Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“There was--a device,” Jean said, like that meant anything at all. “It wasn’t supposed to explode.”

Diluc crossed his arms. There was a headache building behind his left temple, the kind he hadn’t had since he was a sickly child watching Kaeya play outside with the other Winery kids. It had been building steadily over the past few weeks, turning into a constant stabbing pain this morning when he’d come back from the vineyards to find Jean waiting for him. 

It wasn’t every day that the Acting Grand Master played messenger girl, and he recognized her downturned mouth, her short, unhelpful sentences, as what they were: signs that Jean was in over her head.

Still weighing his chances of not getting involved in whatever mess this was, he said, “Naturally.”

Jean looked like she would have liked to fidget, but instead met his gaze head on. “We were closing in on the last of the Abyss Mages when lingering electricity reacted with the fire around the device. Outrider Amber was in the direct radius, and Captain Kaeya, he- well, he pushed her out of the way, and the energy hit him instead.”

Something inside Diluc went cold and quiet. He said, “Kaeya did.”

“We were just as taken aback as you are,” but Diluc’s not surprised Kaeya did it, like Jean assumes: he thinks of the week they’d been bedridden with colds the summer Kaeya turned ten, sick and miserable after Kaeya jumped in to save a drowning child barely younger than them, and Diluc jumped in to save him. It was the way of the world back then: Kaeya went, Diluc followed. 

Not as much now. Maybe for the best, if where Kaeya went made him...what? Cursed?

“His life’s not in danger,” Jean blurts before Diluc can say anything, and he lets out a short, painful breath. “Physically, the worst he got is a few burns to his arms. He saw to those himself before the, um, incident occured.”

Against all odds, Diluc finds that he’s breathing easier. Jean’s still waffling about something, but--nothing incurable, it seemed like. Nothing that Diluc couldn’t fix by jumping in after him. 

“I’d like to repeat that he’s physically fine,” Jean said, shooting him another cautious look. “But we brought the artifact back with us and no one’s been quite able to figure out how it works yet. All we know for sure is that it causes the symptoms we first saw in Captain Kaeya.”

“Those being?”

She squares her shoulders and looks him directly in the eye. “Sir, it seems that Captain Kaeya has lost most of his memories.”

Instant relief makes Diluc say, “So that’s not that bad.”

“Um, not necessarily. You see, sir, we’ve thus far been unable to convince him to go see Barbara, or any of the other conventional doctors. In this state Captain Kaeya is on his guard against anyone he doesn’t recognize. The Knights of Favonius seem to make him particularly wary.”

“You want to check if he recognizes someone from the Winery.”

“Not quite, sir.” She puts her hand on the hilt of her sword, touches her hair. More waffling. “Not to say that we didn’t try, and he did strike up easy conversation with a few people, but that seems to have been out of the Captain’s nature than from him remembering them. So.”

Diluc waits her out. 

“We were hoping--we think that the Captain’s reluctance to seek medical attention means that we have no choice but to wait it out.” Her blue eyes on his, beseeching. “And as you know, Captain Kaeya has more than a few powerful enemies in Mondstadt who may take advantage of his vulnerability.”

Diluc tenses. “He has plenty of friends--”

“None outside the city. None that could protect him.” Diluc’s already shaking his head when Jean says, “Sir, won’t you keep him under your protection till the effects wear off?”

“He’s just one man,” Diluc said, a little wildly. His head felt fuzzier than ever, full of humming static. “You couldn’t knock him unconscious again and let Dr. Livingstone have at it?”

Jean hesitates for a second. Her eyes flash before she remembers herself. “With all due respect, I feel like I can’t tell if you’re joking or not.”

“You’re right, you’re right, that was--you’re right.” The headache was fully built now. “Is he here with you?”

“We have Lisa keeping an eye on him for now. He doesn’t seem as wary of her.”

His headache flares hot and sharp behind his eye. He hadn’t been sleeping well, since he heard the whispers on the street about Kaeya not contacting his network for weeks now. 

“Knowing him, there’s a chance that the situation is not as dire as it seems. Has anyone tested that he truly has lost--”

“Let me stop you there, sir,” and Jean looks all the way outraged now. “If I couldn’t recognize that one of my men is telling the truth about such a debilitating affliction, you must think me a very poor leader.”

Or Kaeya an exceptionally good liar, Diluc thinks, but Jean doesn’t give him time to hold his ground. Indignant, she storms out of the mansion. Diluc has no choice but to follow. 

When Jean led him down to the lake, Diluc thought that maybe he’d find Kaeya and Lisa the way he always saw them around Mondstadt: their heads bent together, always laughing softly about something. What he found, instead, was Lisa standing with a pinched, frustrated look on her face, arms crossed, standing thirty feet from Kaeya who was crouching on the riverbed. He met her eye and she shrugged. From the way that even Jean began to circle around like a traveler around a hilichurl camp was when Diluc finally understood: Kaeya didn’t just mistrust the Knights. He was actively keeping them away. 

At the sound of their approach Kaeya straightened. The mist flower he’d been watching had frozen his boots, and Diluc was assaulted by memories again, competing over each other to gather the most flowers and shivering in blankets at the end of the day. 

Enough stalling, he tells himself. 

A stranger stares at him through Kaeya’s eyes. There’s a flicker there, and Diluc thinks, maybe-- but it’s gone before Diluc’s heart has even stopped surging. The stranger’s lips are curved in Kaeya’s smile, and his blue eye dances over Diluc, down, then back up, wary but warm in a way that Kaeya hasn’t looked at him in almost ten years, and Diluc-- 

Diluc abruptly wishes he’d thought to take off the scruffy overalls he’d worn to the vineyard before coming.

“Hm,” Kaeya taps his chin, the edge of his smile. “You’re not doing a very good job of convincing me, Miss Jean. You couldn’t have found a more Knight-looking man if you tried. And I made my terms clear: not a Knight.”

Diluc scowls. “ You’re a knight.”

“Then I seem to have made some poor choices in life, indeed.” Still laughing, Kaeya moves a step back, the water crystallizing under his boot-heel. His eyes dance from Diluc to Lisa to Jean, settling back on Diluc, assessing. He takes another step back. Out of Diluc’s range. 

Jean takes a step forward. “Kaeya, we assure you that none of us mean you harm, and we only wish to protect you. Don’t we, Master Diluc?” 

“ If you’ve really lost your memories, then you won’t know who’s coming after you when the news gets out,” Diluc says, ignoring her. “As much as I’d love to melt that ice under you, I can promise I’m not the one who wishes you the most harm.”

“Charming,” Kaeya chuckles. “Tell me, are you this aggressive towards all who seek your protection, or might I be special in some way, Sir Knight?”

“Not a knight,”Diluc growls, frustrated. Why had he thought Kaeya would be less insufferable without his memories? 

They stare at each other across the lake they grew up in. Kaeya’s smiling with all his teeth, Diluc can feel his own face twisted in a murderous scowl. Beside him Jean looks distressed. It looks dire, except--

“Why are you rolling your eyes?” he snaps at Lisa.

“Because,” she says, crossing her arms, “ boys. ”

“Explain.”

“I’d love nothing more, Master Diluc,” she says, lazily smirking at Kaeya, who has finally narrowed his eye and let his own smirk drop, sizing her up like a real opponent. “But I imagine Kaeya wouldn’t be very happy with me if I do.”

Diluc could fester for ages over the open wound that is the way that Lisa says Kaeya’s name: Kae-ya, slow and sweet like a cherry she’s rolling around on her tongue. His skin itches. His head aches. Very deliberately, he puts it out of his mind. 

Lisa has taken a step forward as well. “Well, Kaeya?”

She crosses the ice that Kaeya has reluctantly laid for her. Their boots make the same sound on the ice, and the sight of them is familiar: Lisa and Kaeya, smiling, lovely. When she reaches him she leans up to say something in his ear and their hair whispers together, dark and light. 

