[ and how is it fair, that kaeya has always done likewise to him? for all that he strove to be perfect and without flaw, kaeya had always been there to remind him. he had always been there to pull him from the vortices of his own self-destruction, had always called him back from the infinite edge. what would have occurred if he had ever been without him? would he have broken on the shores of his own resolutions, too shattered to remake himself anew for lack of reason to return home to roost?
he'd never wished to consider it. he doesn't consider it now, in the way he places his gloves on the nightstand, begins to work off his coat just as kaeya speaks to him. and he wonders, for only a moment, if he hears him correctly as he turns his head — as his eyes snap dark and focused to him, weighted with the consideration of all that's coalesced between them, that frissons along his shoulders even now as his coat slips from their round. ]
And what if there are? [ he says, soft and full of purpose. what if i were to love you so much that i would choke with it? that i would gladly die in the circle of your arms, have you in any way you would allow? the red of his coat pools at his elbows as he partially knees his way onto the bed. how is he not to notice the way that kaeya now looks at him? how is he not to see the way that kaeya's honeyed words fail him, that the blood of his blood flows dark beneath the skin? he wonders why it is always now that he might find the spool of speech somehow, syllables tender at the swell of his lip.
his heart has always steered him. once so impulsive and brilliant and bright, he'd known nothing of the injustices of the world. he'd only believed he might once have fixed them, mended them — brought kaeya into the light alongside him, made him too a beacon. but, those idle dreams have died. worn smooth like sea glass, fractured like brittle shells — they're no longer children. there is nothing that diluc does not know now that kaeya does not know too.
diluc knows as well as kaeya does that there is something woven irreparably into the soul. he must know too that there is nothing that might exist of diluc ragnvindr without kaeya alberich. he must know that there is nothing that might have ever grown in diluc without him, barren in the soil of his richer lineage.
he'd known it since the rains swept in.
he doesn't pay mind as his coat falls to the floor like the closing of a curtain. the stage is set and there is nothing, but kaeya and diluc in the hell of a town that made them realize the tremulous steps they made about each other were foolish, just as he is. just as he always was, the first night he tried to kiss him at the cusp of eighteen out in his father's gardens. but, now — his back bows, just a little, as he braces himself with a hand planted at the other side of his hip. like this, his hair slips over the curve of his shoulder, following the twist of his body to truly look at him. ]
What would you have me do then, Sir Kaeya?
[ he nudges at the boundary, close enough that kaeya's breath becomes his breath. close enough that he might see the bluer flecks that catch at the lone star of his eye. close enough, he thinks, to know perhaps that kaeya won't rebuff him. not now. ]
[ when they were children, he'd often watch diluc coax wounded animals to his hand, withstanding their frantic claws and bites with a resilient patience that bordered on the supernatural at times. he'd never understood back then why diluc had been so determined to sacrifice gouges of his flesh to these feral creatures who could never comprehend gratitude, let alone express it. what was the point, he'd held himself back from asking, of wasting all that kindness and warmth on those who had no ability to appreciate it? far more merciful to all parties involved to let the wretched things die of their wounds if that was to be their fate, rather than spare any more blood for a life that would almost certainly be cut short as soon as it was freed anyway.
he's never felt so akin to a wild animal as he does now as diluc leans over him, the thick bars of his arm trapping him in a cage of his own volition. the wings of his shoulderblades dig into the mattress as he presses himself further down instinctively, his heart thrumming hummingbird fast. fight and flight rise up within him in equal measure, colliding with each other until all that's left is freeze as he stares up agape, the diamond of his eye expanding into a dark star that eclipses nearly the whole of his iris. ]
Di--
[ he snaps his mouth shut, but it's too late to hide the absolute shock infused into the single syllable, nor how his voice cracks like the awkward adolescent he never truly was. appropriate, given how it feels as though his entire being is cracking straight down the middle, the rumblings of an avalanche beginning to make its way down from up high a mountaintop after finally surrendering to the sun's persistent glare. diluc has always run hotter than most people and kaeya cooler, and in this moment their respective temperature differences has never seemed so stark; caged underneath the relentless heat of diluc's body, kaeya feels as though he's melting, all his clever deflections and glacial defenses dissolving into nothing but a puddle against the sheets.
his mind whirls frantically for a response, any response, aside from whatever garbled stuttering lies on the tip of his tongue now. his own fault for being caught so utterly off-guard and dismantled in a way that truly only diluc could ever pull off - his own fault for being surprised, because how could he have not seen this coming? diluc has never shied away from any challenge, their entire childhood littered with incidents and injuries from goading each other on too far, and of course that's what he must see this innuendo as. of course he must take it as just another battle of words and daring to be won, just retribution against kaeya pushing all his buttons as usual, because what else could - what other option could possibly--
(he knows what it looks like when someone wants him - though admittedly no one's ever looked at him like this, as if they actually want him and not just the beautiful shell he resides in. he knows diluc, for all his disguises and omittance of the truth, is a terrible liar. and yet the idea that this could be exactly as what it's presented as...no. surely diluc couldn't be that blind, to genuinely offer himself to someone like him.)
well. there's only one response he can possibly give to that. kaeya and diluc, locked in a constant orbit around each other, bound together as inevitably as the dusk must follow the dawn. wherever diluc goes, whatever boundaries he pushes past, kaeya has no choice but to meet him where he is, unwilling to ever be left behind again. the shock fades from his face, replaced with an expression he's worn often, though certainly never directed at diluc before - eye half-lidded, lips curled in a sultry smile, honey coating every facet of his voice. ]
My, my. So it turns out that even the noble and upright Ragnvindr heir has these sorts of...interests, after all. [ he props himself upward on his elbows, curling a finger around the metal centerpiece of diluc's collar to pull their faces even closer. ] I would have you do quite a lot...but I think that depends on your own willpower, hm?
