More Like You (Yan!Albedo)

synopsis: Albedo isn’t usually careless with his things. Not around you, at least. Everything has a time, a place, a reason. Even if you can’t see that.

cw: imprisonment?? kidnapping, mild stockholm syndrome?? mild mentions of SH, yandere themes

From the request for an artsy darling ❤

_._

The first time he leaves his drawing pens out, you think he’s gotten too comfortable with your complacence.

What if you used them as weapons? Felt tips could pierce skin, if you applied enough force. What if you hurt yourself?He was always careful around you, nearing condescension, treating you like some fragile, breakable thing.

So your first thought is to be offended. Have you gone soft? Has the time and the loneliness gotten to you? Maybe it has been a little too long since you last gave him a hard time. Maybe you haven’t spurred him into action recently enough.

But the second thought that comes to you, when the initial bitterness fades, when you realize that maybe he’s leaving his things out now because he knows that you know that you won’t do anything (he’s always known you better than you know yourself, after all), is one of some intense kind of longing. You used to draw a lot, before.

It was an outlet, a way to bleed yourself onto the page without opening a vein. You’d nearly forgotten the feeling. The euphoria. The pain that came with it, too, the hours spent hunched over something that you’d end up hating, in the end.

But here they are, his drawing effects, laid bare on his abandoned desk as though they are calling your name. Begging to be used. But you’re wary, still, of the talking-to that might come after, of the patronizing tone and the reminder that if you want something, you need only ask him.

The pull of it, eventually, overcomes the wariness. It’s hard not to let it, when your world is a small cabin in the raging wilds of Dragonspine, with no company other than that of your captor and of your own wicked thoughts.

The first stroke of the pen on the paper (you found scrap pieces stashed away in his desk, top drawer) is nearly euphoric. You don’t really know what you’re drawing, at first, basking in the feeling of doing something of your own volition for the first time in months.The first scrap is filled with mindless scribbles, little flowers and looping letters.

When you put your focus onto something else, using the chair behind the desk as reference, your heart aches a little. Because it’s been a while since you’d been able to draw anything,and you’re rusty. Your hand cramps. Your lines are shaky.

You want to laugh. Cry, maybe.

And then there comes the telltale turning of the lock to the front door, and you’re scrambling, trying to replace the pens exactly as you found them, shoving the scraps of paper into the waistband of your pants.

When you go to greet Albedo that day, you have a hard time masking your happiness. In an uncharacteristic show of affection, you throw your arms around his neck, and although he is a little stiff, he lets you.

_._

The second time he leaves his things out, you start to believe a little in fate.

What else would bring you your most secret joy?

From there, it becomes a habit. Whenever he’s gone, exploring or experimenting or basking in his freedoms, you indulge in your own. So happy are you, that you don’t notice that he leaves more often these days. That he starts being a little more forgetful, leaving sketchbooks around, and paints, and near-blank canvases.

It doesn’t matter to you, after all. Not when you get to have your own, small piece of autonomy. The one thing he doesn’t get to see, to observe, to regulate.

Inadvertently, you start to see him in a better light, too. You can’t help it, really, riding high on the euphoria of your small victory. Your small independence from him. When he comes home, you can’t help feeling giddy.

He never seems to notice either. He never comments on the pages ripped from his drawing pads. Never mentions the way the stack of canvases seems thinner, today. He doesn’t even bring up the way he seems to run through his paints more quickly, these days.

This only fuels you, encourages you, drives you to draw more, to paint more, to push this freedom as far as it will take you.

_._

Albedo is pleased, these days.

He has always been calculated, pragmatic. It’s in his nature. He understands the importance of experimentation, and is no stranger to laboring over trials until he reaches the answer to his hypothesis.

This was an educated guess. He’d noticed the way your eyes caught on his hands when he painted, the way you seemed to perk up just a little more when he’d drag his easel out of the closet.

Albedo is a practical man. He is accustomed to waiting. He is patient.

But even he must admit that victory tastes sweet, even when it is so easily attained.