Even before Lisa leans back down, Kaeya’s face has gone blank. It’s the mask he wears before he decides which one to trade it for, and it’s as good as a gasp of shock from someone else. 

Leaving him frozen, Lisa tartly click-clacks her way back off the ice. Her lightning zaps Kaeya gently as she goes, and it finally makes him startle out of it, look at Diluc with wide eyes, and then twist his lips with unfeigned unhappiness. 

“I suppose it’s not too farfetched to think that a man who seems to hate knights isn’t one,” he says. He says it with bad grace, not looking at Diluc. It looked like being a sore loser was an ingrained habit, and Diluc smirked. “Then, Sir Not-Knight, I’ll be in your care.”

(“It’s not that I care what you told him,” Diluc tells Lisa, next time he bumps into her at the library.  

“Of course.”

“It’s simply that--it might be important, if we are ever to come up with a cure for his affliction. If it’s about something he remembers.”

“Oh no, it wasn’t,” Lisa says politely. She raises her cup to her mouth, hiding a smile. “It was something completely different. More tea?”)

The first of their hostile visitors comes calling that night. 

Still skittish, Kaeya had been visibly relieved when Diluc gave him one of the unoccupied guest bedrooms and left him to his own devices. He’s pacing the floors thin ruminating and plotting, Diluc can tell. It was always Kaeya’s way: he planned for everything, and when something that no one could possibly plan for happened he’d go and bury himself into a sulk for a while. This, more than anything else, convinces Diluc that Kaeya isn’t faking the whole thing. 

Diluc potters about his bookshelves in the meantime. He picks up a few books, flips through them, and sets them down. It’s infuriating that he should be so ill at ease in his own home, because of Kaeya, no less. Normally the staff would have set his dinner before him by now, but he’d asked it to be kept in Pyro-heated dishes till Kaeya was ready to come down, and dismissed them all for the day. 

It’s probably because he’s so unused to having company over. That has to be it. Busy with the winery and the tavern and his more illicit activities in Mondstadt, he hadn’t even had time to think about how empty the mansion is at night after the rest of the workers have gone to their homes. Alone, he hadn’t thought about how the emptiness echoed and how small he still was compared to the high ceilings of his childhood home, but now--

(He deliberately doesn’t think about the fact that it’s Kaeya: almost ten years gone, but the house already doesn’t feel the same with him back in it.)

Diluc is slightly bemused, counting back the months since he’d had a guest over last, when there’s a loud knock on the door. 

“Coming!” he calls, belatedly remembering that he’d given the butler permission to turn in. “Who is it?”

“Mason, of the Knights of Favonius!” a voice calls back. “Acting Grand Master Jean sent me to check on the Captain!”

Diluc frowns in thought. Hydro Vision, he remembers. Polearm user. He’d seen him in combat once or twice, and Jean had commented how skilled he was. 

He opens the door and a man with a pleasant, expressive face and a broad frame grins at him. “How’s the Cap’n doing? Not causing too much of a ruckus, I hope.”

“Not at all,” Diluc says automatically. “Come on in. I hadn’t realized it was raining.”

The man --Mason-- nods his thanks as Diluc offers to hang his wet coat. Rubbing his hands together, he looks around the hall as he steps in, and his eyebrows hike up. “Always knew Kaeya came from money,” he says, “but sweet Barbatos. The Alberiches do well for themselves, huh?”

His brow furrows when Diluc doesn’t say anything. “Did I say something wrong?”

“You must be new,” Diluc replies briefly. 

“I am, actually,” he says, his handsome face brightening in a smile. It settles into his features easily, like it’s his default expression as opposed to the troubled frown he’d been wearing earlier. “The Captain recruited me himself, as a matter of fact. I’m from out of town.”

“Hm,” says Diluc.

A clattering from the top of the stairs announces Kaeya’s presence, and Diluc tenses. “Sir Not-Knight,” he’s saying, sounding a little tired as he climbs down. “Did you put me in the room with a view of Mondstadt for the sake of irony, or are you as charmingly dense as you seem? Oh, hello,” his tone changes when his eyes land on Mason. He loses his exhausted slump and turns sharp as ice. “And who may you be?”

Mason salutes. “Mason, from your unit, Captain. I’m here to check in on you on the Acting Grand Master’s behalf.” He relaxes into a smile. “I’ve gotta say, Kaeya, when they gave the report I expected you to be a lot worse off. Outrider Amber was nearly in tears.”

Kaeya’s lips quirk. “It’s Barbatos looking out for me, don’t you think?”

Mason looks startled, then huffs a laugh. “There’s somebody that’s got their eye on you, alright.” He turns to gesture at the house, his gaze leaving Kaeya. In that split second Kaeya’s eye flashes to Diluc. Diluc shakes his head.

Kaeya’s smile gains teeth.

“Great place you’ve got here,” Mason says. He knocks on the wooden panelling of the cabinets and whistles. “This is some seriously expensive stuff. How old money are you, Cap’n? No wonder you keep standing us all drinks. Is this all authentic?” His exaggerated lilting Springvale accent slips on the word authentic. Snezhnayan, Diluc thinks suddenly. 

“I thought Miss Jean sent you to check on me, not the house I live in.”

Mason shoots Kaeya a quick grin. “I can’t help it! All the men are curious, you know. You don’t talk about your personal stuff at all. Ah, but,” he looks apologetic as he turns back to face Kaeya, who’s gone strangely still. “I guess you wouldn’t know right now either.”

Diluc wishes he could nudge Kaeya, pinch him, anything. The expression on his face is like a ghost had tapped him on the shoulder.

Instead he says loudly, “Kaeya does alright for himself. Will that be enough for your report, Mason?”

Kaeya starts. His eyes are wild. What’s wrong, Diluc fights the urge to ask. He was fine just a second ago, what happened? Something in his expression makes Diluc want to burn his way over to Kaeya, touch his face, his chest, make sure he’s alright. Memories or no, it took a lot to wrongfoot Kaeya like this. 

“Actually,” Mason says, unaware, “Captain keeps talking about the lake he grew up next to. I’d love to take a look, if it’s all the same to you, Kaeya.”

“Sure,” Kaeya says. When Diluc meets his eyes next he flinches and says quickly, “It’d be a pleasure. No, I’m perfectly fine showing him around on my own,” he hisses harshly at Diluc. “It’s a big lake. Even an amnesiac can remember that.”

He leads Mason outside without a single look back. Diluc’s left standing alone in the mansion, again. 

His fists clench.

He’d always known that the secrets that Kaeya draped around himself would come for his life one day. He understood the necessity of it--Mondstadt needed someone keeping an eye on its underworld, the secret backrooms where the light of Jean and her heavenly authority couldn’t touch-- but it was ridiculous that Kaeya would hold all the threads, no matter how suited he was for the job. There was no one who could tell him he’d gone too deep. No one to pull him back to safety. 

His father used to laugh at them. Lightning, he’d called Kaeya, ruffling his hair as Kaeya stayed perfectly still like a cat fighting not to purr. Thunder, and he’d point at Diluc. 

Diluc thinks of jumping into the freezing water and the tight, terrified grip of Kaeya’s small hand in his. He dreams of that, still. He dreams of being locked in place as Kaeya’s light faded and faded into the deep.

Diluc grunts in frustration. He straps his sword to his belt and puts his coat on. He follows Kaeya.

He has to sprint to catch up to the muddy bootprints on the ground. The rain’s nothing but a wet drizzle coming in from the lake, but it still makes it hard to see and Diluc can’t risk lighting the way with fire. He’s afraid that--well. He’s afraid. 

He sprints till he’s panting, then some more, till white spots dance across his eyes. He’s never been much of a tracker. Desperation begins to claw at the edges of his fear, when the sky lights up with blue. 

Ice.

It comes from the direction of the plains. They used to practice sparring here, Kaeya quick and light on his feet, dancing away laughing from the heavy swings of the claymore Diluc hadn’t grown into yet. 

Kaeya’s not laughing now. Diluc blinks rain out of his eyes as he approaches, barely making out the figures in the fog, but-- Kaeya has stumbled. 

