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“A-ah! Diluc!”
This was dangerous. Undignified, one might say. Diluc probably would, after the battle-induced haze passed and he realized the mistake he made. But for now, Kaeya would take it. He'd take it and revel in it and punish himself for it later. But now, he'd take it.
His relationship with Diluc was confusing, it had been ever since he came back. Sometimes, Kaeya wished he never did, and then that wish was overshadowed by the intense longing for even a smidge of attention from him Kaeya had always been plagued with from way back in their childhood. From when he was still a boy who had only then known the sun and couldn't help but relate Diluc with the recently discovered warmth. And when Diluc came back, after the years of grief and loneliness and drinking himself stupid into blacking out in alleys and walking home the next day with pain on his hips or cuts on his knuckles, when Diluc came back, Kaeya considered leaving Mondstadt. He wrote a resignation letter, had his things packed up and ready. He had nowhere to go. Burning his resignation letter reminded him of his brother so much, he went bar hopping that night and ended up in the only place he ever could, the wind would drive him there whether he wanted it or not. Angel's Share. Or at least, that's what he had been told. That night, he woke up in his bed. He hated Diluc so much. All he grew up to learn was to love him. He was pathetic.
Ever since then, their relationship had gotten better. Somewhat. The endeavor they ended up trapped within that last summer had contributed immensely to crack a small fracture in the wall of frost that seemed to have grown impenetrably between them. Even if Kaeya found himself waking up on his own bed more often, even if he and Diluc would sometimes have a mockery of what could be called a chatter across a bar counter, or painfully random encounters when fighting the same enemy on different fronts; the only meaningful conversation they had, years after Kaeya had learned to accept their past together as nothing but a sore shared wound, was during that happening in the summer.
And then, the crack deepened. Sometimes, Diluc would talk to him, solemn and cordial and it was such a close simulacrum of the young knight he once knew, Kaeya could barely restrain himself until he reached his apartment and broke down. The warmer Diluc acted towards him, the more painful it was. How Kaeya wished his entire life didn't revolve around this man. But alas, he had doomed himself from the start by wandering into the wrong house, on the wrong night. Or perhaps, his father had doomed him by sending him on his way right into The Ragvindr Estate. Maybe the wind itself had never been in his favor, an intruder as he was.
And now this. Kaeya had always lived in fear of an invasion in Mondstadt. He knew what it meant, but especially, what it could mean, one day. He had seen his homeland destroyed once already. And worse than seeing your homeland destroyed, would be to get caught up in the crossfire, unable to attack his own people and yet unable also to protect this home which had taken him in so lovingly, despite everything.
He took no pleasure in subduing the Abyss, much less killing hilichurls and mages, but he endured it, closed his eyes to the slaughter in favor of the greater good of the people he could still save, for now.
And the most cruel fate the wind still held for him was that even after all that time, even after the fight and years apart, he and Diluc still completed each other perfectly in battle.
And maybe it was the adrenaline, a real fight against a real enemy. He knew little about the time Diluc spent in Snezhnaya, but he could tell he had faced enemies much stronger than a few Abyss minions, and so had Kaeya. The danger here was the sheer quantity of monsters, and how feral Durin’s influence made them. Usually, if you scared off a group of hilichurls, if you broke down a samachurl’s or mage’s shield, they would most likely retreat. Not this time. This time, they wouldn't stop until all of them were dead.
When the last of the invaders fell to Kaeya’s sword, his hands dripped with blood, Khaenri’ahn blood, he tried not to think of it. Mondstadt would survive, Diluc would survive.
Diluc. He heard metal clattering first, Diluc’s sword was awfully heavy and it sounded so when he dropped it. Kaeya turned to look at him with a heavy heart, if Diluc were to drop his sword so suddenly, maybe he let something slide, a monster had sneaked past them and caught him off guard, and it was all Kaeya's fault-
But Diluc was okay. When he turned, he had only a second to see his face, flushed and splattered with his beautiful freckles and blood as red as his hair, a wild mane of fiery curls. His eyes were dilated, they did when Diluc fought, Kaeya remembered. He remembered sparring with him and looking up at a panting Diluc, pupils blown wide and red cheeks, his chest up and down in wavy, sensual motions. Kaeya's adolescent urges tended to mix with his recollections of Diluc.
Perhaps Diluc's did, too.
A heavy hand brought Kaeya's head closer before he could react, and a soft warmth captured his lips. The last time he and Diluc shared a kiss, it was the night before Crepus’ death. It was a goodnight peck Diluc would always softly lay upon him, and sometimes it would turn into something deeper, hushed and sinful. But that night, it was just a peck, for years Kaeya thought the last time he'd ever feel Diluc's ghost lips against his in his memories.
