[ perhaps he’d gotten his tongue around a quip, perhaps he hadn’t. even so, the progress is slow and the path becomes less familiar. diluc has always known mond’s topography, knows the ages of the buildings and often their interiors, but there is something in the quiet of himself that comes up steadily. if they are not heading to the barracks, if they are not heading to his home, then surely it is another quarter that they are heading to. an unknown to him in theory, but diluc finds in turn it both unsettling and disappointing that he has not known until now where he was precisely. centered toward the easy walk to the heart of town, the smooth-worn cobble, it strikes him now that it’d have never been this way in another time. another life from now, he thinks. one that he’d clung to as he’d clung to so many other things in the egg yolk pale of dawn before he’d been forced into waking.
kaeya had always been as the bright plumes of summer, the spades of dandelions caught yellow and green between the flash of white teeth. he’d always been acerbic, curious, infuriating in the way that he could lean into all of diluc’s fissures like ivy in the eaves. no matter how hard diluc pulled (and how could he?), what was kaeya and diluc and diluc and kaeya fell at his feet. impossible to untangle, impossible to be without the shadowed smudge of kaeya’s chill in the heat of his periphery – what was diluc left to do, but to seethe? he'd always been quick to anger – been so stubborn and so headstrong –, that wasn’t it an inevitability all along? falling back into old habits, impassioned to the mutilated roots of his father’s suffocating legacy, he’d turned over in the dark earth of his own body and come up new and wounded and ugly. he'd come up hungry to hurt, to be hurt, to hurt in ways he did not yet know how – and now, he thinks he hurts in the bleak of kaeya’s threshold. he thinks he bleeds, little needlepointed teeth, into the soft pink of his lungs. he thinks kaeya has never been messy, never been prone to leaving what he cherished in the open since he was young. he thinks it’d taken him so much trust for kaeya to show him the extent of his little collections, dried lamp grass and the spines of lightning bugs.
he'd always thought it strange then, that such a brilliant sliver of star could covet the light diluc never learned to envy. how odd, that he should want to keep what was in him already. how peculiar, diluc had thought, that the purpling edge of kaeya’s one eye was the same color that hung about the pale of the moon.
it makes sense now. of course it does. all the evenings kaeya had crawled into his bed, all the afternoons he’d watched for hours the crystalflies dance in the vineyards, all the countless seconds he’d leaned up against diluc in the barracks at night – how could he not wish for the light? how could he not hold each, liquid edge of it in the palm of his hands? how could he not drink from what diluc afforded him, affords him, would always keep affording him? how could he not turn his face to the sun? and still, diluc tries to steady himself. he tries to haul himself up enough to say that he is on his feet, closer than they had been since the night he’d cast his vision on the desk at the ordo, left all of himself (he wished, he hoped) in mond. it fills him with something that he does not put name to, but knows intimately. it surges through to the pit of his stomach, tightens in a wince as he turns his palm to the barren walls and rolls his eyes up. ]
You’ve never been messy, [ he grumbles, eventually, mouth parting around the fresher scent of kaeya’s apartment. it smells less of the perfume he wears, more of him, and diluc finds himself inhaling. a stray thought surfaces to remind him of what he’s doing before he snaps his mouth shut. for a moment, as he knows it no better to leave that comment lingering. ] Until I’ve had to haul you out of my tavern.
[ certainly. but, in that too there’s a familiarity. it scrapes at the edge of the absences here, makes them less awkward. less stark. diluc tells himself that he does it for his benefit alone, but he’s always known. with kaeya, there is no excluding. ]
no subject
kaeya had always been as the bright plumes of summer, the spades of dandelions caught yellow and green between the flash of white teeth. he’d always been acerbic, curious, infuriating in the way that he could lean into all of diluc’s fissures like ivy in the eaves. no matter how hard diluc pulled (and how could he?), what was kaeya and diluc and diluc and kaeya fell at his feet. impossible to untangle, impossible to be without the shadowed smudge of kaeya’s chill in the heat of his periphery – what was diluc left to do, but to seethe? he'd always been quick to anger – been so stubborn and so headstrong –, that wasn’t it an inevitability all along? falling back into old habits, impassioned to the mutilated roots of his father’s suffocating legacy, he’d turned over in the dark earth of his own body and come up new and wounded and ugly. he'd come up hungry to hurt, to be hurt, to hurt in ways he did not yet know how – and now, he thinks he hurts in the bleak of kaeya’s threshold. he thinks he bleeds, little needlepointed teeth, into the soft pink of his lungs. he thinks kaeya has never been messy, never been prone to leaving what he cherished in the open since he was young. he thinks it’d taken him so much trust for kaeya to show him the extent of his little collections, dried lamp grass and the spines of lightning bugs.
he'd always thought it strange then, that such a brilliant sliver of star could covet the light diluc never learned to envy. how odd, that he should want to keep what was in him already. how peculiar, diluc had thought, that the purpling edge of kaeya’s one eye was the same color that hung about the pale of the moon.
it makes sense now. of course it does. all the evenings kaeya had crawled into his bed, all the afternoons he’d watched for hours the crystalflies dance in the vineyards, all the countless seconds he’d leaned up against diluc in the barracks at night – how could he not wish for the light? how could he not hold each, liquid edge of it in the palm of his hands? how could he not drink from what diluc afforded him, affords him, would always keep affording him? how could he not turn his face to the sun? and still, diluc tries to steady himself. he tries to haul himself up enough to say that he is on his feet, closer than they had been since the night he’d cast his vision on the desk at the ordo, left all of himself (he wished, he hoped) in mond. it fills him with something that he does not put name to, but knows intimately. it surges through to the pit of his stomach, tightens in a wince as he turns his palm to the barren walls and rolls his eyes up. ]
You’ve never been messy, [ he grumbles, eventually, mouth parting around the fresher scent of kaeya’s apartment. it smells less of the perfume he wears, more of him, and diluc finds himself inhaling. a stray thought surfaces to remind him of what he’s doing before he snaps his mouth shut. for a moment, as he knows it no better to leave that comment lingering. ] Until I’ve had to haul you out of my tavern.
[ certainly. but, in that too there’s a familiarity. it scrapes at the edge of the absences here, makes them less awkward. less stark. diluc tells himself that he does it for his benefit alone, but he’s always known. with kaeya, there is no excluding. ]