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Diluc hated everything. Which was a sad statement, in and of itself, but if he was to be truly honest with how life has been treating him. Anonymous letters, a prolonged bickering conversation on the back of a dragon, and Archons forbid, being stranded on an island alone with Kaeya fucking Alberich… Oh , he really hated everything.
“Stop!” Kaeya bursted with his palms held out, only a few meters away from where Diluc was standing on shore, “Just-- For the love of Barbatos! Stop moving! You’re melting the ice!”
“Oh, sorry , I didn’t realize that I started taking orders from a self-proclaimed captain.”
“What are you on about? I’m the Cavalry Captain of Mondstadt. That isn’t self-proclaimed.”
“A Cavalry Captain with no cavalry--” he cut himself off to point at where Kaeya was standing on the water, Kaeya’s arms crossed and staring right back at the redhead. “--the ice you're standing on is unsteady-- is that really much of a title?” Diluc took another step into the water, the bottoms of his boots wet and the ice lining the top of the ocean glimmering underneath the sun.
Kaeya ignored the comment, simply creating another film of ice underneath his feet and shooting a forced smile towards Diluc, “Again, if you could kindly stop moving, it would be oh so greatly appreciated. I can’t move forward if you’re melting everything your feet touch. You’re like King Midas…” he started, “except instead of turning everything you touch into gold, you just like making things exceptionally harder for me.”
“What do you expect me to do? Just stay on a deserted island and wait for you to find a boat somewhere? How do I even know that you’ll come back and get me?”
Kaeya feigned heart pain, throwing a hand over his exposed chest and leaning sideways, “Do you really have such little faith in me?”
Diluc grumbled, “Funny that you think I have any faith in you.”
Kaeya blinked, a smile still plastered across his face before he whipped his head away and made another sheet of ice ahead of him, stepping away with a small salute, “Have fun surviving then! I’ll be sure to tell the Dawn Winery that their beloved boss has decided to simply stay on vacation forever!”
In a bit of a panic, Diluc stepped forward, his feet slipping slightly on the ice melting away, as he moved onwards on the ice bridge. “I was joking! You can’t just leave me here!”
“Oh, you’ll find your way around!” Kaeya shouted, still not looking behind him as he leapt onwards, ice forming underneath his feet while he continued on the ocean.
“Kaeya!” Diluc’s tone turned harsh as he caught up to the other, putting a rough hand on his shoulder. Kaeya flinched as they made contact and the moment he realized who it was standing behind him, his usual playful smile faded.
“What are you doing?!” Kaeya blurted, his voice full of much more surprise than Diluc has heard from him in ages.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“You’re melting the--!”
Before Kaeya had a chance to yell again, Diluc felt the ice underneath them crack. Oh, right . Kaeya, in a futile attempt, created some ice where he stood, but with the steaming melt already happening underneath them, it faded fast. Diluc already knew what was about to happen.
He looked up towards the hot summer sky, sweat pooling down his coat and hair matted against his forehead, Kaeya cursing under his breath.
Yeah , Diluc thought, I hate everything .
The ice underneath them broke in half, and they both plummeted into the ocean.
“How…” Kaeya started, “ How did you melt the ice? Is your body just constantly on fire? If I mix cold tea with your finger, would it start boiling?”
They were both back on the same shore they had been stranded on, sitting on the sand pouring excess water out of their boots. Diluc’s soaked clothes were heavy on his body, but the last thing he wanted to do was take them off in front of someone who would love taking jabs at his “not yet perfect body”.
“Hm, I don’t know. Maybe my pyro activates based on emotion,” Diluc said, sarcasm and nonchalant-ness intermingling in his words. “For example… when I am beyond annoyed.” He aggressively wiped sand off his feet.
Kaeya shot him a deadpanned look, “Come now, Diluc, no need to be so brash. Even so, If that’s the case then I should probably file a report about the dangers of you intermingling with common city folk.”
“Who would be around to boil your tea with a simple finger touch then?” Diluc asked, putting his pointer up in reference to what Kaeya had asked him moments before.
The other dropped the boot beside his own knee and tilted his head ever-so-slightly, “Where did you learn to become so cocky?”
Diluc smiled at his success in getting in a solid hit against the other, “Pretty sure I learned it from someone,” he stated, looking askance with a hand on his chin. Kaeya stayed unamused.
“I have really never seen you this animated before. What a sight. Who knew all I had to do was drag you out to a deserted island and drop you in the ocean.”
Diluc scoffed, one that let a smile linger across his lips. It felt foreign, and he avoided having to look at the other by continuing to smack clinging sand off his pants. It was weird. For once in a long while, their playful banter actually felt playful .
“Oh Diluc, are you avoiding eye contact with me? You know you only have to look into one eye, don’t you?” Kaeya noted. The other’s smile wiped away and he looked up with a dead expression at the other’s eyepatch.
Kaeya just grinned back, slipping one of his boots on before speaking again. “It’s fine, the ocean is a much better view anyway.”
“Are you calling me ugly?”
“I think I’d say more… unflattering.”
Diluc crumbled his hand into a fist in the sand before said sand hit the side of Kaeya’s tan face.
“WHAT—“
“Wonder who’s more unflattering now.”
Hard wet sand then smacked the front of Diluc’s face and his head moved back from the impact, some of the icky substance clinging to his sweaty skin. Oh, you’ve got to be kidding. Diluc kept his eyes shut and his face scrunched, afraid of sand falling into his eyes if he were to open them.