[ unbidden, the corner of his mouth jerks into a self-deprecating twist - already preparing to laugh this off as a joke gone too far the moment diluc succumbs to the inevitable and jerks back in disgust. ]
[ perhaps it was a way of healing the self, healing the other.
molded to the whims of his father, made aligned to any scrap of approval he might have given him — it was only when he'd grown older that he'd realized that some creatures never wanted to be made whole in the truth of themselves. left to limp along the sidelines of their own existence, there were only few that came to diluc readily. and, even when they might have left in the end, that sadness was his own emptiness. it was his own loneliness, the want of perfection — the fact that he himself was never made actualized until the idealized reality was uprooted, was made plain as rot that ran through the foundations of his ancestral house.
it had taken almost dying, returning home to mond (to kaeya) to know that all living things must want to be saved to save themselves. and like this, he thinks, kaeya flourished. what groundwork diluc had given him was no less instrumental than the groundwork that kaeya had given himself. and like this it remained diluc and kaeya, kaeya and diluc. it remained a locked orbit, a perpetual gravity, an incomprehensible pull of twinned and binary stars.
when kaeya tugs at him — goads him —, diluc only presses his mouth to the warmth of his temple, the covered edge of his old scar. he's seen it, in the plain light. touched it, as much as he might have dared, in the months that they'd remained here. he holds the shape of it in the teeth of his memory, scribed it with such ferocity that it would never be taken. not from either of them. ]
Idiot. [ it knives from his chest like sparks off a fire. hands pushed through ashes, he burns himself willingly to eke the words out. his chest vises, heart sent to tripping over itself. it feels like the loosing of stones down green embankments, the cresting of waves over one's head. it feels insurmountable, unreasonable. it feels like the tall walls of storms that never wore themselves out. ] Can you ever be quiet?
[ it isn't a question. not a real one, anyway. since the time that diluc's known him, he'd only once held his tongue. in those long, hard months — in the winter that seemed to have no end —, he'd coaxed him out. kaeya, skittish in the fall of his shadow. silent, no matter the fear he must have felt. no matter how well-intentioned he'd been back then, diluc had always known himself to be selfish, overeager. he'd always known himself to want and to love with such severity and such sincerity that he'd sooner felt he'd die from it. consumed once by his own failures, it had only been his self-imposed exile that had righted him. it had only been his realization that kaeya had so long wrapped his vulnerabilities in the rampart of his words that even diluc had failed to notice it.
he'd once been so happy when kaeya had opened his mouth.
now, diluc knows him to be earnest in the stuttering hitch of his words. he knows him to be honest, in the pause before the slating of another act. for all that kaeya may think he wears many masks, diluc sees what is rooted beneath it. in the thaw of kaeya's own heart, diluc dares not bring attention to it. not directly. he knows better, has learned better — the corpse dirt of his own lineage is a testament of that, the black soil only now fertile after so many long and painful years.
he'd never wished for anything else from kaeya, he thinks, but kaeya himself.
and so, for all the challenge that kaeya throws to him, there is nothing more to do, but discard it. how could he ever be disgusted, when the heart of his heart offers a momentary glimpse of another route? like hoar that melts beneath his soles, like the prising of fingers through the soft skins of stone fruits, he welcomes it.
there's nothing refined in the way that he finally kisses him, a muddle of teeth and adrenaline more than anything else. he's never bothered to corner another in a sun dappled alley, never once caught another in the silence of the barracks. he's never wished to learn how. not with anyone else — never with anyone else — he'd never imagined another person with whom to ache his way through this, to wrench his way through unfortunate angles and terrible trajectory.
when he surfaces, it's sooner rather than later. his lower lip throbs with an oncoming bruise, but the fabled lightness that throws itself through one's being after the first dare of a kiss is decidedly capsized by the absolute lurch of his own breath in his chest. like the flaring of sparklers, the burst of inazuman candles, he feels the overwhelming scent of kaeya more than he fills himself with it.
he's too close to capture his expression clearly, but he doesn't have to know the full of it to understand that his eyes are as wide and dark as his own are. his skin burns a solid line against the cut of kaeya's jaw, his hand (how did it end up there?) trembling so fiercely that it's a wonder he's managed to keep cradling his face at all. ]
Kae, you've always had it, [ he says, sudden as the way he realizes the dark of kaeya's lashes, the way his body feels beneath his. there's a desperate edge to the way the words flood through him, cut over the banks of his teeth. they inundate any hope from reprieve, for the silence of his of own hands and heart and mouth. startled in his own right, a bird shot down in flight, the wounded wing he drags about is the insurmountable weight of his affections. finally freed as an arrow, the injury he bears holds no other recourse — he bleeds with it. ] My attention, my interest— [ he grasps at anything along kaeya's side, comes up with the linen of his own stolen shirt. he hooks two fingers into it, balls it tightly in the shelter of his fist. ] All of it.
[ time slows to a crawl, the moment between heartbeats stretching out into eternity.
they've lived in each other's skins too long for kaeya to remain blind to the intent behind diluc's movements, the crimson bloom of his cheeks, the blaze of resolve in his half-lidded eyes. this has happened once before after all, deja vu hitting him with all the subtlety of a brick - and even as diluc begins leaning in, the glow from the afternoon sun seems to soften his face into a younger and more innocent visage, the years between blurring between present and past.
kaeya had stopped him back then. seventeen and already (always) wiser or perhaps just more cynical than his age, he'd known the aborted affection for the mistake it would have been. the young master ragnvindr, romantic to a fault, who held vows of courtship and wedlock with more sanctity than towards his own god, deserved far better than giving away his first to a snake in the grass in some fumbling of misread teenage infatuation. nothing between them could ever have been genuine after all, not when one of them was little more than a mirror reflecting a false image to distract from the lies buried underneath, and so he'd deflected and demurred and laughed off the attempt in a display of oblivious rather than rejection. and after...well, after, diluc had never brought it up again, and kaeya had placed the memory high up on his shelf of inconsequential events to be forgotten - no doubt it had been a lapse of judgment made in drink, or a desire to quell a curiosity with the one person in his life deemed safe.
except here, five years and a lifetime later, there is no alcohol, no melody of violins trickling to a veranda of flowers under a moonlit night sky, no starry-eyed idealism from a boy who has never known the bitter taste of betrayal. time and the harshness of reality has peeled away the patina of kaeya's painstakingly painted pretense, and diluc now beholds him for who he truly is: a liar, a deceiver, a shamble of falsities and insecurities and sins barely held together by a porcelain smile. a cursed creature incapable of loving anyone or anything right without destroying them both in the process, and yet--
and yet even so, he still--
it should feel like a thunderclap when diluc's mouth finally brushes his own. it should feel like the world shaking apart and remaking itself anew, but everything suddenly seems so distant. the only thing kaeya can think, half hysterically, is that diluc's lips are chapped. of course they are, pyro heat and a habit of nervous chewing means the delicate skin there must be drier than the sumeru desert, and of course he's never cared about beauty maintenence in his life no matter how often kaeya complains....
the kiss is over before it barely begins. he blinks up dazedly. ]
...I knew you weren't using the balm I gave you.
