Chapter Text
“Luc.” It comes as a whisper, so quiet most people wouldn’t hear it, even in the dead of night.
Diluc pretends he’s one of those people.
"Luc," Kaeya repeats in a sing-song murmur. The door closes behind him and the sliver of lantern–light grows until it consumes his room. "I know you're up."
Diluc peeks at him through his pillows and wild curtain of red hair. No use in pretending. He sits up, rubbing his eyes. "What is it."
Kaeya saunters over and leans against the dresser. "I'm bored. Let's go out."
"This is what you wake me up for?"
"You weren't sleeping, Jerk. I shared a room with you for five years. You snore."
"Not true." Diluc sweeps his hair back and ties it into an impromptu braid. To be honest he was waiting for this, hoping for this. All he ever needs—all he has ever needed—was someone to challenge him, to serve as a goad, an instigator, a stirrer of the pot. Diluc hates trouble but loves troublemakers. He hates change and uncertainty but his own brother showed up on the doorstep having never known any form of stability. So sure. He gets out of bed, looking for a stray pair of socks to wear. "I'd tell you to go back to sleep, only I noticed you don't really do that anymore."
“I sleep” Kaeya’s already leading him out of the room and down the curling stairs of their manor, abandoning his usual patience for the sake of mischief. “Only I do it sitting up, in my school uniform, with my work in front of me.”
"Funny." Diluc ties his shoes. His brother doesn’t.
They close the front door as quietly as possible and then exhale a collective breath. Sometimes Adelinde is up, doing whatever she does in the dark, and she ushers them back to bed.
Now she isn't here. Nobody is here but the two of them. It feels nice.
Kaeya stretches out his arms at takes a deep breath; the air around them is thick with fireflies. They drift in waves as if the breeze is the only thing keeping them up.
He runs ahead and does a cartwheel. "We could swim in the lake. Or better, the ocean. You've touched the waypoint at Dornman Port, right?"
Even as they negotiate they head in the direction of Springsvale. It's the closest place to the winery where anything ever worth experiencing happens. And it's less controlled then most other populated areas, more monsters, not so many knights to drag the two of them home.
“Can we go to the city?” Diluc asks, tucking the cuffs of his pajama shirt.
“To see Jean? I hope you don't want to watch her sleeping.”
He flushes and shoots a sidelong glare. “I don’t want to see anyone. It’s just safer there.”
Kaeya has a knowing look that annoys more than sympathizes. “Safer now that lover girl has a vision.”
A certain guilt rises at not having noticed her much before she'd gotten a vision. It's not like Jean hadn't tried to talk to him when they were young after all, she had. Diluc hopes his father's obsession with earning one hadn't spurred this interest in her now. She'd always been exceptional and caring and—
"Oh, I wish you could see the look on your face." Kaeya teases.
"Fuck off." Diluc pushes him away with a scowl that tries to be the opposite of dreamy.
Kaeya stumbles, laughing. "I mean she’s cute. Big nose though. And she’s taller than you.”
“I’m not finished growing!” Diluc mutters, then bites his tongue and seethes. His face is red hot and the breeze doesn’t do much to help it.
“Diluc and Jean floating in the breeze,” He sing-songs.
They’re at the top of the hill above Springsvale and only one of them has passed their gliding test.
Unfortunately, somehow, that one was Kaeya. He unfurls his wind glider with a smug look. “K–I–S–S–I–N–G.”
“No, do not drag me out here just to—”
He takes off with a running start.
Diluc curses after his brother, watching him swerve past trees and kick off chimneys.
“Kaeya.” He balls his hands into fists and kicks up the grass. “You’re no better than a child, I don’t even like that— that overachieving bluenose.” He stomps down the hill with a naive teenage anger that comes off as embarrassing even to himself. “She’s Catholic, for Celestia’s sake”
The air is cool and quiet. Diluc squints up to the dark rooftops, trying to catch a glimpse of his brother watching him. “Ah, Kaeya?”
How far had he gotten? It couldn’t have been longer than a minute’s headstart. Kaeya has a talent for disappearing, suddenly, even at times when he seems at his best.
