[ They've acted this little play enough times before that Kaeya knows what to expect as he slowly strolls to where Mondstadt's local vigilante had last been spotted. Perhaps some trussed-up vagabonds ready to spend the night in the city's finest prison cells, or an alleyway devoid of any signs of life save for scorchmarks against the cobblestones that will have to be cleaned up before morning light. If he's lucky, he may even be able to catch the tail end of the Darknight Hero's battle from hidden within the shadows; the sight of all that passion and fury and flame so tightly tucked away beneath layers and layers of stiff rigidity these days, whirling in a dazzling dance of devastation, is well worth the price of admission.
It isn't often that his predictions miss the mark entirely. Usually he welcomes such interesting breaks from the expected, but Kaeya can't find any such thrill in him now as he stares at Diluc stumbling crooked against the walls, clumsy and ungainly in a way he hasn't seen in years.
He doesn't panic; the ability for shock had been numbed out of him long before he ever stepped foot in this strange land of grass and flowers, left behind in the sprawling underground caverns of his homeland. Ice instead of adrenaline floods through his veins, freezing time in this moment as he analyzes every detail of the tableau before him. His nose may not be able to detect pheromones, but it's perfectly functional otherwise, and what it tells him now is: no coppery tang of blood in the air, no stink of burnt flesh, just the distinct acrid smokiness from pyro magic and a faint spray of lakewater. The black clothing under the night sky hides any potential stains out of view, but the glow of moonlight casts those remarkable eyes into stark relief, a pair of embers blazing against the dark - sharp with irritation, no trace of the glazed confusion of a head wound to be found.
So then. An injury serious enough to send even the most reticent of warriors reeling on his feet - the aftermath of an electro attack perhaps, or a bad blow to the ankle or ribs - but nothing severe enough that needs to be addressed immediately. Nothing near fatal.
Time restarts. Kaeya breathes out the chill that had gathered in his lungs, vapor hanging in the air for a brief moment against his lips before it's blown away by the wind.
Let's see, how to handle this? He's almost tempted to save the poor guy some pride after an undoubtedly rough night and pretend he was never here, but then Diluc looks up and their gazes catch and hold, inevitably drawn even under the darkness of night. Ah well, mocking amusement it is then. Tucking his hands into his pockets, he casually saunters closer, a teasing smirk on his lips as his eye scans the other's body up and down for any further clues to the nature of his injuries. ]
Well, well. If it isn't the mysterious Darknight Hero, live in the flesh. [ The ridiculous moniker rolls off his tongue as if savoring a fine wine; Kaeya had spent weeks making sure the name caught on like wildfire amongst the citizens, and he considers every second well-spent. ] Such a shame I left my good cuffs at home.
[ 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?
Ah, but it seems all my leads have been so kindly taken care of by a mysterious stranger, so I'm free as a bird! What a lucky coincidence, don't you think?
[ He keeps his voice as playful as usual, but there's no mistaking how his expression sharpens as he takes in every detail of the scene. He may not be able to read Diluc's mind the way he used to, but body language is still body language, and right now it's telling him that there's a good chance the man will collapse halfway to the winery and probably be eaten by slimes if he lets him go now. Diluc's grandstanding might be enough to fool most, but Kaeya's seen him at his best and worst more times than he can count; he knows full well there's no way someone so proud and impassive, someone who wields a claymore as lightly as a feather, would ever lean on it for support unless he had no other choice.
Hidden deep within his pockets, his fingers curl with the long ingrained instinct to take the claymore's place, to be the one to catch Diluc when he stumbles. Once, he wouldn't have hesitated to rush over and shoulder Diluc's burdens as his own; once, Diluc would have dropped the facade of the invincible warrior and let him, putting up with the inevitable teasing with long-suffering good humor. He'd been so damn pleased with himself back then, glowing in smug self-satisfaction every time Diluc trusted him and him alone with all his struggles and vulnerabilities, his pride nearly enough to drown out the everpresent siren song of his guilt.
These days, the man's more liable to cut his hand off than take it should he offer it out for help. The ease of their childhood banter has long since been burnt to ashes; now, every conversation they have may as well be a chess game, each sentence carefully examined for traps and hidden meanings, each word planned ten steps ahead. No point in asking Diluc what the hell happened to him, not when it'll just get his hackles up, not when he's lost any right to express concern; no, the only way he can get what he wants is through being exactly what Diluc expects him to be, the coldhearted schemer and manipulator. ]
My, my. [ He raises an eyebrow and lets the smile on his face grow even wider, the crook of his mouth hooking up into a patronizing curl, shifting into a smug expression that multiple people on multiple occasions have informed him makes him look extremely punchable. ] Master Hero, are you drunk?
[ Obviously not - they both know Diluc abhors the taste of alcohol and would never indulge to the point of drunkeness, let alone before a fight. But short of regaining the man's trust - an impossibility for certain - riling him up is the best way he knows to make him slip all the little details that'll give him away. ]
[ all bluster and bluff and show for nothing, he thinks. there has never been a singular coincidence between kaeya and he, never a moment left up to wondering. what is chance when there is destiny written through the firmament? what is destiny when all diluc has learned from his wanderings that kaeya was never meant to be as his right-hand to start? what of them both, polar and binary stars, if not doomed to rip one another apart? for a long time, that'd been all that it was. it was all diluc could convince himself of. alive in the ashes he'd kindled, the embers of what he'd once wished for hot on the tongue — it'd taken more for diluc to realize what anger could do and what anger was. what it could become. and, as he considers the plant of his claymore in the soft sands beneath him, what it wasn't.
but, what good is it? here and now, any recollection and hope for retention slips from beneath him like ice underfoot. heel to the rime with no hope of friction, diluc digs down a little bit more. he doesn't know when to let go, not really. never really has, but he knows there's no immediate danger to be had beyond the damage to his own pride. owing something or other on another night. enduring whatever foolish interrogations kaeya had to satisfy. ]
Very convenient, [ he allots, voice pitching off-course. it rumbles through the grit of his lungs, rolls over itself. comes up thinner, fatigued. wisped. if he can just make it through this, he can turn in at angel's share. he can make it there. he can — his palms are slick on the hilt of his claymore. he feels his fingers tighten, instinctive. at the pale curve of his throat, his pulse jumps in tandem with the low thrum in his chest. it sounds like a low roar, caught in the space between his jaw and his ear. it circles there, tangible as he lifts his head to blink through the dampening curl of his hair.
in another life, it wouldn't have been like this. perhaps it would have been easier entirely. perhaps, right now, diluc veers unsteadily, he'd be asleep in his own bed. kaeya would come in like he used to, smelling of linen and skin. it'd be peaceful. kaeya would have roused him, despite all of his grumblings, and they would have sat on the balcony. early morning, he thinks. watching the crystal flies. kaeya would have never been rain-sodden in those little fantasies. he'd never have been a startling, blue nail through the roof of diluc's heart. he'd have just been him.
diluc wouldn't have wanted for anything at all and it takes a moment for him to refocus and regroup. kaeya is still circling. he's still wearing that kind of smile, fish-hooked for him. he knows the hard line of his expression, the little hold of his shoulders, but there's no hint of him. it's only this kaeya. this one, who turned up in the place of the one diluc had left.
diluc's mouth sets. the pale of its line is an uneven thing, cut through with the notch of his brow as he pins his focus on kaeya's shoulder. just enough to give him space to breathe. to try to spin the little pieces of his thoughts together for this one. ]
If you're looking for drunkards, there's plenty in the city. [ yes. there, he thinks. that's enough. that's something, he thinks, as he shakes through the heat that simmers in root of him. he pushes himself up, like a flame caught on the roll of kindling. if the momentum is there, he knows he has to make use of it. it won't last for long. ] I'd suggest you —
[ — start there, he means to finish. but, it's a touch difficult to get the words out when his palm finally gives and his grip finally slips and the whole structure of his balance is upended as easily as he'd gotten it going. ]
[ once upon a time, he'd been known throughout mondsdadt as the shadow to the ragnvindr heir's light, the moon to his sun, always trailing slightly behind like the cool breeze of autumn towards the end of the hot summer days. those who called him so usually said it with a curl of pity or derision, as if following in diluc's footsteps was somehow shameful instead of the best damn thing that's ever happened to him, as if he wouldn't have been content doing so for the rest of his life. how many nights had he spent sleepless staring up at the stars back then, torn between wishing desperately these halcyon days as diluc's right-hand man and confidante could last forever and wishing desperately that the people of his homeland could too one day look up and see something other than the ruined sky above?
it's been a few years and a lifetime since then, and destiny and their own choices have decreed them walk separate paths than the naive dreams of their youth. even so, the instant he sees diluc falter and begin to fall, kaeya's body moves forward on instinct as if no time's passed at all, bracing him on his back before he can hit the ground. for all their estrangement, he slides into diluc's space exactly as fluidly as he used to, quick dancing steps covering all the blind spots to the other's brute force, fitting as perfectly into the gaps left behind as water into a glass.
...the extra weight is new however, knocking the breath out of his lungs in a wheeze. ]
Oof! Just how many extra claymores are you packing under there?
[ much as he tries to act nonchalant, he can't quite keep the sharp concern out of his voice. diluc's always run warmer than most, but the searing line of heat weighing down his back feels less like the cozy blanket he remembers and more like a sweltering sauna, even through all their layers of clothing. with one hand supporting diluc so he doesn't flop off like a slug, he removes the glove from his other hand with his teeth and reaches up to place it against his forehead, hissing when it burns so hot he swears his palm will blister. ]
...seriously? [ it's a good thing no one is likely to stumble across the two of them in the middle of the night here, because his reputation as a smooth and silvertongued charmer will never recover from the way exasperation colors his tone now like a nagging grandmother. ] Master Hero, as incompetent and slow as we meagre knights are, I assure you we can fight nearly as well as a man with a fever high enough to melt the caps of Dragonspine. You could have just stayed in bed.
[ there'll be too many questions if he drags the both of them into the audience of gossiping drunks still lingering around angel's share; it's a bit of a distant walk, but the winery will be the best option to deposit diluc's flu-ridden body and leave him under the tender mercy of adelinde. he staggers one step forward, then two, and promptly changes his mind - his apartment it is! ]
[ diluc once liked fables, fairytales. he'd once poured over old tomes in late father's library, the dust and weathered pages like the scales of gossamer wings. he'd once thought kaeya was written out like one of those beings — spun into silks, blue as starsliver and eye awash with a burning star. what more could he be, he'd thought? a beautiful, discarded thing turned up in the storms like the cores of wind about the plates of mountains. snow, he'd thought, in the half-dark of the fingerling moon and the corpse of her sisters hung heavy in the belts about the heavens.
but, the world is only honey dark. the truth is an unknown. punished, for all it is pursued. and is diluc not guilty too? no matter how much he has dug through, the mud of warm bodies beneath the tread of his boots, hadn't it been him who'd cut loose? hadn't it been them both? sinners, in the way children are: bickering at the last scraps of something that mattered more than what was thrown between them as though a noose. and yet, it'd hurt. it hurt in the way that deep hurts do, teeth against the marrow and the bone. a thin sliver of a page cut across the pad of a finger. throbbing, for all that it seemed to narrow with age.
but, for all diluc thinks he deserves that earth that comes up to meet him (or perhaps it is the other way around?), it does not embrace him. instead, it is the artificial bloom of sweeter flowers. it is ice fields. snezhnaya, in all of its whiteness, cut through with the warmth of his blood. and yet, for all it should appeal to him, it scrapes along the roof of his mouth as though a brand. it pounds through the bulk of him, hammer-heavy and leaden. it aches in the way his stomach curls tight and weighted as though a musket ball.
he hates it, he thinks. hates this is what he's come back to. hates this is what he smells, when the touch is all he remembers it to be. in part. for a moment, seventeen and at the edge of windrise — kaeya's eye trained beyond him, even back then. how stupid had diluc been? how foolish? how — ]
You wish, [ he slurs into the crook of some body part. his boots scrape at the dirt, the toes marred by the sand at the shoreline. kaeya smells of the lake beneath all the fuss and pageantry. he smells briefly of himself as diluc tries to force himself upright, tries to find the world a more conscious blur of movement. but, for all that he tries and attempts and feels around at the air or the cobble(? when did that appear there?), it matters little. he only recognizes parts of mond here and there, back alleys and angel's share. some tight row of townhouses, at the western-edge.
he probably doesn't notice too much any breaks that kaeya gives himself or affords, half-stumbling through the city where kaeya's strength won't bear him. he'd always been the stronger of the two, diluc. the more stubborn. the more determined to reach the end goal, no matter how much it took from him. dignity, pride — whatever it was that the band of ne'er-do-wells threw at him. it didn't matter.
What, for you to be recuperating snugly in bed while I spend the evening indulging in your establishment's finest vintages? I can't imagine why I would possibly wish for that when I'm having so much fun bearing the - hruf - literal brunt of your delightful company instead.