Pt5 - Eros (Yan!Albedo)

(Pt 4 - Philautia)

2.7k

Here it is. The beast. This is not proof-read, btw. I will go over it eventually, so pls forgive me my mistakes and any weird pacing

cw: Not-SFW (18+) , depression, trying to feel things, stockholm syndrome, unhealthy relationships.

_._

The days, cast in shadow, are a blur.

You don’t know how much time has passed, and you don’t really care.

You’ve started doing normal things again, somewhat. You’ve started eating again, when you can stomach the though of food, and Albedo makes sure that you have access to mild, gentle soup whenever you want it. Sometimes, if you’re feeling alright, you’ll nibble away at a piece of plain toast.

Life has become dull. Being is lifeless.

Sometimes you remember that you exist, and sometimes you don’t. Sometimes you think you remember things; most times your brain is filled with fog. Thick, unbearable fog. The feeling of always being on the verge, the verge of knowing things, of knowing yourself. Accident. No accident.

Alive. Not alive.

You stare down into a wooden bowl of soup. Your reflection stares back, warped by small ripples. Your eyes look wrong. Everything looks wrong.

Albedo is monitoring you from across the table, pretending not to pay you any mind. You know he is, of course, no matter how engrossed he pretends to be in his book. You can feel the flicker of his gaze meet your face every so often. You don’t have the courage to meet his eyes. You swallow thickly, blinking slow.

“Why am I like this?” you ask suddenly.

He pauses, page hesitating in the air. He clears his throat. Takes a steady breath. “There was an accident.”

“There was no accident, Albedo.”

He levels a look at you, one that is stone cold, expressionless. The look of an intellectual, studying his newest object of curiosity.

“Yes,” he says evenly, slowly. “There was.”

And you don’t know the truth anymore, really. The memories are a blur, a soup of unreal and real, mixed together with no way of discerning between the two.

“What happened?”

He sighs, closing his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose. “There is no need to concern yourself with the traumatic things of the past.”

“How am I ever supposed to heal from things I can’t even remember?”

The two of you sit in heady silence, nothing but the dull clinkingof your wooden spoon against wooden bowl, dragging through the soup. Freundin is nowhere to be seen. You haven’t seen her in some time, honestly. She always did come and go as she pleased; cats are fickle like that.

You envy her that freedom.

“The traveler was asking about you,” Albedo says smoothly. “When I went into Mond yesterday to check on the shop.”

“Hm.” You recognize that he’s trying to distract you, like a parent would a child, and you don’t find yourself in a good enough mood to entertain him. You want to sleep, maybe, or cry.

You want to feel something.

You push up from the table, chair legs clattering against the floor.

“I’m not hungry anymore,” you announce to no one, to Albedo.

He only hums in response, and you try not to feel childish as you stomp away to your room.

_._

Your world is nothingness.

That is what you think, curled up in bed, staring blankly at the wall.

What is there out there? What more can there be to life? There must be more than this. There must be. And yet, your life is here, is this, is four walls and one person and bland soup and sleep. He doesn’t let you read, puts puzzles out for you to engage with. He leaves drawing supplies, canvases, paints. He wants you to engage, to be an active participant in your life, but you just have no will, anymore. And what life, besides?

Your life is nothingness.

And you just want to feel.

_._

Later that evening, you find him where you usually do, in his study. His hair is pushed back, glasses resting on the tip of his nose, eyes focused and intent on the papers splayed out in front of him. He raises his head as you enter, knocking quietly on the door.

He smiles softly at you, candlelight framing his face, and in this setting he is beautiful. Haphazard, messy, beautiful.In his element.

You wonder at what he might look like, framed by the sun, set against the raging snow of Dragonspine. How he must look engaged in his work in the field, held back by nothing but the limitations of his mind.

And you’d come in here for something different, to ask him some stupid question about something pointless, and now those thoughts are far, far away. Because he is beautiful, and maybe the things you have been missing are things he can provide.

Maybe he was right, all along.

You wring your hands together as you approach him, swallowing whatever thick thing threatens to crawl up your throat.

