Chapter Text
A finch chirps three times outside Diluc’s window as he wakes.
It flutters away in a blur of orange feathers as he shoots up in bed, eyes wide and right hand clutching at his chest. He heaves in air, trying to catch his bearings as the adrenaline fades from his veins. He feels his limbs shake as he turns around to face the bedside table, stray strands of red falling into his vision as it blurs from his panic.
The teacup is—
Is—
Diluc gets up on foal’s legs, having to lean up against the table just to stay upright.
He feels nauseous. He feels the bile burning the back of his throat and tongue, threatening the enamel on his molars—he feels the blood pounding in his head, hears the roar of it in his ears.
The teacup—
Diluc turns and runs downstairs, bare feet chilled by the cool wood of the early morning. The door swings and slams into the wall behind him, but he doesn’t care, can’t care when—
He was supposed to be—
To be—
He almost tumbles onto the floor in his haste, catching himself on the railing at the last second before he loses his balance. His arm jerks against his weight and he almost loses his battle with nausea.
Diluc forces himself to take several deep breaths—in through his nose, out through his mouth, in through his nose, out through his mouth—
He was supposed to be—
In—
Out—
In—
The clock reads 7:29.
Diluc stumbles, nearly twisting his ankle and falling into a nearby table. One of the chairs atop it crashes to the floor, wood against wood, the loud bang rattling through Diluc’s skull and making him flinch.
He chokes on a gasp, throat heavy and sore and thick.
He has to get to the door.
He doesn’t set the chair back upright, instead choosing to leave it on the cold wood floor. He can’t focus on that right now, can’t think of tidying up, he needs to—
Needs to get to the—
He yanks the door open, leaving it to swing back and forth on its hinges as Diluc stares at—
“Ready for an adventure?” Kaeya rasps with a smile, blood of a sickly crimson sheen spilling from his lips.
His brother cradles the spear of ice impaled in his stomach, melted water and that red, red blood slipping between his fingers.
Kaeya sways on his feet, and briefly Diluc thinks he should catch him before he falls, before he crumbles into nothing but a cold corpse and blood on the floor. But he doesn’t, he just stands there, and stares as Kaeya stares at him.
Someone is screaming.
Briefly, Diluc thinks it’s him.
Kaeya’s lips aren’t moving. Kaeya isn’t moving at all.
The Vision on his hip is grey.
Diluc bolts.
He doesn’t care that he’s in his sleep clothes, or that his feet are bare, he just has to run, he has to get out—he’ll run all the way to Liyue, to Sumeru, if he has to.
He just has to break free.
The abyssal miasma permeates the city, aided by the windmills and sweeping alleyways. It chokes Diluc, burns his skin and nearly makes him crash to his knees, but he keeps going, keeps running, running—
There are monsters in those shadows, he knows. He can sense them lurking, watching him, waiting—
“Master Diluc?”
He skids to a stop. His lungs scream in his ribs, heart battering his sternum in frantic beats. He can’t feel his hands, and his feet are very cold.
His brain feels like it's buzzing.
It’s a trick, he thinks, begs his mind. He finds his vision is blurry and his face is wet.
“Master Diluc, are you alright?”
When he turns, he finds a knight staring back at him, face pinched into a confused frown.
The moon is high in the sky, full and bright and white.
It is not 7:29.
“Master Diluc, are you alright?” the knight repeats, a bit more forcefully this time. “Do you need any help, sir? Would you like me to escort you home, or to the cathedral?”
He takes a half-step forward, and Diluc takes two back.
He swallows, and forces his throat and tongue to work.
It is not 7:29.
“I-I’m fine… thank you,” he rasps, already backing away from the knight.
“Are you sure, sir? I-I would be happy to—!”
“I said I’m fine!” Diluc snaps, curling his hands into fists.
He realizes he doesn’t have his Vision.
It is not 7:29. It is not 7:29–
“Go back to your post, and don’t say a word of this,” he orders, turning and forcing his tired legs into another sprint.
“O-of course, Master Diluc, but—Master Diluc, wait—!” The knight calls after him, but he can’t bring himself to stop.
He has to get to—
Diluc gets to his destination faster than he thought he would, almost collapsing against the front door. He bangs his fist against the wood, loud and frantic.
A few seconds, then again, and again—
“Kaeya, open the gods-damned door!”
His next knock almost hits Kaeya in the face.
“Fucking hell, Diluc—what?”
Diluc breathes.
There is no blood on Kaeya. His shirt, misbuttoned as it must’ve been in his hurry to put it on to answer the door, is pristine and white. There is no ice in his stomach.
“Are you trying to wake up all of Mondstadt? It’s 2:30 in the damn morning,” Kaeya hisses, voice still thick in sleep.