[ the banter is familiar, if more acerbic than when they'd been young, the warmth and weight of diluc's body pressing down against his back even more so. it's hard, as they stumble their way through back alleys and empty streets, not to recollect the halycon days of yesteryear when they'd lean on each other just like this in exhausted satisfaction after a brutal day's training; it's harder still not to dwell on how diluc only trusts his attempts at aid now when he's near out of his mind with fever. funny the way the mind works sometimes, how even plastered back to front with near every inch of them touching, so close he can feel the heat of the other's breath shiver aross the fine hairs of his nape with each step they stake, the yawning chasm between them seems to grow ever wider.
perhaps it's this strange familiarity that causes his thoughts to come unusually sluggish this night, because it's not until they're facing the door of his apartment that the extremely obvious finally hits him that barbatos' underdeveloped tit, diluc is going to be inside his house. for all the rumors of his promiscuity (rumors he himself helped spread), the number of times anyone has crossed the threshhold into his domain can be counted on two fingers: once, when jean forgoed her usual courtesies in the wake of stormterror's initial attack, and the other, when he'd forgotten to return a library book and opened the door to find lisa on his sofa halfway through his finest bottle of wine. as for actually inviting someone in, willingly and of his own initiative? well, that's happened about as often as one less than how many working eyes he has left.
and now he's letting diluc in? diluc, of all people, who'll take one look at his blank walls and empty rooms and the way his apartment looks no different than the day he'd first moved in, barely furnished and devoid of life, and come to who knows what conclusion? what is he thinking? but then again, what choice does he have?
(he brushes away the voice that says that actually, between angel's share and his offices and the many hideouts he has around the city for clandestine meetings, he has quite a few choices available to him. bare though it may be, his apartment is at the very least well-stocked with supplies and a comfortable bed, and he isn't so cruel to make a sick man sweat out his fever in some rundown cot.)
all this flashes through his head as his hand lingers on the doorknob - but if there's one thing kaeya's ever been good at, it's covering up whatever interior dilemma he's going through with exterior charm. he only hesitates for a moment before tossing the door open, strolling in as casually as he can while lugging what feels like a brick wall over his shoulder. ]
Now I don't want to hear anything about needing to clean. Some of us aren't blessed with more maids and servants than we know what to do with.
[ 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. ]
Consider this me repaying the favor, then. In fact, I'd say I'm going above and beyond seeing as how I'm not just dumping you onto the cold, hard, cruel streets by yourself.
[ not that he would have ever expected diluc guiding him back to his place, not that he would have ever accepted it. he's almost never as drunk as he acts, after all, and no amount of wine could ever get him to forget that he cannot allow this man back into his home. he's reminded viciously of why, as they make their way further into the apartment and he lets diluc slide off his shoulders onto the uncomfortably stiff couch, the blaze of his hair blinding enough to leave afterimages dancing in his eye. diluc's always burned bright, too bright, so much so that the bare walls seem to almost reflect his glow - a fire crackling warmly in the hearth, a candle flickering in the window to welcome him home.
it's awful. it's hideous. it sets his skin to prickling a thousand ice shards deep until he wants nothing more than to rip it open and crawl out of himself to escape, a strange metallic taste coating his tongue as he fights back the urge to bare his teeth like some small cornered animal. he's always been a fast learner, after all, and this particular lesson he's had hammered into him twice over: to drift like a ghost within these walls, shedding no slip of his soul behind, because nothing in his life worth keeping ever stays. if, when, he's forced to leave mondstadt, he wants nothing that'll draw his thoughts back to the place he once called a home - no shelves stacked high with tawdry romance novels, no photos of idyllic memories lining the walls, no sweet scent of calla lilies and soft glow of jars full of crystalflies...no blazing sun in human form tempting his tired feet back to a place he never truly belonged.
it's temporary, he reminds himself, fingers restlessly dancing a coin through his knuckles to try to rid the excess energy flowing through him, the instinct to lash out or flee until he's safely cocooned in a shell of his own making again. it doesn't matter, none of this matters - diluc is sick, the unnatural flush of his cheeks and glaze of his eyes painting an all too familiar portrait, and kaeya isn't so coldhearted yet to abandon his, his, his whatever to sweating out a worsening fever in some dirty alleyway alone. of course the ideal would be dragging the stubborn fool to barbara's tender care, but the church is up a thousand flights of stairs and some people here don't have the muscles of a claymore-wielding ox! he tossed aside the concept of manly pride the day he decided to parade around in a half-open shirt, he's fine admitting when he's physically beaten! ]
I'll get you some water. [ unable to stop himself, he reaches out to place a hand over diluc's forehead, hissing dramatically when it burns so high he swears he can feel his palm blistering even underneath his glove. ] Just how the hell did you manage to sneak past Adelinde in your condition, anyway?
[ hadn't it always been? some vile thing reminds him, struck stark against the blackness at the inside of his ribs. like dampened flint, the ache of knowing the darkness won't break for what remains of them never quite leaves as much as it on some days subsides. a weight in the pocket of his memory, a dull sword in the hand, diluc knows these things to be more dangerous the sharpened edge of a knife. at least, diluc thinks hazily, you know when it'll cut you. you know when it will make you bleed.
it wouldn't be this nasty, opened thing that is left upon what kaeya has deigned to call furniture and left to ooze in the wreckage of his own stupidity and the overlay of days spent in the barracks. back then, kaeya had deposited him with the same sort of roughness. he'd never been as able to support him for long distances, made more for the grace of a ballroom and the true artistry of sword form. he'd always made an attempt. foolish as he was too, even knowing — diluc's eyes flutter shut, for just long enough to pull syllables together in the dry of his mouth. ]
Adelinde needn't keep tabs on everything I do anymore, [ diluc gives, grouses more. he bats at the hand that comes up to touch about his forehead, seconds off the mark. instead, what occurs is more of an impotent threat of a waving hand, fingers uncertain of what happened to their target. he heaves a breath, though it's more of a huff. for what he can manage to crystallize into thought, it is just more of the same. familiar, he'd guess now. old and flat and acerbic — ground down by the state of his body, the hot flush of his skin and the parting of his lips. ] Don't bother. [ and still, his eyes fix on the weighted swing of kaeya's earring, the bell curve of a distant star. he'd given it to kaeya on the cusp of seventeen, turned over to the warm cup of his palm. he'd thought of putting it in for him, thumbing against the lobe of his ear. peach flesh and downy, he'd thought of holding the delicate edge of unbitten skin and punching it through.
even now, the memory of it tumbles down the steps of his spine. it terminates at the pit of his stomach, heats him further from the inside, and with it too is the crowding sense of nausea that crests against the back of his teeth and comes out coughing. words, he thinks. defensive and wounded little things, more for his own darkness he cannot burn away through the use of his vision — the endless striking of matches. ]
You've already gone above and beyond, haven't you? [ so stubborn, his father would say. so stubborn, kaeya would have once told him. he feels the bite of sawdust at his back, the poor padding of whatever kaeya's dropped him on. he feels his gradual slip, though he attempts to blindly shove himself upright. ] I can manage.
[ kaeya doesn't want him here, not really. he doesn't want the charity of some misremembered repayment. he doesn't want this looming, the little teeth of his scent at the back of his throat and his lungs full of it. and still, and still — something instinctual and ugly simmers up behind his eyes. it looks out at kaeya, looks out at the gem that stays fixed in the dark of his hair like some guiding light. he'd put it there, he thinks. once upon a time.
once upon a time, he thinks as he leans forward and senseless, he'd have pressed his forehead to the ridge of his hip. he'd have stayed there until kaeya indulged him, idle strokes at the wild curl of his hair. he'd have told him he was tired and diluc would have fallen for it. again. he would have done anything for kaeya back then. the blue nail of his beauty lodged still in his heart, he'd have bore any ache for him. but — that was a lifetime ago, he thinks.
and still, the crown of his head somehow brushes forward enough just to touch him. half-aware and half-alert, knowing distantly that this the closest they been of diluc's own foggy volition, for whatever it's worth. ]
[ ah, he should be used to his own words coming back to haunt him by now, and yet...above and beyond. he huffs a laugh in lieu of any other response he could make, rusty like knives caught jagged against his throat. once, there had been nothing, nothing in all the world he would have considered above and beyond for this man; he would have climbed any mountain, thrown himself into any battle, broken the brittle bones of whatever bonds remained of his birthplace if diluc had ever so much as asked without hesitation or expectation. they'd both known it surely, that whatever air they breathed, victories they'd bleed, prices they'd pay would be shared between them as one life split in two - everything except the dirty little secrets kaeya kept so carefully hidden away, the very essence of his existence.
it could never have worked. he'd known it would only ever end in disaster the moment that vibrant spark held out his hand to a coiled viper lurking in the vineyard on a rainy night. even so, it still stings to face how far they've fallen, that a moment of respite on a far too uncomfortable couch for someone so sick he can barely walk could be considered above and beyond. ]
Clearly she does, if you're out wandering the night delirious with fever. [ what goes unspoken, what he swallows down, is that it had never been adelinde who had dragged diluc out of the rain and wind when he'd stubbornly insisted on flaking every little piece of himself off bit by bit in a futile hope to squeeze into the mold of his father's making. he doesn't think about a child-sized vision tucked away in a drawer, four years of staring at the scarlet glow within, waiting for it to fade, waiting for himself to fade with it. had diluc picked up this habit back then too, uncaring and unnoticing of whatever fever raged through him in the heat of the fires of vengeance? ] Unless your plan was to weaken enemy forces by coughing on them, I don't know what you were hoping to accomplish in this state.
[ diluc's forehead is hot, hot, hot against the palm of his hand - but it's the downturn of his eyes, the lean of his neck, the sway of his body just a fraction closer that sends a wave of heat coursing through his veins. it's a pale mockery of the intimacy they'd once shared, the last echo of the dying gasp of a corpse long since rotted...and yet, and yet. there had been a time once when he'd never known the warmth of the sun, of a smile, of a hand tight within his - when he'd never known he was cold all the way through because he'd never known there could be anything else but cold. he'd felt that encompassing numbness again that torrential night and the years that followed, a shell of ice encroaching around his heart to guard against any attempts to burn, forgetting what fire felt like at all beyond a sick scorching pain.
barbara had told him a story once, some church parable about a bird trapped in eternal night flying for a brief moment into a house filled with light and laughter before out the window into darkness again, left with nothing but the remnant of a memory of brilliant warmth. he isn't sure what lesson he's supposed to take away from the tale, but he suddenly feels a pang of sympathy for that tiny lost soul clinging onto a scrap of borrowed light, knowing it'll never see it again, questioning if it had ever been real to begin with. would it have been better to have never encountered that window into another life to begin with, to be forever blind but ignorant to the blindness?
he drops his hand from diluc's forehead, takes one step back and then another. no. best to leave any such thing forgotten. cryo and pyro are fundementally incompatible after all, and one of those elements has an overwhelming advantage over the other. attempting to close the distance would accomplish naught but melting him away until there's nothing left. ]
From the look of it, I highly doubt you can manage even the steps to my bedroom - but feel free to prove me wrong, Master Diluc. I could always use a laugh.
[ that's what he is, isn't he? the center of some cosmic punchline, soft laughter caught in milk teeth. kaeya, his lone eye upturning, but there is no kindness in its study. there is nothing in the frozen boundary, expanses diluc fought himself to cleave. if emptiness has a weight, he thinks it is measured in the way that kaeya's hand leaves. he thinks it is calculated in every step kaeya takes back, in the way he does not lean as diluc leans into the spaces forged (incidental, accidental) in-between. and for all that the hollow in diluc's body keens, the sound that rises from within is tamped down, chewed up, mangled. the corpse of it piecemeals against the solidifying angles of diluc's body, the warning glimmer of his teeth. it cuts through the heat of his mouth, a sharp little sound that fissures near kaeya's hip. cracks in an ice floe, the molten core of some accursed creature digging its way up to see —
shut up, he thinks he says. devoid of anything, devoid of the sweltering curl of a quip — a nasty repartee, kaeya'd always known how to press. he'd known to how to command. no wonder, diluc had thought so many months back, that kaeya took to where he left. no wonder, diluc had thought, that he'd become captain for all of diluc's bitterness. no wonder, diluc thinks even now as he wobbles his way up on unsteady legs, that kaeya is where he is not. existent, separate but never separated. a singular entity, tied together in ways that diluc once could not fully comprehend.
before, he would have never thought to argue with kaeya. he'd have listened. listened, as kaeya would have listened to him. he'd have torn down the sky if kaeya asked, built him a tower to the pitiless expanse of the divine. he'd have cut through sinew of nations, pulled from himself all his vitality to rest upon his hands. he thinks he'd have carved himself open, if kaeya wanted to rest. and now — it's all of his stubbornness that gets him half-way there. all of the pride that he knows one day will kill him. all of the ugliness of wanting, even now, to show kaeya he capable enough to do anything.
see, he says with the blind stumble of his body, see? he's strong enough. fine enough. strong enough. he's all that the diluc of his sound mind can prove, all that the instinct in him simmers at the challenge. see, he heaves, his arm bracing against something toward what he remembers the lay of these townhouses to be. he doesn't need it. he doesn't.
but, it doesn't mean he doesn't want it. it doesn't mean he does not dip into some odd memory, the moments where kaeya would shadow him as much as diluc would shadow him. it doesn't mean, for all of his momentary fever, that some portion of him still doesn't scrabble at the corpse dirt of his body and grieve. ]
[ the sound that claws its way out of diluc's throat hooks into all the little fissures in the ice of his heart, dragging him backwards through the years until he's fifteen again and hearing that same choked keen buried into shoulder. for a moment he can almost feel the coarse silk of sunset hair twined through his fingers, moonlight glowing down two slender bodies curled so tight it's impossible to tell where they end and begin, a shaky voice whispering shameful secrets into the shadowed curve of his neck. young and already straining under immense pressure, unaware of how impossibly heavier the weight on both their shoulders will soon become, they'd taken advantage of those clandestine nights alone to reveal all the dirty little confessions hidden so carefully from the rest of the world...or at least diluc had, cracking himself open to pull out all his soft and glistening insides, offering the tenderest parts of himself without hesitation into the gaping maw of a wolf in sheep's clothing.