Kaeya’s voice rung out, “Why don’t you eat some of that? We’re stuck on this far off dead island for who knows how long, aren’t we?”
Diluc, in a flood of rage, opened his eyes and wiped off some of the sand before tensing his back, “Might I remind you it’s YOUR fault we’re stuck on this island?! We were supposed to land on that one!” Diluc pointed a finger at the clump of land situated quite a distance away from them, but still visible with its high mountains.
“And I could‘ve GOTTEN to that one, if you had just stayed put. You could’ve carried out your revenge plan any other time, you know.” Kaeya argued.
“A revenge plan? What--” Diluc struggled for words, “ WHY would I carry out a revenge plan that ends with me dunked in the ocean?! You said you wouldn’t come back for me!”
“Oh my, the feeble Dark Knight Hero of Mondstadt was too afraid to be alone,” Kaeya pouted, an obvious teasing lilt in his tone.
He knew that Kaeya already pieced it together, but Diluc crossed his arms anyhow, “I’m not the Dark Knight Hero.”
“You don’t have to hide it from me. I know everything.”
“Yet you somehow still lack common sense.”
“Oh,” Kaeya said breathlessly, “That was low, even for you.”
“Why, you little--”
“Little what?” Kaeya provoked, “ Little brother?”
Diluc’s mind froze, his eyes buffering as their banter ended abruptly. The air around them felt stagnant, a strange drop of coldness swirling near Diluc’s neck. His hands stayed suspended in the air, fingers gripping tightly on the edge of the boot he was still holding.
Kaeya’s smile faded slightly at the silence, just now realizing the weight of his words. A terribly awkward silence washed over the both of them, but after the initial shock rolled over, Diluc cleared his throat and started pulling on one of his boots (just to keep his hands busy).
“You’re much more of a bother than a…” Diluc swallowed, the sides of his face growing warm, “--than a brother.”
Something sharp twisted in Diluc’s throat after he finished speaking, and he continued pulling his boot up like it wasn’t already fully on. The underlying intonation of Diluc, somewhere in his heart, still seeing Kaeya as his family went unnoticed. Kaeya let out a laugh, more softly than mockingly (... or maybe the both of them just decided to keep it going unnoticed).
Diluc refused to look upwards. That was until he heard the sound of Kaeya dusting sand off his lap as he moved to stand up, Kaeya’s hands finding a place on his hips as he scanned the waters. There was a foreign calmness in the air that Diluc had a hard time deciphering. It wasn’t really something that needed to be deciphered, but maybe that’s just the way he’s always been. Reaping the consequences after feeling even semi-alright, was he always doomed to that? Kaeya kept his eyes out towards the ocean, but spoke up.
“Diluc, you’re a man who knows his own mind. So, help me decide, will you? Is it seabird hunting time or seashell collecting time?”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“You don’t have to be so stiff, do you? Do you really want to stay here and do nothing at all? We might as well find a way to pass the time. I simply thought collecting seashells might be fun. It was last time,” Kaeya smiled, tilting his head down at Diluc, who was still seated on the sand, “Although… we were much younger then.”
A memory seemed to violently shift somewhere in Diluc’s chest. Small soft hands, and rough rocks. Victorious smiles, and bright blue eyes. Kaeya really had seemed like he had found the greatest treasures every time his hands caught a shell, raising it into the air. Diluc had basked in the triumphs then, and Kaeya’s constant need to run at him just to give him an extra shell. He was afraid of the water at that time, wasn’t he?
Diluc felt his chest ache, and he abruptly stood up to shake his thoughts from his mind, feeling them drop into the sand.
“I didn’t know you still remembered anything from back then.”
Kaeya only smiled at him. Diluc hated it. He hated the bittersweetness of the air. He hated those memories. That wasn’t new, was it? He hated everything. Diluc’s mind seemed to repeat the saying. Over and over again. And if he was to be asked what for, he wasn’t sure he’d have an answer. Were there that many thoughts he was desperately trying to avoid?
They turned to face each other at the same time, and if there was a conversation that could’ve sprouted at that moment, the opportunity had broken when Diluc heard a distant voice.
His eyes broke from Kaeya’s first, the sight of Paimon and the traveler clear in his sight. He shifted his vision down, trying to ground himself back to reality somehow.
“Would you look at that? I had no idea we’d run into you here. An unexpected pleasure!”
Whatever tension that had been in the air evaporated, and Kaeya stepped towards Jean and the others, away from where he had been standing in Diluc’s vision. The bitter sweet comfort had gone with it, and deep down, somewhere in Diluc’s disheveled insides, he wondered what he would’ve said if they had a little more time. His ears tuned back into the conversation, fast enough to catch Kaeya’s next words.
“--want to enjoy some more of this island sunshine. Master Diluc might actually get a tan.”
“You just want to see me sunburnt,” Diluc deadpanned.
“Wow, do you think your hair would blend in with your skin then?”
“I would not sunburn that badly!”
“That’s quite hard to believe--”
Their bickering rode on, Paimon finally flying in to try and break their quarrel apart. The traveler could only snicker, and Jean could only drop her head in her hands from behind as the nonstop conversation kept ringing out into the archipelago.
Neither of them would ever realize the glowing blue conch, washed away into the ocean, that had recorded their exchange of words about seashells and memories. A conversation they believed had been lost in the wind, forever trapped inside a capsule.