[ his voice sounds tinny and far away, barely audible over the rushing of blood in his ears. dimly, he notes that his breathing's picked up as if he's run across the town and back, his lungs expanding and contracting at a speed and volume that ought to make his ribs ache - though he can't feel them anyway underneath the icy numbness that is now creeping over his entire body, weighing his limbs down in paralysis.
it's all he ever wanted. diluc's attention, his interest, his regard, his affection - from the moment their eyes met that fateful rainy night, he had already taken one foot down this inevitable path that would lead him turning his back on his entire people just for a glimpse of sunshine in shape of this man's smile. all his provocations, all his refusal to let the past die, all to dig himself so deep under diluc's skin that to pry him out would be to kill them both...and yet there is no triumph singing sweetly through his veins at having gotten everything his heart has ever desired. there is only dread.
because what has he ever given diluc in return for sunlight and warmth and true north? only the rain, and the biting frost of betrayal, and the utter ruin of the map of his life. ]
what hasn't he unwoven from the dark of his chest, pulled through diluc as though he weren't the answer to every point of wandering, every tessellated question that hung above their heads? what wasn't kaeya to him? his love for him rooted long ago, he thinks. spat from the empty heart of the world, they'd made molten the concept of what they could be, would be — should be — are. there is no diluc ragnvindr, he thinks fiercely, without him. there is no manner or means of preordained destiny that will take the foundation of his bone and blood and marrow. there is no existence he wishes for, he knows, if it is without him. kaeya. the one who blew through the doors of his father's grand house, soaked with the rains down to the skin. he'd been beautiful back then. and he is beautiful now, no matter how kaeya struggles with the concept of want and need and desire — no matter how he struggles to think he deserves a sliver of the happiness that kaeya too had long brought him.
no matter the ache, the division, and the irreparable sting of the world made clear — it was no fault of his. how frightened he must have been all those long, lonesome years. how uncertain he must have felt, knowing what he did. they had been only children in the shelter of the vineyard, kaeya's eyes the stars that held themselves truer than those in the blue bowl of the sky that hung as an axeblade above them. and yet, had he known, diluc thinks that he'd never have chosen to not meet him. he thinks he'd never have chosen to be without him. he'd have made his hands red with the blood of his own flesh and body before relinquishing the heart that was never his to give.
and it is in the well of those memories that he unearths the kaeya who needed reassurance to take seconds, to stroke through diluc's hair, to hold his hand when he frightened — to climb into his bed. it is in those memories that he hears the rattle of his breathing, the staccato of his pulse. he feels it jump beneath the meat of his thumb as it dips beneath the cut of his chin. he's so cold, he thinks. just as he always was back then, his glacial palms and trembling body pressed against the furnace of himself.
there had been a moment he'd thought to apologize, the prickling of his own panic cresting in the warmth of his own mouth. there had only been a moment that his stomach coiled about itself, the sizzle of his own anxiety tripping down the notches of his spine before fizzling out. it had only taken the desperate grip of kaeya's fingers about the inset ring of his collar, the abortive attempt to sit back, that had made him snap his teeth about the reflex.
and yet, and still — the words come as the melt from the rugged back of dragonspine. they come, almost tumbling over themselves, his gaze fixed and focused and clear. he won't let kaeya think otherwise. he won't let him have the room for that doubt.
he'd sooner burn himself with his own fire, than to ever relent. he won't let himself do it again. ]
You do, [ he says, words wrenched up from the corners they'd tucked themselves in. they're fierce little things, scratching at the backs of his teeth and drying the wet of his mouth. he hunts them down, his focus a dedication — or perhaps a form of stupidity, shaped only by how this sticks. ] Of course you do.
[ he's never believed anything more. he's never thought anything less. if he might empty himself out to feed him, to sustain him, to give to him as much as kaeya might let him — he would. oh, he would. ]
If you want to choose me, then choose me. If you don't, then you needn't. [ his touch remains, stays. he breathes around the cut of kaeya's knuckles, feels the way the backs of his eyes sting with the effort of speaking like this. ] But, you won't make up my mind for me.
[ since when could he? how presumptuous he is, to think that the boy who is now the man that lingers almost remarkably in the space just above him would ever back down? when faced with opposition, with the long nights that never yet bled into dawn — see it with me, he thinks. i've always seen it in you. ]
You moron, [ he hisses with some finality, some sort of softness that can't be taken back. no matter how embarrassment sears up the back of his neck, the rest comes regardless. he's never been good in speech, not like him. ] That decision was made when I was ten.
[ he means it. he means it, as much as it means the whole of his face pinkens — as much as it crawls up to the roots of his hair —, he means it. ]
[ really, he shouldn't be surprised in the least. of course diluc, whose body bears testament to a lifetime of rushing in and damning the consequences, would be stubborn enough to look his ruin head on and embrace it nonetheless.
and make no mistake, ruin is precisely what he brings - a monsoon sweeping across a once peaceful valley, bitter freezing winds lured to warmer pastures only to wreak devastation with the torrent he inevitably creates with his presence alone. he had known from the start that the rains that heralded his arrival would eventually grow into a flood, drowning out even this sun in shape of a brightly smiling child. if he was less selfish, he would have never stepped foot into the winery at all, never reached out with a trembling hand to try to grasp this spark for his own.
and that's the thing, isn't it? it could have been anyone. diluc had been so miserably lonely back then, a young prodigy trapped in the hollow home of his father's making who burned so brilliantly that it wouldn't be long before he either exploded or extinguished from his own flame, and kaeya had taken ruthless advantage of his vulnerability. he's well aware he hadn't been a particularly cute or lovable child that first year - too quiet, too wary, too not there with half of him still trapped in the screams and smoke of khaenri'ah - but he hadn't needed to be. all he needed to be was there, a hand with no expectations attached to hold and guide and nurture, and diluc had latched onto it as if he were the boy long lost in darkness, reaching desperately for any mote of light.
he'd fallen for it hook, line and sinker. is apparently still falling for it even a decade and change later, even knowing full well now the fangs that hide behind the allure of the anglerfish's glow. ]
You've always...had such terrible taste.