he'd never been able to return the favor. no matter how often diluc had gently reassured him he'd always be there too, no matter how expectant and concerned those too large eyes would get, kaeya had always kept a firm lock on his innermost thoughts. oh, he'd let a few surface tensions slip here and there, but how could he bear to expose the ugly wraiths and twisted corruption burrowed so deeply in the shrivelled husk of his heart to someone so pure he shone? so instead, he'd offered what little he could, a place of respite and a promise: you never have to prove anything to me.
and look at them now. master crepus is dead, the knights of favonius fallen off their pedastal, yet diluc still pushes himself upright with a stubborn set to his jaw, the slow and heavy unfolding of his body putting into mind tetonic plates shifting to prepare for a volcanic eruption. so determined to prove to a man who once watched him cry over a turtle that...what, exactly? that he's strong enough to bear whatever burdens come his way? kaeya's never doubted that for a moment. that he doesn't need anyone's help, certainly not from a slippery liar who's betrayed his trust in the worst possible way? he's never doubted that either.
so much for his vow to be the one person who that wide-eyed boy with so many expectations would never have to work to impress. he'd feel ashamed if he hadn't known all along how little his word is worth. ]
Hey now, my couch can't be that uncomfortable. [ in fact it is, but they both know fulll well that has nothing to do with why diluc has painfully dragged himself to his feet, the flush of his cheeks blooming like bloodspray against the pale snow of his skin. for a moment, kaeya feels every bit the monster diluc must see him as these days, though his face shows nothing but exasperation as he ventures in closer again in case of any sudden falls. ] Don't make me tie you down just to get some fluids into you.
[ were diluc of clearer mind, it’d been easy to tell him it was terrible. his couch and whatever he filled it with, that is. for now, diluc considers kaeya lucky to receive the half-roll of his eyes and a sharp exhalation of doubt that colors itself in the weight of his own irritation and the heft of his own fatigue.
when he was young, he’d thought it different: no burden was too much to bear when kaeya was there, no dream so insurmountable. toeing at the shoreline, the grit of the sand at their skin, he’d thought no matter where kaeya went he would go with him. along the spines of mountains, against the shadow of the world – all the little promises diluc told him, curled up against his against body. a body, diluc had once thought, was too his own. how many moons had they spent pressed along the seams of one another, folded limb against limb as though the closing of correspondences? how many times had diluc thought – wildly perhaps – that if he might find the space inside him, that he’d draw upon his own sword to open it for him? for kaeya, who asked at first for nothing. for kaeya, who looked upon diluc with the bright northern star in his eye and shrunk from him as though kaeya had reason to shrink at all. for him, who still lingers at diluc’s elbow despite the acidity of their exchanges and the looming years that have left mottled the lay of their skin. he no longer knows what kaeya feels like, sounds like when he wakes in the morning. he no longer knows what kaeya does throughout his days in full. he no longer knows if he snores, if he pushes the cold soles of his feet against the bodies he must share space with now.
he no longer knows and diluc does not bend for it, but the ache of its absence wrenches from the pit of his stomach. it simmers against the curve of his shoulders, the flushed curve of his throat. it beads there, a blistering roll of fire. in its wake, it consumes all the sense and patience that diluc knows that he should own. back then, kaeya had steadied him, tempered him. he’d kept the ember of diluc’s grand ambitions softer, more controlled. and his emotions – ah, it’d been so easy, hadn’t it? what diluc had known, kaeya had too. and now?
it is stubbornness, that drags him into kaeya’s room. into kaeya’s bed. he doesn’t think about it, being potentially played again, until his body is half-draped over the mattress and the poor cut of the fabric scrapes against his chin. smells like him, his brain supplies regardless. smells good. and it is that stupidity and his instincts that settle gladly into bed. ]
Like you managed me across town? [ he slurs out, after a long moment. there’s a little swell of victory in his chest regardless, in the way it puffs up a little no matter how ridiculous. even if this is what he was aiming for, diluc had at least provided no laughter for him. not like that. and not like this, as he hauls himself back up enough to messily unlace his own boots and resolve that he’d be gone by morning anyhow.
[ for all that he's often accused of hedonism, usually by the man in front of him now, kaeya is a master at denying himself the comforts in life he truly wants - and that he wants them at all, for that matter. oh, he'll splurge on fine wines and fashionable clothes, but it's all hollow in the end; he still comes home at night to an empty apartment, still smiles distantly through any attempts at close companionship, still avoids the roads that would take him in view of dawn winery when he can. some might call it self-flagellation, but that would imply an awareness of longing to begin with, an awareness he suffocates with drink and distractions whenever it surfaces; what is want, what is desire to a mere mirror of a man, a glittering shell of lies that only reflects whatever it needs to pass as human? khaenri'ans may dream of dreaming, but kaeya dreams of dreaming of nothing at all.
and so he doesn't let his eyes linger on the way diluc is splayed across his bed like an offering, on how the moonlight softens his silhouette into some shimmering fragment of a dream he refuses to remember. he doesn't think about how the banked embers of diluc's eyes and the fire of his hair make his coarse sheets suddenly seem cozy and inviting, or how the last time he'd felt warm at all had been the night before that terrible birthday, tucked tightly together in a bed they'd both long outgrown. when he kneels down to help diluc fumble with his boots, he feels no urge to press his face into his lap to see if his heat will finally melt the ice cold that's settled deep into his bones; when he takes his overcoat, he ignores the way the residual warmth of the other's body curls around his fingertips.
it's fine. it's easy. it's nothing he's not used to by now. he's always been quick on the uptake at whatever he puts his mind to, and that includes putting his mind to having no mind at all. ]
Hey, I got you here in one piece, didn't I? With how much you and that sword of yours weigh, you should consider yourself lucky I didn't just dump you on the street. Ahhh, my back is so sore, how am I going to work tomorrow under the weight of all this ingratitude....
[ the banter is automatic, his mouth running on reflex while his brain tries desperately not to focus on how strange yet familiar the sight in front of him is. someone divested of their heavy outer attire should by logical assumption appear smaller, yet diluc clad in only a single layer somehow manages to fill the entire room with his presence, as if all that extra adornment and armor had merely been holding him back. for the first time, kaeya curses the overly observational instincts trained into him since birth; try as he might, he can't stop himself from cataloguing all the little changes from the years past, the scars now visible on diluc's hands, the extra freckles dotting his neck, how his shoulders are now so much broader than they'd been as a teen...
and that's his cue to leave. he stands abruptly, running a hand through his hair. ]
Well, I'm going to take a shower so I can soothe my aching back. Try not to drool all over my pillows, won't you?
[ ah, but dreams are always like that: torn asunder by the winds of change, battered by the tides of time. each one — little hopes and little promises — caught between milk teeth as though fresh primroses, stuck to the skin as though the residual sap of wayward pines. once upon a time, long ago and in the middle of the night, kaeya had blown in as though any rainstorm. he'd tumbled into diluc's bed and diluc's arms as though he'd meant to fit there, as though he'd never any other choice. pieced together as though the seams of letters, tucked as though dandelion seeds in the palms for prayer, diluc had known back then that no matter what it was that kaeya did to him — and perhaps, diluc knows now, that that wish was childish too.
once upon a time, he'd thought kaeya to be a slip of the moon. a far shore that he might dip his hands into, might hold close to him and know the light he saw as if he were not serving only to reflect his own. back then, he'd never thought he'd assumed, that he'd stifled, that he never burned so hotly that he forbid any hope for kaeya to grow. in the soft soil of their mutual body, how much of it was diluc's own? how much of it did kaeya wish to hold from himself? how much does diluc still not know? how much, he thinks hazily as kaeya pulls off his boots and helps him out of his coat, did diluc just guess he deserved?
none of it. those are the words coiled in the pit of his stomach, caught about his teeth. he was never— diluc wants to slur out a retort, something quick off the tongue and witty too, but the profound ache that surges up from his core leaves him reeling in the next breath, a dull throb of want of anything to quiet the heat of his body a signal to what little is left of himself to grumble out some assent to the word of "showering" and the implication of returning again as he fights (futilely) the slip of his own elbows to faceplant against the bed. and really, the only portion at all that saves him? it is the implication. that kaeya, despite all his huffing, lingers in diluc's space. that kaeya watches him, as much as diluc watches him. that, in the grey down of his scattering thoughts, there is the fact his hands felt as steady as he'd remembered them.
and with that, diluc thinks as he shoves his face deeper into the mess he's already made of kaeya's bed (never mind that he fills his lungs with the scent of what kaeya is), that is enough of those thoughts. ]
[ one of the few luxuries kaeya allows himself in his apartment is his shower, hooked directly to an underground furnace so the water comes out piping hot whenever he wants. strictly speaking, it's not exactly necessary; the resistance granted by his vision coupled with his naturally low body temperature means that a cold shower feels rather balmy to him and a lukewarm one positively toasty, but he's always been addicted to greedily absorbing whatever heat he can get, as if letting enough of it sink through his skin will somehow melt the core of ice he carries in his heart.
tonight, he cranks the heat up to maximum. it's hardly comfortable, the near boiling temperature of the water already too much for anyone normal, let alone a cryo wielder, but he bears the torrent without flinching. drops of molten fire sluice down his body, burning away filth and grime and extraneous thought, leaving searing trails of white-hot pain behind; when they lick across his burn scars, he presses a hand to them closer, as if trying to recapture that startling bright moment of their creation. if he closes his eye, he can almost pretend he's back there now - rain dripping down his hair, the acrid stench of smoke and scorched flesh in his nostrils, an agony that has nothing to do with his wounds pulsing in his chest, a surety and a relief that the next blow would finally put a permanent end to all his lies.
(he has dreams still, of burning to death in a magnificent blaze borne of betrayal and broken promises. he wishes he could call them nightmares.)
the pain is a penance and a reminder, that regardless of whatever strange circumstances has led to diluc being in his bed once more, they can never go back to what they were - their bridges have been burnt, their paths diverging with no hope of reconnection. it's a reminder he tells himself often to no avail; for all that he attempts to treat their relationship as one of near strangers the way diluc clearly wants, his feet still take him to angel's share every night as if a man possessed, his silvertongue still teases and mocks before he can coil it back. it's pathetic, really, how he vies for whatever attention he can scrape like the child he never was, and yet no amount of pain or willpower or self-loathing recriminations get him to stop.
it's tempting to just stay in the shower until he either boils alive or diluc sneaks out the window and they can pretend this never happened, but he's already gotten more than one complaint about his amount of water consumption. it's when he's drying his hair that he realizes that one, because he normally sleeps shirtless he completely forgot to bring in a change of clothes aside from his usual pair of loose pants, and two, the shower also must have washed away all of the omega pheromones he'd applied, leaving only the neutral scent of a godless creation with no secondary gender behind.
well, it's not like diluc hadn't already known he's unnatural to this land, or that he can possibly do anything to drive the man away further. with a grimace, he slips on his undershirt - it's a bit too tight to be comfortable sleepwear, but it's not like he's going to be falling asleep any time soon with diluc still in his room anyway. taking a deep breath, he pastes a smile on his face before heading back into his bedroom, plunking a glass of water on the stand beside diluc's head. ]
Drink. If you need anything, I'll be on the couch - but don't expect service to the extent of Adelinde's chicken soup, I can't work miracles.