He looks at you questioningly, and the words die on your tongue. You don’t know what to say. You don’t know what to do.

“What is it, Y/N?” he says, soft. Always soft. Only with you.

“I—” your mouth feels dry, all of a sudden.

“Did you finish the puzzle?” His voice is hopeful, hesitantly so.

“No I just…” you press your lips together, frustrated. Why is it so hard to ask for the things that you want? Has he ever refused you anything? “I was just… thinking about some things.”

His face is emotionless, guarded. But now you have his full, undivided attention, his glasses pushed back, hands laced beneath his chin. He leans forward. He says nothing.

“I just was thinking. About you. And us.”

This is difficult. Especially considering the fact that you’ve had a series of revelations in the past few seconds, and you are still having trouble corroborating them with the things you know. Or rather, the things you don’t know.

(If there were a list of the things you do know and the things you don’t know, it would look something like this:

I. Your mind is a mess.

I. What happened to you.

II. There are many things you do not know.

II. Why you are the way that you are.

III. There are many things Albedo does know.

III. How Albedo feels about you.

IV. You are sad.

IV. Why he bothers.

V. You are lonely.

V. Why he cares.

VI. Albedo is very, very beautiful.

VI. Who you are.

VII. You yearn for something you do not know.

VII. Who he is.

VIII. Life is suffering.

VIII. If you are a burden.

There are many more things you do not know.)

So instead of saying all of these things, you say: “Do you love me?”

It is more of a blurting out than of a careful, thought-out saying. And once the words have left your lips, you wish you could take them back. Because he closes his eyes, lashes fluttering softly against his cheek, breathing out a sigh. Your hands strangle each other.

There is an eternity in silence. And then, after it all, he says, so quietly you can barely hear: “Yes.”

It should bring elation, that your newfound feelings might be reciprocated. But it doesn’t. It makes something pit in your stomach. You decide that it must be that emptiness, that emptiness, that emptiness.

“What brought this about?” he says.

“I don’t know,” you reply, and it is the truth. “I just…”

You move closer toward him, unsure. And yet, you’ve never been so sure of anything, really. You want… you want…

Panting, heavy breaths, the feel of his cock deep inside of you, his mouth painting bruises along your skin. The undulation of his hips, rocking, knocking against yours. Harder, harder, faster, deeper…

You don’t know where these thoughts come from.

You do.

You don’t.

Your face heats. You chew at the inside of your cheek. Suddenly, you don’t care about before. You don’t care about the mess that is your mind, or the sadness, or the emptiness.

“I want to… feel something,” you murmur, hands restless. “I don’t want to be numb anymore.”

“Then allow me to fix you,” he whispers, fingertips reaching out, as if he yearns to touch you. He closes his fist, hanging in the air. “Allow me to make you whole again.”

“But isn’t that the problem, Albedo? There is no meanymore.”

You move around his desk, closing the gap between the two of you, hovering near. Your mind is loud, louder than it’s been in weeks, months, years. Time isn’t real anymore. Nothing is real. Nothing but this.

“Please,” you whisper, and your voice breaks.

You finally let yourself touch him, fingertips trailing down his clothed chest, and he’s gone silent. His eyes, shining in the candlelight, only watch you, expressionless. You think that you must look much the same to him, hovering above his body, face numb and dull as stone. You are his statue, after all, aren’t you? His creation, his carving, his thing to mould and to cherish.

Accident, no accident. You feel the world give way. There’s a pounding in your head.

You lean down and you kiss him, and for a moment he does nothing but sit there. And then he’s kissing you back, hands reaching up to wrap around your neck, the back of your head, anchoring you to him. His lips are earnest, hopeful, and he tastes of mint leaves and… something else. Tea, maybe.

He pulls you down, never leaving your mouth, until you are sitting in his lap. One of his arms snakes around your waist, pulling you closer, closer. You inadvertently grind against his hips and he breathes out against your lips.

“Let me feel something, Albedo. Make me feel something.”