[ the words, for all that kaeya tries to deliver them dry, come spat out from his throat guttural and raw. his lashes tremble minutely as he casts his eye down, unable to bear the sight of diluc's face anymore for fear of what he will read in his expression; the corner of his mouth twitches and pulls in some wretched caricature of a mocking smile, directed entirely at himself. it's an expression he's only worn once before though he doesn't remember it - one rainy night, the mud soaking through to his knees, watching the blade of a claymore hurl down towards him.
it had been the one selfless gesture of his life; not the confession, which remains a blank still in his memory, but the aftermath where he had given diluc his blessing to leave. even then, there had been a selfish undercurrent to it still - this way, he could pretend that diluc had ever been waiting for his permission at all, that he wouldn't have just slipped out in the dead of night regardless without so much as a farewell.
and afterwards, what then? for all his normally unshakable willpower and remarkable self-restraint, all his vows to let diluc move on without him, he'd found himself circling around the prodigal son of mondstadt time and time again, sinking his hooks ever deeper. despite his many flaws, kaeya would admit that he's never been a particularly greedy person...but perhaps a more accurate way to put it would be that all of his greed has been condensed and directed towards this. there is a void within the frozen confines of his chest that slathers to siphon and swallow every aspect of diluc's life, from his attention to his rage to his time to all the little moments in between, in some futile effort to no longer feel so empty. it is a hunger that is never satisfied, no matter how often the scraps tossed his way.
it is that same hunger now that drives him to yank diluc down at the same time he lunges up, their mouths slamming together in a display that can't be called a kiss so much as a battering ram. oh, he can lie to himself and claim that he simply couldn't bear for diluc to keep talking, nor the prospect that diluc would somehow read rejection in his paralysis...but there is no softness or tenderness to the gesture. there is only terror and the ever-burning need to consume, as kaeya breathes in the air from diluc's lungs with the desperation of a drowning man on his last gasp of breath, before he rips himself away again. ]
I don't know if I have the luxury of choice. [ what choice does a pawn have in face of the players? what choice is a single soul in face of a million ghosts? and yet for all that kaeya is purported good with speech, his next words emerge mumbled and near inaudible, muffled as he tilts his forehead down to meet diluc's shoulder in an effort to avoid his gaze. ] But if I did...isn't it obvious who I've already chosen?
[ always, always. whatever scraps of himself he's managed to salvage from khaenri'ah's hold...they had always belonged to diluc from the start. ]
[ if he as though the birds who fly readily into the nets of the hunter, then what is kaeya beneath him? what is he, who thinks diluc to be so stunned and witless and willing, as though he knows not at all what he is? who is he, to assume he might care for the fates that attempt to batter them? no matter how many times kaeya believes himself undeserving, more flawed than diluc himself is, diluc would have to remind him. slowly, gently — with as much patience as he might stand. there is no naivety that exists now in him, who has given so much of himself and ever yet more no matter how much kaeya might ask for. it's the least he's wished to do, he thinks, for him.
and yet, there is a visceral ache that wells up in him. it pulls at the foundations, ferocious and insatiable and hot. it stings at the backs of his eyes, bruises each edge. it hurts. it hurts, in the way his teeth don't against diluc's as he yanks him down to him. it hurts, like the slip of the blade between the shoulder blades. it hurts, he thinks, like the absolute starvation he feels at the lack of his proximity.
like something vital has gone missing, only to return to him. ]
Kae, [ it's a wound, less a word. a name. it blisters in the dark and the wet of his lungs, catches up in the raw of his throat. it comes, like the notching of arrows, the upward drag of the sun. all of his life, diluc could be said to have never wanted for anything. he could be said to have never gone hungry, to have never gone unloved, to have never gone to bed with doubt he'd remain where he rested his head. but, he had never wanted more than the boy who turned up his door, who was planted as a root from a strange and windless land. he had never wanted more than him, who held in his palm the raw of his heart. who had long thought adoration did not wreath him in the country that took him in. but oh, how mistaken they all had been — as any child of the storms and gales, diluc sustained as much as he consumed. he razed through the absolutes of what was given to him, the parceling of language off the tip of kaeya's tongue. he reveled in it, the smatterings of kaeya's tremulous affections. he grasped for it, the rabbit-soft hold of kaeya's attentions. in the youngest of their years, it had been the way his eyes held him cautious. he waited for, each evening, the way his cool hands combed through the thick of his hair.
even now, each point of contact is selfishly hoarded. each inch of skin — secreted. for all that they drifted, there was never separation in truth to start. how is one to wander in darkness when they are locked in another's gravity? how is one to become truly lost, when the light of the other feeds them, as much as they might feed themselves? diluc will never be that child who wore the face of another's dreams again. he will never be lonesome, piecemealed — waiting, he thinks, for any answer to what he never would be (always could be) to begin. he will never be again blinded to what kaeya is, left to bloom in the sun he'd once taken from him. ]
If my taste is terrible, [ he starts again, limbs uncertain of their own ability to move as he settles a leg on the other side of kaeya's hip, ] then I've never been more glad for it.