Diluc had thought --known-- that Kaeya could handle himself against Mason, no matter what happened. What he hadn’t banked on is that Mason had brought friends. 

Five frozen statues tower over Kaeya as he hunches over a gash in his side. His face is raw with pain, that expression Diluc kept catching at the house. With no one to see him, Kaeya’s face is open. He looks scared. He looks resigned. He looks like he’s in incredible pain. 

Diluc isn’t even thinking when he charges in. His sword lights up the sky and dances through the rain, and reinforcements keep coming, and he was so careless, he knew what Kaeya was like but he still let him--

Later, later, he tells himself. He lets himself be the edge of his blade. He doesn’t have to think about guarding his back-- even injured, the conditions favor Kaeya. He freezes the incoming hordes and steps back to let Diluc sweep through them. It’s instinct to step in with fire to melt Kaeya’s ice. They handle the whole group in the blink of an eye. 

“Still trying to convince me you’re not a knight?” Kaeya pants. His voice is hoarse, and he’s trying for his usual teasing tone but can’t quite manage it, like a cracked mask that he keeps trying to put on. 

Diluc stares at him in dumbfounded revelation. 

Even as children, he’d never seen Kaeya scared of anything.

“You knew,” he says without thinking. “Why did you come out here with him?”

Kaeya props himself upright with his sword. It hurts to watch him. Diluc has seen him shrug off worse injuries than these, but now Kaeya looks brittle, on the verge of snapping. Always with the secrets, Diluc thinks, furious.

When he begins to speak, he sounds beaten. It sits so wrong in Diluc’s ears that it takes him a beat to pay attention. 

“Say, Sir Not-Knight. Did you know that this Mason here,” Kaeya kicks his unconscious form, “was an undercover Fatui agent infiltrating the Knights? Apparently I found out and blackmailed him to stay because the Knights didn’t have a decent mid-ranged fighter.” He doesn’t meet Diluc’s eyes. “I held his secret over him and made him serve in the Knights for over two years. As soon as he heard I lost my memories he came over to kill me while I’m not suspicious. If he’s despicable, what does that make me, hm?”

Diluc’s throat catches despite himself. “I may disagree with your methods, but--”

“You don’t know anything about me,” Kaeya growls, and there, there he is: the trapped animal that stares out from Kaeya’s eyes. “All I do is lie. All my instincts ever do is tell me to lie. I’m--”

“The person I know the best,” Diluc says firmly. “We may walk different paths, Kaeya, but I know you. Right down to your bones.”

Kaeya is staring at him. Irritated with himself for always being the one reaching out , Diluc is nonetheless helpless not to step down from the outcrop of rock and hold his hand out. 

“I’ll never understand you,” he says, “but no one could protect Mondstadt like you do.”

Kaeya’s pupils are blown wide, his lips parted. Diluc has the fleeting thought that this must be what he looked like when he was waiting to be kissed, and pushes that thought angrily out of his mind. 

“Come on,” he says, annoyed and flushed hot by the resurgence of this bad habit, this old, horrible, no-good crush. “We shouldn’t stay out here too long.”

Uncharacteristically quiet, Kaeya takes his hand. He lets himself be led home. 

The next morning, Kaeya is insidious. 

After returning from their fight with the Fatui agents, Diluc had awkwardly shown Kaeya around the house as his Pyro energy dried them off. It took a while for Kaeya to start smiling again, and it was a toned-down version of his usual mischief, just a little tired around the edges. They ate a quiet dinner and retreated to their rooms.

“Don’t think I can’t tell what you’re doing,” Diluc tries to keep his voice cold, and thinks that he maybe fails. He can’t loosen his grip on his cup, for one. 

Kaeya just looks at him like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. “Doing?” he dances his fingers along Diluc’s coat collar again, the pads of his sword-callused fingers whispering against the skin at the nape of Diluc’s neck as he fussed with it, then on to his lapels, gentle enough that Diluc could only watch with a dry mouth as those dark fingers played with his buttons. “As a member of nobility I’d have thought your wardrobe would be a touch more elegant than this, Sir Not-Knight.” 

“My name is Diluc,” he says. A scowl naturally furrows his brow, and Kaeya looks like he wants to laugh.

He’s looking at him through his lashes again, blue eyes teasing and warm. “Diluc,” he says. “A knight in overalls isn’t quite where I thought my preferences would lie, but here we are.”

-- shameless. 

“Not a knight,” Diluc croaks. “I think I-- I have work,” he says, and turns away so he doesn’t have to look at Kaeya any longer, the way he dimples when he smiles, his unbrushed hair falling over his shoulder, the way he still thinks that he owes Diluc this, even after all these years. 

Kaeya had been gentler than this, as teenagers. He never let on that he knew about Diluc’s stupid crush, never made it obvious how much it bothered him, but he always looked so relieved when he ran into Diluc talking to a girl. 

“Hm? The overalls made me think you were getting ready for something quite different.”

Gods. Diluc steadies himself. He’s stronger than this. He doesn’t need Kaeya’s pity. “You don’t have to do this, you know.”

Kaeya laughs easily, and actually looks abashed. “I admit I was starting to worry if I was laying it on too thick.” He brushes his hair out of his face. He gives Diluc a warm, affectionate look, somehow even more tempting than his sultry low-lidded stare. “I take it you’re not much for wooing?”

“Nothing to woo,” Diluc says, forcing himself to be brisk. “You don’t owe me anything.”

“Owe--” and Kaeya’s eye goes wide before he huffs a laugh. “Let’s not insult ourselves by assuming that that’s what’s happening here, Sir Not-Knight.”

“Then what.”

Kaeya smiles. It’s Kaeya’s real smile. Diluc hasn’t seen it in some years. “You tell me.”

Diluc has to hold himself very still, not trusting himself not to reach out and twist strands of blue hair around his fingers, to nudge closer--

The door bangs open. 

“Master Diluc!” says Charles, looking uncharacteristically frazzled. “Master Diluc, you’re needed in the tavern post-haste. There’s--oh, I didn’t see you there, Master Kaeya.”

He trails off into puzzled silence. 

Diluc shrugs off the whisper of Kaeya’s touch. His duties settle on him like a cape, comforting in its weight. In the corner of his awareness Kaeya’s mouth is twisted, rueful. “Kaeya will be accompanying me, provided that he behaves . Now, what about the tavern?”

The tavern, as it turns out, has turned just the wrong side of rowdy, mostly thanks to the Adventurer’s Guild having had the bright idea to mark it as a touchpoint for their newest gliding challenge. Kaeya watches with unfeigned amusement as Diluc has to hop on his own glider to coax one of the younger challengers off a precarious patch of roof. 

“But I’d be fine, ” Bennett keeps insisting, even as Diluc grabs him by the scruff of his neck to veer sharply away from a crash. “Whoops,” he adds unconvincingly, as his knee smashes into a flowerpot on a balcony. “But seriously, Mr. Diluc, I know what I’m doing. I just need this one talisman, now I’ll have to go back to the cathedral and start all over again.”

“Or you could just climb up there and get it, easy peasy,” says Kaeya, strolling across the town square towards them. He flicks a sunsettia at Bennett, his eyebrows hiking up when Bennett fumbles the catch before picking it up off the ground and digging into it with all apparent enjoyment.

Diluc frowns. “Kaeya.”

“It’ll take some wiggling, but it’s not impossible,” Kaeya says. He smiles guilelessly at Diluc, then down at Bennett. “Besides, you’re not tall enough to keep gliding when it’s this low.”

“Gee, I don’t know, Captain Kaeya,” Bennett says, oblivious to Diluc glaring at Kaeya above his head. “It is a gliding challenge, and climbing is supposed to be slower.”

Diluc says, “That’s right, go back and start over,” just as Kaeya says, “If you climb on Mr. Diluc’s shoulders you probably could start gliding again.”