You can feel the hesitation in his movements, careful and deliberately slow, as he pushes you back against his desk. You lay back, staring up at the ceiling, unblinking, unthinking. There’s nothing right now, nothing but the want for him…

He pulls your shirt down so that it drapes around your shoulders, chest bared, and slowly, slowly, he leans down, taking one of your nipples in his mouth.He grazes it with his teeth, smoothing over with his tongue, and you moan soft into the air. Your limbs are shaking. You don’t know why.

You’re touching him, hands tracing over the shape of his chest beneath his shirt, and he’s touching you, everywhere, softly kneading against your other nipple, careful, caring. Gentle, so gently. Soft, so softly.

You want more. You want more. You want more.

His other hand finally ventures down to the place where heat has gathered, your lusting pulling at the insides of you. He fiddles with the laces of your pants, hands steady, methodological. His mouth pulls away from you, and you lament the loss of him. But he looks at you, a question in his gaze.

“Please,”you whisper again. Desperate. Desperation.

Finally, finally, he pulls your pants away, and your undergarments, and he touches you…

He is exquisite, even like this. He is perfect, he is everything…

You gasp at the first touch of his hand, stroking, tentative. More,you think, and you must say it aloud because he does indeed give you more. Faster, more assured, more more more more more more more—

He’s watching you in very much the same way that he watches his experiments, his eyes alight with wonder, curiosity. But there is something more there, something more…

His hand pulls away. He leans down to kiss you.

“Do you…”

“Yes, Albedo.”

So he reaches for something that you can’t see, drowning in the yearning for him. And then there is a coldness at your entrance, his fingers, coated in something cold and liquid. He pushes one finger slowly inside, and you arch against the desk. You moan his name.

He pumps slowly into you, divine feeling. You feel something in the pit of your stomach, but it isn’t emptiness. It’s fullness of a new ferocity.

When he adds a second finger, you whine, and you want him to ruin you with a reckless abandon. He caresses the part inside that sends lightning down your spine. You are ruined. He is ruination. A third finger finds its way within you.

Something peaks within you as he hurries his hand, and you shudder around him, uncaring of the noises that escape in your holy rapture. You are panting, his breathing is steady. He watches as you come undone for him. Careful, calculating.

And then he pulls his fingers away, fiddling with the laces of his own pants. He pulls them down and throws them away, and he is bared to you as you are to him.

“Are you sure?” he murmurs into the night, and you don’t even know if he’s talking to you, anymore. He’s stroking his erect cock, so close to where you want—needhim, and so you nod your head, eyes glistening, looking up at him with such open yearning that it’s nearly blinding.

When he sheathes himself inside of you, you think that this is where he belonged all along.

You gasp up into the air, gripping at his hair, the collar of his shirt. He’s panting into your shoulder, teeth grazing the skin, and he is still for a moment. For a moment there’s nothing but this. He does not end, you do not begin. There is nothing but the stillness and the quietness of your breathing and the conjunction of your bodies, become one thing, one beating, pulsing thing.

When he moves it is slow and languid, careful. He does not want to hurt you, but you want him to. You want him to ruin you, to tear you apart. But you’re crying already.

It is a ravenous thing, this beast that has taken the place of both you and him. A thing of mass destruction. You think you will implode. You think it will eat you alive.

The movement of his hips hastens, moving in and out of you in such a way that he unravels your body with every stroke. His head tips back, exposing the column of his throat, scintillating with sweat. He groans into the air.

And there it is, the beast, rearing its head in the pit of your stomach, uncoiling and roaring and begging for release. You’re moaning, and there is his name mixed in there somewhere, stuck between euphoria and that never ending sadness. He licks a tear from your cheek.

“How long I’ve waited,” he whispers, or maybe he doesn’t.

His hand reaches down between your legs, quickening the beast, pushing it closer and closer to the edge. His eyes are closed, face skewed in wretched ecstasy. He whispers your name into the night. Again and again, he whispers your name, until you are sure there is no other word. The beast is ravenous, and hungry, and begging…

The coil snaps, the beast tears free. You cry out, pulling him close, closer, as close as you can without him fading completely into you. It is blinding and wonderful and the closest you have felt to happiness since waking up.