A ghostly blue light shines in his periphery. Diluc turns, thinking it's the glow of his eye, but no, it’s too bright.
The light was coming from a sealie. It drifts towards him like a silken ghost, at night they look nearly as beautiful as they are eerie.
Diluc reaches forward with wide curious eyes, letting the spirit rest in his cupped palms. "Well, hello. You're lost, aren't you?"
It's a stupid question because A, sealies cannot speak in a language simple enough for humans to understand. And B, he's holding it, of course it's lost.
Diluc tilts his head and holds it closer. “Okay. Where to?”
The sealie extends its antenna towards the edge of town and churrs.
Diluc takes one last helpless look at the cottages and then obliges. The draw of the sealie’s court leads him to the train tracks at the edge of the woods.
The blue spirit spills from his grasp and tethers itself to the earth with a spider-string thread of his soul.
Diluc doesn't like the sensation, the awareness of his own spirit, the idea of loss no matter how small. He knows, roughly, how big souls are in physical form, the size of a vision. It isn't an unraveling. It's a gift. He could send a thousand sealies home without feeling the burden.
He sweeps his hands to disperse the tingling feeling, looking around. He takes a deep breath to call out for Kaeya but something reaches from beneath the tramway wagon and grabs his ankle.
Kaeya’s name comes out as a shriek. Then, promptly, as a complaint. “God’s above, what are you doing?” He hisses.
“Get down, come on,” His brother warns, not without humor.
“Why—”
“Quick.”
Diluc gets down on his knees and slides beneath the wagon attachment.
“You better explain why you're hiding under here.” He whispers.
The dim glow of Kaeya’s eye is bright enough to reveal a smirk. “I’ve been spotted by the pussycat.”
As if on cue footsteps patter on their heads. “Who was that?” Draff slurs, a bottle clinking in his pocket. “I heard someone shout.”
Diluc holds his breath. Unlike Kaeya, it would be his first time getting into trouble with one of Springsvale’s drunken huntsmen, and unlike Kaeya the possibility is less than amusing.
The two glance up at the work–boots visible beside the tracks. It seems like too long for him to stand there, waiting for them.
Draff is supposed to keep moving, sweeping the lots for drifters, slimes, and thieves who had come to Springsvale this summer drawn by reports of goods for the taking.
Inside the wagon car, over his head, Diluc hears small animals in their nests, rousing themselves to their nightly business. According to their father’s natural history, he knows that business is to bite misbehaving boys and give them rabies.
He squints in the dark at his brother. Trying to mouth some combination of swear words he would never say out loud.
Finally, Draff moves. There’s a churr, a monstrous growl. A little further on, the black, clawed feet of a hilichurl join the workboots.
Diluc thanks the Gods for this scapegoat when he hears the crack of a broken liquor bottle, or maybe a clay mask. He grabs his brother by the elbow and eases out the other side of the wagon car.
They peek over the edge of the cart to make sure he's fully distracted.
When traveling with their family groups, hilichurls are a sight to behold. Alone though, they can't even stand up to one of Draff's drunken fits of anger.
Kaeya’s breath catches in his throat when he sees him slam the monster to the ground and kick its ribs.
“Come on,” Diluc whispers, pulling him back towards the town.
Kaeya glances back at him, unmoving. He looks scared.
Diluc raises his eyebrows. He's seen his brother laugh in the face of much bigger threats. “What are you waiting for?”
His whisper is less than an exhale. “He’s hurting it. Luc, he’s torturing it.”
Diluc blinks, eyes flickering back to the fight. “Sure, so what?”
“Why won’t he just kill it?”
“I’m sure he’ll get to that,” He tugs him away from the train car. “Come on, while he’s distracted.”
Kaeya pulls away from his grasp and swallows hard. He kneels down and grabs a stone. Heavy. Sharp.
The shape suggests a sort of violence on its own, but Diluc has to run his eyes over it over and over before he understands what's happening. He looks back up at him helplessly. Why?
No reply, his brother turns the corner and pushes Draff away with a surprising level of hatred.
“No.” Diluc follows, pressed against the tramway, confused. So, terribly confused.
