Chapter Text
Diluc had a tendency to scare a lot of people.
It was not bad, so to speak. And it certainly wasn’t like he was a terrible child. It was just a (in Kaeya’s words) downright freaking terrifyingly horrendous task. Honestly, when Kaeya first met Diluc, he thought that the redhead was literally a perfect little noble son. He seemed so prim and proper and had polite smile to boot.
At first, Kaeya didn’t even notice it. He was too caught up over the fact that he had been just abandoned by his father with a mission he did not want at all. The burden had clawed its weight into his chest and stayed there. His nightmares gave him more anxiety. It was hard to acknowledge everyone that was around him. Master Crepus was kind enough to give him a place to stay. He didn’t want to be a burden, so he did his best to adjust into his new environment.
But Diluc was kind. He stayed in the same room Kaeya did. He even crossed the cold floor, sleepily and clumsily, just to calm Kaeya down from whatever nightmare that woke him up. At some point, Master Crepus began telling Kaeya that Diluc was his brother now if he wanted it. Although, Kaeya wasn’t too keen on that yet.
It wasn’t until a month of settling in did he finally notice.
He was reading a book. It wasn’t for studying or anything. Just some fictional book at the insistence of Master Crepus. Kaeya had been curled up in a chair by the a small fireplace. A cup of tea was at his side. Nothing fancy, really. In fact, it seemed like a rather calm afternoon.
There was a grand piano playing in the background. A simple song that Diluc had been at for the past hour. Kaeya had been listening in here and there. It was still messy, notes either fumbled or off key, but it was slowly getting better. After a while though, he felt a bit bored listening to the same song over and over again—
Until it suddenly stopped.
It was rather abrupt, as if Diluc just up and left the piano or something. Kaeya uncurled himself from the chair and put the book aside. The music room wasn’t that far down. But, to his own surprise, Diluc had shown up a moment later. He only spared Kaeya a small wave and a smile, before he grabbed a fire poker.
And walked right back to the music room.
Kaeya was bewildered through it all. Because, really— what in Teyvat just happened? Why did Diluc need a freaking fire poker in the music room, when there surely wasn’t a fireplace in there? Curiosity won over Kaeya’s confusion.
Without a second thought, Kaeya hurried after the young master to the music room.
He didn’t expect to see Diluc leaning too far out an open window, reaching for something in the tree right outside with the fire poker.
Kaeya didn’t even have a chance to scream when Diluc started to slip out of the window. He crossed the room faster than he had before and grabbed the redhead’s arm, yanking him back inside the safety of the house. The fire poker clattered to the wooden floor as the boys tripped over their feet and landed on each other. It took a second for Kaeya to recover, “We’re on the third floor— You could’ve hurt yourself!”
You could’ve died at that height, he didn’t say.
“What were you doing?!”
Diluc, on the other hand, was rather unfazed, if not a little confused. He rubbed his shoulder where Kaeya accidentally elbowed him.
“Getting a brooch back,” he answered, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. It didn’t help when Diluc just gestured by the piano. “A bird stole it and used it for its nest. She, ah— I need to get it back.”
Kaeya blinked once, twice, three times, “What.”
Diluc picked up the fire poker again (Kaeya definitely restrained himself from grabbing the thing out of the other’s hands), and pointed to the window, “See? Look.”
Kaeya did try to look, but he didn’t see anything. Only a bird’s nest that seemed very normal to him. He turned back to Diluc, “Are you suuure that there’s a brooch in there.”
The other nodded with all the seriousness of a ten year old, “Yup.”
For some reason, Kaeya felt a bit skeptical. He clearly couldn’t see anything that Diluc claimed there was. He figured that Diluc was probably still too much of a child to let go of his imagination or something. Although, it seemed so wrong to write him off like that. So, Kaeya, completely unsure of what was going on, went with it.
“Okay, there’s a brooch in there,“ Kaeya muttered under his tongue, then turned to Diluc, “So— uhm, it’s yours?”
Diluc had a strange smile on his face, “Probably, but it shouldn’t be.”
There were so many things that Kaeya sincerely wanted to unpack from that statement. Especially since he couldn’t see anyone at the piano. To him, it was just the two of them in a music room with the window open.
“What about piano practice?” Kaeya asked.
Diluc actually looked conflicted for a second, “That… can wait. I really need to get that brooch back.”
But— for the sake of sanity (of whose was a damn good question), Kaeya went with it.
“We’ll get it back. Just— just try not to lean out of windows again.”
Diluc smiled honestly, “Sure.”
._._._._._.
They had a safer plan. Actually, it was more of Kaeya preventing the young master from accidentally falling to his death.
But anyway.
Kaeya was the one to knock the nest out of the tree with a couple sticks. Diluc stayed outside, underneath the tree when the nest fell. Honestly, Kaeya was a tad guilty for destroying the nest. The two met back in the music room in just a few minutes.
Diluc held out his hand to Kaeya, “See? I told you it was in there.”
Kaeya tried very hard. He really did. He even squinted his eyes to focus on Diluc’s hand. He saw nothing. And yet, Diluc’s hand was definitely clasped around something. It was probably an inch or two in size.
“Great! It looks— pretty,” was all Kaeya could say, because what could he say? He just killed a family of birds for this so-called brooch.
Diluc gave him a weird look, “Pretty is… certainly one way to put it.”
Kaeya blinked. The strange smile was back on Diluc’s face as he dropped his hand, still clutching nothing.
“Thank you for your help, Kaeya.”
“It was no problem, uhm, Diluc.” Kaeya found it difficult to call him by his name. After all, they were supposedly brothers now, “What are you going to do with it?”
Diluc dropped his hand on the piano’s top, and backed away, “Return it.”
“But, didn’t you say it was yours?”
It was strange, if not a little scary when Diluc changed the subject so suddenly, “Do you know how many cats we have around the manor?”
It seemed so rapidly random that it nearly blindsided Kaeya.
“Are you seriously asking or do you already know?”
Kaeya could do nothing when Diluc took his hand, pulling them out of the room. He wasn’t fast enough though. Kaeya looked back once and paled.
There was nothing by the piano, but there was something on the floor where the shadows danced. A shadowed person stood by the piano’s own. It reached for the piano, and held up a shadowed brooch in the late afternoon sun. Kaeya’s eye widened.
The brooch wasn’t pretty at all.
In that second, Kaeya realized something downright freaking terrifyingly horrendous.
Diluc didn’t look back, “I have a guess, but what do you think?“
Kaeya took the lead, lengthened his stride as much as his legs could. He even held Diluc’s hand in a tight grip and almost dragged him away.
To hell with his fear of being a burden.
To hell with keeping a distance from his new brother.
Kaeya didn’t let him go as he smiled at Diluc, “I think we have a ton of stray cats.”