Diluc looks up to meet his eye. His eyepatch—the soft blue one he didn’t know he still had from childhood—is crooked, letting hints of pale and pink scar tissue peek out more than usual. His hair, braided for sleep, sits messy on his head, no doubt from his pillow. Kaeya scowls at him, tired though he looks.
Diluc looks back to his stomach.
Kaeya sighs, and his shoulders slump just a bit.
“Another nightmare, eh?” his brother whispers, reaching down to the hem of his shirt. Kaeya pulls the fabric up, revealing his torso.
Diluc inches forward, checking, checking for—
“See?” Kaeya says, awfully, painfully gentle, “no ice. No scar either. Everything’s okay. It’s over, Di.”
He’s right. Diluc can’t see any new scar, nothing different from the first time he showed him. As horrible as his real scars are, Diluc is relieved to see them and just them.
Diluc braces himself against the doorframe before his knees give up on him.
It is not 7:29.
Kaeya drops his shirt and reaches out, tugging him inside.
Diluc feels himself be deposited on a couch, but he finds that it doesn’t feel wholly real. He feels like he’s floating, up and up into Kaeya’s ceiling even if his body stays on the couch. He knows he is still on the couch.
The door closes somewhere to his left.
It is not 7:29.
Kaeya walks into his kitchen, and starts preparing the stove for tea.
It is not 7:29.
Kaeya suddenly stands in front of him, holding something in his arms.
“Hold this,” he says, so Diluc does. It’s fuzzy, and warm. Kaeya gently guides his hand up and down the thing, and it starts to vibrate with a low hum.
It takes too long for Diluc to realize it’s Kaeya’s cat. He can’t remember her name.
“Hello,” his mouth says, just this side of audible.
“She’ll keep you company while the kettle heats,” Kaeya tells him, reaching over to gently comb Diluc’s hair from his face, then wipe his cheeks dry with his sleeve.
He leaves, but Diluc doesn’t see him go.
It is not 7:29.
Diluc pets the cat.
“Vin,” he mutters, the name crawling through the fog of his brain to his lips. Kaeya’s cat is named Vin.
She is very soft, and mellow. Diluc pets the mottled colors of her coat. She has a lot of orange.
Kaeya comes back, this time bearing cups of tea.
“Sorry, only my mugs are clean,” Kaeya says, handing him one.
Diluc can smell the extra honey in his tea as he takes it from Kaeya. He frowns.
“You only own mugs,” he says, carefully cradling his between his hands. It’s purple. “Three of them.”
Vin stretches herself across his legs, pushing out her toes, then curls upside down with a little trill.
Kaeya sits himself down on the coffee table across from him, smiling just a little as he scratches Vin’s chin.
“Caught me,” Kaeya says softly, taking a sip from his mug. It’s a soft, dark pink. “You back with us then?”
Diluc takes a long gulp from his tea. It’s the perfect temperature.
“It’s not 7:29,” he says instead of an answer, finding Kaeya’s eye.
“No it is not,” Kaeya replies, squinting over at the clock, “It is… 3:27 in the morning.”
Has it been an hour already? It doesn’t feel like it’s been an hour.
He just got here, didn’t he?
Diluc hums, and takes another sip from his tea. “Sorry for waking you.”
Kaeya shrugs, folding his right leg over his left. “It’s fine, Di. I’m guessing you were sleeping at Angel’s Share again?”
Diluc looks at Vin’s white belly and pointedly does not answer. The couch feels very plush beneath him.
“I keep telling you not to do that,” Kaeya admonishes, poking his leg gently with his toe, “you have nightmares every time.”
“I have nightmares at the winery, too,” he protests weakly, curling into his mug.
“Not like the ones you have at Angel’s Share, in that room.”
“… It’s convenient,” he tries, though it sounds like a flat argument even to his ears.
Kaeya rolls his eye at him. “Oh, yes, how could I forget your extra-curricular and very illegal hobby! My mistake.”
Diluc glares at him. His body still feels too fuzzy for this. “It’s true.”
“I have a perfectly good couch, you know. It’s completely free of trauma-related memories and happens to be very comfortable. You’re even sitting on it right now!”
“Shut up,” he grumbles, gently petting Vin’s soft belly. “I wouldn’t want to… impose.”
“How is it imposing if I’m offering, idiot?” Kaeya says, looking mildly exasperated as he gestures at Vin. “It even comes with a complimentary cat; she’s always curled up in the corner there.”
Diluc hums. “I’ll think about it.”
“So, you’re never going to do it, got it.”
“I said I’d think about it.”
“I can’t believe you would disappoint Vin like this, Di. I thought you loved animals.”
“I do—”
“She clearly loves you, and you would really be so cruel as to leave her all alone?”