Bennett lights up. “Oh, epic idea! Brilliant as always, Captain Kaeya.” He turns big eyes on Diluc. “Mr. Diluc, would it be alright if I--”

“Absolutely not,” Diluc says, firmly. “The Guild sets these challenges and it wouldn’t be fair for everyone else if you get an advantage.”

“But isn’t that the life of an adventurer?” Kaeya presses. Insidious. “Finding creative solutions to challenges? I can’t expect young Deacon here to be a very good adventurer if he can’t even find an effective way to start gliding after hitting the ground once.”

“That’s right!” Bennett shouts enthusiastically. “But it’s Bennett, though. Captain Kaeya, are you alright?”

“He’s fine,” Diluc grouses. “He just has a chronic allergy to respecting any kind of rule.”

“I look forward to obeying your rules, Sir Not-Knight,” Kaeya murmurs, infuriatingly demure, his eye casting mischievous peeks at him from under his lashes. Diluc bonks him upside the head and he dodges gracefully, laughing. 

Diluc looks at Bennett, big eyes sparkling, then at Kaeya, who’s smiling at him, like--like--

“Fine,” he huffs. 

Bennett yells a cheer and begins to clamber up. 

“They grow up so fast,” Kaeya says, pretending to wipe a tear. 

“I’ll deal with you later,” Diluc growls. Bennett isn’t very heavy, but he has maybe a few dozen more elbows than is normal, all of them accurately planting themselves in the softest parts of his gut.

“Yes, good,” Kaeya says. “I think I’m getting empty nest syndrome already. Comfort me, Sir Not-Knight.”

Bennett isn’t listening. “Bye, Mr. Kaeya, Captain Diluc!” he yells as he soars off. He cheers as he gets his last talisman, and in the distance there’s a crowd of Adventurers running around preparing to cushion his inevitable crash landing.

Just to wipe the smug smirk off Kaeya’s face, Diluc says, “It’s not because of what you said, you know. That child is a child of the city. We’re all supposed to be his parents.”

Kaeya looks startled. “The city adopts orphans?”

“Mondstadt does.”

He hides his expression with a thoughtful hmm, but it’s unmistakable: Kaeya looks pleased. “Fitting, for a city protected by you.”

Diluc squints upward. Adventurers dot the sky, wheeling about like laughing, benign birds of prey. The most he’s heard anyone complain about today is how quickly the Good Hunter runs out of jam. All that, with the looming threat of the Fatui hanging over their heads, held at bay by diplomatic acrobatics that even Diluc admits are beyond the pale for the Knights. It screamed of someone working behind the scenes. Someone cloaked in shadow, a sliver of a smile, the toss of his coin gleaming gold in the dark.  

“And you,” Diluc says. 

Kaeya’s eyes are bright. “And me,” he allows. “Probably.”

Kaeya insists on making small talk with everyone at the tables of Good Hunter as he passes, and Diluc realizes that he’d forgotten how painfully slow mingling was when Kaeya was involved. The man had no memories of his network of secrets but it was just a matter of time till people flocked to him, confiding their quandaries and pressing him for ideas. Kaeya listens with a smile throughout, drumming his fingers on the table as he solves problems for people he doesn’t have the faintest memory of. It’s his nature, Diluc realizes with despair tinged with something uncomfortably close to affection. He’s a meddler, through and through. 

“I’d love to stay and chat,” he’s saying with fake regret as yet another youngish man takes a seat next to him. “But I’m afraid I’m keeping my escort waiting.” He gestures with flourish at Diluc, who had been quietly observing him from the table he was sharing with Amber. 

Diluc snorts. “Don’t start taking my preferences into account, the shock might kill me.”

“Bristly, isn’t he,” Kaeya says to his companion. “The handsome ones always are.”

While Diluc is scowling and going red, Kaeya murmurs another apology and slips out of his seat. He leans down till his hair falls forward and brushes Diluc’s coat. “I think I was promised a stroll?”

“Only if you behaved.”

“But I’ve been very good,” he slips in a side-eye to Amber, who is staring, open-mouthed. “Haven’t I, Amber?”

“What is going on,” Amber says anxiously. “Is this a, um, drill?” 

Diluc grabs Kaeya roughly by the arm. “Here’s a piece of advice that will serve you well, Amber: never listen to anything he says.”

“But Captain Kaeya taught me how to make explosives!” Amber cries after them as Diluc drags Kaeya away. “And how to use a dagger! Master Diluc, are you sure--”

Kaeya’s laughing as they finally half-sprint out of earshot. His laughter tinkles in Diluc’s ears. He’s still holding his arm, looser than when they’d set out. He sees Kaeya look at it curiously, then look away with a pleased curl of his lips. 

“Back to the tavern?” Kaeya suggests, voice soft.

Diluc nods. He lets go of Kaeya’s arm. 

They-- stroll, Diluc admits it, even though the word fits wrong, more suited for pairs like Godwin and Gloria, raptly in love, barely aware of their surroundings enough to wave at Diluc and Kaeya as they pass their bench. He’s distantly aware that conversations halt when people spot them, and whether that’s because the sworn rivals of the Winery are together, or because of how Kaeya looks --a grin crooking his mouth, bright as starlight, aware of the attention but not shifting focus for a single second from Diluc-- either way, it makes Diluc want to hurry to the privacy of the tavern. 

“It’s a beauty, this city of ours,” Kaeya says, smiling knowingly at him and Diluc shuffles to slow his pace. “You make quite the picture. A prince in his kingdom.”

“What prince,” he snaps, ears going crimson. Then without thinking he adds, “I kicked one of the pigeons on the bridge once.”

Kaeya snorts an ugly laugh. 

“It was in front of the Grand Master at the time,” Diluc adds, watching Kaeya try to play off his laughter gracefully. “He had just finished telling me what a fine young man I was growing up to be, and you dared me to kick a pigeon and I did.” He huffs a laugh as Kaeya leans into him, trying for elegance and failing. “I think we were nine at the time.”

“How dare you,” Kaeya says, blue eye bright, shimmering with indignation and delight. “How dare you spring that on me. I thought you were supposed to be nice! And noble!”

“You’re the knight, not me.” How long since Kaeya had looked at him like this, Diluc thought for maybe the thousandth time. He stews in the longing ache of the thought, tinged with a sweetness that came with having Kaeya at his side again, and as they take their seats at the tavern he finds himself saying, 

“We grew up together. In the Winery.”

He doesn’t mention his father. He doesn’t think he can. Kaeya may have lost his memories, but he was still Kaeya: one mention of the circumstances of his death and Kaeya will put together the source of all their conflict and will likely take off again, half-wild and skittish as he is. It was one thing to cut ties with him when he could protect himself fine on his own. Now, exposed and made vulnerable by his own secrets, letting him go would mean--

“I was adopted?” Kaeya is flicking his knife in lazy concentric circles that are making the rest of the patrons nervous. Charles is making dismayed faces at them from behind the bar, and Diluc pretends not to notice. “That would explain this innate competitiveness. I expect I was very good at everything I did.” He smirks when Diluc mumbles an insult under his breath. “Thought so. So we were...brothers?”

“We were both too old to play pretend at families. Even Father didn’t force the issue.” 

And it had felt wrong to try and tie Kaeya down with a title like that, when he’d still been raw and desperately homesick, glancing out of the windows with his eyes shimmering sky-blue before he caught himself and looked away. His father hadn’t said anything, but he didn’t have to. Somewhere deep down, Diluc had always known that Kaeya’s heart lay buried in his homeland.

They pick themselves up and move into a table at the back, Diluc guiding Kaeya with a hand on the small of his back. Kaeya’s gaze drops to the hand, then back to Diluc’s face. Diluc raises a challenging brow, and Kaeya smirks. 

Once they sit back down, Kaeya gets that look again, playful, simmering heat. “So...not brothers, then.”

Diluc’s face heats. “Is that really the most important part?” 

“It is to me,” Kaeya says, bracing his elbow on the table and cupping his face. More serious than Diluc had expected him to be. “The way I see it, there’s something unresolved between you and I. And this body is giving me clear hints as to what it is.”