[ it splinters over his teeth, shrapnel on the tongue. if the soft of his mouth bleeds, he cares little for the injury now. the words lay open, bared as the bones of young deer in the summer thaw. they bleach themselves as their soft pelts do against the heat of his body, the thinning of his breath.
there's no stumbling back from what he's done. they both bear the consequences of the recklessness he's brought, thrown to the teeth of things both darker and hungrier than they've ever been. his mouth tastes of copper as kaeya buries himself in the shadow of his shoulder, tastes of him as he settles his weight against him. keep him there, he thinks, as he uses the hand curved against his cheek to pull him up again. ]
Insufferable, [ he says, his quarry the shambles of his wretched vocabulary as he kisses the smooth skin of his forehead, down the firm bridge of his nose. each one is punctuation, words caught in the crossfire of his own will to bury them into kaeya's skin. ] An absolute fool. [ he catches the apple of a cheek, the grimacing edge of his mouth. ] Stubborn.
[ i love you, he tells him in the nick of his canine against the swell of his lip. i love you, he tells him, fumbling through the steps others before him have taken. i love you, he tells him, no more artful than the first time he'd kissed him.
he may be a fool, but there is nothing more foolish than missing the chance to show him, to understand him. to love him, all the same. ]
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he'd never wished to consider it. he doesn't consider it now, in the way he places his gloves on the nightstand, begins to work off his coat just as kaeya speaks to him. and he wonders, for only a moment, if he hears him correctly as he turns his head — as his eyes snap dark and focused to him, weighted with the consideration of all that's coalesced between them, that frissons along his shoulders even now as his coat slips from their round. ]
And what if there are? [ he says, soft and full of purpose. what if i were to love you so much that i would choke with it? that i would gladly die in the circle of your arms, have you in any way you would allow? the red of his coat pools at his elbows as he partially knees his way onto the bed. how is he not to notice the way that kaeya now looks at him? how is he not to see the way that kaeya's honeyed words fail him, that the blood of his blood flows dark beneath the skin? he wonders why it is always now that he might find the spool of speech somehow, syllables tender at the swell of his lip.
his heart has always steered him. once so impulsive and brilliant and bright, he'd known nothing of the injustices of the world. he'd only believed he might once have fixed them, mended them — brought kaeya into the light alongside him, made him too a beacon. but, those idle dreams have died. worn smooth like sea glass, fractured like brittle shells — they're no longer children. there is nothing that diluc does not know now that kaeya does not know too.
diluc knows as well as kaeya does that there is something woven irreparably into the soul. he must know too that there is nothing that might exist of diluc ragnvindr without kaeya alberich. he must know that there is nothing that might have ever grown in diluc without him, barren in the soil of his richer lineage.
he'd known it since the rains swept in.
he doesn't pay mind as his coat falls to the floor like the closing of a curtain. the stage is set and there is nothing, but kaeya and diluc in the hell of a town that made them realize the tremulous steps they made about each other were foolish, just as he is. just as he always was, the first night he tried to kiss him at the cusp of eighteen out in his father's gardens. but, now — his back bows, just a little, as he braces himself with a hand planted at the other side of his hip. like this, his hair slips over the curve of his shoulder, following the twist of his body to truly look at him. ]
What would you have me do then, Sir Kaeya?
[ he nudges at the boundary, close enough that kaeya's breath becomes his breath. close enough that he might see the bluer flecks that catch at the lone star of his eye. close enough, he thinks, to know perhaps that kaeya won't rebuff him. not now. ]
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he's never felt so akin to a wild animal as he does now as diluc leans over him, the thick bars of his arm trapping him in a cage of his own volition. the wings of his shoulderblades dig into the mattress as he presses himself further down instinctively, his heart thrumming hummingbird fast. fight and flight rise up within him in equal measure, colliding with each other until all that's left is freeze as he stares up agape, the diamond of his eye expanding into a dark star that eclipses nearly the whole of his iris. ]
Di--
[ he snaps his mouth shut, but it's too late to hide the absolute shock infused into the single syllable, nor how his voice cracks like the awkward adolescent he never truly was. appropriate, given how it feels as though his entire being is cracking straight down the middle, the rumblings of an avalanche beginning to make its way down from up high a mountaintop after finally surrendering to the sun's persistent glare. diluc has always run hotter than most people and kaeya cooler, and in this moment their respective temperature differences has never seemed so stark; caged underneath the relentless heat of diluc's body, kaeya feels as though he's melting, all his clever deflections and glacial defenses dissolving into nothing but a puddle against the sheets.
his mind whirls frantically for a response, any response, aside from whatever garbled stuttering lies on the tip of his tongue now. his own fault for being caught so utterly off-guard and dismantled in a way that truly only diluc could ever pull off - his own fault for being surprised, because how could he have not seen this coming? diluc has never shied away from any challenge, their entire childhood littered with incidents and injuries from goading each other on too far, and of course that's what he must see this innuendo as. of course he must take it as just another battle of words and daring to be won, just retribution against kaeya pushing all his buttons as usual, because what else could - what other option could possibly--
(he knows what it looks like when someone wants him - though admittedly no one's ever looked at him like this, as if they actually want him and not just the beautiful shell he resides in. he knows diluc, for all his disguises and omittance of the truth, is a terrible liar. and yet the idea that this could be exactly as what it's presented as...no. surely diluc couldn't be that blind, to genuinely offer himself to someone like him.)
well. there's only one response he can possibly give to that. kaeya and diluc, locked in a constant orbit around each other, bound together as inevitably as the dusk must follow the dawn. wherever diluc goes, whatever boundaries he pushes past, kaeya has no choice but to meet him where he is, unwilling to ever be left behind again. the shock fades from his face, replaced with an expression he's worn often, though certainly never directed at diluc before - eye half-lidded, lips curled in a sultry smile, honey coating every facet of his voice. ]
My, my. So it turns out that even the noble and upright Ragnvindr heir has these sorts of...interests, after all. [ he props himself upward on his elbows, curling a finger around the metal centerpiece of diluc's collar to pull their faces even closer. ] I would have you do quite a lot...but I think that depends on your own willpower, hm?