Diluc is not awake or aware enough for Kaeya’s bullshit, and he’s 100% sure that’s exactly why he’s doing it.
“Shut up.”
“Where would the fun be in that?” Kaeya asks innocently, taking a sip from his tea.
Vin, apparently having had enough of both of them, hops down from Diluc’s lap, wandering off in the direction of Kaeya’s bedroom. Diluc mourns the loss of her warmth on his legs.
“She has the right idea, you know,” Kaeya says gently, setting down his mug next to his hip. “Think you can try to sleep?”
Diluc doesn’t know. He does feel heavy, and tired, but still a bit like he’s stuck, stuck in—
In through his nose, and out through his mouth.
It is not 7:29.
“I don’t know,” he settles on, trying to ignore the buzzing in his head. He still feels like he could float away at any moment.
“Give it a try, then,” Kaeya says, standing up from the table and stretching. He carefully pries the mug from Diluc’s fingers, setting it next to his own and offering his hand. “C’mon, up you go. I even have the day off tomorrow, so you can sleep as long as you’d like.”
Diluc hums. It does sound nice, if he’s being honest with himself.
“And if I have another nightmare?” he asks, eyes falling to his lap.
“Oh, no, whatever shall I do if that were to occur,” Kaeya starts, and Diluc can hear the eye roll, “if only I had years of experience in calming you down from nightmares since we were children. What a shame!”
Groaning, Diluc grabs Kaeya’s hand and forces himself up to his feet. “You’re so annoying. Fine.”
“And yet here we are.”
“Shut up. I’m tired.”
“Then let’s go to sleep, hm?”
“Yeah,” Diluc mutters, allowing himself to be ushered into Kaeya’s room. “We’re sharing?”
Kaeya falters for a moment, eye blown wide, but quickly blinks away his surprise. “I’ll be taking the couch, not to worry; I’m well aware of your love of personal space.”
“No!” he objects, not particularly liking the idea of Kaeya being out of his sight right now. Not when the miasma lingers in the corner of his senses, when he swears if he stares at his brother long enough he’ll be stabbed through once more. “Please—it’s fine. Stay.”
For a moment, two, all Kaeya does is stare at him.
“… Okay,” Kaeya finally mutters, a bit wide-eyed. He blinks at Diluc for a few moments, then seems to come back to himself as he pulls back the covers. Vin, who had been very comfortable dead center of the bed, gives a pitiful cry at being disturbed. “Oh, don’t give me that, little miss. Hop on in then.”
Diluc does, purposefully on the side closest to the door. His body feels heavy and exhausted as Kaeya follows suit. Vin wastes no time in curling up between them, previous offenses seemingly forgiven.
As soon as his head hits the pillow, he finds he can barely keep his eyes open. Kaeya pulls the covers over both of them, warm and snug.
It fills him with warm nostalgia, cradling his ribs in soft and soothing memories.
Suddenly, he’s twelve all over again.
“Night, Yaya…” he mumbles, settling into the pillow with a yawn.
Kaeya, at his back, chokes on a gasp. “Y-Yeah… night, Didi. Sleep well.”
“Mm.”
. . .
Diluc wakes alone, to the sun shining high in the sky.
He’s not in his room at the winery, or in the attic of the Angel’s Share. These are not his sheets, and this is not his bed.
The cat curled up on his chest is not his either.
“Hello,” he mutters, voice croaky and dry from sleep.
Vin blinks up at him with liquid green eyes and chirps quietly in greeting.
He’s loath to move her, but he can feel the stiffness in his joints and muscles, and his stomach is being very persistent that it’s empty. As gentle as he tries to be, she still makes sure he knows how much she dislikes being picked up and deposited atop the covers.
“Sorry,” he mumbles, gently patting her head.
He never knew a cat could glare like that.
Accepting his defeat, Diluc sighs with a stretch and shuffles his way out of the room and rubbing the crust from his eyes.
His feet evidently take him to the kitchen where he finds Kaeya hunched over the dining table, a pile of paperwork strewn about before him. He’s dressed much more comfortably and casually than he usually sees him, simply in a loose pair of navy pants and a soft looking cream-colored long sleeve shirt. It strikes a pang of nostalgia in him; he looks so much more like his little brother from yesteryear, the one who constantly wore turtlenecks and loved all things soft and cozy, than the posturing, flamboyant man he’s become today. He doesn’t quite know what to do with this nostalgia, however, so he swallows it down whole and steps fully into the kitchen anyway.
“Morning, sunshine,” Kaeya greets with a teasing smirk, not looking up from his paperwork.
Diluc grunts in response.
Kaeya laughs at him. “My, so crass. Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed.”
“Your cat would say otherwise,” he grumbles, making his way over to the sink.
