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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no subject
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. ]
no subject
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. ]
no subject
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. ]