[ unbidden, the corner of his mouth jerks into a self-deprecating twist - already preparing to laugh this off as a joke gone too far the moment diluc succumbs to the inevitable and jerks back in disgust. ]
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molded to the whims of his father, made aligned to any scrap of approval he might have given him — it was only when he'd grown older that he'd realized that some creatures never wanted to be made whole in the truth of themselves. left to limp along the sidelines of their own existence, there were only few that came to diluc readily. and, even when they might have left in the end, that sadness was his own emptiness. it was his own loneliness, the want of perfection — the fact that he himself was never made actualized until the idealized reality was uprooted, was made plain as rot that ran through the foundations of his ancestral house.
it had taken almost dying, returning home to mond (to kaeya) to know that all living things must want to be saved to save themselves. and like this, he thinks, kaeya flourished. what groundwork diluc had given him was no less instrumental than the groundwork that kaeya had given himself. and like this it remained diluc and kaeya, kaeya and diluc. it remained a locked orbit, a perpetual gravity, an incomprehensible pull of twinned and binary stars.
when kaeya tugs at him — goads him —, diluc only presses his mouth to the warmth of his temple, the covered edge of his old scar. he's seen it, in the plain light. touched it, as much as he might have dared, in the months that they'd remained here. he holds the shape of it in the teeth of his memory, scribed it with such ferocity that it would never be taken. not from either of them. ]
Idiot. [ it knives from his chest like sparks off a fire. hands pushed through ashes, he burns himself willingly to eke the words out. his chest vises, heart sent to tripping over itself. it feels like the loosing of stones down green embankments, the cresting of waves over one's head. it feels insurmountable, unreasonable. it feels like the tall walls of storms that never wore themselves out. ] Can you ever be quiet?
[ it isn't a question. not a real one, anyway. since the time that diluc's known him, he'd only once held his tongue. in those long, hard months — in the winter that seemed to have no end —, he'd coaxed him out. kaeya, skittish in the fall of his shadow. silent, no matter the fear he must have felt. no matter how well-intentioned he'd been back then, diluc had always known himself to be selfish, overeager. he'd always known himself to want and to love with such severity and such sincerity that he'd sooner felt he'd die from it. consumed once by his own failures, it had only been his self-imposed exile that had righted him. it had only been his realization that kaeya had so long wrapped his vulnerabilities in the rampart of his words that even diluc had failed to notice it.
he'd once been so happy when kaeya had opened his mouth.
now, diluc knows him to be earnest in the stuttering hitch of his words. he knows him to be honest, in the pause before the slating of another act. for all that kaeya may think he wears many masks, diluc sees what is rooted beneath it. in the thaw of kaeya's own heart, diluc dares not bring attention to it. not directly. he knows better, has learned better — the corpse dirt of his own lineage is a testament of that, the black soil only now fertile after so many long and painful years.
he'd never wished for anything else from kaeya, he thinks, but kaeya himself.
and so, for all the challenge that kaeya throws to him, there is nothing more to do, but discard it. how could he ever be disgusted, when the heart of his heart offers a momentary glimpse of another route? like hoar that melts beneath his soles, like the prising of fingers through the soft skins of stone fruits, he welcomes it.
there's nothing refined in the way that he finally kisses him, a muddle of teeth and adrenaline more than anything else. he's never bothered to corner another in a sun dappled alley, never once caught another in the silence of the barracks. he's never wished to learn how. not with anyone else — never with anyone else — he'd never imagined another person with whom to ache his way through this, to wrench his way through unfortunate angles and terrible trajectory.
when he surfaces, it's sooner rather than later. his lower lip throbs with an oncoming bruise, but the fabled lightness that throws itself through one's being after the first dare of a kiss is decidedly capsized by the absolute lurch of his own breath in his chest. like the flaring of sparklers, the burst of inazuman candles, he feels the overwhelming scent of kaeya more than he fills himself with it.
he's too close to capture his expression clearly, but he doesn't have to know the full of it to understand that his eyes are as wide and dark as his own are. his skin burns a solid line against the cut of kaeya's jaw, his hand (how did it end up there?) trembling so fiercely that it's a wonder he's managed to keep cradling his face at all. ]
Kae, you've always had it, [ he says, sudden as the way he realizes the dark of kaeya's lashes, the way his body feels beneath his. there's a desperate edge to the way the words flood through him, cut over the banks of his teeth. they inundate any hope from reprieve, for the silence of his of own hands and heart and mouth. startled in his own right, a bird shot down in flight, the wounded wing he drags about is the insurmountable weight of his affections. finally freed as an arrow, the injury he bears holds no other recourse — he bleeds with it. ] My attention, my interest— [ he grasps at anything along kaeya's side, comes up with the linen of his own stolen shirt. he hooks two fingers into it, balls it tightly in the shelter of his fist. ] All of it.
[ how could it have ever been otherwise? ]
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they've lived in each other's skins too long for kaeya to remain blind to the intent behind diluc's movements, the crimson bloom of his cheeks, the blaze of resolve in his half-lidded eyes. this has happened once before after all, deja vu hitting him with all the subtlety of a brick - and even as diluc begins leaning in, the glow from the afternoon sun seems to soften his face into a younger and more innocent visage, the years between blurring between present and past.
kaeya had stopped him back then. seventeen and already (always) wiser or perhaps just more cynical than his age, he'd known the aborted affection for the mistake it would have been. the young master ragnvindr, romantic to a fault, who held vows of courtship and wedlock with more sanctity than towards his own god, deserved far better than giving away his first to a snake in the grass in some fumbling of misread teenage infatuation. nothing between them could ever have been genuine after all, not when one of them was little more than a mirror reflecting a false image to distract from the lies buried underneath, and so he'd deflected and demurred and laughed off the attempt in a display of oblivious rather than rejection. and after...well, after, diluc had never brought it up again, and kaeya had placed the memory high up on his shelf of inconsequential events to be forgotten - no doubt it had been a lapse of judgment made in drink, or a desire to quell a curiosity with the one person in his life deemed safe.
except here, five years and a lifetime later, there is no alcohol, no melody of violins trickling to a veranda of flowers under a moonlit night sky, no starry-eyed idealism from a boy who has never known the bitter taste of betrayal. time and the harshness of reality has peeled away the patina of kaeya's painstakingly painted pretense, and diluc now beholds him for who he truly is: a liar, a deceiver, a shamble of falsities and insecurities and sins barely held together by a porcelain smile. a cursed creature incapable of loving anyone or anything right without destroying them both in the process, and yet--
and yet even so, he still--
it should feel like a thunderclap when diluc's mouth finally brushes his own. it should feel like the world shaking apart and remaking itself anew, but everything suddenly seems so distant. the only thing kaeya can think, half hysterically, is that diluc's lips are chapped. of course they are, pyro heat and a habit of nervous chewing means the delicate skin there must be drier than the sumeru desert, and of course he's never cared about beauty maintenence in his life no matter how often kaeya complains....
the kiss is over before it barely begins. he blinks up dazedly. ]
...I knew you weren't using the balm I gave you.