“She was keeping you company while you slept, of course~,” Kaeya teases, and Diluc can just hear the smirk in his voice. “Don’t be so ungrateful!”
“She wasn’t very grateful when I had to get up,” he protests, picking up Kaeya’s soap bar to check the scent. It’s lemon. “Mind if I eat something?”
“There’s not much, but help yourself.”
After washing his hands, Diluc makes his way over, opens the ice box and frowns.
“‘Not much’ is probably the understatement of the century, Kaeya,” he grumbles, half-heartedly shifting through the ingredients there.
It doesn’t take much, considering all that’s in there is three eggs, a third of a stick of butter, a half-empty container that looks like it could possibly hold radish veggie soup, and a bottle of milk.
Somewhere behind him, Kaeya makes a noise of protest.
Well, he doesn’t want to take all of Kaeya’s eggs, so he takes two, and closes the ice box. Hopefully, there will be bread in the bread box on the counter, but Diluc doesn’t get too excited. He pries it open, and—
“Kaeya.”
“Hm?”
“Why is my Vision in your bread box?”
Kaeya shrugs at him as he shifts his papers. “Why not?”
Diluc stares at him. “When did you even get it? Or find it?”
Kaeya turns over his left shoulder and gives him a blank look. “When you were sleeping, obviously. It wasn’t exactly hard to figure out where you left it, either. Do give me some credit, hm?”
Diluc grumbles, but assents, taking his Vision and pocketing it. Immediately, its presence chases away a bone-deep chill he didn’t know he had. “Any reason you put it in the bread box instead of, I don’t know, just giving it to me?”
“Entertainment.”
Grabbing two slices of bread, Diluc sighs. “Are you incapable of returning my Vision in a normal manner, or must you always leave it in objects?”
“Oh, but where’s the fun in doing it like that, Di?” Kaeya whines in that dramatic way of his. “You’re terribly boring.”
“Ugh,” he replies eloquently.
“And grouchy.”
“Shut up, Kaeya.”
Kaeya laughs quietly, and returns to his paperwork.
Diluc himself manages to hunt down a pan in Kaeya’s barren cabinets, along with a spatula and his salt and pepper. “Did you at least eat before throwing yourself into work?”
“I had a lovely cup of coffee with my breakfast, thank you.”
Diluc speaks fluent Kaeya and goes back to the ice box, grabbing the last egg from the carton and the stick of butter.
And two extra pieces of bread, for good measure.
Going about the motions of preparing scrambled eggs is a simple way to ease the buzzing in his head. It’s easy enough to light the stove with a snap of his fingers, setting the heavy pan atop the flame. The sizzle of the butter in the pan and the circular motion of stirring the eggs distracts him from—
From… what happened last night. This morning. Whatever.
He doesn’t want to think about it, not right now, so instead he splits the scrambled eggs in half and puts them on two plates. Salt and extra pepper for Kaeya, and just a pinch of both for himself. He leaves the bread to toast in the pan as he seasons the eggs, only taking a minute with the leftover heat.
Kaeya startles when a plate of warm toast and eggs appears under his nose.
“Eat,” he orders, ignoring Kaeya’s glare as he goes to put out the stove.
Thankfully by the time he sits down with his own plate, Kaeya is, in fact, eating.
“I thought you had the day off,” Diluc says, gesturing at the papers strewn about the table with his toast.
Kaeya groans into his eggs. “As did I, but, we're even more short staffed than usual. I’m Quartermaster, afterall—everlasting paperwork is in the job description.”
Diluc hums, swiping a few of the papers for himself to read. He ignores Kaeya’s squawk of protest and skims over the pages.
He… does not miss the paperwork that came with being Cavalry Captain, he thinks, tossing the papers back onto the table and going back to his eggs.
Grumbling, Kaeya reorders the papers, tapping them into a neat little pile, all the while glaring at Diluc and—
“You’re not wearing your eyepatch,” he mumbles, eyes suddenly blown wide.
Kaeya, with both eyes, blinks at him, as if he had forgotten.
“Ah… I suppose I must’ve forgotten to put it back on after my shower earlier. My mistake, allow me to—”
Diluc snaps his hand out and catches his brother’s wrist as he rises to stand. Kaeya, obviously confused, stares at him, then his hand.
“I—” Diluc stutters, unsure of how to phrase what he wants to say, “I… it’s fine, Kaeya. You shouldn’t have to wear one in your own house if you don’t want to.”
A frown marrs Kaeya’s face. “O…kay?”
Despite his confusion, he sits back down, and returns to his ‘breakfast’, casting glances at Diluc every so often.
Diluc himself, he…
He’s staring.
“You’re staring,” Kaeya informs him, voice tight and defensive.
“Sorry,” he mumbles, forcefully looking back at his plate.
