs awkwardly, standing up. Albedo’s eyes are drawn to the tear in his jeans, right at the knee. He can see the ripped skin there from what was likely a nasty fall. Not the one that just happened judging by the blood crusted on the fabric. He furrows his eyebrows, concerned, but doesn't mention it.
“Sorry, I may have pissed off some people and I didn’t want them finding out where I live so I ended up going through someone’s backyard to lose them,” he explains.
Albedo sighs, pinching at the bridge of his nose as a headache starts to form, “And where, exactly, do you live?”
He jabs a thumb behind his shoulder, grinning, “Next door.”
Great. He has a delinquent for a next door neighbor. Perfect.
“Come on, dumbass. That’ll get infected if you don’t clean it right. And I doubt you will,” Albedo tells him, nodding his head at the man’s knee before turning around and walking back in the house.
He doesn’t bother waiting to see if he would follow him. Instead, he walks to the kitchen, sneaks the first aid kit out of the cabinet, and brings it back to his room.
The man is looking over the books on his shelf, thumbing through his old chemistry notebook from his junior year of high school.
“My name’s Kaeya, by the way. Since you didn’t ask,” he tells him when Albedo enters the room.
“I wasn’t curious,” Albedo replies.
“Ouch. Has anyone ever told you you’re not very sociable?” Kaeya teases, taking a seat on Albedo’s desk.
Albedo almost yells at him to get off but decides that the position works out well for him to treat the wound. He pulls up his chair and takes a seat, “A few times, yes.”
He grabs a pair of scissors from the first aid kit and starts cutting the fabric around the wound.
“My pants,” Kaeya whines, a pout on his lips.
“They were ruined anyways.”
It seems to shut him up, as he falls silent for the first time since Albedo met him.
At least for a couple of minutes and then he’s speaking again, “And your name is?”
Albedo closes his eyes for a moment, resisting the urge to smack him. The sound of his voice is far too grating.
“Albedo.”
“It’s a pretty name, sweetheart.”
When Albedo looks up to glare at him Kaeya has a cocky smirk on his face, as if he said it just to get on Albedo’s nerves.
“I told you my name, so I expect you to use it,” he snaps, pressing the alcohol soaked cloth in his hand to his knee.
“Ah, ah, ah, ow,” Kaeya whimpers, nose scrunching up against the pain.
After cleaning the wound Albedo sticks a big square bandage on it, humming once he’s finished and pushing away from the desk so Kaeya can hop down.
Kaeya bounces slightly from side to side, “Feels good. Thanks, sweetheart.”
Albedo glares at him again, snapping the first aid kit closed, “What did I say?”
He waves his hand dismissively, “Yeah, yeah. ‘m supposed to call you Albedo.”
“Whatever, just get out of my house,” Albedo tells him, placing a hand on his back to usher him over to the door.
Kaeya chuckles, a satisfied grin gracing his lips. “See you later, sweetheart,” he says before escaping out the door. He only narrowly avoids the hand Albedo shoves out to smack him for the nickname.
Albedo closes the door behind him and lays down in bed, listening to the creak of the fence as Kaeya hops over it. He takes out his contacts, throwing them randomly on the floor. A benefit to wearing dailies.
His father always scolds him for it.
He forgot to tell him to replace the flowers.
He supposes there will be time for it later, since they were neighbors. Albedo sighs to himself in the silence of his room and turns over the pillow so it’s cool again.
He lost a good hour and a half of sleep from the ordeal. On a Friday night, too. The day he’s permitted to sleep in the latest. It’s 7am wakeup on weeknights, 9am on Fridays, and 8am on Saturdays to prepare himself for the week. A schedule he wasn’t allowed to abandon despite having graduated last year.
He closes his eyes, urging himself to go to sleep. Even so, he isn’t able to quiet his mind and the uncomfortableness that settled in his chest for another hour before finally falling asleep.
***
“‘et up.”
Albedo groans, rolling over on the bed.
“Your mother made breakfast, Albedo,” his father says.