Diluc’s fingers spasm on the table. He can’t meet Kaeya’s eye. 

“If that was even the case, why wouldn’t you have made a move by now?”

Kaeya hesitates. Diluc finds that he’s holding his breath. 

“You claim not to understand me,” he says, tracing circles on the table with his thumb. “I’d say I don’t quite understand myself. The Kaeya Alberich of rumor is a daredevil, so why would he be so afraid of getting what he wants?”

Diluc drops his gaze. “You must know there’s more to it, Kaeya. We both had our reasons.”

“Both,” Kaeya’s voice is as soft as snow. 

Diluc had missed him, the way he slept roughly the same amount as a cat, the way he woke up ready to bolt, had to be spoken to slowly and softly till he calmed. He missed the way he talked with his hands, the way he played small, harmless tricks on Diluc and let out peals of laughter at the expression on his face. The way he was fiercely loyal, even when that loyalty tore him in two.

“Both,” Diluc admits. 

Kaeya’s expression shifts, goes open and wanting. “Come here,” he begs sweetly, threading a hand through Diluc’s hair when he goes, shaking his ponytail loose and mouthing at his jaw, his clever teeth moving to tease his ear until Diluc grumbles in complaint and slots their mouths together, lips catching. Kaeya smiles. Diluc had instinctively known Kaeya liked to kiss, so he’s glad he’s good at it. 

After the first catch of their dry lips Kaeya presses closer and murmurs his dissatisfaction when there’s still space between them. “Here, let me,” he says impatiently and hitches himself on to Diluc’s chair and grins down at him and Diluc feels half-wild, transparent and desperate, as he tugs him back down. 

Kaeya meets the kiss with a small laugh of delight, and it’s the easiest thing Diluc has ever known. 

Chapter Text

Diluc convenes with the Fatui delegation again that night. They have slowly begun to strip off the sugar-coating from their threats, and from their studied expressions of nonchalance as they inquire about Kaeya’s absence Diluc gathers that word has already spread about Kaeya’s condition. Yesterday’s agent was supposedly someone with a personal vendetta against Kaeya, but what are the odds, really? There are new faces in the delegation every day as they send higher and higher ranked diplomats to step on Mondstadt’s throat, to get Diluc or Jean or Kaeya to bend. Word on the street is that one of the Harbingers has been sighted, that they’re coming full throttle for the city before the Grand Master returns. 

Let them come, Diluc thinks. He’d much rather they’d had an all-out war so he could wipe out the threat in one stroke of his sword, rather than this insidious negotiating and renegotiating, insults veiled as threats veiled as bargains. 

He’s hyper-vigilant, without Kaeya to pick up on the loose threads of information that he might miss. He’d left Kaeya in the town square chatting to Donna, looking thrilled as she began talking about--something, someone she liked, Diluc hadn’t been paying attention, caught up with how irritating Kaeya could be when he was focused on something. He had barely noticed when Diluc parked Bennett next to them to keep an eye on him, though he did offer a wink and a wave when Diluc muttered I’ll get going then. 

“Master Diluc, what do you think?” 

Diluc snaps back to attention.

“You seem distracted,” one of the Fatui says, a hand coming up to hide her mouth. “Is something on your mind, Master Diluc?”

Diluc brushes her faux concern aside. “Nothing of consequence. Let’s continue.”

Afterwards, brain still staticky from the diplomatic hoops he’d been forced to jump through, Diluc finds that his steps are hurried as he heads towards the town square. For a moment familiar panic stabs through him--only to melt away the next, when he spots Kaeya’s dark head poring over some texts spread over a table at the Good Hunter. 

He’s gathered a following, Diluc notes with amusement. Bennett and Flora have joined him, and so have Amber, Barbara, and Albedo’s quiet young assistant whose name Diluc can never remember. It’s the latter that Kaeya’s talking to, but the whole table is nodding along excitedly.

“--some truth in the illusion,” Diluc overhears as he approaches. “It can’t be too flashy, it can’t be too eye-catching, because the mark will be able to tell if it’s too good to be true. Keep it grounded--” he trails off as he spots Diluc, and curls a small, private smile at him. Diluc’s complaints die in his throat. “--in reality,” he finishes, patting the seat next to him. 

Barbara nod-nod-nods. Jean would kill everyone and then herself if she finds out her precious little sister is learning--what? Lying lessons?-- from Kaeya. “Right!” she says brightly. “Like if you’re pretending to be food to someone who’s reeeaaaally hungry, you should pretend to be a mushroom skewer, not a Sweet Madame!”

“...right,” Kaeya says. He brushes his fingers across Diluc’s lapel, checking his clothes absently. “Good?” 

“Good,” Diluc confirms. It’s less about the disaster of a meeting and more about how he feels now: he didn’t realize how tense he was until he feels his shoulders loosen. “I didn’t teach a member of the Church how to lie, for one.”

Kaeya doesn’t even have the grace to look embarrassed at being caught. “Whoops,” he says, smiling. 

Diluc thinks: I want to kiss him . 

The thought lingers, a small, warm core at the center of his stomach. Diluc thinks about kissing Kaeya  as they shoo the children away and say their goodbyes, thinks about it as they begin the slow, meandering trek to the Winery under the starlight. Thinks about it as Kaeya admits, blushing slightly: “I had no idea she was a nun. I thought she just dressed like that.”

Diluc feels a laugh bubble out of his throat, sweet and light and golden. It’s dark out, and no one’s around; Diluc surges up and lands a soft kiss against Kaeya’s mouth, traces his smile with his lips. Kaeya makes a quiet, hungry noise like he’d been waiting, too. He yields under Diluc's touch without seeming to yield, shudders when Diluc scrapes his teeth against the hard cut of his jaw. 

The knowledge that this is allowed--is welcomed-- is intoxicating. Diluc gets greedy, gets two handfuls of Kaeya’s white shirt and pulls him close, says woefully miscalculated things like, “here, let me,” and “Kaeya, you’re so--” until Kaeya pulls away, mouth red and kiss-bitten, and begins to yank him towards the house. 

"Where--" Kaeya gestures at the door impatiently. His mouth is bruised and slick, an invitation. "Open."

Diluc huffs a laugh and fishes out the key. 

The mansion is in darkness. It’s later than he’d thought; all the staff have already headed down to their own homes, and there’s something about the close, intimate quiet as he lights the chandeliers that replaces Diluc’s sense of urgency with the slow burn of anticipation. The light softens the curves of Kaeya's smile to something liquid and honeyed, unbearably sweet. He comes easily when Diluc beckons him close, straddles Diluc's lap on the chair and looks down at him, gorgeous and unashamed.

“You waited too long.” Kaeya dips down to brush a tease of a kiss against Diluc's lips. “We waited too long,” he corrects himself. 

Diluc knows what he means. Earlier in town he’d been almost clumsy with hunger, the raw serrated edge of his attraction to Kaeya. But with Kaeya close enough to kiss, the warmth of longing no longer burns. 

“Even if we did--” Diluc says. He hesitates. He doesn’t know how to put it into words, after thinking it for so long. “Even if we stayed close and never cut ties, we would have grown apart as we grew up. There are expectations. I’m the Third Generation head of the Winery, and it’s only because of my father’s untimely death that nobody’s tried to force marriage on me yet. And you--you’ve always had your own plans, Kaeya.”

“Yet I don’t see any wives around this place,” Kaeya says quietly. He’s staring at Diluc’s mouth. “Or husbands.”

Diluc nods. There’s a chance he’d get laughed at, but all Kaeya does is look sad. 

“I would have found a way,” he says, unexpectedly. “If I-- if I knew that I could have stayed.”

Diluc tenses. His fingers, wonderingly tracing the dip of Kaeya's shirt, still. “Are you suggesting I kicked you out?”

Kaeya’s mouth presses into a thin line, but he attempts levity anyway. “Nothing that serious,” he says. “Just that...this body--I-- I don’t exactly feel welcome here.”