He’s suddenly lost his appetite.
Kaeya’s other eye looks… bad, to say the least.
Logically, he knows that his golden eye is fine. He knows he didn’t blind his brother. But the scarring is…
It’s… extensive.
Most of Kaeya’s right eyebrow is gone, along with his lashes. The rough tissue extends up behind his bangs, and down where his eyepatch usually sits. So much of the right side of his face is just scar.
Diluc has no idea how Kaeya didn’t lose his vision that night.
Across from him, Kaeya sighs and sets down his fork.
“I thought we established that my eye was fine years ago,” he says a bit petulantly, getting up and walking off to his office before Diluc has the chance to stop him this time.
When he sits back down, his usual eyepatch is back in place. His expression looks much more guarded than it did just a few minutes ago.
“I’m sorry,” Diluc whispers, pushing the same bit of egg around on his plate.
Kaeya sighs, and it’s a heavy, tired thing. “It’s fine, Diluc. It’s not as if I’m unaccustomed to wearing an eyepatch.”
“That’s not what I’m apologizing for.”
Kaeya groans, “do you truly wish to have this conversation right now?”
“No,” he sighs. He doesn’t want to have it ever, if he’s being honest.
“Then let’s not, shall we?” Kaeya insists sharply, taking a harsh bite from his eggs. “My eye is fine, and I don’t blame you for anything you did that night. End of discussion.”
Diluc drops his fork against his plate in frustration. “First of all, you should blame me; what I did was horrible and unforgivable. Second, with that amount of scar tissue there’s no way it’s ‘fine’, Kaeya.”
“Of course there’s damage, Diluc, Archons you wield a fucking flaming claymore!” Kaeya practically shouts, slamming his fork down on the table and getting up to pace. “Look, I can still see out of it, and it still performs its purpose, alright? It’s fine.”
Diluc gets up too, ready to shout that just because it still technically has sight doesn’t mean the eye is fine, but then—
“What do you mean ‘still performs its purpose?’” he hisses through his teeth, advancing when Kaeya only clicks his jaw shut and freezes in place. “Kaeya!”
“It was a slip of the tongue,” he responds, fast and just a bit too much on the side of frantic to pass for casual. “Forget I said anything.”
“You don’t have ‘slips of the tongue’, Kaeya,” Diluc growls back, brows pinched together so tightly his head starts to ache.
“… I believe it’s time for you to go home, Master Diluc,” Kaeya hisses after several moments of silence, side-stepping Diluc to get back to the dining table. “Your shoes are by the door and I have work to attend to, so I trust you can see yourself out?”
“I’m not leaving,” Diluc states, walking back around the table to face Kaeya once more. “Kaeya, what do you mean?”
Ignoring him, Kaeya pushes aside his half-eaten meal and picks up his pen once more.
“Kaeya.”
Kaeya drops his pen. “Diluc, obviously I don’t want to talk about it, so either let it go or get out.”
Diluc grips the edge of the table until the wood creaks and his knuckles blow white.
They almost always end up here, it seems. In an argument, neither willing to back down or give so much as an inch.
Diluc wishes it were easy to talk to Kaeya. It hasn’t been for a very, very long time.
“I’m not leaving,” he repeats, forcing his voice to calm even in the face of his frustration. His Vision burns in his pocket. He thinks he just sounds rather tired. “Talk to me. I thought we agreed to not hide things from each other anymore.”
“Well, if you want to talk so badly, why don’t we start with what happened last night then, hm?” Kaeya counters, narrowing his eye in thinly veiled contempt and anxiety.
Diluc gapes for just a moment, incredulous, then closes his mouth and glares. “There’s nothing to talk about. I had another nightmare, it was a bit too real, so I came to check on you—nothing more.”
Kaeya looks at him like he doesn’t buy it for a second.
Quite frankly, Diluc doesn’t either.
“Really now? A simple nightmare had you run across the city barefoot in a crazed panic and pound away at my door at 2:30 in the morning?” Kaeya asks sharply, slightly baring his teeth, “I find that quite hard to believe.”
Diluc goes to run a hand through his hair, but finds he can’t get his fingers through the knots. Dropping his hand with a growl, he falls more than sits back down into his chair.
Something on Kaeya’s face softens. “It’s been six months, Di. You need to talk to someone.”
“That’s rich, coming from you,” he grumbles, pushing his face into his hands, “and I talk to you, might I add.”
“Barely, and I don’t count, I was there,” Kaeya counters with a dismissive wave, frowning. “You need to talk to someone neutral, someone who can help you.”
Diluc wants to rip out his hair. “Like who?! Who in Teyvat would actually believe me?”
