[ Haven’t they just? Captain Kaeya chasing the remnants of the Darknight Hero, who spends much of his evenings tailing him? It’s a stupid fanged thing, Diluc should think, caught forever in the cycle of its own body – its own justifications for remaining entangled with it. No matter how one tries to loosen the bind, it seems like it just means to remain. And Diluc might curtail such fanciful lines of poetry any other day, but the round of his thoughts run roughshod over themselves, scatter like light does across the glass at his feet. His body seems only to sympathize with it, the tension of his frame cut in strange places. His shoulders sag and his chest does not heave, but it is a near thing. Like a tomcat at a scrap, hackles raised, Diluc has no place to beat a retreat to lick at the wounds of his own hubris. He has no place to turn, ‘lest he’d fancy a dip in the lake. And with these stakes – he considers the weight of his claymore, the odd weight in his stomach. He considers the miserable itch, a burn down to the heart and the marrow.
What passes through Kaeya is an unknown to him, unreadable as any star chart that lingers in Teyvat. Once, such little expressions would be translatable to him. The turn of his eye, the cast of his lashes. The way his mouth would quirk at such an angle. The flex of his shoulder or the weight set at his hip. Kaeya, who’d once been – Diluc plants the tip of his claymore in the soft soil of the shore. He pushes himself up by the hilt, knows he needs to shoulder by or not all. Kaeya wouldn’t jail him, he knows, but it’ll come at a price. A piece of information. A new rumor. Something or other from the mouths of their networks. A favor spooled ‘round the fingers. A thread of some worn tapestry, eager to unwind. Perhaps then, he thinks, he’d be able to convince him to step aside. To pay him no further mind. To let Diluc hobble his way home and sleep off the oncoming ache in his joints, the leaden palm of drowsiness. ]
Sir Kaeya of the Ordo Favonius, [ Diluc says, voice a thin fissure of flame against the set of teeth, the tick of his jaw. At the nape of his neck he feels the beading of sweat, the sweet-sick smell of pheromones and something akin to ink. He leans harder against the hilt of his claymore, sets his shoulders square. He does not flinch away from the assessing gaze Kaeya casts, but rather stands (he tells himself) steady. ] Haven’t you more important leads to consider?
no subject
What passes through Kaeya is an unknown to him, unreadable as any star chart that lingers in Teyvat. Once, such little expressions would be translatable to him. The turn of his eye, the cast of his lashes. The way his mouth would quirk at such an angle. The flex of his shoulder or the weight set at his hip. Kaeya, who’d once been – Diluc plants the tip of his claymore in the soft soil of the shore. He pushes himself up by the hilt, knows he needs to shoulder by or not all. Kaeya wouldn’t jail him, he knows, but it’ll come at a price. A piece of information. A new rumor. Something or other from the mouths of their networks. A favor spooled ‘round the fingers. A thread of some worn tapestry, eager to unwind. Perhaps then, he thinks, he’d be able to convince him to step aside. To pay him no further mind. To let Diluc hobble his way home and sleep off the oncoming ache in his joints, the leaden palm of drowsiness. ]
Sir Kaeya of the Ordo Favonius, [ Diluc says, voice a thin fissure of flame against the set of teeth, the tick of his jaw. At the nape of his neck he feels the beading of sweat, the sweet-sick smell of pheromones and something akin to ink. He leans harder against the hilt of his claymore, sets his shoulders square. He does not flinch away from the assessing gaze Kaeya casts, but rather stands (he tells himself) steady. ] Haven’t you more important leads to consider?