“You do think I kicked you out,” Diluc realizes. 

Kaeya gently pushes himself away. There is a chill in the air. “It just seems unlikely,” he says, reluctantly, “that I would be the kind of person to push a good thing away.”

“So you assumed it was me.”

Kaeya shrugs. 

Diluc stares down at his hands, still buzzing with the feeling of Kaeya’s skin. “You never could leave well enough alone,” he murmurs. “Father used to say your curiosity would get you in real trouble one day.”

“You don’t talk about him,” Kaeya says softly. Always so observant.

Slowly, with no great fanfare, Diluc begins to truly see the lay of the land around him. He'd been caught up in the sheer intoxicating delight of Kaeya's reciprocated feelings, losing himself in a decade-long crush. He'd wanted the same thing for so long for every day that he'd overlooked a simple truth: without his memories and all the secrets that made him who he was, this wasn't really Kaeya. 

It feels like the ground gives out under him. It feels like he's finally standing on solid ground.

“I don’t,” Diluc agrees finally. “It’s the weight I carry. And Kaeya, you have one too. And it’s not my place to tell you your secrets. I can't.” he can see Kaeya's face begin to change, bitter hurt and incredulity beginning to scrawl over his sharp features, but--

They’re interrupted by a timid knock on the door. 

“Captain Kaeya, Master Diluc, it’s Sucrose!” a small voice calls. “Master Albedo has come up with a cure for Captain Kaeya, and he wants to see you!”

Diluc ignores Kaeya’s frustrated noise and stands up and flings open the doors. Sucrose smiles up at him tentatively, and makes her way to Kaeya who is sitting alone, radiating tension. 

“Captain Kaeya, we should hurry,” she says. “Master Albedo said that the Acting Grand Master was really pushing for this cure.”

Kaeya ignores her. It’s so uncharacteristic that Sucrose just blinks, puzzled, when Kaeya says, “There are easier ways to reject someone, you know. Throwing around this great secret that’s supposedly keeping us apart is just--it’s tacky.” He sounds exhausted and defeated. 

“You should know,” Diluc says, trying to stay firm though his throat closes around the words. “If you knew, you wouldn’t-- You wouldn’t.”

Kaeya’s lips are pursed in a flat line. Bitten, still, with the bruised plumpness of summer fruit. 

DIluc jerks his gaze up. Kaeya doesn’t seem happy at catching him staring at his lips. If anything, he seems even more frustrated. “So maybe this is the perspective we both needed.”

Or maybe it’s the final nail on the coffin of what we used to have. 

“That’s not my decision to make,” Diluc says. He holds up a hand. “And as you are now, not yours, either.”

Kaeya’s eyes flash. “I’m still me.”

“I wish that was true,” Diluc says, and Kaeya recoils as if he’d punched him. Diluc doesn’t soften his tone. “Albedo will figure this out. Then we’ll talk.”

Sucrose perks up. “Yes, Captain Kaeya. Master Albedo is very capable, I’m sure he has your cure all rady to go!”

Seeing Kaeya ball his fists, Diluc nudges him. “Hurry. Albedo does things at his own pace.”

Kaeya hesitates. “I don’t want to--” he plants his feet more firmly. “We need to finish having this conversation, first.”

“Later.” Diluc attempts to gentle his tone. He’s too aware of Sucrose’s big eyes on him. “Go and get yourself fixed. I’ll wait for you.”

Kaeya keeps looking at him, a slight frown marring his face. Sucrose scrabbles at his arm urgently, but he holds still for a moment longer. “This isn’t over, Diluc.”

If he’s lucky, Kaeya won’t want anything to do with him after his memories return. If he’s lucky they’d both be able to write this whole week off--this fever dream of a week, blazing warm and saccharine sweet, and they’d go back to being--to not talking to each other. Seeing Kaeya on the streets of mondstadt and pulling his gaze away, like a knife out of an open wound. 

Diluc sits in silence in his empty home alone. Abruptly, he feels exhausted. This house has Kaeya’s initials carved into the banisters right next to Diluc’s own. It rings with the ghost of Kaeya’s laughter: Kaeya at ten, just beginning to open up, to realize this was a permanent thing. Kaeya at fifteen, talking about the date he’d been on with one of the Adventurer boys from mondstadt. His smiles had gained an edge the night that Diluc’s father died, and that edge had never left. Diluc had seen firsthand how much Kaeya’s secrets cost him, he--

Could see smoke beginning to rise from one of the windows. 

“Get out!” he roars before he remembers he's alone. He doesn’t fear fire but there is a rush of water, vast, like the ocean, unnatural in the peaceful plains of the Winery, stranger still since he can still feel the snap of the house burning. He rushes to the front door before he hears the crackle of electricity, before the room explodes. 

His house crumbles, and he crumbles with it. 

He claws back to consciousness to the sound of voices. “--you are,” Kaeya is saying, “this is the stupidest mistake you’ve ever made.”

A voice says, “Well, that’s honestly debatable.”

Snezhnayan accent, Diluc thinks. Stronger than the one on the Fatui spy in the Knights. He opens his eyes and sees Kaeya, first (always Kaeya) and focuses on that for a long few seconds, Kaeya crouching next to him with his chin tipped up, his ice showing razor-sharp as he glared at--someone, his edges blurred purple from the blow Diluc had taken to the head.  

As his eyes slowly refocus, the Fatui ambassador takes his mask off and sets it on the drawer. “You know,” he says almost conversationally, “when I heard that the man who was leveraging Mondstadt’s peace had amnesia, I imagined that he’d be the most heavily-guarded man in Teyvat.”

He’s smiling pleasantly. Through the haze of pain Diluc can see the outline of a bow, the curves and flats of a Hydro Vision. No ordinary agent. 

“Kaeya,” Diluc grunts. “Get out of here. Go. I’ll handle this.”

He begins the slow, grim process of climbing to his feet, biting his lip fiercely as he feels his bones push themselves awkwardly back into place. He has to stop himself from looking around, from taking in the wreckage around him--his home, his father’s home--

Diluc snaps back to attention. There were more pressing concerns than the knot of grief coagulating in his stomach, and he carefully considers himself, cataloguing his condition. He has more injuries than he’d accounted for--Kaeya had been numbing some of the pain. He had always been a fast healer, but--

“Um, I made pretty sure you couldn’t. Handle this, I mean,” the Fatui agent sounds almost apologetic. “When it was proved that Diluc Ragnivindr himself really was protecting  Captain Alberich, I took precautions. The intel said nothing short of a building falling down around you would stop you.”

Diluc dismisses this as soon as the words are out of his mouth. “Kaeya,” he says instead. “Leave. For once in your life, listen to me.”

Kaeya’s eyes flash to him, furious. “You stubborn bastard. Your head--”

“I’m perfectly fine,” Diluc says, and the Fatui snorts even as Kaeya thins his lips tight. Diluc stares him down, dead serious. His childhood home was in ruins around them. The Fatui agent wasn’t walking out of this in one piece, injuries or no injuries. “Kaeya, you heard him. You need to get to safety.”

“That is actually the opposite of what I was leading towards, but okay,” the Fatui agent says, still agreeable. He twirls his bow in a neat circle. “And I hope I won’t have to remind you that using Cryo on me is a no-no. I’ve heard of your nasty tricks, Kaeya. I have superior range, and I don’t often miss.”

He’s not bluffing. Kaeya’s midrange at best, never mind that he doesn’t even have his sword with him. 

Kaeya’s eyes have lost their laughter. They’re as hard as ice. 

“Well, you boys sure showed me a good time, but it’s finally time.” The Fatui agent makes a show of checking his empty wrist. “Us Harbingers are always on the clock, you know.”

“Do you ever shut up,” Diluc growled, thinking, Harbinger. He steadies his hands on his claymore. Preparing for a swing, bracing his cracked ribs for impact. He’d met more than his fair share of Harbingers, and each was more murderous than the last. If this really was a Harbinger, then it changed everything. 