“Jean would,” Kaeya starts, actually lifting his fingers to count as he talks, “Adelinde, Elzer, Albedo, the Traveller, Venti—”
“Alright, I get it, but… I can’t put this on them, Kaeya. It’s not fair.”
“But it’s fair to you?” Kaeya asks, eye narrowed and arms crossed over his chest. “Diluc, the last time you tried to shoulder trauma alone, you were banned from an entire country.”
Diluc groans. “That situation is completely different, and this isn’t—”
“What? Trauma?” Kaeya interrupts, eye going wide. “Need I remind you of what happened?”
“No—”
“Let’s see,” Kaeya starts anyway, settling back into his chair, “you were stuck in a never ending day for, oh, what was it? Three months, minimum? Probably closer to four or even five? And during that time you had to watch me and yourself die? Over and over and ov—”
“Alright!” Diluc cuts him off with a shout, bracing against the table as his heart threatens to burst through his chest. “I see your point.”
Kaeya sighs and leans forward, poking Diluc’s fingers with his pen. “Then why do you refuse to get help, hm?”
Loosening his grip on the wood, Diluc slumps forward and pulls at his tangled hair. He sits like that for a long time, focusing only on the sting of his scalp and the sound of his and Kaeya’s breathing. Then, when he finally feels he can muster his courage enough, “because nothing happened.”
Immediately, Kaeya frowns at him. “What are you talking about? Of course it happened—”
“No, that’s not what—” Diluc sighs heavily and lets his hands fall to the table. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Then what—?”
“You’re fine!” he snaps, knowing he sounds at least half-way manic, “you’re fine, I’m fine. There’s not so much as a scratch on either of us despite everything… so, it shouldn’t matter, right?”
Kaeya blinks, eye wide and unbelieving. “Diluc—”
“There were no consequences,” he says in a rush, desperate for his brother to understand. “Nothing truly happened that day. We stayed at the tavern and talked—that’s all everyone else will remember. Even you only remember one day of it. I’m the only person who saw it all and in the end nothing actually happened.”
Kaeya barks out an incredulous laugh. “You’re serious.”
“It’s true.”
Folding his arms across his chest, Kaeya sighs, heavy and long. His eye rakes over him, searching for something, though Diluc doesn’t know what he’s looking for. He must find something, however, because in the next moment he gets up and disappears down the hall.
Returning just a minute later, Kaeya unceremoniously deposits a very sleepy Vin in his lap and pulls his chair out from against the wall.
Diluc, now confusedly holding the cat, looks at Vin for an answer. She makes a quiet squeak and blinks at him, before curling up with her face tucked into his elbow.
Very helpful.
He barely refrains from flinching when Kaeya grabs his hair.
“What are you doing?” he asks, only to have a wide-tooth comb waggle in his face.
“It’s painful looking at your hair, Di,” Kaeya says in a honeyed tone, carefully combing at the very ends of his hair with gentle strokes, pinching the strands above where he works so it doesn’t tug. “I know you’re fond of birds, but you needn’t make a nest for them on your head.”
“I haven’t had the chance to brush it yet,” he grumbles defensively, scratching behind Vin’s right ear. His hair wasn’t that bad.
“Well, considering your idea of detangling your unruly mane of hair is to simply tear a brush through it, it must be an Archon-given blessing that I’m here to give it the proper treatment it deserves~,” Kaeya says, pointedly tugging at a large knot.
Diluc rolls his eyes. “My hero.”
“Your hair’s hero, truly,” Kaeya corrects, slowly working his way up.
A silence falls over them as Kaeya combs through his hair, and while it’s not comfortable, per say, it’s not entirely unpleasant either.
Diluc lets the nostalgia of the action wash over him; Kaeya used to comb his hair for him frequently when they were young, particularly when Diluc was visibly stressed or upset. He used to worry it would be a bother to his little brother, what with how easy the curls turned into snarls and snags, but Kaeya always seemed to revere the process; he always snatched the comb from Diluc’s fingers with a grin.
“It needs strategy,” Kaeya had said when Diluc asked him why he seemingly enjoyed the task so much, “I have to do it right or I’ll hurt you—or, even worse, I’ll rip out your hair. Father would kill me.”
“No, I don’t think he’d care very much. Adelinde, on the other hand,” Diluc had shot back, putting on a mortified face.
Kaeya had matched his expression, eye wide and looking properly frightened, but both of them had only lasted a few seconds before bursting into giggles.
It’s a fond memory, he thinks. Kaeya couldn’t have been older than twelve, Diluc himself no more than fourteen.
Things had been so simple then.
“Just because something doesn’t leave a physical wound, or scar, doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt,” Kaeya says suddenly, startling Diluc out of his reverie.
“What?” he croaks, turning his head only to have Kaeya force him to look forward again.