[ and how might he sneak like this? for all that diluc rebuffed him, there is little to do for what has stricken him this night. induced to the misery of his own cycles, forced through the escalation and the slivering pain that comes with it, it is all that he might do to lie here and be silent. it is all that diluc might do to lie here and pull in each shuddering lungful of what he remembers. what he could not forget. and so, muddled and murky as the bottom of each lakebed, diluc is awash. he loses, to the sound of the tap turning on and turning off. loses, as he turns his head against the sheets and the sees the world about kaeya's silhouette distort. tilt.
drink, he hears kaeya tell him. if you need anything— ]
Shut up, [ a reedy little thing, pressed through the teeth and coiled about the neck. he is eleven again. he is fourteen, sixteen, eighteen — bleeding out in the cold, bleeding out on his back. he is every single liquid night between. foolhardy and sanctimonious, his bitterness like the ice that webbed between his fingertips. that burned diluc hotter than any fire he'd ever wielded. his skin had mottled as bruised, tender lamp grass. it'd blackened as soot. it took fissures of his milk-washed skin, grooved it as though silty shores. warm in the springtime, he'd thought of kaeya's hand cut through the blackness of the fertile filament. pain became a pinhole, little bursts of stars each time he'd touched it. then, since — now, as his arm climbs upward. it flings its heft along the bridge of kaeya's shoulder, yokes him tight around the neck.
there is no recognition. how could there be, for all that his body burns and seethes for what he sees as lost? reduced to the smoldering edge of primal instinct, hair matted and skin damp, what little of diluc is left buries itself against the dark crescent of his throat. pulled down to the nest of kaeya's bed, pulled into the vice of diluc's arms, he noses against the thrumming pulse. and with each shallowed, labored breath he tastes the scent of pine. he tastes himself in the mingling of what he knows is right. and for what ugliness he is in his own right, it bears itself to kaeya's judgement, blind and pitiless.
diluc had long since told himself that he'd hated himself for trying to hate him at all. he'd long since told himself there was nothing left to forfeit, nothing left to lose. he'd told himself, but the body is mindless. it throbs as though an opened wound, fingers pushed against the worst of it. and diluc throbs too with it, ceaseless in the way he rubs his wrists along the linen. comforts himself amid the visceral anxiety that seizes him in the aftermath, knowing there is something amiss and yet — he turns the scarred skin to kaeya's back. strokes, trembling and uneven. ]
[ the gritted order to shut up is expected - the arm around his neck is not, and for a wild moment kaeya thinks this is it, diluc's finally had enough and decided to strangle him. an extremely understandable desire, all things considered, which is why he's taken by surprise when instead he's dragged down into the bed, landing face first into a fluffy mass of fiery hair. it's the shock, clearly, that saps all the strength from his limbs, leaving him loose and pliant; it has nothing to do with the warmth suddenly surrounding him, sinking into the marrow of his bones. it has nothing to do with how with every breath, he inhales the scent of aged oak and smoked wood and something deeper, something his noseblind self can't identify but wraps around the corroded strings of his heart to tug him home. it has nothing to do with the way his skin lights up like fireworks, every nerve ending screaming with scalding oversensitivity, forcibly reminding him it's been who knows how long since the last time he's allowed anyone to really, truly touch him.
no, he knows exactly how long it's been. down to the month, the day, the second.
it's the sensation of hands stroking up and down his back, lightning shuddering through his spine, that shocks his brain back into gear. a really slow, stupid, rusty gear, because the only thought that echoes in his head is - what the fuck? what the fuck? since when is clinginess a side effect of fever - okay, sure, they'd cuddled like this whenever they'd gotten sick as children, but there's been an unspoken agreement that it was more for kaeya's sake what with him coming down with far more severe cases than diluc's minor colds, and anyway that had been years and a lifetime ago. it doesn't explain diluc's behavior now, when he's more likely to want a porcupine in his bed than his estranged sworn brother.
for a moment, as diluc's nose presses into the hollow of his neck and nearly gives him a heart attack, he's struck with a sudden memory from a much younger time - rifling through pages of tawdry romance novels under the covers, trying to learn how to imitate the behavior of these strange secondary genders, wondering what it would feel like to truly....
...but no, that can't be it. diluc's biological clock is as strict as the man himself, and a quick check of his internal schedule confirms he's not due for a rut any time soon. that, and there haven't been any of the usual signs of pre-rut recently - no frequent wrinkling of his nose, no subtle leaning back from anyone in scent range, no irritated snap in his voice, none of the little tics that tell kaeya he can skip going to angel's share for the next few nights. (and if anyone asks, not that anyone ever will, he only keeps close track of these details because it's part of his duties as mondstadt's unofficial spymaster, thanks so much. he would know every alpha's rut schedule down to the day if it mattered, it just so happens that none of them aside from the infamous darknight hero are important. )
and anyway, diluc being in rut still wouldn't explain all of...all of this. even reduced down to a base bundle of instincts searching for a warm source of pheromones to embrace, he still wouldn't reach out to kaeya - not to this uncanny creature from a godless land, who produces no scent save for the dead decay of the darkness that lurks underground. without the mask of his artificial pheromones, any alpha in rut should be treating such an aberrant twist of nature with revulsion, not drawing them close enough that every breath they take shares the same inhale and exhale of air.
no, there's only one logical reason for this. clearly, the fever has boiled diluc's brain to the point where it's clouded his memories and caused him to hallucinate. ]
Diluc. [ for once, kaeya's voice is devoid of humor in his worry, as he pushes himself up on his arms to give the other some space, patting his cheeks lightly to try to draw his attention. ] Do you know where you are? Do I need to call Barbara?
[ how funny that he should think that, that each little sign and symbol of his cyclical ruts would never show up outside of bounds of expectation. was it not already obvious that the fatui had no issue sinking to exciting new lows? was it not obvious already that kaeya was the only one that he could stand? in all the time he spent back in mond, kaeya was the only one who could bring him back to the fold. he knew better than anyone who it was that sent kaeya stringing along in the days up to his ruts. he'd known better than anyone, that no one else would dare (could dare) to come close when he found himself in the highlands - covered to the wrists in oil and ichor, singed and sunburnt.
it'd been miserable, with or without him. no matter how far he would roam, the knifepoint of his accursed hormones would wedge into the marrow. it would seize him by the throat, make nuisance of itself in the days and weeks up to. nothing could soothe him. nothing could quiet him. nothing. no herbs or salves or tinctures. no potions, made with the newest ingredients or the newest ideas behind them. and so: what fools would those self-named fools be, if not wield the known against him? what a fool kaeya must be too, to think he doesn't already know. ]
'm in bed, [ diluc tells him. slurs, more so. affront cuts through the fever bright of his expression, the dark of his eyes narrowed against the separation kaeya has stupidly carved. like this, he looks every bit an animal. matted lashes and matted curls, the flush on his skin is high and fresh as blood. beneath kaeya's hand, there is no thought of whether it burns. instead, it is instinct that drives the want to press into his palm. to turn his head and nuzzle up against it, only stoppered by the threads of something more coherent underneath it all. barely, that is. he still blinks and leans in, the process both noticeable and unbearably slow. ] Told you to shut up.
[ he did, didn't he? he tries for it again, but his tongue feels weighted in his mouth. he feels as though a bruise, the darkened skins of stone fruits punctured through. he breathes, lips parted. he hooks the rough crescent of his nails against kaeya's shoulder, bites their edges all along the linen that barely covers it. in his head, he thinks he makes a compelling argument to lie back down and stop asking him pointless questions. he thinks maybe he is seventeen years old, a handful of weeks before everything was upended. he thinks maybe they are in the barracks. he thinks maybe that kaeya's hair is warm and rain-damp. he thinks, without thinking at all. all the little ruinous pieces of himself, shaken out across their makeshift bedclothes. what a bother. ]
Well, at least the fever hasn't robbed you of your sense of humor. That would be a real tragedy, considering how little of it you have left.
[ even so, between the glaze in his eyes and the syrup slur of his voice, it's clear that diluc's nowhere near his right mind, the fever likely fogging his reality until he no longer remembers that what he holds in his arms is no treasured companion but a viper poised to strike. only the cruelest of monsters would let this joke play out any further; what kaeya needs to do now is to get him out. out of his bed, out of his apartment, out into the hands of someone who actually knows what they're doing and won't lead to any further regrets come morning.
it should be easy. he's always both prided and loathed himself for his ability to detach from any given situation, to shield himself with a smile and let his words carry away whatever semblance of sentiment he might have. it should be easy to simply pull away from the circle of diluc's arms, to laugh it off as another embarrassing story he'll tell in the future, to escape this pretense at intimacy that threatens to choke him with all the weight of memories long aged to dust. it should be easy...and yet when diluc turns the flush of his cheek into his hand, all the steel of kaeya's prized self-control melts away like so much frost beneath the sun. when diluc presses down on his shoulders, he can only helplessly follow, a star dropping in free-fall to the inescapable gravity of the sun.
ah. of course it wouldn't be easy. somehow he's forgotten who he really is, that he's selfish, selfish, selfish to the core. ]
If you want someone quiet, you should let me take you to Barbara.
[ 'let' - as if diluc in this state could possibly stop anything kaeya wanted to do, as if he's ever needed permission to interfere in his life. it's just another excuse, another way to deflect the blame, another way to manipulate the narrative so that this - taking advantage of a sick man to play out a pale mockery of the only thing he's ever truly wanted - can somehow not be entirely his fault when reality sets back in. ]
Don't recall you ever being funny, [ diluc mumbles, eyelids heavy. he turns his face against the bare of kaeya's palm, in all ways sluggish and unthinking. when he was young, kaeya used to stroke his hair until he fell asleep. he used to stroke through kaeya's too, the color of it so deep and so blue that it seemed the sheen off a bird's wing. diluc thought of him as a raven back then, a fiercely intelligent and curious thing. shadowed against the sun, brighter than anything — it'd took so long to earn his trust. but, as with all that diluc had ever thought he'd come to know, it'd been only that he was naive. that he was foolish. that he was an idealistic, ignorant thing that circled a peacock of a man in his cloak of new stars.
but, for now, the diluc who should care about distance and time and the inevitable agony of what has already come to be — he curls deep in the dark, instinctive parts of himself. he nests down in the cool of kaeya's body. he breathes, slow and deep. ]
Throw your back out then, [ he continues, more for the sake of something he no longer can hold the shape of in his hands. all that ache in his body finds a singular point of pressure and releases, a slow and trickling valve. the scent of kaeya numbs it down, makes it so that he is able to speak. ] See if I care.
[ and it is only when kaeya lies back down, when he allows diluc the grace to shove himself back up against him as though they are again seventeen and reckless in all of their youth and wonder, does diluc find some glimmering edge of relief. cool as the backs of dragonspine, open as the maw of caverns so deep that they know no end or boundary. ] Dumbass.
Strange, because I seem to recall a certain someone laughing so hard at my jokes that grape juice came out of his nose. More than once, I might add.
[ it's always a risk bringing up what they had been once upon a time, always a good chance he'll drive the wedge between them further by tainting what had once been pure sunlight with all the exposed shadows surrounding him now. usually he does so with a vicious vindictiveness, wielding their shared memories like jagged knives, hooking them under diluc's skin so he can't brush them away no matter how much pain it may cause them both. tonight, curled together as if they're still children yet untouched by the world's cruelties, the words come out with a rueful fondness instead, a trickle of vunlerability leaking out of his chest in this twilight moment that seems separated from time.
they say old habits die hard, but kaeya's never understood the phrase. he's broken himself of his old habits time and time again, ground them into the dust of fossils and forgotten bones; first all the little things that made him other, the tics and traits he carried with him from the land of the dead, and then again with all that made him ragnvindr until only a handful in the city ever remembered he had once hailed from the same home as the famed dawn winery's young master. now, as his hands start automatically stroking through diluc's hair without any input from his brain, he thinks he finally gets just what they mean. it's as if he's stepped back in time...
...but not, he realizes, to the halcyon days of their teenage youth when they'd been less two indivduals and more one soul split across halves. he's too aware for that - the rough silk of hair snagging against his calluses, the heat of his breath against his neck - too conscious of what had once been pure instinct. no, this reminds him of a time much further back than that, to the early months when they'd first met: him, tense and terrified of this strange creature in his bed, reaching out to hide the way his hands trembled, ready to leap back at the slightest sign of rejection. he remembers thinking diluc's hair had been the softest thing he'd ever touched - that diluc had been the softest thing he'd ever seen, round cheeks and huge eyes and bright smile, holding his heart out on a platter as if the world wasn't filled with monsters ready to gobble it up. he remembers thinking how his homeland would have eaten this boy alive, how easy it would be to crush this tender spring flower between the hard ice of his grasp, simultaneously repulsed and intrigued by the thought - caught between the awe of a crystalfly landing gently on his palm and the urge to rip off its wings so it could never leave. he remembers thinking: i will destroy you.
in some ways, he thinks now, he never really did grow up from that feral and frozen child of his past. diluc's hair is still the softest thing he's ever touched. he still wants to both crush their bones together until every part of them intersects, and to run as fast and far as he can and never come back. and look, he was right, wasn't he? it turns out they destroyed each other, in the end. ]
Call me what you want, but I'm still smart enough to stay home when I'm too sick to walk straight. [ a lie, and both of them know it. a lie twice over, because if he were anywhere near smart, he'd have put an end to this long ago. ]
[ 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. ]
[ everything is warm, warm, warm, the scent of summer in his nose, the heat of sunlight leaking through his arms - and then diluc speaks, words rumbling against the hollow of his throat, and the world freezes over again.
ah. how stupid of him, to be swept away by childhood nostalgia, to lose himself in the memory of a bed where their breaths had risen and fallen in sync, their dreams shared as one in their sleep, their hearts thudding to the same beat. how stupid, to forget for a moment what he's become in diluc's eyes - a snake in the grass, a cuckoo in the nest, a wolf who had thrown aside its sheepskin without hesitation to devour its prey. it's an old familiar hurt, every time he's hit with how little the man thinks of him now, yet he's still never prepared for just how much it burns.
and of course he deserves it. and of course it's no surprise...but even so, he wonders, how can diluc accuse him of not remembering their past when every brick that builds the foundation of the crumbling shell of his sense of self is baked in those sunlit memories, when the mortar that barely holds the mess together is scraped from the ashes of the cremation of their relationship? how can he not know that it's the memory of that firebright child whose love blazed like an inferno, of the only time he'd ever been happy, that steadies his blade as he wields it against his own people and keeps him rooted in a city that has no place for him? cavalry captain, wine aficionado, mondstadtian dog - isn't it obvious that even four years gone, what's left of him that doesn't belong to khaenri'ah is wholly, solely, entirely his so much so that cutting him open would find a glass replica of diluc's heart instead of his own?