Now, worlds apart from those two boys discovering kisses for the first time, he found himself just as taken aback and hesitantly eager.
“Tell me you want this,” Diluc whispered wetly against him. He had had a lifetime to observe Kaeya and learn all his signs and unspoken words, he had said so himself while they fought. Kaeya might not have been nervous when hordes of Abyss creatures threatened to enter the city, but he was most definitely nervous now.
Kaeya was suspended in time. Not often was he asked what he wanted. His whole life he followed, obeyed, duty and endurance. He wanted it with all his heart, but had not the words to ask for it, foreign in his tongue and mind. Instead, he did what he had learned to do; he followed the bright flame that was Diluc’s presence. Once, not too long after he had been living in the Ragvindr Estate, Crepus sat him down while Diluc was away in one of his extra classes, and told Kaeya it was his duty to care for his older brother, to be his right hand, his shadow. Perhaps it was Kaeya's own fault for taking it too seriously.
When they became teens, as it was for teens, Kaeya rebelled. He wanted to be Diluc's equal, and for a while, it almost felt like he was. They often tied when they sparred, when they raced with their horses, Diluc's grades were just a tad bit better, but Kaeya was catching up. In bed, they were equally clueless, and equally eager. Maybe grief served to accentuate in them their nature, a necessary evil. It burned Diluc brighter and faded Kaeya grayer.
Kaeya only had to lean in after Diluc's lips once. The rest was enduring his love.
It was what Kaeya called it, love. It was a beautiful word, one he remembered to be proper for knights in bedtime stories. Diluc's love was rough, more blood lust than anything else, and Kaeya couldn't decide if that made it harder or easier for him. Not that he had much of a mind to think about it.
The bridge, with its display of carnage, quickly proved itself a poor location and Diluc pressed him against the stone of the city walls, a dark corner where they could convince themselves they were hidden enough for it to be acceptable.
As he closed his eyes and threw his head back, Kaeya felt again a teenager, backed up against a tree in the middle of practice, Diluc's tongue on his neck and diving lower, clothes pushed aside and pants on their knees and hot, hushed moans only for themselves. They couldn't keep this now just like they couldn't keep it back then, and indulging in this was something far beyond wrong, or undignified, or selfish. It was unsustainable. Kaeya had taken so long to recover from it the first time, and he fell right back into it with barely an effort from Diluc. He wondered if Diluc had missed him at all in those years he spent away, and more than that, if he had missed him in those last months he was back in Mondstadt.
Diluc groped him and rubbed against him and Kaeya opened his pants like muscle memory. ‘Take me’ he used to say when they fooled around like this, effeminating his voice as to impersonate a maiden, and Diluc would push him away and laugh, saying he had no interest in maidens. A bitter thought warmed itself into Kaeya's happy memory, a parasite tinting his mind palace with somber darkness. Diluc lying with a Snezhnayan girl, touching her the way he'd touch him, tender fingers running down smooth, pale thighs, tucking blond or ginger hair behind a delicate ear.
It was unfair, really. Kaeya had had his share of partners ever since Diluc had been gone. They meant nothing to me. Was he supposed to wait for him?
Kaeya moaned. Diluc still knew exactly how to touch him, how to press his weight against him.
“Dil-” Kaeya wanted to chant his name, to be heard, he was desperate to.
“Shh. Too loud,” Diluc muttered, covering his mouth with a hand that tasted of sweat and was big enough to make it hard to breathe. Then, softer, his lips brushing Kaeya's ear; “Be quiet for me, hm?”
His hand moved hefty and certain between them, Kaeya pushed his hips into his touch, it was so much, everything felt too warm and the smell of blood and sex so all-encompassing he felt dizzy. Adrenaline which had not yet the opportunity to cool into sore limbs and a heavy head still coursed through his veins and the tips of his fingers tingled, numb but heightened in all the places that mattered. He held onto Diluc and grinded against his hand, against his body, an ephemeral pas de deux, apart for too long and finally, finally again in synchrony.
Kaeya came with a muffled groan, breathless and whimpered as it fought its way out his throat, and he endured Diluc's love for a little longer until he, too, poured himself onto him. A confession had never sounded so… wet.
He inhaled deeply when Diluc released his mouth, focus returning to his vision with air he hadn't realized was lacking. He took maybe half a breath before the hand was back stifling him.
“Sir Kaeya? Master Diluc?” A voice passed them by towards the bridge, it sounded young, a squire probably, sent to search for them now that the battle was over.