“You seem to think that because there are no physical wounds left means that what happened doesn’t matter,” Kaeya continues, tossing a completed section of his hair over Diluc’s shoulder. The curls have been combed out into soft and loose waves, though he knows they’ll snap back to their original shape soon enough. “It matters, Di; you’re allowed to be hurt by it.”
Diluc grits his teeth. His fingertips feel tingly in Vin’s fur.
“But everything is fine,” he hisses out, forcing himself to swallow every bitter emotion pooling on his tongue down down down— “This isn’t like when Dad died, Kaeya. That had—has—real repercussions. This—the domain isn’t even there anymore. All that’s left is me.”
“The knights who went in first are still here,” Kaeya offers, falsely light and nonchalant.
They both know those men can barely string together a sentence these days; they’re too scared to go outside the home the Knights placed them in, too scared to see if that choking miasma and those awful monsters are still out there, waiting—too scared to do much of anything.
The image of Kaeya, struck through with ice and blood seeping down his chin on his doorstep comes unbidden to his mind.
He squeezes his eyes shut against him and it does little good. He can’t say he blames them; Diluc still doesn’t know how he made it out of there any semblance of sane.
“What good would they do?” he asks, suddenly very tired.
Vin stretches a bit in his lap and pricks his thighs with her claws.
“They’re proof, are they not?” Kaeya asks, prying apart a stubborn bunch of hair with his fingers. “You’re not the only one, Di, and those knights prove it.”
Diluc bites the inside of his cheek and tries to think of how to phrase why that doesn’t help him as much as he wishes it did.
“Our experiences are still too different,” he says eventually, running his fingers down Vin’s body despite the numbness crawling up his hand. “Their depictions are nothing like my experience, Kaeya. They didn’t have to—to—”
To see their little brother die, the one they’d never gotten to talk or apologize to about all the awful things they had said and done, over and over and ov—
Abruptly, Kaeya yanks on the knot he’d been detangling.
“Ow,” he says, holding the back of his head and turning to glare at his brother.
Kaeya doesn’t look sorry at all. “There’s no need to be quite so mulish.”
“I’m not being mulish,” he replies, frowning, “I’m trying to state my point of view.”
In lieu of a verbal answer, Kaeya flips the next combed through section of hair into his face. Diluc blows the strands away from his mouth and glares over his shoulder.
“If you want to talk about ‘mulish’, then I suppose we can start with you changing the subject a few minutes ago, no?”
Kaeya pauses, face serious in a way Diluc still isn’t used to, then makes him look forward again.
“I suppose there are things neither of us are quite ready to talk about,” Kaeya says softly, sighing with a false sense of lightness.
Diluc takes a deep breath himself. The comb pulls through his hair much gentler, biting him in the neck with the nostalgia of it. It weighs down his shoulders, heavy and aching.
“Speaking of,” he forces himself to say through a thick and swollen throat, instead of any of the thoughts running through his mind, “Kaeya… you still haven’t told Jean, have you?”
The comb stills.
Kaeya breathes heavily through his nose, and when the comb starts again, the gentleness running through it feels forced.
“I can’t say that I have,” he confirms, breathy in a way that tells Diluc all his masks are slamming back into place.
“It’s been six months,” he parrots his earlier words, fiddling with the ends of a lock of hair.
“I know, Di.”
“Abyss activity has been ramping up lately,” he says, as gently as he thinks he can.
He doesn’t want to force Kaeya into telling Jean, not like this, but—
“I know, Di.”
“She deserves to know, Kaeya—”
His brother slams the comb down on the table and leans heavily over it, gripping the edge of the table until his knuckles blow pale. Diluc zeros in on the stretched scar tissue and reaches over, carefully forcing his iron grip to relax.
“I know, Di,” Kaeya repeats, weak and tired and scared as he practically falls into the chair next to him.
Diluc sighs. “Have you thought of a plan? Of what to say?”
Kaeya picks up the comb and twirls it between his fingers. Reaching over, he pulls Diluc, chair and all, across the floor, close until he can comfortably go back to detangling his hair.
“Of course I have,” he says, refusing to meet Diluc’s eye, “I’ve come up with countless scripts, thought of her every reaction and how to counter them. I’ve perfected it all down to the last pretty letter.”
“But?”
“But… I want… I want to do it right this time,” Kaeya confesses on a breath, crushing his hair in a cruel grip. “I don’t want to hurt her.”
“Kaeya…” Diluc gently unfurls his fingers once more and turns to face his brother. “Jean loves you. She can survive this. You can survive this. She will still love you even through this.”
A moment, three, and then Kaeya simply smiles at him.
Personally, Diluc thinks it’s as terrifyingly realistic as fool’s gold.
