[ you're awake? kaeya asks. he asks, as though diluc wasn't awake before the question tumbled off the curve of his lips. as if he hadn't stirred when kaeya himself did, roused in the slim hours before the dawn breaks golden across the warmth of kaeya's skin. he knows kaeya as kaeya knows him, knows him in the opening valley of wounds, the drag of his mouth against the thrum of his pulse. he knows him as the iron sting of blood in his throat, gutted to the root of all that he is and would be. all that he might have been, adorned in untarnished regalia. white as the nights in the snezhnaya, the mist off the mountainsides — diluc long thought of it as the hoar of long winters, the wetting of crops before the inevitable frost. the ache would always remain, but they would survive it. survive it, as diluc survived it. jagged in the way of his body, carved by the wither and rot — he is open to the way of kaeya's wandering hands. he stretches long and slow as kaeya idly maps, tells himself he trembles only to shake off the residual sleep that lingers at his periphery. he presses the tip of his nose against the dip of kaeya's throat, opens his his mouth against the cords of his neck. ]
Keep you at the winery, [ he says, without much pause. the hand at kaeya's back catches its thumb along the ridge of muscle, the border of a scar. he knows this one, as much as kaeya does not know the one that he plays his own fingers against. it had tormented him, once. it torments him still, in the quietest parts of himself that struggle up to the surface. but — diluc sighs, put-upon in a way that signals it is barely an effort at all. ] Plant you by the window. [ he'd be lovely, he thinks. he'd uproot the vineyard for kaeya, if he asked him. he'd situate him where he could see him, ensure he only ever knew the light. he'd love him, he thinks, just the same. with all the stupidity of a man who knows his death and still chases it, who would willingly bleed to know he bleeds too. it used to startle him. when they were separated, it used to hook beneath his skin as though the barbed ends of thorns. memories of him, his want to be close as they once were — knowing, without knowing then, that diluc was not diluc at all without him.
but, diluc continues. the words are a tangible weight, pressed close as they are to the skin. ]
no subject
Keep you at the winery, [ he says, without much pause. the hand at kaeya's back catches its thumb along the ridge of muscle, the border of a scar. he knows this one, as much as kaeya does not know the one that he plays his own fingers against. it had tormented him, once. it torments him still, in the quietest parts of himself that struggle up to the surface. but — diluc sighs, put-upon in a way that signals it is barely an effort at all. ] Plant you by the window. [ he'd be lovely, he thinks. he'd uproot the vineyard for kaeya, if he asked him. he'd situate him where he could see him, ensure he only ever knew the light. he'd love him, he thinks, just the same. with all the stupidity of a man who knows his death and still chases it, who would willingly bleed to know he bleeds too. it used to startle him. when they were separated, it used to hook beneath his skin as though the barbed ends of thorns. memories of him, his want to be close as they once were — knowing, without knowing then, that diluc was not diluc at all without him.
but, diluc continues. the words are a tangible weight, pressed close as they are to the skin. ]
Water you?