He blearily opens his eyes, blinking a few times before reaching over blindly to grab his glasses from the bedside table, sliding them onto his face.
His father’s face becomes clear, a smile far too bright for this early in the morning. Albedo groans again, sitting up on the bed and rubbing at his eyes, skewing his glasses as he does.
He, unlike his father, has never been a morning person. Despite nineteen years of his father trying to force him to be one.
“Come out in the next fifteen minutes, please,” his father tells him before leaving his room, shutting the door behind him.
Albedo leans against his headboard and sighs. It feels like a fever dream. Kaeya does.
But the first aid kit still sitting on his desk reminds him that it wasn’t.
He changes into something more presentable sleepily, saving his bedhead for after he finishes eating.
His mother is at the stove flipping pancakes, a woman who is surprisingly shorter than he is. He got her height, far different from his 6’2’’ father.
He walks over to her, giving her a small hug and pressing a kiss to her head with a smile. His mother has always been his favorite parent. He’s always made that fact far too obvious, too.
“Good morning, Albedo,” she greets, sliding two pancakes onto a plate and handing it off to him.
He takes the plate from her, sitting at the kitchen island and pouring a small pool of syrup on the plate to dip his pancake into.
Normally, people would spend their Saturdays lounging around being lazy. This family doesn’t tolerate laziness. They finished unpacking the day they moved in, last weekend. Then they settled into their normal routine just like it was before.
They moved because Albedo was going to college. He insisted on staying in the campus dorms. Insisted on getting a taste of the freedom he always wanted. He lost that argument.
His parents were paying for a quarter of his college, therefore they decided they get to choose where he lives.
Honestly, he would have just paid for the whole thing by himself if he knew this is how it would end up. Besides, most of it is paid for by a merit scholarship regardless.
On the schedule today is planting the empty garden in the front yard, because, according to his mother, it was disgraceful to leave it looking that unpresentable. Albedo tried to reason that they should wait till spring before planting, but his mother wouldn’t listen. After, his father would like him to help set up his new computer. A three screen unnecessarily expensive piece of technology that he scarcely knows how to operate. Lastly, mandatory three hours of studying, despite none of his current classes being related to his major.
Medicine. He was on a track for pre-med.
A compromise they came to after months of arguing. His father wanted him to become a lawyer. Albedo wanted to be a chemist. A doctor was a profession in the sciences that was still considered very highly respected.
Albedo finishes his breakfast as quickly as possible, dropping the plate in the sink and walking over to the door to the garage to help his father.
There are already bags of mulch lined up on the driveway. His father must have woken up early to get them.
“Albedo, grab the spade from my toolshed,” his father calls out to him.
“Yes, sir,” Albedo replies obediently, grabbing two of the tools before waking over to him.
He and his father work in silence. They were never ones for talking. At least, not ones for talking to each other.
His family was picture perfect. Their image controlled down to every last motion. It was so false it makes Albedo nauseous to think about, sometimes.
He reaches up to wipe at the sweat beading his hairline despite the cool weather. He catches sight of blue out of the corner of his eye and glances over next door. Kaeya is walking with a woman to the car. His mother, he guesses.
When they make eye contact Kaeya gestures to his own forehead with a smirk, winking at Albedo before getting in the car.
Albedo takes his phone out of his pocket and looks at the dirt smudged on his face with the reflection of the black screen.
He feels himself flush, bringing up the edge of his shirt to wipe the dirt off his face. It only serves to smear it even more and he sighs.
“Put your shirt down, Albedo. It’s inappropriate,” his father scolds him.
“Yes, sir,” Albedo mumbles.
“Don’t mumble. Speak clearly.”
“Sorry, sir,” Albedo corrects himself, this time making sure his voice comes across clearly.
His father nods, satisfied, and turns back to the flower he was sticking in the ground, crumbing the bottom before sticking it in the ground and surrounding it with fertilizer.
Albedo mimics him with his own flower. They don’t bother speaking for the rest of the day.