“Perhaps she shouldn’t,” is all Kaeya says, as bright and suave as he ever is.
“Kaeya—” Diluc starts, distressed, but Kaeya simply waves him off and rises to his feet.
“Now, since you were clearly so displeased with my array of food, maybe you’d like to treat me to a grocery trip, hm?” he says, clapping his hands together before he wanders off to the kitchen, half eaten breakfast in hand.
“Kaeya—”
“You know, I was thinking of braising some meat in wine, but I just haven’t decided on the cut,” he interrupts, polished and perfect as he is in the tavern. “If it would be no bother, perhaps you have a recommendation? You were always more fond of the heavier dishes than I, and since it’s on your mora, why not take advantage, no? The salary cuts have been hitting the knights quite hard as of late, and—”
“Kaeya.”
His brother flinches, pauses, and Diluc physically watches the moment the Cavalry Captain melts away into his little brother of yesteryear.
It’s a scary change, he thinks.
“You can’t possibly—” Diluc starts, then licks his lips in unsureness of how to continue. “She will still love you, Kaeya. I have no doubts about that.”
Kaeya chuckles, though it’s half-hearted. “We’ll see.”
“It’s Jean,” Diluc emphasizes, rising to his feet.
“And Jean loves Mondstadt more than anything in Teyvat,” Kaeya says, suddenly awfully heavy and tired sounding. “If she were to know what she let live within her city walls, then—”
Grabbing his brother’s shoulders, Diluc grips him tight, and gives him a gentle shake. “They’re your city walls too, Kaeya. They always will be.”
Kaeya searches his face, though he isn’t sure what he’s looking for. He isn’t sure what he finds, either, as Kaeya sighs and shrugs his way out of his grip and turns to the sink. “For now.”
“Forever,” he insists, glaring at the back of Kaeya’s head.
Kaeya waves a dismissive hand at him over his shoulder, though he deflates just a moment after.
Diluc waits.
“… Jean has a week off next month,” he finally says, quietly and delicately in a false sense of ease. “We can… we can tell her then.”
“We?”
“Unless you rescind your offer of accompanying me, I would… appreciate your presence.”
“I’ll be there,” he swears.
He doesn’t care what he’ll have to rearrange—he’ll make it happen.
“Thank you…” Kaeya whispers, so softly Diluc has to strain to hear him.
“Of course,” he offers back, then, after a brief and mildly awkward pause, he clears his throat. “Let’s clean up and then I suppose… I can get you those groceries.”
Kaeya, seemingly thankful for the change of subject, perks right up. “Ah, how marvelous! My, if the citizens of our dear city knew you were so generous to little old me, you might have your walls caved in with jealousy!”
Diluc instantly regrets his decision.
“Nevermind, you can starve,” he says, deadpan, dumping his dishes in the sink unceremoniously.
Gasping theatrically, Kaeya places a hand on his chest and stares at him with a wide eye. “Oh, so cruel! My own brother, letting me wither away to nothing right before his very eyes!”
Diluc flicks the water off his fingers into Kaeya’s face. “Do you have any spare clothes? I’d rather not walk around in pajamas.”
“Why not, it’s the city of freedom, afterall,” Kaeya returns, flicking his own wet fingers back into his face, “but, if you insist, then I picked up a change of clothes from the tavern for you earlier.”
“Thanks,” Diluc says, and tries to enjoy the peace of washing dishes with his brother.
. . .
Later, when both of them have dressed and freshened up enough to be presentable to the world (Diluc in need of it more so than Kaeya), they make their way out of Kaeya’s apartment.
Diluc wanders ahead a bit as Kaeya locks the door, enjoying the midafternoon clear skies and birds flying by.
One bird immediately catches his eye, however, perched in the nearby tree as it is.
A raven.
Diluc blinks at it, and it blinks back, striking him with its bicolored gaze. Its singular milky eye seems to bore into his skull.
Ravens aren’t native to Mond, he thinks.
“Diluc?” Kaeya calls over his shoulder, and he snaps his head to look at him. Kaeya settles his hands on his hips, unimpressed. “What ever caught your attention so raptly? I’ve been calling you for almost a minute.”
Diluc blinks. Had he? “There’s a raven in that… tree…” he starts, only to turn and find the mysterious bird gone.
Huh.
Kaeya rolls his eye at him. “You and birds; it’s probably just our dear Princesszin’s Oz, Di.”
Diluc disagrees.
He’s seen Oz many times, conversed with him once, even. That raven was not him.
“Right,” he says anyway, since there’s no real reason to argue the matter.
With one last glance at the tree, Diluc catches up with Kaeya, who’s already coming up with ways to waste his mora.
‘How strange,’ he thinks, and pushes the image of the raven from his mind.
A thing to ponder another day, he supposes.