He glances at Kaeya. He’s still staring at the Harbinger, calculations running plain across his face. Diluc rolls his eyes and moves clumsily to shield him. 

Kaeya’s startled enough to go reeling back when Diluc shoves him gently. “Go,” he says, quiet. Kaeya’s eye is wide. “I’ll still be here when you send the Knights.”

Kaeya stares at him for what feels like a lifetime (“Hey, did you guys forget about my whole deal? You know, I’m gonna kill you both?”) and his mouth hovers on the edge of a worried frown. His eye holds the faraway look he gets when he’s plotting. 

It takes a while, but Diluc can see the instant when he snaps to a decision. Almost simultaneously, they both take a breath. 

Then Kaeya--unfurls, is how it seems. All the tension holding his frame tight falls away, and his eye glimmers. He leans his weight back into a lazy, misshapen sprawl. His mouth twisted in a regretful moue, he turns to the Harbinger with an expression of such saccharine, fake sadness that Diluc can see the Harbinger tense at the change. 

It shakes him harder than the fallen ruin of his home: he recognized the posture. There you are. 

But on the heels of that thought follows the icy realization that there was no way: no way that Kaeya made it to Mondstadt and back on time. It was such a dangerous bluff, to pretend his memories had returned, and for what ends? The Harbinger probably had orders to kill him either way. 

“Kaeya,” he growls. “You’re playing with fire.”

Kaeya ignores him.

“You Fatui,” he drawls. He tosses his coin up and down: a nervous habit, but it’s not like anyone but Diluc has known him long enough to figure that out. “You’ve got a real knack for forcing things to a conclusion, hm?”

“Oh, the Khaenri'ah don’t fall behind.” Earlier, the Harbinger had an easy grip on his bow. Now he mirrors Kaeya’s posture: shoulders loose, hands open, eyes hard. “What are you driving at?” 

They’re circling. Diluc remembers a Liyue saying: two tigers on a mountain.

“Something quite interesting has been happening to me while I didn’t have my memories, you see.” Kaeya says, smiling. “All these patterns and coincidences keep piling up. Small things acting as hints for big things. Big things escalating into even bigger things.”

“Fascinating.”

“But I’m not really interested in patterns, you see. Whenever one happens I suspect it’s because someone with a methodical mind has created it. Someone who pays a lot of attention to detail. Someone who wanted the Knights of Favonius to believe that your motive for wanting to kill me was because I held a secret that I used as a bargaining chip for Mondstadt’s peace.”

“Do you?”

“That’s neither here nor there, Harbinger. But,” Kaeya smiles, his coin a glitter of gold in the air. “Let’s say I did. No one’s actually naive enough to believe I don’t have a failsafe for that kind of thing.”

In Mondstadt, Kaeya had shown a morbid fascination with himself. The people he sat down with at the Good Hunter must have given him a picture of himself, and Diluc can even imagine the broad strokes of it: friendly, secretive, the best liar Mondstadt had ever seen.

It’s not enough. If Kaeya really had regained his memories he would have hinted at his secret by now, led them smilingly to a favorable negotiation before the Harbinger even knew what was happening. 

The Fatui inclines his head. “No one plans for accidental amnesia. I should know, because I’d have thought of it earlier if I did.”

“But we both know I did plan for my death,” Kaeya says, with a lot of confidence for someone who knows no such thing. “So why step into that landmine?”

“You tell me,” says the Fatui agent. “And for the record, I don’t believe for a second that you really do remember everything. But you really are good at making things up, so I’ll let you pass.”

“Kind of you.” Kaeya smiles. “As tempting as it is to think that you got obsessed with me from afar, it’s far more reasonable to think that your reasons are political. But failing that: perhaps the reason you’re so eager to get rid of me is because you simply want to kill someone crucial enough to start a war.”

The Harbinger’s eyes are shuttered. “Captain Kaeya’s imagination is as pretty as he is.”

“And bloodthirsty Tartaglia lives up to his name.”

A direct hit; Kaeya must have heard the gossip around town. Diluc looks at the Fatui with renewed curiosity. So this was the infamous Eleventh? He was flashier than he’d expected. 

“You wanted war?” Diluc says, eyebrow raised. “You couldn’t just go to a tavern and pick a fight?”

“Ah, they warned me you’d be like this, Master Diluc. As expected from a former Captain.” Tartaglia shakes his head in mock sorrow. He hasn’t put his bow away yet. Biding his time. “But Captain Kaeya will agree with me that it’s time that things were shaken up a little. Things are headed in a dire direction, and by now everyone on Teyvat should take their fate into their own hands instead of relying on their gods. Besides, a little change never hurt anybody, right, Kaeya?”

Diluc jerks his head  incredulously when Kaeya doesn’t respond right away. “ Kaeya. ”

“I know, I know,” Kaeya huffs a laugh. “He’s a lunatic, but he makes his own kind of sense. But you can’t force the world to get worse. These things happen organically.” He shrugs. “Not if I can help it, of course.”

Tartaglia wilts. He’s a lot younger than he’d seemed behind his mask, and Diluc dislikes him all the more for it. “You’re as disgustingly loyal as the reports said. It really clashes with your aesthetic, you know.”

Kaeya smirks. “We all have our crosses to bear.”

“See, you keep saying stuff like that,” Tartaglia complains. “You might give a boy ideas, you know.”

Diluc is already rolling his eyes by the time Kaeya gives a huge Cheshire grin and makes his eye go wide. “Ohhhhh, young Harbinger, have you come to steal me away from my prince?”

“They didn’t tell me you were fun!” Tartaglia is outright whining now. “Man, if I knew I definitely wouldn’t have tried to kill you! Probably.”

“Don’t hold yourself back,” Diluc says. Kaeya makes sad noises but Tartaglia, smart boy, follows Diluc’s gaze to the light steadily approaching them, the pulsating resonance of a powerful Geo Vision. There’s only one man in all of Teyvat that moves with such calm deliberation. 

“I shouldn’t have let you stall, huh,” Tartaglia says bleakly, watching Albedo crest the mountain. “They told me you’d try, but I thought I’d be able to tell. And you Knights mobilize way too quickly,” he accuses Kaeya.

Kaeya looks at him. His smile is a crescent moon hidden behind clouds. “It’s more that he was already on the way here to give me my cure.”

Diluc watches Tartaglia’s face change, unable to think, unable to put together the truth that Kaeya has finally lain so carefully at his feet. Kaeya lies and lies and lies, until he says something like this and Diluc doesn’t know what to make of the tremor of his voice, the resigned tilt of his head, the way his mouth is smiling but his fists are clenched. 

He looks at the face of the truth: Albedo, undeniably approaching them, his sword gleaming in the moonlight. “No side effects, Kaeya?”

Kaeya shakes his head. “Right as rain.”

"Wait, you really had your memories this whole time?” Tartaglia clutches his head comically. Albedo placidly unsheathes his sword before Tartaglia can pull out the weapon in his hair ornament. "You shouldn't lead poor boys like me on. I might have said some really reckless things!"

Diluc says, gruffly, “Don’t you have somewhere to be, Harbinger? For someone whose mission just failed you sure stick around a lot.”

He doesn’t look at Kaeya. 

Tartaglia is scuffing his feet. He’s been outmaneuvered and outclassed, but he doesn’t look too torn up about it. Mostly, Diluc is wondering how much power he really has within the Fatui to go rogue like this and get away with nothing more than a slap on the wrist. How much power, to stare down three former and current captains of the Knights of Favonius and seem unconcerned that he has wronged all of them. 

He was a boy, yes, but one built for war, an irrefutable sign that change was coming to Mondstadt, to the whole world, and soon it wouldn’t matter how hard Kaeya fought against it. Now that all his pretenses have been stripped away, Diluc catches the icy fury in Kaeya’s sharp smile. 

“So...no war?”

“Not today,” Kaeya agrees. Still smiling, he tosses him a dagger for Tartaglia to catch, only for Kaeya to cross the distance in the span of a single blink and freeze him in place. 