He follows, mere moments later, the feeling of him spilling into you, filling all of the broken parts. He groans, stilling, leaning down into your neck. His teeth latch onto the unmarred skin. You wish they would break through it, draw blood.

You want him to ruin you. Ruin. Ruination.

Instead, after a minute, he pulls away, looking down at you. His eyes are still dark, dim, unmoving. But there is a smile that adorns his lips, slight and nearly imperceptible.

The beast is gone, you realize, with no little sadness. It has faded away, retreated. He kisses you, one more time. His forehead rests against yours. He pulls out of you, spent and sated, soft.

In a moment he’ll help you get cleaned up and walk you, your legs shaking, to the bath that he’s drawn. He’ll wash you down, hands careful and loving. When you try to kiss him again he’ll pull softly away, murmur that you need sleep now. He won’t care that you’re crying. You catch something like guilt in his eyes, but it is gone before you can get even a good look at it.

He will carry you to bed, your head tucked into his chest, and will acquiesce when you ask him to stay with you. You will fold yourself into his side, trying to climb inside his skin, trying in vain to find that feeling again. He’ll hold you until you fall asleep.

And then, quiet as the night, quieter, he will whisper: “I will never lose you again.”

And he will mean it.

ᴄʜᴀʀᴀᴄᴛᴇʀꜱ: , , , ,
ᴛᴀɢꜱ: 
ᴄᴡ: , ,

always writes little notes for you when he leaves early for work. He can’t even imagine what it’s like to wake up to an empty and cold bed, him long gone for a day of managing a business and manor. So, he will leave little notes on the kitchen table, little post-its that say things like ‘I will be home early tonight, I can’t wait to see you’ or even a simple ‘I adore you’. Sometimes, if you’re extra lucky, he’ll even make you breakfast. Somehow, it always seems to be the perfect temperature for eating right when you notice it.

makes sure that when you’re assigned to a mission outside of Mondstat’s safe walls, it’s one with him. When confronted, he will deny having a say in your job, merely attesting the ‘coincidence’ to fate, or sometimes teasing you by accusing you of changing the assignments yourself. In truth, he worries about you. He knows how capable you are and has seen your strength firsthand, but fear still manages to cage his heart in an inescapable bind. What if you meet something stronger than you? No, he couldn’t handle loosing you. So, instead, Kaeya will follow you, ensuring your safety, but not without a few cunning remarks and teasing flirts. After all, he would truly follow you to the ends of the Earth, if only you asked.

finds himself asking you to be a helper for his research more often than not. It started out with a simple request for you to become a sketching subject for him. As time went on, he found himself drawing you when he zoned out, picturing the way the reflecting sunlight cascaded across your skin when you stared out at the piles of snow. So, to quell this confusing need to be close to you, Albedo offers you a position as his assistant. When you are around, the male begins to wonder if he should study the meaning of beauty and why he finds you to be the most accurate description he has ever witnessed.

always stumbles to you after getting hurt on a job, no matter how far into headquarters you are. Sure, it’s quite difficult to dodge all of his subordinates when he’s dripping blood, but seeing your smiling face is more than worth it. When you usher him into your private quarters with an exclamation of shock and worry, he can’t keep the grin down. Your voice is soft when you chastise him, warning him of the stinging before beginning to clean his wounds. Childe finds that in these moments, where he is laying in a sunbathed room, watching the wind blow tree branches just beyond the window, and the only sound audible is that of your soft mutters and breaths as you dab antiseptic on his injuries, he feels most at home. 

wishes to listen to you speak more than speak himself. This is quite a change from his normal behavior, when he eagerly recounts stories of days long forgotten. Said change even shocked the archon himself. Zhongli finds that when he is with you, his interest in the past dwindles just the slightest. Instead, he is quick to lend an ear to your problems. The god finds you most beautiful when you speak of things that make you happy, eyes shining and gentle smile playing on your lips. He will quietly commit every single thing you say to memory, so even if the day comes that you two must part, your words will dance through his mind infinitely. Yours are ones he could never forget.