you're the one who left, he wants to spit out, the words rising up like jagged knives in his throat. you're the one who doesn't want to remember. his hands stiffen with the urge to strike back, to retaliate until they're both left bleeding from reopened scars, until he marks diluc so deeply that he'll never be able to forget him again without breathing for the pain of it; it's only the fact that even he isn't low enough to attack a sick man that keeps him still rather than shoving what now feels like a live coal in his arms away. ]
Ah, Master Diluc, I remember everything about you. [ he regrets his words immediately; even layered in superficial charm, even dripping with saccharine honey, there's still too much sincerity in the sentence for comfort. scrambling to recover himself, he huffs a laugh, forcing a cheeky smile to his face. ] At least all the embarrassing parts, anyway.
soft in the way of his heart, soft in the heat of his lungs – soft, when the world itself fixed upon a solid axis and never deigned to spin. diluc had once been an ignorant thing, blessed by the ironies of the gods that knew not his name or his prospects. he had once been naïve, had once been young and full of dreams, never to be listened to. it was that foolishness, that harboring of sin without meaning, that had allowed him the illusion of sweetness to begin with. spun as though hay into each golden thread, it was the specter of love that filled him with hubris. it was the concept that each fantasy, so bright and unconditional and saccharine, was possible as they were everlasting. held tight in the fist of his heart, tucked firm beneath the tongue, he’d have given kaeya anything. he’d have given him the eggshell of the moon, would have carved from his body the strength of his limbs. but now, he dreams only of the evenings that kaeya would listen. tucked to his chest, hollowed to house him as the chamber of seashells, diluc used to think that kaeya would always fit against him just like this: two stars pinned and binary, balanced as they were fixed. where diluc went, so too did kaeya. and where kaeya went, so too did diluc.
it was no use. no matter how he tried to run, how he tried to forget – how might he have? how might diluc have ground his nails into the flesh of himself, pulled free the boundary that was his before kaeya? even without the heat of his vision, the dawning turn of kaeya’s lone eye, there was nothing in him that he could find. no matter how deeply he dug, no matter how far he’d turned from the sun, the darkness reflected only the truth. no matter how far he might go, he would always be there. in the rain dampened parts of himself, in the death of his father, in the fragmentations of his mother held in the moments before he’d awoken to what diluc could call you - it would always be him. ]
Better I didn't accept your drink, then. [ it is a grumble of a thing, tossed across the sheets. for all that diluc knows not at all the clear lines between sincerity and fabrication, he knows there is no mask in the way kaeya’s hands tighten. instinctive, in the basest parts of himself, he scents the tension that holds no fruit. he thinks how blessed he might have been, to be loved. he thinks he’d never deserved the concept. diluc thinks, as all that is selfish and asleep in him inches up against him stubbornly, that he’d always been a perilous thing – forever pushing his luck, thinking he’d never snuffed out the light that was turned over to his sun-bleached palms.
he huffs out once against kaeya’s shoulder, against the cool curve of his throat. the crown of his head rubs once against the dark underside of his chin, potent for all that it is display. he knows – will know – kaeya cannot discern the meaning in it. blind in this way, a fortune – was there ever any wonder that diluc came to be this because of him? ]
[ there's a niggling itch in the back of his mind as diluc's hair brushes against his chin, a faint alarm that he's missing some vital piece of a puzzle he isn't even aware he's trying to put together. it's not a feeling he's particularly accustomed to or enjoys, he who pries secrets out of most everyone he meets as easily as breathing. but then again, he's always been a little bit stupid when it comes to diluc, since the moment they'd met - clumsy in spite of his grace, foolish in spite of his wits, bewildered and blinded in face of someone who burned too bright beyond his comprehension.
beneath his palms and between his fingers and below his head, the softness of diluc's hair reminds him of fur, some wild creature huddling for warmth against the night. rabbit fur, he remembers suddenly, a memory of far younger days - there'd been a family of them once, nibbling on the vine-ripened grapes of the winery. he'd stared at their twitching noses stain purple as they gorged themselves on the winery's lifeblood, thought about the tenderness of their flesh, the fragility of their bones, about proving his worth to this strange foreign family so they'd keep him around a little longer. it'd taken but a moment to stun the rabbits with his slingshot and then slit their throats with a dagger - mother and child, the kits no bigger than the palm of his hand. the fur had been soft then too, blood pumping out to drench his fingers dark copper; he'd watched the light leave their eyes without any emotion save a vague curiosity on how easily a life could be exstinguished - at least not until he'd looked up and saw the expression on diluc's face, felt that same sick swooping sensation of having missed some crucial step somewhere.
his father had taught him survival at any cost, how to freeze his heart into unwavering ice. the courts had taught him how to lie with a smile, to navigate the seas of conversation without compass or map. diluc had taught him, step by fumbling step, how to be human.
it's the only lesson he's never been able to master. little wonder then, that when diluc left, he'd taken some vital part of kaeya's soul with him - the part that borrowed his flame to burn away the darkness, the part that desperately believed if he pretended hard enough he could do better, be better. and now the rabbit has grown into a wolf, snarling and snapping at the world around him - and yet here he still is, lain in bed with the bloodsoaked hunter he knows far better than to trust, so really who's the stupid one here?
(it's him. it's always been him.) ]
Since when have you accepted anything from me at all? [ too sharp, too personal, and he nearly bites his tongue off, hoping against hope diluc won't remember any of this once his fever's broken. he tightens his grip against diluc's hair and back, curls towards him in some mocking imitation of an attempt at a protective embrace - as if there's anything out there diluc needs protecting from more than the one in his bed. ] Go to sleep, Diluc.
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It isn't often that his predictions miss the mark entirely. Usually he welcomes such interesting breaks from the expected, but Kaeya can't find any such thrill in him now as he stares at Diluc stumbling crooked against the walls, clumsy and ungainly in a way he hasn't seen in years.
He doesn't panic; the ability for shock had been numbed out of him long before he ever stepped foot in this strange land of grass and flowers, left behind in the sprawling underground caverns of his homeland. Ice instead of adrenaline floods through his veins, freezing time in this moment as he analyzes every detail of the tableau before him. His nose may not be able to detect pheromones, but it's perfectly functional otherwise, and what it tells him now is: no coppery tang of blood in the air, no stink of burnt flesh, just the distinct acrid smokiness from pyro magic and a faint spray of lakewater. The black clothing under the night sky hides any potential stains out of view, but the glow of moonlight casts those remarkable eyes into stark relief, a pair of embers blazing against the dark - sharp with irritation, no trace of the glazed confusion of a head wound to be found.
So then. An injury serious enough to send even the most reticent of warriors reeling on his feet - the aftermath of an electro attack perhaps, or a bad blow to the ankle or ribs - but nothing severe enough that needs to be addressed immediately. Nothing near fatal.
Time restarts. Kaeya breathes out the chill that had gathered in his lungs, vapor hanging in the air for a brief moment against his lips before it's blown away by the wind.
Let's see, how to handle this? He's almost tempted to save the poor guy some pride after an undoubtedly rough night and pretend he was never here, but then Diluc looks up and their gazes catch and hold, inevitably drawn even under the darkness of night. Ah well, mocking amusement it is then. Tucking his hands into his pockets, he casually saunters closer, a teasing smirk on his lips as his eye scans the other's body up and down for any further clues to the nature of his injuries. ]
Well, well. If it isn't the mysterious Darknight Hero, live in the flesh. [ The ridiculous moniker rolls off his tongue as if savoring a fine wine; Kaeya had spent weeks making sure the name caught on like wildfire amongst the citizens, and he considers every second well-spent. ] Such a shame I left my good cuffs at home.
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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?
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[ He keeps his voice as playful as usual, but there's no mistaking how his expression sharpens as he takes in every detail of the scene. He may not be able to read Diluc's mind the way he used to, but body language is still body language, and right now it's telling him that there's a good chance the man will collapse halfway to the winery and probably be eaten by slimes if he lets him go now. Diluc's grandstanding might be enough to fool most, but Kaeya's seen him at his best and worst more times than he can count; he knows full well there's no way someone so proud and impassive, someone who wields a claymore as lightly as a feather, would ever lean on it for support unless he had no other choice.
Hidden deep within his pockets, his fingers curl with the long ingrained instinct to take the claymore's place, to be the one to catch Diluc when he stumbles. Once, he wouldn't have hesitated to rush over and shoulder Diluc's burdens as his own; once, Diluc would have dropped the facade of the invincible warrior and let him, putting up with the inevitable teasing with long-suffering good humor. He'd been so damn pleased with himself back then, glowing in smug self-satisfaction every time Diluc trusted him and him alone with all his struggles and vulnerabilities, his pride nearly enough to drown out the everpresent siren song of his guilt.
These days, the man's more liable to cut his hand off than take it should he offer it out for help. The ease of their childhood banter has long since been burnt to ashes; now, every conversation they have may as well be a chess game, each sentence carefully examined for traps and hidden meanings, each word planned ten steps ahead. No point in asking Diluc what the hell happened to him, not when it'll just get his hackles up, not when he's lost any right to express concern; no, the only way he can get what he wants is through being exactly what Diluc expects him to be, the coldhearted schemer and manipulator. ]
My, my. [ He raises an eyebrow and lets the smile on his face grow even wider, the crook of his mouth hooking up into a patronizing curl, shifting into a smug expression that multiple people on multiple occasions have informed him makes him look extremely punchable. ] Master Hero, are you drunk?
[ Obviously not - they both know Diluc abhors the taste of alcohol and would never indulge to the point of drunkeness, let alone before a fight. But short of regaining the man's trust - an impossibility for certain - riling him up is the best way he knows to make him slip all the little details that'll give him away. ]
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but, what good is it? here and now, any recollection and hope for retention slips from beneath him like ice underfoot. heel to the rime with no hope of friction, diluc digs down a little bit more. he doesn't know when to let go, not really. never really has, but he knows there's no immediate danger to be had beyond the damage to his own pride. owing something or other on another night. enduring whatever foolish interrogations kaeya had to satisfy. ]
Very convenient, [ he allots, voice pitching off-course. it rumbles through the grit of his lungs, rolls over itself. comes up thinner, fatigued. wisped. if he can just make it through this, he can turn in at angel's share. he can make it there. he can — his palms are slick on the hilt of his claymore. he feels his fingers tighten, instinctive. at the pale curve of his throat, his pulse jumps in tandem with the low thrum in his chest. it sounds like a low roar, caught in the space between his jaw and his ear. it circles there, tangible as he lifts his head to blink through the dampening curl of his hair.
in another life, it wouldn't have been like this. perhaps it would have been easier entirely. perhaps, right now, diluc veers unsteadily, he'd be asleep in his own bed. kaeya would come in like he used to, smelling of linen and skin. it'd be peaceful. kaeya would have roused him, despite all of his grumblings, and they would have sat on the balcony. early morning, he thinks. watching the crystal flies. kaeya would have never been rain-sodden in those little fantasies. he'd never have been a startling, blue nail through the roof of diluc's heart. he'd have just been him.
diluc wouldn't have wanted for anything at all and it takes a moment for him to refocus and regroup. kaeya is still circling. he's still wearing that kind of smile, fish-hooked for him. he knows the hard line of his expression, the little hold of his shoulders, but there's no hint of him. it's only this kaeya. this one, who turned up in the place of the one diluc had left.
diluc's mouth sets. the pale of its line is an uneven thing, cut through with the notch of his brow as he pins his focus on kaeya's shoulder. just enough to give him space to breathe. to try to spin the little pieces of his thoughts together for this one. ]
If you're looking for drunkards, there's plenty in the city. [ yes. there, he thinks. that's enough. that's something, he thinks, as he shakes through the heat that simmers in root of him. he pushes himself up, like a flame caught on the roll of kindling. if the momentum is there, he knows he has to make use of it. it won't last for long. ] I'd suggest you —
[ — start there, he means to finish. but, it's a touch difficult to get the words out when his palm finally gives and his grip finally slips and the whole structure of his balance is upended as easily as he'd gotten it going. ]
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it's been a few years and a lifetime since then, and destiny and their own choices have decreed them walk separate paths than the naive dreams of their youth. even so, the instant he sees diluc falter and begin to fall, kaeya's body moves forward on instinct as if no time's passed at all, bracing him on his back before he can hit the ground. for all their estrangement, he slides into diluc's space exactly as fluidly as he used to, quick dancing steps covering all the blind spots to the other's brute force, fitting as perfectly into the gaps left behind as water into a glass.
...the extra weight is new however, knocking the breath out of his lungs in a wheeze. ]
Oof! Just how many extra claymores are you packing under there?
[ much as he tries to act nonchalant, he can't quite keep the sharp concern out of his voice. diluc's always run warmer than most, but the searing line of heat weighing down his back feels less like the cozy blanket he remembers and more like a sweltering sauna, even through all their layers of clothing. with one hand supporting diluc so he doesn't flop off like a slug, he removes the glove from his other hand with his teeth and reaches up to place it against his forehead, hissing when it burns so hot he swears his palm will blister. ]
...seriously? [ it's a good thing no one is likely to stumble across the two of them in the middle of the night here, because his reputation as a smooth and silvertongued charmer will never recover from the way exasperation colors his tone now like a nagging grandmother. ] Master Hero, as incompetent and slow as we meagre knights are, I assure you we can fight nearly as well as a man with a fever high enough to melt the caps of Dragonspine. You could have just stayed in bed.