[ his voice sounds tinny and far away, barely audible over the rushing of blood in his ears. dimly, he notes that his breathing's picked up as if he's run across the town and back, his lungs expanding and contracting at a speed and volume that ought to make his ribs ache - though he can't feel them anyway underneath the icy numbness that is now creeping over his entire body, weighing his limbs down in paralysis.
it's all he ever wanted. diluc's attention, his interest, his regard, his affection - from the moment their eyes met that fateful rainy night, he had already taken one foot down this inevitable path that would lead him turning his back on his entire people just for a glimpse of sunshine in shape of this man's smile. all his provocations, all his refusal to let the past die, all to dig himself so deep under diluc's skin that to pry him out would be to kill them both...and yet there is no triumph singing sweetly through his veins at having gotten everything his heart has ever desired. there is only dread.
because what has he ever given diluc in return for sunlight and warmth and true north? only the rain, and the biting frost of betrayal, and the utter ruin of the map of his life. ]
Di, I don't....
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what hasn't he unwoven from the dark of his chest, pulled through diluc as though he weren't the answer to every point of wandering, every tessellated question that hung above their heads? what wasn't kaeya to him? his love for him rooted long ago, he thinks. spat from the empty heart of the world, they'd made molten the concept of what they could be, would be — should be — are. there is no diluc ragnvindr, he thinks fiercely, without him. there is no manner or means of preordained destiny that will take the foundation of his bone and blood and marrow. there is no existence he wishes for, he knows, if it is without him. kaeya. the one who blew through the doors of his father's grand house, soaked with the rains down to the skin. he'd been beautiful back then. and he is beautiful now, no matter how kaeya struggles with the concept of want and need and desire — no matter how he struggles to think he deserves a sliver of the happiness that kaeya too had long brought him.
no matter the ache, the division, and the irreparable sting of the world made clear — it was no fault of his. how frightened he must have been all those long, lonesome years. how uncertain he must have felt, knowing what he did. they had been only children in the shelter of the vineyard, kaeya's eyes the stars that held themselves truer than those in the blue bowl of the sky that hung as an axeblade above them. and yet, had he known, diluc thinks that he'd never have chosen to not meet him. he thinks he'd never have chosen to be without him. he'd have made his hands red with the blood of his own flesh and body before relinquishing the heart that was never his to give.
and it is in the well of those memories that he unearths the kaeya who needed reassurance to take seconds, to stroke through diluc's hair, to hold his hand when he frightened — to climb into his bed. it is in those memories that he hears the rattle of his breathing, the staccato of his pulse. he feels it jump beneath the meat of his thumb as it dips beneath the cut of his chin. he's so cold, he thinks. just as he always was back then, his glacial palms and trembling body pressed against the furnace of himself.
there had been a moment he'd thought to apologize, the prickling of his own panic cresting in the warmth of his own mouth. there had only been a moment that his stomach coiled about itself, the sizzle of his own anxiety tripping down the notches of his spine before fizzling out. it had only taken the desperate grip of kaeya's fingers about the inset ring of his collar, the abortive attempt to sit back, that had made him snap his teeth about the reflex.
and yet, and still — the words come as the melt from the rugged back of dragonspine. they come, almost tumbling over themselves, his gaze fixed and focused and clear. he won't let kaeya think otherwise. he won't let him have the room for that doubt.
he'd sooner burn himself with his own fire, than to ever relent. he won't let himself do it again. ]
You do, [ he says, words wrenched up from the corners they'd tucked themselves in. they're fierce little things, scratching at the backs of his teeth and drying the wet of his mouth. he hunts them down, his focus a dedication — or perhaps a form of stupidity, shaped only by how this sticks. ] Of course you do.
[ he's never believed anything more. he's never thought anything less. if he might empty himself out to feed him, to sustain him, to give to him as much as kaeya might let him — he would. oh, he would. ]
If you want to choose me, then choose me. If you don't, then you needn't. [ his touch remains, stays. he breathes around the cut of kaeya's knuckles, feels the way the backs of his eyes sting with the effort of speaking like this. ] But, you won't make up my mind for me.
[ since when could he? how presumptuous he is, to think that the boy who is now the man that lingers almost remarkably in the space just above him would ever back down? when faced with opposition, with the long nights that never yet bled into dawn — see it with me, he thinks. i've always seen it in you. ]
You moron, [ he hisses with some finality, some sort of softness that can't be taken back. no matter how embarrassment sears up the back of his neck, the rest comes regardless. he's never been good in speech, not like him. ] That decision was made when I was ten.
[ he means it. he means it, as much as it means the whole of his face pinkens — as much as it crawls up to the roots of his hair —, he means it. ]
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and make no mistake, ruin is precisely what he brings - a monsoon sweeping across a once peaceful valley, bitter freezing winds lured to warmer pastures only to wreak devastation with the torrent he inevitably creates with his presence alone. he had known from the start that the rains that heralded his arrival would eventually grow into a flood, drowning out even this sun in shape of a brightly smiling child. if he was less selfish, he would have never stepped foot into the winery at all, never reached out with a trembling hand to try to grasp this spark for his own.
and that's the thing, isn't it? it could have been anyone. diluc had been so miserably lonely back then, a young prodigy trapped in the hollow home of his father's making who burned so brilliantly that it wouldn't be long before he either exploded or extinguished from his own flame, and kaeya had taken ruthless advantage of his vulnerability. he's well aware he hadn't been a particularly cute or lovable child that first year - too quiet, too wary, too not there with half of him still trapped in the screams and smoke of khaenri'ah - but he hadn't needed to be. all he needed to be was there, a hand with no expectations attached to hold and guide and nurture, and diluc had latched onto it as if he were the boy long lost in darkness, reaching desperately for any mote of light.
he'd fallen for it hook, line and sinker. is apparently still falling for it even a decade and change later, even knowing full well now the fangs that hide behind the allure of the anglerfish's glow. ]
You've always...had such terrible taste.