They panted quietly until the squire's steps distanced, and Diluc gently removed his hand one more time. His fingers caressed the side of Kaeya's cheek briefly, a ghost of his habit as a young gentleman of becoming painfully soft-hearted after sex. Once, it made Kaeya feel absolutely cherished; now, it only made the moment all the more bitter. The thought of ending their endeavor there and going back to that unspoken arrangement of neutrality filled Kaeya with such panic that his mouth worked faster than his reason, the very second he noticed Diluc's lips parting to announce the final words of their tryst, he spoke first, anything to delay that horrible fate.
“I missed you, Diluc,” he whispered, looking away. They should really get out of there, before someone would find them like this. Perhaps Kaeya's words could get lost in the wind, ever merciful Barbatos, and he'd be victim to a much lesser tragedy; unnoticed, not disregarded.
But Diluc heard him, and Kaeya knew, knew by the movement of his brows, the minute hesitation of his hands.
“Tell me you’ve missed me,” he murmured even lower. He felt again so young, his stomach caved in on itself.
“I did.” Then silence. A warm, feather-like touch raising his face. Kaeya always had the impression Diluc's eyes seemed redder when he felt intensely over something. He saw a terrifying glowing crimson in his nightmares, and a yearning shining scarlet in his dreams. He could never really fathom how they could both belong to the same person, but here in this dingy alley by the city gates, he finally caught a glimpse of both. It felt strangely reassuring. “Let us clean ourselves and move. Then we'll talk. I promise.”
Kaeya nodded. “Right. Let's go.”
The dust settled, just like that. The city rejoiced with their victory, the taverns were packed. Once Barbara was done fussing over them and they were allowed to leave the cathedral, Diluc walked with him back to the bridge, now mostly clean. Kaeya filled the silence with some gossip he overheard a few days prior, if only because Diluc had a terrible habit of strolling always completely quiet, and Kaeya couldn't have that. He was surprised when his babbling actually earned him a small chuckle and a smile from Diluc.
At the end of the bridge, once the city's commotion was a distant buzz of indistinguishable voices and light, they both halted.
“So… I should probably-”
“Come home with me,” Diluc interrupted. He was decided already, and he was probably the most stubborn man Kaeya knew.
“...What?”
“If you wish to, of course.”
“Why?”
“I told you-”
“Why did you come back?” It was the thing heavy in Kaeya's heart. He was doing fine until Diluc came back. Perhaps not great, but still, Diluc had no right to turn his life upside down again. Kaeya was no longer bound to him, was the truth, he owed him no duty. ‘Your whole life has been dictated by the whims of noblemen. I say fuck them,’ Rosaria had told him one night when they were bar hopping. Kaeya couldn't remember the exact tavern they had been at, and much less how that night ended, but he did somewhat remember pouring his heart out to her, and he remembered raising his glass in toast of that. Fuck them. Unfortunately, Kaeya was a weak coward.
At least the silence didn't extend as much as Kaeya knew it could between them, this time. “...Revenge is never going to bring father back,” Diluc said quietly. The way he still called Crepus ‘father’ twisted a rusty knife in Kaeya's chest. He's your father, too. He'll always be. “It took me too long to realize that.” Kaeya thought a lot about the time Diluc spent in Snezhnaya. During the first year he was gone, Kaeya would wake up in a cold sweat after dreaming of Diluc's body, torn apart by a bear or a wolf or tortured terribly by a group of Fatui, lying bent and crooked and bloody in the snow, buried in white and dirt with the winds of time. Diluc's return was a mix of relief and bitter anger. “I sated my bloodthirst, I suppose. It gave me nothing in return. It certainly didn't make me a better man. The winery, Elzer, Adelinde…” He looked at Kaeya earnestly. Lovingly. Like he hadn't looked at him in years. “...You. After so long, it's… nice, to have somewhere to return to. You're all the family I have left.”
“That’s not fair.”
“It’s not. I know. I understand if you don't want this. I won't force you, of course.” He sighed, his eyes wandering down the road Kaeya knew would take them to Dawn Winery, then further, where Kaeya confessed his sin, then further down to the road where Crepus died. Maybe his sights reached as far as Snezhnaya, a hawk. “If it's worth anything, I do regret what I did that night.”
“You could just say you're sorry.” Kaeya crossed his arms.
Diluc chuckled, a sound filled with nostalgic melancholy. “I am.”
“Hm. Me too.” He nodded. “I’m afraid I cannot evade you.”
“I do intend on staying in Mondstadt for the time being.”
“You ruin my life.”
Diluc laughed. How Kaeya missed him. He extended his arm, like a lady waiting for her date to court her. “Take me home, Master Diluc.”