[ there'll be too many questions if he drags the both of them into the audience of gossiping drunks still lingering around angel's share; it's a bit of a distant walk, but the winery will be the best option to deposit diluc's flu-ridden body and leave him under the tender mercy of adelinde. he staggers one step forward, then two, and promptly changes his mind - his apartment it is! ]
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but, the world is only honey dark. the truth is an unknown. punished, for all it is pursued. and is diluc not guilty too? no matter how much he has dug through, the mud of warm bodies beneath the tread of his boots, hadn't it been him who'd cut loose? hadn't it been them both? sinners, in the way children are: bickering at the last scraps of something that mattered more than what was thrown between them as though a noose. and yet, it'd hurt. it hurt in the way that deep hurts do, teeth against the marrow and the bone. a thin sliver of a page cut across the pad of a finger. throbbing, for all that it seemed to narrow with age.
but, for all diluc thinks he deserves that earth that comes up to meet him (or perhaps it is the other way around?), it does not embrace him. instead, it is the artificial bloom of sweeter flowers. it is ice fields. snezhnaya, in all of its whiteness, cut through with the warmth of his blood. and yet, for all it should appeal to him, it scrapes along the roof of his mouth as though a brand. it pounds through the bulk of him, hammer-heavy and leaden. it aches in the way his stomach curls tight and weighted as though a musket ball.
he hates it, he thinks. hates this is what he's come back to. hates this is what he smells, when the touch is all he remembers it to be. in part. for a moment, seventeen and at the edge of windrise — kaeya's eye trained beyond him, even back then. how stupid had diluc been? how foolish? how — ]
You wish, [ he slurs into the crook of some body part. his boots scrape at the dirt, the toes marred by the sand at the shoreline. kaeya smells of the lake beneath all the fuss and pageantry. he smells briefly of himself as diluc tries to force himself upright, tries to find the world a more conscious blur of movement. but, for all that he tries and attempts and feels around at the air or the cobble(? when did that appear there?), it matters little. he only recognizes parts of mond here and there, back alleys and angel's share. some tight row of townhouses, at the western-edge.
he probably doesn't notice too much any breaks that kaeya gives himself or affords, half-stumbling through the city where kaeya's strength won't bear him. he'd always been the stronger of the two, diluc. the more stubborn. the more determined to reach the end goal, no matter how much it took from him. dignity, pride — whatever it was that the band of ne'er-do-wells threw at him. it didn't matter.
it doesn't matter now. ]
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[ the banter is familiar, if more acerbic than when they'd been young, the warmth and weight of diluc's body pressing down against his back even more so. it's hard, as they stumble their way through back alleys and empty streets, not to recollect the halycon days of yesteryear when they'd lean on each other just like this in exhausted satisfaction after a brutal day's training; it's harder still not to dwell on how diluc only trusts his attempts at aid now when he's near out of his mind with fever. funny the way the mind works sometimes, how even plastered back to front with near every inch of them touching, so close he can feel the heat of the other's breath shiver aross the fine hairs of his nape with each step they stake, the yawning chasm between them seems to grow ever wider.
perhaps it's this strange familiarity that causes his thoughts to come unusually sluggish this night, because it's not until they're facing the door of his apartment that the extremely obvious finally hits him that barbatos' underdeveloped tit, diluc is going to be inside his house. for all the rumors of his promiscuity (rumors he himself helped spread), the number of times anyone has crossed the threshhold into his domain can be counted on two fingers: once, when jean forgoed her usual courtesies in the wake of stormterror's initial attack, and the other, when he'd forgotten to return a library book and opened the door to find lisa on his sofa halfway through his finest bottle of wine. as for actually inviting someone in, willingly and of his own initiative? well, that's happened about as often as one less than how many working eyes he has left.
and now he's letting diluc in? diluc, of all people, who'll take one look at his blank walls and empty rooms and the way his apartment looks no different than the day he'd first moved in, barely furnished and devoid of life, and come to who knows what conclusion? what is he thinking? but then again, what choice does he have?
(he brushes away the voice that says that actually, between angel's share and his offices and the many hideouts he has around the city for clandestine meetings, he has quite a few choices available to him. bare though it may be, his apartment is at the very least well-stocked with supplies and a comfortable bed, and he isn't so cruel to make a sick man sweat out his fever in some rundown cot.)
all this flashes through his head as his hand lingers on the doorknob - but if there's one thing kaeya's ever been good at, it's covering up whatever interior dilemma he's going through with exterior charm. he only hesitates for a moment before tossing the door open, strolling in as casually as he can while lugging what feels like a brick wall over his shoulder. ]
Now I don't want to hear anything about needing to clean. Some of us aren't blessed with more maids and servants than we know what to do with.
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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. ]
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[ not that he would have ever expected diluc guiding him back to his place, not that he would have ever accepted it. he's almost never as drunk as he acts, after all, and no amount of wine could ever get him to forget that he cannot allow this man back into his home. he's reminded viciously of why, as they make their way further into the apartment and he lets diluc slide off his shoulders onto the uncomfortably stiff couch, the blaze of his hair blinding enough to leave afterimages dancing in his eye. diluc's always burned bright, too bright, so much so that the bare walls seem to almost reflect his glow - a fire crackling warmly in the hearth, a candle flickering in the window to welcome him home.
it's awful. it's hideous. it sets his skin to prickling a thousand ice shards deep until he wants nothing more than to rip it open and crawl out of himself to escape, a strange metallic taste coating his tongue as he fights back the urge to bare his teeth like some small cornered animal. he's always been a fast learner, after all, and this particular lesson he's had hammered into him twice over: to drift like a ghost within these walls, shedding no slip of his soul behind, because nothing in his life worth keeping ever stays. if, when, he's forced to leave mondstadt, he wants nothing that'll draw his thoughts back to the place he once called a home - no shelves stacked high with tawdry romance novels, no photos of idyllic memories lining the walls, no sweet scent of calla lilies and soft glow of jars full of crystalflies...no blazing sun in human form tempting his tired feet back to a place he never truly belonged.
it's temporary, he reminds himself, fingers restlessly dancing a coin through his knuckles to try to rid the excess energy flowing through him, the instinct to lash out or flee until he's safely cocooned in a shell of his own making again. it doesn't matter, none of this matters - diluc is sick, the unnatural flush of his cheeks and glaze of his eyes painting an all too familiar portrait, and kaeya isn't so coldhearted yet to abandon his, his, his whatever to sweating out a worsening fever in some dirty alleyway alone. of course the ideal would be dragging the stubborn fool to barbara's tender care, but the church is up a thousand flights of stairs and some people here don't have the muscles of a claymore-wielding ox! he tossed aside the concept of manly pride the day he decided to parade around in a half-open shirt, he's fine admitting when he's physically beaten! ]
I'll get you some water. [ unable to stop himself, he reaches out to place a hand over diluc's forehead, hissing dramatically when it burns so high he swears he can feel his palm blistering even underneath his glove. ] Just how the hell did you manage to sneak past Adelinde in your condition, anyway?
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it wouldn't be this nasty, opened thing that is left upon what kaeya has deigned to call furniture and left to ooze in the wreckage of his own stupidity and the overlay of days spent in the barracks. back then, kaeya had deposited him with the same sort of roughness. he'd never been as able to support him for long distances, made more for the grace of a ballroom and the true artistry of sword form. he'd always made an attempt. foolish as he was too, even knowing — diluc's eyes flutter shut, for just long enough to pull syllables together in the dry of his mouth. ]
Adelinde needn't keep tabs on everything I do anymore, [ diluc gives, grouses more. he bats at the hand that comes up to touch about his forehead, seconds off the mark. instead, what occurs is more of an impotent threat of a waving hand, fingers uncertain of what happened to their target. he heaves a breath, though it's more of a huff. for what he can manage to crystallize into thought, it is just more of the same. familiar, he'd guess now. old and flat and acerbic — ground down by the state of his body, the hot flush of his skin and the parting of his lips. ] Don't bother. [ and still, his eyes fix on the weighted swing of kaeya's earring, the bell curve of a distant star. he'd given it to kaeya on the cusp of seventeen, turned over to the warm cup of his palm. he'd thought of putting it in for him, thumbing against the lobe of his ear. peach flesh and downy, he'd thought of holding the delicate edge of unbitten skin and punching it through.
even now, the memory of it tumbles down the steps of his spine. it terminates at the pit of his stomach, heats him further from the inside, and with it too is the crowding sense of nausea that crests against the back of his teeth and comes out coughing. words, he thinks. defensive and wounded little things, more for his own darkness he cannot burn away through the use of his vision — the endless striking of matches. ]
You've already gone above and beyond, haven't you? [ so stubborn, his father would say. so stubborn, kaeya would have once told him. he feels the bite of sawdust at his back, the poor padding of whatever kaeya's dropped him on. he feels his gradual slip, though he attempts to blindly shove himself upright. ] I can manage.
[ kaeya doesn't want him here, not really. he doesn't want the charity of some misremembered repayment. he doesn't want this looming, the little teeth of his scent at the back of his throat and his lungs full of it. and still, and still — something instinctual and ugly simmers up behind his eyes. it looks out at kaeya, looks out at the gem that stays fixed in the dark of his hair like some guiding light. he'd put it there, he thinks. once upon a time.
once upon a time, he thinks as he leans forward and senseless, he'd have pressed his forehead to the ridge of his hip. he'd have stayed there until kaeya indulged him, idle strokes at the wild curl of his hair. he'd have told him he was tired and diluc would have fallen for it. again. he would have done anything for kaeya back then. the blue nail of his beauty lodged still in his heart, he'd have bore any ache for him. but — that was a lifetime ago, he thinks.
and still, the crown of his head somehow brushes forward enough just to touch him. half-aware and half-alert, knowing distantly that this the closest they been of diluc's own foggy volition, for whatever it's worth. ]
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it could never have worked. he'd known it would only ever end in disaster the moment that vibrant spark held out his hand to a coiled viper lurking in the vineyard on a rainy night. even so, it still stings to face how far they've fallen, that a moment of respite on a far too uncomfortable couch for someone so sick he can barely walk could be considered above and beyond. ]
Clearly she does, if you're out wandering the night delirious with fever. [ what goes unspoken, what he swallows down, is that it had never been adelinde who had dragged diluc out of the rain and wind when he'd stubbornly insisted on flaking every little piece of himself off bit by bit in a futile hope to squeeze into the mold of his father's making. he doesn't think about a child-sized vision tucked away in a drawer, four years of staring at the scarlet glow within, waiting for it to fade, waiting for himself to fade with it. had diluc picked up this habit back then too, uncaring and unnoticing of whatever fever raged through him in the heat of the fires of vengeance? ] Unless your plan was to weaken enemy forces by coughing on them, I don't know what you were hoping to accomplish in this state.
[ diluc's forehead is hot, hot, hot against the palm of his hand - but it's the downturn of his eyes, the lean of his neck, the sway of his body just a fraction closer that sends a wave of heat coursing through his veins. it's a pale mockery of the intimacy they'd once shared, the last echo of the dying gasp of a corpse long since rotted...and yet, and yet. there had been a time once when he'd never known the warmth of the sun, of a smile, of a hand tight within his - when he'd never known he was cold all the way through because he'd never known there could be anything else but cold. he'd felt that encompassing numbness again that torrential night and the years that followed, a shell of ice encroaching around his heart to guard against any attempts to burn, forgetting what fire felt like at all beyond a sick scorching pain.
barbara had told him a story once, some church parable about a bird trapped in eternal night flying for a brief moment into a house filled with light and laughter before out the window into darkness again, left with nothing but the remnant of a memory of brilliant warmth. he isn't sure what lesson he's supposed to take away from the tale, but he suddenly feels a pang of sympathy for that tiny lost soul clinging onto a scrap of borrowed light, knowing it'll never see it again, questioning if it had ever been real to begin with. would it have been better to have never encountered that window into another life to begin with, to be forever blind but ignorant to the blindness?
he drops his hand from diluc's forehead, takes one step back and then another. no. best to leave any such thing forgotten. cryo and pyro are fundementally incompatible after all, and one of those elements has an overwhelming advantage over the other. attempting to close the distance would accomplish naught but melting him away until there's nothing left. ]
From the look of it, I highly doubt you can manage even the steps to my bedroom - but feel free to prove me wrong, Master Diluc. I could always use a laugh.