[ the words, for all that kaeya tries to deliver them dry, come spat out from his throat guttural and raw. his lashes tremble minutely as he casts his eye down, unable to bear the sight of diluc's face anymore for fear of what he will read in his expression; the corner of his mouth twitches and pulls in some wretched caricature of a mocking smile, directed entirely at himself. it's an expression he's only worn once before though he doesn't remember it - one rainy night, the mud soaking through to his knees, watching the blade of a claymore hurl down towards him.
it had been the one selfless gesture of his life; not the confession, which remains a blank still in his memory, but the aftermath where he had given diluc his blessing to leave. even then, there had been a selfish undercurrent to it still - this way, he could pretend that diluc had ever been waiting for his permission at all, that he wouldn't have just slipped out in the dead of night regardless without so much as a farewell.
and afterwards, what then? for all his normally unshakable willpower and remarkable self-restraint, all his vows to let diluc move on without him, he'd found himself circling around the prodigal son of mondstadt time and time again, sinking his hooks ever deeper. despite his many flaws, kaeya would admit that he's never been a particularly greedy person...but perhaps a more accurate way to put it would be that all of his greed has been condensed and directed towards this. there is a void within the frozen confines of his chest that slathers to siphon and swallow every aspect of diluc's life, from his attention to his rage to his time to all the little moments in between, in some futile effort to no longer feel so empty. it is a hunger that is never satisfied, no matter how often the scraps tossed his way.
it is that same hunger now that drives him to yank diluc down at the same time he lunges up, their mouths slamming together in a display that can't be called a kiss so much as a battering ram. oh, he can lie to himself and claim that he simply couldn't bear for diluc to keep talking, nor the prospect that diluc would somehow read rejection in his paralysis...but there is no softness or tenderness to the gesture. there is only terror and the ever-burning need to consume, as kaeya breathes in the air from diluc's lungs with the desperation of a drowning man on his last gasp of breath, before he rips himself away again. ]
I don't know if I have the luxury of choice. [ what choice does a pawn have in face of the players? what choice is a single soul in face of a million ghosts? and yet for all that kaeya is purported good with speech, his next words emerge mumbled and near inaudible, muffled as he tilts his forehead down to meet diluc's shoulder in an effort to avoid his gaze. ] But if I did...isn't it obvious who I've already chosen?
[ always, always. whatever scraps of himself he's managed to salvage from khaenri'ah's hold...they had always belonged to diluc from the start. ]
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and yet, there is a visceral ache that wells up in him. it pulls at the foundations, ferocious and insatiable and hot. it stings at the backs of his eyes, bruises each edge. it hurts. it hurts, in the way his teeth don't against diluc's as he yanks him down to him. it hurts, like the slip of the blade between the shoulder blades. it hurts, he thinks, like the absolute starvation he feels at the lack of his proximity.
like something vital has gone missing, only to return to him. ]
Kae, [ it's a wound, less a word. a name. it blisters in the dark and the wet of his lungs, catches up in the raw of his throat. it comes, like the notching of arrows, the upward drag of the sun. all of his life, diluc could be said to have never wanted for anything. he could be said to have never gone hungry, to have never gone unloved, to have never gone to bed with doubt he'd remain where he rested his head. but, he had never wanted more than the boy who turned up his door, who was planted as a root from a strange and windless land. he had never wanted more than him, who held in his palm the raw of his heart. who had long thought adoration did not wreath him in the country that took him in. but oh, how mistaken they all had been — as any child of the storms and gales, diluc sustained as much as he consumed. he razed through the absolutes of what was given to him, the parceling of language off the tip of kaeya's tongue. he reveled in it, the smatterings of kaeya's tremulous affections. he grasped for it, the rabbit-soft hold of kaeya's attentions. in the youngest of their years, it had been the way his eyes held him cautious. he waited for, each evening, the way his cool hands combed through the thick of his hair.
even now, each point of contact is selfishly hoarded. each inch of skin — secreted. for all that they drifted, there was never separation in truth to start. how is one to wander in darkness when they are locked in another's gravity? how is one to become truly lost, when the light of the other feeds them, as much as they might feed themselves? diluc will never be that child who wore the face of another's dreams again. he will never be lonesome, piecemealed — waiting, he thinks, for any answer to what he never would be (always could be) to begin. he will never be again blinded to what kaeya is, left to bloom in the sun he'd once taken from him. ]
If my taste is terrible, [ he starts again, limbs uncertain of their own ability to move as he settles a leg on the other side of kaeya's hip, ] then I've never been more glad for it.
[ it splinters over his teeth, shrapnel on the tongue. if the soft of his mouth bleeds, he cares little for the injury now. the words lay open, bared as the bones of young deer in the summer thaw. they bleach themselves as their soft pelts do against the heat of his body, the thinning of his breath.
there's no stumbling back from what he's done. they both bear the consequences of the recklessness he's brought, thrown to the teeth of things both darker and hungrier than they've ever been. his mouth tastes of copper as kaeya buries himself in the shadow of his shoulder, tastes of him as he settles his weight against him. keep him there, he thinks, as he uses the hand curved against his cheek to pull him up again. ]
Insufferable, [ he says, his quarry the shambles of his wretched vocabulary as he kisses the smooth skin of his forehead, down the firm bridge of his nose. each one is punctuation, words caught in the crossfire of his own will to bury them into kaeya's skin. ] An absolute fool. [ he catches the apple of a cheek, the grimacing edge of his mouth. ] Stubborn.
[ i love you, he tells him in the nick of his canine against the swell of his lip. i love you, he tells him, fumbling through the steps others before him have taken. i love you, he tells him, no more artful than the first time he'd kissed him.
he may be a fool, but there is nothing more foolish than missing the chance to show him, to understand him. to love him, all the same. ]