Kaeya stands over the hissing monster for a second. It’s bleeding, it’s lashing out. He drops to his knees and raises the stone above his head. It comes down with a crunch.
Diluc winces away and slaps a hand over his mouth. He feels nauseous. Why? Why would Kaeya go out of his way to... to…
It isn't clean, but that doesn’t mean it isn't quick. Kaeya drops the stone. He coughs out a sob as if realizing what he'd done, and holds the hilichurl in his arms.
Draff looks as confused as Diluc. His confusion though, fades to anger. Whatever he says is too slurred with alcohol and senseless rage to understand. He yanks Kaeya up by the arm and twists it so sharply that the tear layer of his eye shines with pain. He seethes through his teeth, joints ringing.
Diluc’s hands shake. He shouts, blood rushing in his ears. He thinks he calls them monsters.
Draff pauses and narrows his eyes. It seems to take a second for him to comprehend who Diluc is, or at least Diluc’s influence on Mondstat’s alcohol industry. He drops Kaeya and steps down on him, forcing his head to the ground and pressing on the heel of his foot for good measure. He doesn't take his eyes off Diluc, maybe he's trying to gauge his reaction. “Get your foreign little friend under control.” He sneers.
Luc realizes he's crying and wipes his eyes. He exhales, gaze moving slowly from the corpse, to the drunk, to his brother.
Draff kicks off and leaves.
Diluc rushes to his brother. There's a red mark in the shape of the boot's tread on his cheek. His arm looks pretty bad.
“Kae.” He murmurs. “Why’d you do that?”
“I don’t know.” Kaeya picks himself up and stares at the dead hilichurl. “I didn’t want it to suffer, I guess.”
“Why?”
His eyes glaze over. “I… I don’t know.” He turns away from the corpse and offers a hollow smile. “If you tell Dad I dragged you into a fight though, I’m taking the grudge to my grave.”
“Father would never fault you.” Diluc reaches to help him stumble through the cobble street, but he flinches away. “Are you alright?”
“Yeah, fine. It happens all the time.”
“That’s a lie.” He says. “I hope that’s a lie.”
Kaeya bows his head and laughs, slouching over to grip his dislocated shoulder. “Don't look so cold." He raises his eyebrows teasingly. "I know a certain girl with a vision who can fix pretty much any wound.”
Diluc makes a face and stares at the Statue of the Seven at the top of the hill. “How can you joke after you— you…” He sighs and rubs his temple. “You’re not joking.”
“You thought you were the only one I bother at midnight?”
"I sometimes worry you might ruin our family name."
"No, no, don't worry. I can guarantee you I will." He leans against the Statue when they reach the top of the hill, and spits down at Barbatos’ marble feet.
Diluc ignores the sacrilege. Usually, he’d complain, but at the moment all his energy is focused on the pinpoint disaster in front of him. “I’m joining the knights.” He says, not really thinking about it. “Then I can arrest Draff for hurting you.”
Light flashes over his eyes as the statue sends them within Mondstat’s gates. It’s a dizzying, almost nauseating feeling, the type you never really get used to. Diluc stumbles against the pavement and nearly meets it face–first, but his brother catches him by the shirt sleeve.
“Okay, sure. I’ll bite.”
“I said I’m joining, not us.” Diluc corrects. “You’ll probably die.”
“I can think of worse.” Kaeya laughs but it lasts too long and goes hollow. Something in the stretch and break of his voice suggests it isn’t a joke.
Diluc pulls further away to study his expression. A question builds in the back of his throat. Familiar but unnerving. He turns away and flushes at his own ignorance.
“What? What’s that look?”
“Nothing.” He waves, flitting his gaze away from his brother’s cold blue eye. “It’s a stupid, inappropriate question. You’d laugh.”
“Well, now you have to ask.” Kaeya touches his shoulder and grins. It pulls too wide, shows too many teeth. He looks like a specter who’d studied human expressions from afar and arrived only to realize he’d overdone the details.
It only adds weight to Diluc’s terrible, childish curiosity. He takes a deep breath. “Are you a ghost?”
“Tch,” He does laugh. It’s overdone like the smile. “Not anymore.”