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shut up, he thinks he says. devoid of anything, devoid of the sweltering curl of a quip — a nasty repartee, kaeya'd always known how to press. he'd known to how to command. no wonder, diluc had thought so many months back, that kaeya took to where he left. no wonder, diluc had thought, that he'd become captain for all of diluc's bitterness. no wonder, diluc thinks even now as he wobbles his way up on unsteady legs, that kaeya is where he is not. existent, separate but never separated. a singular entity, tied together in ways that diluc once could not fully comprehend.
before, he would have never thought to argue with kaeya. he'd have listened. listened, as kaeya would have listened to him. he'd have torn down the sky if kaeya asked, built him a tower to the pitiless expanse of the divine. he'd have cut through sinew of nations, pulled from himself all his vitality to rest upon his hands. he thinks he'd have carved himself open, if kaeya wanted to rest. and now — it's all of his stubbornness that gets him half-way there. all of the pride that he knows one day will kill him. all of the ugliness of wanting, even now, to show kaeya he capable enough to do anything.
see, he says with the blind stumble of his body, see? he's strong enough. fine enough. strong enough. he's all that the diluc of his sound mind can prove, all that the instinct in him simmers at the challenge. see, he heaves, his arm bracing against something toward what he remembers the lay of these townhouses to be. he doesn't need it. he doesn't.
but, it doesn't mean he doesn't want it. it doesn't mean he does not dip into some odd memory, the moments where kaeya would shadow him as much as diluc would shadow him. it doesn't mean, for all of his momentary fever, that some portion of him still doesn't scrabble at the corpse dirt of his body and grieve. ]
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he'd never been able to return the favor. no matter how often diluc had gently reassured him he'd always be there too, no matter how expectant and concerned those too large eyes would get, kaeya had always kept a firm lock on his innermost thoughts. oh, he'd let a few surface tensions slip here and there, but how could he bear to expose the ugly wraiths and twisted corruption burrowed so deeply in the shrivelled husk of his heart to someone so pure he shone? so instead, he'd offered what little he could, a place of respite and a promise: you never have to prove anything to me.
and look at them now. master crepus is dead, the knights of favonius fallen off their pedastal, yet diluc still pushes himself upright with a stubborn set to his jaw, the slow and heavy unfolding of his body putting into mind tetonic plates shifting to prepare for a volcanic eruption. so determined to prove to a man who once watched him cry over a turtle that...what, exactly? that he's strong enough to bear whatever burdens come his way? kaeya's never doubted that for a moment. that he doesn't need anyone's help, certainly not from a slippery liar who's betrayed his trust in the worst possible way? he's never doubted that either.
so much for his vow to be the one person who that wide-eyed boy with so many expectations would never have to work to impress. he'd feel ashamed if he hadn't known all along how little his word is worth. ]
Hey now, my couch can't be that uncomfortable. [ in fact it is, but they both know fulll well that has nothing to do with why diluc has painfully dragged himself to his feet, the flush of his cheeks blooming like bloodspray against the pale snow of his skin. for a moment, kaeya feels every bit the monster diluc must see him as these days, though his face shows nothing but exasperation as he ventures in closer again in case of any sudden falls. ] Don't make me tie you down just to get some fluids into you.
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when he was young, he’d thought it different: no burden was too much to bear when kaeya was there, no dream so insurmountable. toeing at the shoreline, the grit of the sand at their skin, he’d thought no matter where kaeya went he would go with him. along the spines of mountains, against the shadow of the world – all the little promises diluc told him, curled up against his against body. a body, diluc had once thought, was too his own. how many moons had they spent pressed along the seams of one another, folded limb against limb as though the closing of correspondences? how many times had diluc thought – wildly perhaps – that if he might find the space inside him, that he’d draw upon his own sword to open it for him? for kaeya, who asked at first for nothing. for kaeya, who looked upon diluc with the bright northern star in his eye and shrunk from him as though kaeya had reason to shrink at all. for him, who still lingers at diluc’s elbow despite the acidity of their exchanges and the looming years that have left mottled the lay of their skin. he no longer knows what kaeya feels like, sounds like when he wakes in the morning. he no longer knows what kaeya does throughout his days in full. he no longer knows if he snores, if he pushes the cold soles of his feet against the bodies he must share space with now.
he no longer knows and diluc does not bend for it, but the ache of its absence wrenches from the pit of his stomach. it simmers against the curve of his shoulders, the flushed curve of his throat. it beads there, a blistering roll of fire. in its wake, it consumes all the sense and patience that diluc knows that he should own. back then, kaeya had steadied him, tempered him. he’d kept the ember of diluc’s grand ambitions softer, more controlled. and his emotions – ah, it’d been so easy, hadn’t it? what diluc had known, kaeya had too. and now?
it is stubbornness, that drags him into kaeya’s room. into kaeya’s bed. he doesn’t think about it, being potentially played again, until his body is half-draped over the mattress and the poor cut of the fabric scrapes against his chin. smells like him, his brain supplies regardless. smells good. and it is that stupidity and his instincts that settle gladly into bed. ]
Like you managed me across town? [ he slurs out, after a long moment. there’s a little swell of victory in his chest regardless, in the way it puffs up a little no matter how ridiculous. even if this is what he was aiming for, diluc had at least provided no laughter for him. not like that. and not like this, as he hauls himself back up enough to messily unlace his own boots and resolve that he’d be gone by morning anyhow.
easy. ]
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and so he doesn't let his eyes linger on the way diluc is splayed across his bed like an offering, on how the moonlight softens his silhouette into some shimmering fragment of a dream he refuses to remember. he doesn't think about how the banked embers of diluc's eyes and the fire of his hair make his coarse sheets suddenly seem cozy and inviting, or how the last time he'd felt warm at all had been the night before that terrible birthday, tucked tightly together in a bed they'd both long outgrown. when he kneels down to help diluc fumble with his boots, he feels no urge to press his face into his lap to see if his heat will finally melt the ice cold that's settled deep into his bones; when he takes his overcoat, he ignores the way the residual warmth of the other's body curls around his fingertips.
it's fine. it's easy. it's nothing he's not used to by now. he's always been quick on the uptake at whatever he puts his mind to, and that includes putting his mind to having no mind at all. ]
Hey, I got you here in one piece, didn't I? With how much you and that sword of yours weigh, you should consider yourself lucky I didn't just dump you on the street. Ahhh, my back is so sore, how am I going to work tomorrow under the weight of all this ingratitude....
[ the banter is automatic, his mouth running on reflex while his brain tries desperately not to focus on how strange yet familiar the sight in front of him is. someone divested of their heavy outer attire should by logical assumption appear smaller, yet diluc clad in only a single layer somehow manages to fill the entire room with his presence, as if all that extra adornment and armor had merely been holding him back. for the first time, kaeya curses the overly observational instincts trained into him since birth; try as he might, he can't stop himself from cataloguing all the little changes from the years past, the scars now visible on diluc's hands, the extra freckles dotting his neck, how his shoulders are now so much broader than they'd been as a teen...
and that's his cue to leave. he stands abruptly, running a hand through his hair. ]
Well, I'm going to take a shower so I can soothe my aching back. Try not to drool all over my pillows, won't you?
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once upon a time, he'd thought kaeya to be a slip of the moon. a far shore that he might dip his hands into, might hold close to him and know the light he saw as if he were not serving only to reflect his own. back then, he'd never thought he'd assumed, that he'd stifled, that he never burned so hotly that he forbid any hope for kaeya to grow. in the soft soil of their mutual body, how much of it was diluc's own? how much of it did kaeya wish to hold from himself? how much does diluc still not know? how much, he thinks hazily as kaeya pulls off his boots and helps him out of his coat, did diluc just guess he deserved?
none of it. those are the words coiled in the pit of his stomach, caught about his teeth. he was never— diluc wants to slur out a retort, something quick off the tongue and witty too, but the profound ache that surges up from his core leaves him reeling in the next breath, a dull throb of want of anything to quiet the heat of his body a signal to what little is left of himself to grumble out some assent to the word of "showering" and the implication of returning again as he fights (futilely) the slip of his own elbows to faceplant against the bed. and really, the only portion at all that saves him? it is the implication. that kaeya, despite all his huffing, lingers in diluc's space. that kaeya watches him, as much as diluc watches him. that, in the grey down of his scattering thoughts, there is the fact his hands felt as steady as he'd remembered them.
and with that, diluc thinks as he shoves his face deeper into the mess he's already made of kaeya's bed (never mind that he fills his lungs with the scent of what kaeya is), that is enough of those thoughts. ]
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tonight, he cranks the heat up to maximum. it's hardly comfortable, the near boiling temperature of the water already too much for anyone normal, let alone a cryo wielder, but he bears the torrent without flinching. drops of molten fire sluice down his body, burning away filth and grime and extraneous thought, leaving searing trails of white-hot pain behind; when they lick across his burn scars, he presses a hand to them closer, as if trying to recapture that startling bright moment of their creation. if he closes his eye, he can almost pretend he's back there now - rain dripping down his hair, the acrid stench of smoke and scorched flesh in his nostrils, an agony that has nothing to do with his wounds pulsing in his chest, a surety and a relief that the next blow would finally put a permanent end to all his lies.
(he has dreams still, of burning to death in a magnificent blaze borne of betrayal and broken promises. he wishes he could call them nightmares.)
the pain is a penance and a reminder, that regardless of whatever strange circumstances has led to diluc being in his bed once more, they can never go back to what they were - their bridges have been burnt, their paths diverging with no hope of reconnection. it's a reminder he tells himself often to no avail; for all that he attempts to treat their relationship as one of near strangers the way diluc clearly wants, his feet still take him to angel's share every night as if a man possessed, his silvertongue still teases and mocks before he can coil it back. it's pathetic, really, how he vies for whatever attention he can scrape like the child he never was, and yet no amount of pain or willpower or self-loathing recriminations get him to stop.
it's tempting to just stay in the shower until he either boils alive or diluc sneaks out the window and they can pretend this never happened, but he's already gotten more than one complaint about his amount of water consumption. it's when he's drying his hair that he realizes that one, because he normally sleeps shirtless he completely forgot to bring in a change of clothes aside from his usual pair of loose pants, and two, the shower also must have washed away all of the omega pheromones he'd applied, leaving only the neutral scent of a godless creation with no secondary gender behind.
well, it's not like diluc hadn't already known he's unnatural to this land, or that he can possibly do anything to drive the man away further. with a grimace, he slips on his undershirt - it's a bit too tight to be comfortable sleepwear, but it's not like he's going to be falling asleep any time soon with diluc still in his room anyway. taking a deep breath, he pastes a smile on his face before heading back into his bedroom, plunking a glass of water on the stand beside diluc's head. ]
Drink. If you need anything, I'll be on the couch - but don't expect service to the extent of Adelinde's chicken soup, I can't work miracles.
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drink, he hears kaeya tell him. if you need anything— ]
Shut up, [ a reedy little thing, pressed through the teeth and coiled about the neck. he is eleven again. he is fourteen, sixteen, eighteen — bleeding out in the cold, bleeding out on his back. he is every single liquid night between. foolhardy and sanctimonious, his bitterness like the ice that webbed between his fingertips. that burned diluc hotter than any fire he'd ever wielded. his skin had mottled as bruised, tender lamp grass. it'd blackened as soot. it took fissures of his milk-washed skin, grooved it as though silty shores. warm in the springtime, he'd thought of kaeya's hand cut through the blackness of the fertile filament. pain became a pinhole, little bursts of stars each time he'd touched it. then, since — now, as his arm climbs upward. it flings its heft along the bridge of kaeya's shoulder, yokes him tight around the neck.
there is no recognition. how could there be, for all that his body burns and seethes for what he sees as lost? reduced to the smoldering edge of primal instinct, hair matted and skin damp, what little of diluc is left buries itself against the dark crescent of his throat. pulled down to the nest of kaeya's bed, pulled into the vice of diluc's arms, he noses against the thrumming pulse. and with each shallowed, labored breath he tastes the scent of pine. he tastes himself in the mingling of what he knows is right. and for what ugliness he is in his own right, it bears itself to kaeya's judgement, blind and pitiless.
diluc had long since told himself that he'd hated himself for trying to hate him at all. he'd long since told himself there was nothing left to forfeit, nothing left to lose. he'd told himself, but the body is mindless. it throbs as though an opened wound, fingers pushed against the worst of it. and diluc throbs too with it, ceaseless in the way he rubs his wrists along the linen. comforts himself amid the visceral anxiety that seizes him in the aftermath, knowing there is something amiss and yet — he turns the scarred skin to kaeya's back. strokes, trembling and uneven. ]
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no, he knows exactly how long it's been. down to the month, the day, the second.
it's the sensation of hands stroking up and down his back, lightning shuddering through his spine, that shocks his brain back into gear. a really slow, stupid, rusty gear, because the only thought that echoes in his head is - what the fuck? what the fuck? since when is clinginess a side effect of fever - okay, sure, they'd cuddled like this whenever they'd gotten sick as children, but there's been an unspoken agreement that it was more for kaeya's sake what with him coming down with far more severe cases than diluc's minor colds, and anyway that had been years and a lifetime ago. it doesn't explain diluc's behavior now, when he's more likely to want a porcupine in his bed than his estranged sworn brother.
for a moment, as diluc's nose presses into the hollow of his neck and nearly gives him a heart attack, he's struck with a sudden memory from a much younger time - rifling through pages of tawdry romance novels under the covers, trying to learn how to imitate the behavior of these strange secondary genders, wondering what it would feel like to truly....
...but no, that can't be it. diluc's biological clock is as strict as the man himself, and a quick check of his internal schedule confirms he's not due for a rut any time soon. that, and there haven't been any of the usual signs of pre-rut recently - no frequent wrinkling of his nose, no subtle leaning back from anyone in scent range, no irritated snap in his voice, none of the little tics that tell kaeya he can skip going to angel's share for the next few nights. (and if anyone asks, not that anyone ever will, he only keeps close track of these details because it's part of his duties as mondstadt's unofficial spymaster, thanks so much. he would know every alpha's rut schedule down to the day if it mattered, it just so happens that none of them aside from the infamous darknight hero are important. )
and anyway, diluc being in rut still wouldn't explain all of...all of this. even reduced down to a base bundle of instincts searching for a warm source of pheromones to embrace, he still wouldn't reach out to kaeya - not to this uncanny creature from a godless land, who produces no scent save for the dead decay of the darkness that lurks underground. without the mask of his artificial pheromones, any alpha in rut should be treating such an aberrant twist of nature with revulsion, not drawing them close enough that every breath they take shares the same inhale and exhale of air.
no, there's only one logical reason for this. clearly, the fever has boiled diluc's brain to the point where it's clouded his memories and caused him to hallucinate. ]
Diluc. [ for once, kaeya's voice is devoid of humor in his worry, as he pushes himself up on his arms to give the other some space, patting his cheeks lightly to try to draw his attention. ] Do you know where you are? Do I need to call Barbara?