Knives. Kaeya always had a way with them. 

He points one to the softness of young Tartaglia’s throat, the ice cracking around the tip. 

“And if I see you in this Winery again,” he whispers, “you’ll wish it was Diluc you ran into again.”

Diluc looks warily from the frozen Harbinger to Kaeya, who is practically whistling as he slides down a pile of rubble and dusts himself off. He turns around impatiently when he sees that Diluc hasn’t joined him. “What are you waiting for, Diluc?”

“Depends on where we’re going,” Diluc says cautiously. 

“Well, we can’t leave the house like this, can we?” Kaeya sounds supremely unconcerned by the young war machine that he froze in place. “Come on, I know a contractor down at the docks. He’ll give you a discount.” 

Diluc follows. 

Down at the docks, Kaeya is a whirlwind of action. “Leave those there,” he barks at some workers, ushering them towards the repairs. He bends down to pick up the ragged remains of a whittled wooden crane and tosses it back to Diluc in the same fluid motion. “Did Albedo leave? Was Sucrose with him? I wanted her help to push some of these beams into place.”

“No. Maybe, I’m not sure, I didn’t check,” Diluc snaps irritably. “Kaeya, I thought we could--talk.”

Kaeya’s action kicked into another gear, almost frenzied, but Diluc had caught the split second where he froze. “We have a house to rebuild, Diluc! Or at least I have a house to rebuild, since it is my fault that it was ruined in the first place. You’d think that they wouldn’t let a kid with a Vision that can flatten a house just run around unsupervised.”

“You seemed to get along with him fine.”

Kaeya’s mouth ticks up briefly. “Jealousy isn’t--”

“You risked your entire life and mine on some double bluff to sate your ego,” Diluc says harshly, and Kaeya goes completely still. Diluc can hear his breath coming in quick, shallow gasps. “Are you at least going to tell me why you did it?”

For a moment Kaeya looks like he’s about to snap. Years apart, but it only took Diluc a week to be able to tell that the play of emotions across his face meant that Kaeya was trying to summon a smile. 

Finally, sounding exhausted, Kaeya admits, “I wanted to see if he was actually sent by the Tsaritsa. She would have given him orders to back down if there was even a hint that I might remember, but I didn’t want him to feel seriously threatened either. He’s powerful enough when he’s not on the back foot.”

“So you got to Albedo after all.”

“Albedo was just on his way to the lake. We even had time to talk about hilichurl mask markings before I heard the explosion.”

Despite himself, Diluc snorts. The esoteric bored Kaeya to tears, but he would never let go of an opportunity to get in Albedo’s head. Blockhead, he’d used to call him when Albedo first joined the Knights, throwing things at a young Albedo’s head, trying for a reaction while the young alchemist just kept staring at him placidly. Can’t figure out what he’s thinking, he’d complain to Diluc later. Like you, but less snarky.

You’re just angry he’s not charmed by you, Diluc had told him, and Kaeya, pouting, had thrown pinecones at him instead before grumbling and picking them out of Diluc’s hair. Kaeya used to look for reasons to touch him, the same way  he had the past week. He doesn’t do it now. 

“He still doesn’t like me,” Kaeya says, and Diluc feels a fissure run through him. Kaeya always knew what he was thinking. 

“He would, if you stopped sending spies after him every time he went down to Dragonspine.”

“No one would go down there willingly if they didn’t have something to hide,” Kaeya retorts. It’s the echo of an old argument. Diluc watches Kaeya realize it mid-sentence, watches as a small smile curves his lips. 

Memories made a difference, and they had a whole housefull between the two of them. Their history had been etched into the floorboards of their house, to the rooms that they shared and the rooftop that they’d learned to glide from. The chests that Kaeya had kicked apart as he packed to leave. Years and years and years of history. 

Something dark and terrible rises in his throat. His father had loved this house, he’d grown up in it, it was all he had--

A hand brushes his. 

“It was good of you,” Kaeya says softly, “to give me the choice.”

He’s looking into the distance, where the sun is beginning to rise over Mondstadt. Then he turns back to Diluc, and smiles. “You did a noble thing for once, Sir Not-Knight.”

It takes a few careful breaths for Diluc to reply.

“It felt good to forget about our bad blood. But it wasn’t you.”

“Bad blood,” Kaeya repeats, his hand still hovering a breath away from Diluc’s. “Is that what we have?”

Diluc thinks of Kaeya saying, why is he so afraid of getting what he wants. Diluc thinks of the curve of Kaeya’s smile yesterday, unburdened, sweet, and he looks at Kaeya standing next to him now with his jaw set and his shoulders tense with responsibility. 

This is Kaeya taking a step. And Diluc has always followed.

“It’s not all,” he says, and the words feel light on his tongue. ”Not by a long shot.”

He works up the courage to duck in and press a chaste kiss to the corner of Kaeya’s mouth, watches as delight begins to bloom on his face, the face that Diluc knows best, has loved the longest. 

He stands in the rubble of his childhood home with the one person in the whole world who loved it as much as he did. He wonders if Kaeya feels the phantom touch of the wooden panels under his fingers too, if he hears the creak of the floorboards and the way the light slanted in from the windows. His home was gone. 

“We can build it back,” Kaeya says softly. “We can build it better. Father would have wanted that.”

Diluc nods. He takes Kaeya’s hand. 

“Better,” he says, and likes the ring of it. 

Chapter Text

“Old continent tech,” Jean said, like that was supposed to mean something. “We didn’t know what it was, exactly, when we went to retrieve it, and when the Abyss Mage activated it Diluc pushed Amber out of the way and--well. No one, uh, no one’s been quite able to figure it out, but it’s only a matter of time.”

It took a lot to rattle Jean this bad. Kaeya released a slow breath and said, “So he’s…”

“Alive, like I said,” Jean said quickly. 

“Yeah, you said,” Kaeya agreed. “But he’s been...injured?”

“Not exactly,” she set her shoulders. “Most of the artifacts that are in common use are infused with energy to sustain warriors in battle, but it’s not out of the question that the inverse could also be true, and there are devices that can adjust an enemy’s defenses. Or, in this case, their obedience.”

Where most people fidgeted, Jean liked to prevaricate. Kaeya didn’t urge her to get to her point faster. An unnamed dread was churning in his stomach. 

“Is that a sex thing,” he asked, finally, after Jean had spent a few more minutes warming to the subject of lost technology. “Is that what that means.”

“ No,” said Jean. She looked horrified, as if controlling your enemies through sex was a new and hideous blasphemy that Kaeya had invented on the spot. “It’s subtler than that, thank Barbatos. From preliminary examinations it seems that Master Diluc has an inclination to...be more suggestible. We think that the Mages were attempting to control him by using it on him.”

“So he’s just--what, a little more obedient than usual?” the tight, choking sensation around his throat begins to ease. “Come on, treating that kind of thing is just Wednesdays for Barbara. ”

“That would have been the case, if we could convince him to see Barbara in the first place. He doesn’t trust us enough to let us examine him. Which is where we-- that is to say, we were hoping that you would lend us your assistance in this matter.”

She looks hopeful. All the gentle, regretful things that Kaeya was about to say die in his throat when the door opens to let in another cluster of Knights, Diluc’s bright hair a beacon among them. 

For a second Kaeya can only stare at the bright red, trying to place why it seems so off before he realizes--Diluc’s head is bowed, his eyes on the ground. 

A sick chill goes through him.

In a moment he raises his head, and, lashes lowered, looks through molten crimson eyes at Kaeya. He quirks a tiny, uncertain smile. “Might you be the noble Sir Kaeya?”

Fuck, Kaeya thinks, very distinctly. If this is a prank it’s a very cruel one. 

“Noble Kaeya, that’s me,” he says faintly.

A smile like sunlight curves Diluc's lips. Fuck, Kaeya thinks again, louder, as Diluc delicately steps away from the Knights and comes to stand at his side, averting his eyes shyly.