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The color white used to appeal to Diluc.
The color white used to contrast well with his crimson hair and eyes, the darker tones he often wore alongside the white or cream as a kid - the same color he wore as his gloves when his father’s blood stained them red.
Diluc remembers it as if it were yesterday - the warmth seeping even through the high quality fabric he had tailored for him per his father’s request - the sticky feeling of his father’s own blood coating his hands a permanent red. (He had tried, he had tried once he had gotten home, to scrub off the visual of the sickly shade of red staining his pale skin. He rubbed his skin raw and bled until his maids had to physically wrench a screaming crying young Diluc from the sink, condemning the world and asking why he couldn’t remove the red from his hands.) He never wanted to see blood on his hands ever again. He couldn’t look at himself for weeks, fashioning his hair into a high ponytail to keep the red away from his face.
So, once he grew of age, he had a new pair of gloves tailored. This time with the palms red and exterior black. Even if his palms were red, red like the color of his father’s blood, the fabric no matter how exquisite could never replicate the vibrancy of the shade that had plagued him so. It brought him momentary comfort to believe that the only time he would see such red again would be if he shed his own blood or another’s.
The time he saw the shade of red was much too soon, when he encountered Kaeya again. The red of his pyro was bright, much too bright against Kaeya’s blisters and welts, much too bright against Kaeya’s blood. It was jarring, and Diluc hated it. Diluc hated him .
And so, even with Kaeya’s vision granted, even with Kaeya’s tears in his unobscured eye and pleading apologies, even with Diluc’s vision burning his own hands and Kaeya’s ice causing iceburn to the pair’s injuries, even with the copious amount of red , Diluc still fought. Kaeya returned the parries likewise (and maybe if Diluc looked on a bit deeper, he would have seen Kaeya was still hesitating rather than seeing this fight as a fight for his life, despite him being the initiator), and Diluc got more aggressive until his hands couldn’t carry his claymore any longer, angry red markings all over his hands and charred fabric wrapped around his wrists pathetically, blood oozing from his hands and ice causing more welts.
Diluc continued fighting until both him and Kaeya’s own visions ended up injuring them. Diluc continued pushing and pushing until Kaeya’s hands were stained and stabbed with his own blood and ice shards. Diluc kept pushing because he would rather fight than come to terms with Kaeya and the hatred and guilt that made bile almost rise up his throat. And Kaeya indulged him, pushing back until Diluc’s knees gave out underneath him, indulged him until Diluc screamed pitifully into the night sky, indulged him until Diluc started sobbing and screaming it wasn’t fair.
Kaeya indulged him until both of them were too weary to fight, and in turn, Diluc allowed him to indulge in the memories of simple sparring between the two of them when they were still children. When Crepus was still alive. When Kaeya and Diluc were able to call each other brothers.
When Kaeya spared him and walked off with shoulders hunched and brows furrowed with tears in his eye, Diluc punched the ground until his knuckles bled. Diluc ignored the blood - both his and Kaeya’s - stained on his hands and his weapon and even his face - and Diluc ignored all indications he had ruined their relationship further.
Diluc refused to accept that he had ruined their brotherhood.
(Again, after their fight, Diluc was locked up in his bathroom again, bar of soap rubbing against irritated burnt skin, hot water scalding his hands, and blood draining down the sink.)