[ old stories, old memories, old habits - diluc does not melt into the snagging of his fingers, the passive taming of his hair. but, there is a moment. there is a quiet, that settles in the ember of his body. it splutters for a moment, stings all along the rawness of his boundary, each edge that diluc wrenched free for his own. ]
I'm surprised you remember at all.
[ fever soft and sleep warmed, his words piece themselves apart against the dark curve of kaeya's throat. smooth as river rock, down soft as the birds who live amongst the snows - diluc thinks of the frost that'd held him through nights far from the remnants of what was once home. picked over, speared upon the thorn of his own ignorance, diluc had thought very little at all of survival or what that had meant. consumed by what he called hatred, brittle down the black of his bones, he'd hoped. he had hoped, in all of the rage that came from realization, that he might bury the body of his youth under the same rooms he had found it. pieced apart and forgotten, rotted down to the root - he thought it better to destroy himself before anything left was destroyed. it had been a momentary death that steadied him. it had been learning what kaeya too must have learned. it was knowing that no matter how he might find himself beyond kaeya's orbit - kaeya would always find his way back to his door.
a cosmic joke, diluc once told himself. a fate bound up in cruelty. no matter how much kaeya held the light to the darkness diluc had made himself apart, there was no halting inevitability. there was no slowing eventuality, the persistent gravity that kept them together. that would one day, too, send them both tearing each other apart. where kaeya went, so too did diluc. again and again, no matter what it was they could do - here they were. tumbled over into kaeya's bed, diluc's breaths a tangible shape against the cool of kaeya's skin, the ugliest parts of himself submit. they quiet in the fever that breaks within his ribs, that settles against the surface in place of any sense that could exist. why now, he would think. why now, would he find him?
why now, would he be led to the days that they would while the afternoons away, tucked against each other as though separation was never something to behold? pressed end-to-end, diluc once thought them a singular soul. he'd thought them once a body, cloven neat in two. he had thought, if he might press himself close enough, he might become him too. and what a fool he had been, still is - what a fool, his father had raised.
what a fool, who still lays in the cradle of kaeya's arms and thinks himself deserving to be held. to hold. to mark him as his own, in the way of his wrists against the broad of his back. against the smooth of his hair, corn silk and soft linen. he is still the most beautiful thing that diluc has ever seen. the glow of a northern star, a sacred wind beneath the blanket of the earth - kaeya had always seized him without pity. he seizes him now, no matter the verbal roll of his eyes and the flutter of his lashes against the mirrored wingbeat of kaeya's thrumming pulse.
diluc had once known kaeya as well as he'd known himself. and in here, in the drifting hours before the clawing light of dawn, he knows kaeya. briefly. ]
no subject
I'm surprised you remember at all.
[ fever soft and sleep warmed, his words piece themselves apart against the dark curve of kaeya's throat. smooth as river rock, down soft as the birds who live amongst the snows - diluc thinks of the frost that'd held him through nights far from the remnants of what was once home. picked over, speared upon the thorn of his own ignorance, diluc had thought very little at all of survival or what that had meant. consumed by what he called hatred, brittle down the black of his bones, he'd hoped. he had hoped, in all of the rage that came from realization, that he might bury the body of his youth under the same rooms he had found it. pieced apart and forgotten, rotted down to the root - he thought it better to destroy himself before anything left was destroyed. it had been a momentary death that steadied him. it had been learning what kaeya too must have learned. it was knowing that no matter how he might find himself beyond kaeya's orbit - kaeya would always find his way back to his door.
a cosmic joke, diluc once told himself. a fate bound up in cruelty. no matter how much kaeya held the light to the darkness diluc had made himself apart, there was no halting inevitability. there was no slowing eventuality, the persistent gravity that kept them together. that would one day, too, send them both tearing each other apart. where kaeya went, so too did diluc. again and again, no matter what it was they could do - here they were. tumbled over into kaeya's bed, diluc's breaths a tangible shape against the cool of kaeya's skin, the ugliest parts of himself submit. they quiet in the fever that breaks within his ribs, that settles against the surface in place of any sense that could exist. why now, he would think. why now, would he find him?
why now, would he be led to the days that they would while the afternoons away, tucked against each other as though separation was never something to behold? pressed end-to-end, diluc once thought them a singular soul. he'd thought them once a body, cloven neat in two. he had thought, if he might press himself close enough, he might become him too. and what a fool he had been, still is - what a fool, his father had raised.
what a fool, who still lays in the cradle of kaeya's arms and thinks himself deserving to be held. to hold. to mark him as his own, in the way of his wrists against the broad of his back. against the smooth of his hair, corn silk and soft linen. he is still the most beautiful thing that diluc has ever seen. the glow of a northern star, a sacred wind beneath the blanket of the earth - kaeya had always seized him without pity. he seizes him now, no matter the verbal roll of his eyes and the flutter of his lashes against the mirrored wingbeat of kaeya's thrumming pulse.
diluc had once known kaeya as well as he'd known himself. and in here, in the drifting hours before the clawing light of dawn, he knows kaeya. briefly. ]