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it'd been miserable, with or without him. no matter how far he would roam, the knifepoint of his accursed hormones would wedge into the marrow. it would seize him by the throat, make nuisance of itself in the days and weeks up to. nothing could soothe him. nothing could quiet him. nothing. no herbs or salves or tinctures. no potions, made with the newest ingredients or the newest ideas behind them. and so: what fools would those self-named fools be, if not wield the known against him? what a fool kaeya must be too, to think he doesn't already know. ]
'm in bed, [ diluc tells him. slurs, more so. affront cuts through the fever bright of his expression, the dark of his eyes narrowed against the separation kaeya has stupidly carved. like this, he looks every bit an animal. matted lashes and matted curls, the flush on his skin is high and fresh as blood. beneath kaeya's hand, there is no thought of whether it burns. instead, it is instinct that drives the want to press into his palm. to turn his head and nuzzle up against it, only stoppered by the threads of something more coherent underneath it all. barely, that is. he still blinks and leans in, the process both noticeable and unbearably slow. ] Told you to shut up.
[ he did, didn't he? he tries for it again, but his tongue feels weighted in his mouth. he feels as though a bruise, the darkened skins of stone fruits punctured through. he breathes, lips parted. he hooks the rough crescent of his nails against kaeya's shoulder, bites their edges all along the linen that barely covers it. in his head, he thinks he makes a compelling argument to lie back down and stop asking him pointless questions. he thinks maybe he is seventeen years old, a handful of weeks before everything was upended. he thinks maybe they are in the barracks. he thinks maybe that kaeya's hair is warm and rain-damp. he thinks, without thinking at all. all the little ruinous pieces of himself, shaken out across their makeshift bedclothes. what a bother. ]
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[ even so, between the glaze in his eyes and the syrup slur of his voice, it's clear that diluc's nowhere near his right mind, the fever likely fogging his reality until he no longer remembers that what he holds in his arms is no treasured companion but a viper poised to strike. only the cruelest of monsters would let this joke play out any further; what kaeya needs to do now is to get him out. out of his bed, out of his apartment, out into the hands of someone who actually knows what they're doing and won't lead to any further regrets come morning.
it should be easy. he's always both prided and loathed himself for his ability to detach from any given situation, to shield himself with a smile and let his words carry away whatever semblance of sentiment he might have. it should be easy to simply pull away from the circle of diluc's arms, to laugh it off as another embarrassing story he'll tell in the future, to escape this pretense at intimacy that threatens to choke him with all the weight of memories long aged to dust. it should be easy...and yet when diluc turns the flush of his cheek into his hand, all the steel of kaeya's prized self-control melts away like so much frost beneath the sun. when diluc presses down on his shoulders, he can only helplessly follow, a star dropping in free-fall to the inescapable gravity of the sun.
ah. of course it wouldn't be easy. somehow he's forgotten who he really is, that he's selfish, selfish, selfish to the core. ]
If you want someone quiet, you should let me take you to Barbara.
[ 'let' - as if diluc in this state could possibly stop anything kaeya wanted to do, as if he's ever needed permission to interfere in his life. it's just another excuse, another way to deflect the blame, another way to manipulate the narrative so that this - taking advantage of a sick man to play out a pale mockery of the only thing he's ever truly wanted - can somehow not be entirely his fault when reality sets back in. ]
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but, for now, the diluc who should care about distance and time and the inevitable agony of what has already come to be — he curls deep in the dark, instinctive parts of himself. he nests down in the cool of kaeya's body. he breathes, slow and deep. ]
Throw your back out then, [ he continues, more for the sake of something he no longer can hold the shape of in his hands. all that ache in his body finds a singular point of pressure and releases, a slow and trickling valve. the scent of kaeya numbs it down, makes it so that he is able to speak. ] See if I care.
[ and it is only when kaeya lies back down, when he allows diluc the grace to shove himself back up against him as though they are again seventeen and reckless in all of their youth and wonder, does diluc find some glimmering edge of relief. cool as the backs of dragonspine, open as the maw of caverns so deep that they know no end or boundary. ] Dumbass.
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[ it's always a risk bringing up what they had been once upon a time, always a good chance he'll drive the wedge between them further by tainting what had once been pure sunlight with all the exposed shadows surrounding him now. usually he does so with a vicious vindictiveness, wielding their shared memories like jagged knives, hooking them under diluc's skin so he can't brush them away no matter how much pain it may cause them both. tonight, curled together as if they're still children yet untouched by the world's cruelties, the words come out with a rueful fondness instead, a trickle of vunlerability leaking out of his chest in this twilight moment that seems separated from time.
they say old habits die hard, but kaeya's never understood the phrase. he's broken himself of his old habits time and time again, ground them into the dust of fossils and forgotten bones; first all the little things that made him other, the tics and traits he carried with him from the land of the dead, and then again with all that made him ragnvindr until only a handful in the city ever remembered he had once hailed from the same home as the famed dawn winery's young master. now, as his hands start automatically stroking through diluc's hair without any input from his brain, he thinks he finally gets just what they mean. it's as if he's stepped back in time...
...but not, he realizes, to the halcyon days of their teenage youth when they'd been less two indivduals and more one soul split across halves. he's too aware for that - the rough silk of hair snagging against his calluses, the heat of his breath against his neck - too conscious of what had once been pure instinct. no, this reminds him of a time much further back than that, to the early months when they'd first met: him, tense and terrified of this strange creature in his bed, reaching out to hide the way his hands trembled, ready to leap back at the slightest sign of rejection. he remembers thinking diluc's hair had been the softest thing he'd ever touched - that diluc had been the softest thing he'd ever seen, round cheeks and huge eyes and bright smile, holding his heart out on a platter as if the world wasn't filled with monsters ready to gobble it up. he remembers thinking how his homeland would have eaten this boy alive, how easy it would be to crush this tender spring flower between the hard ice of his grasp, simultaneously repulsed and intrigued by the thought - caught between the awe of a crystalfly landing gently on his palm and the urge to rip off its wings so it could never leave. he remembers thinking: i will destroy you.
in some ways, he thinks now, he never really did grow up from that feral and frozen child of his past. diluc's hair is still the softest thing he's ever touched. he still wants to both crush their bones together until every part of them intersects, and to run as fast and far as he can and never come back. and look, he was right, wasn't he? it turns out they destroyed each other, in the end. ]
Call me what you want, but I'm still smart enough to stay home when I'm too sick to walk straight. [ a lie, and both of them know it. a lie twice over, because if he were anywhere near smart, he'd have put an end to this long ago. ]
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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. ]
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ah. how stupid of him, to be swept away by childhood nostalgia, to lose himself in the memory of a bed where their breaths had risen and fallen in sync, their dreams shared as one in their sleep, their hearts thudding to the same beat. how stupid, to forget for a moment what he's become in diluc's eyes - a snake in the grass, a cuckoo in the nest, a wolf who had thrown aside its sheepskin without hesitation to devour its prey. it's an old familiar hurt, every time he's hit with how little the man thinks of him now, yet he's still never prepared for just how much it burns.
and of course he deserves it. and of course it's no surprise...but even so, he wonders, how can diluc accuse him of not remembering their past when every brick that builds the foundation of the crumbling shell of his sense of self is baked in those sunlit memories, when the mortar that barely holds the mess together is scraped from the ashes of the cremation of their relationship? how can he not know that it's the memory of that firebright child whose love blazed like an inferno, of the only time he'd ever been happy, that steadies his blade as he wields it against his own people and keeps him rooted in a city that has no place for him? cavalry captain, wine aficionado, mondstadtian dog - isn't it obvious that even four years gone, what's left of him that doesn't belong to khaenri'ah is wholly, solely, entirely his so much so that cutting him open would find a glass replica of diluc's heart instead of his own?
you're the one who left, he wants to spit out, the words rising up like jagged knives in his throat. you're the one who doesn't want to remember. his hands stiffen with the urge to strike back, to retaliate until they're both left bleeding from reopened scars, until he marks diluc so deeply that he'll never be able to forget him again without breathing for the pain of it; it's only the fact that even he isn't low enough to attack a sick man that keeps him still rather than shoving what now feels like a live coal in his arms away. ]
Ah, Master Diluc, I remember everything about you. [ he regrets his words immediately; even layered in superficial charm, even dripping with saccharine honey, there's still too much sincerity in the sentence for comfort. scrambling to recover himself, he huffs a laugh, forcing a cheeky smile to his face. ] At least all the embarrassing parts, anyway.
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soft in the way of his heart, soft in the heat of his lungs – soft, when the world itself fixed upon a solid axis and never deigned to spin. diluc had once been an ignorant thing, blessed by the ironies of the gods that knew not his name or his prospects. he had once been naïve, had once been young and full of dreams, never to be listened to. it was that foolishness, that harboring of sin without meaning, that had allowed him the illusion of sweetness to begin with. spun as though hay into each golden thread, it was the specter of love that filled him with hubris. it was the concept that each fantasy, so bright and unconditional and saccharine, was possible as they were everlasting. held tight in the fist of his heart, tucked firm beneath the tongue, he’d have given kaeya anything. he’d have given him the eggshell of the moon, would have carved from his body the strength of his limbs. but now, he dreams only of the evenings that kaeya would listen. tucked to his chest, hollowed to house him as the chamber of seashells, diluc used to think that kaeya would always fit against him just like this: two stars pinned and binary, balanced as they were fixed. where diluc went, so too did kaeya. and where kaeya went, so too did diluc.
it was no use. no matter how he tried to run, how he tried to forget – how might he have? how might diluc have ground his nails into the flesh of himself, pulled free the boundary that was his before kaeya? even without the heat of his vision, the dawning turn of kaeya’s lone eye, there was nothing in him that he could find. no matter how deeply he dug, no matter how far he’d turned from the sun, the darkness reflected only the truth. no matter how far he might go, he would always be there. in the rain dampened parts of himself, in the death of his father, in the fragmentations of his mother held in the moments before he’d awoken to what diluc could call you - it would always be him. ]
Better I didn't accept your drink, then. [ it is a grumble of a thing, tossed across the sheets. for all that diluc knows not at all the clear lines between sincerity and fabrication, he knows there is no mask in the way kaeya’s hands tighten. instinctive, in the basest parts of himself, he scents the tension that holds no fruit. he thinks how blessed he might have been, to be loved. he thinks he’d never deserved the concept. diluc thinks, as all that is selfish and asleep in him inches up against him stubbornly, that he’d always been a perilous thing – forever pushing his luck, thinking he’d never snuffed out the light that was turned over to his sun-bleached palms.
he huffs out once against kaeya’s shoulder, against the cool curve of his throat. the crown of his head rubs once against the dark underside of his chin, potent for all that it is display. he knows – will know – kaeya cannot discern the meaning in it. blind in this way, a fortune – was there ever any wonder that diluc came to be this because of him? ]
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beneath his palms and between his fingers and below his head, the softness of diluc's hair reminds him of fur, some wild creature huddling for warmth against the night. rabbit fur, he remembers suddenly, a memory of far younger days - there'd been a family of them once, nibbling on the vine-ripened grapes of the winery. he'd stared at their twitching noses stain purple as they gorged themselves on the winery's lifeblood, thought about the tenderness of their flesh, the fragility of their bones, about proving his worth to this strange foreign family so they'd keep him around a little longer. it'd taken but a moment to stun the rabbits with his slingshot and then slit their throats with a dagger - mother and child, the kits no bigger than the palm of his hand. the fur had been soft then too, blood pumping out to drench his fingers dark copper; he'd watched the light leave their eyes without any emotion save a vague curiosity on how easily a life could be exstinguished - at least not until he'd looked up and saw the expression on diluc's face, felt that same sick swooping sensation of having missed some crucial step somewhere.
his father had taught him survival at any cost, how to freeze his heart into unwavering ice. the courts had taught him how to lie with a smile, to navigate the seas of conversation without compass or map. diluc had taught him, step by fumbling step, how to be human.
it's the only lesson he's never been able to master. little wonder then, that when diluc left, he'd taken some vital part of kaeya's soul with him - the part that borrowed his flame to burn away the darkness, the part that desperately believed if he pretended hard enough he could do better, be better. and now the rabbit has grown into a wolf, snarling and snapping at the world around him - and yet here he still is, lain in bed with the bloodsoaked hunter he knows far better than to trust, so really who's the stupid one here?
(it's him. it's always been him.) ]
Since when have you accepted anything from me at all? [ too sharp, too personal, and he nearly bites his tongue off, hoping against hope diluc won't remember any of this once his fever's broken. he tightens his grip against diluc's hair and back, curls towards him in some mocking imitation of an attempt at a protective embrace - as if there's anything out there diluc needs protecting from more than the one in his bed. ] Go to sleep, Diluc.