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It's been a few awkward weeks leading up to this. Diluc wasn’t the most enthusiastic for his own wedding — mostly because it was arranged — but also because of everything that entailed a wedding. Sharing his life with someone else… seemed bothersome . Maybe if he liked someone enough that notion could appeal to him, but as it stands he'll just have to share his life with some girl in Snezhnaya he saw maybe once and couldn’t recall meeting.
Diluc was in no position to complain, however, considering he did agree to this. He made it plenty clear he didn’t like the idea and wouldn't be happy with this resolution, but he agreed because it was the best political strategy the nobles of Mondstadt had thought of. They needed better ties with the other country, so a marriage with a prominent family in Snezhnayan nobility would do. Diluc was still unmarried, and his father had an old friend from Snezhnaya that was a noble. It worked out well enough.
Except for Diluc, of course.
Crepus's friend couldn't refuse the offer any — despite being a family with strong ties to the imperial family, their economical situation looked dire. Getting political ties with Mondstadt's biggest wine empire was surely a sign that things would get better for them. They agreed to offer their eldest daughter, someone around Diluc's age.
...which, now that he thought about it, he couldn’t actually remember her name, either. He should probably remedy that soon.
The only thing that Diluc was maybe looking forward to in this whole arrangement was getting to see Ajax again.
The one time Diluc went to Snezhnaya with his father to visit his friend, he met Ajax, a kid a few years younger than he was. Ajax was outgoing — much unlike himself — yet made fast friends with Diluc. They unfortunately didn't keep in direct contact, being much too young at the time to think of this alternative, but sometimes he'd hear about Ajax's family from his father.
On the day of the wedding itself, however, Diluc learned not all of the family could attend the wedding, which further soured his mood. He may be scowling more than usual, given all servants avoiding him like the plague.
"Diluc, please, you can't go to the altar making such a face," his father fretted as he helped put on the accessories of Diluc's suit.
"That's really too bad. I was born with this face. You gave it to me, if I recon right," he said in a deadpan, much to Crepus's exasperation and Kaeya's amusement.
Kaeya could sit back and enjoy the show, as he wasn’t single, nor a legal heir to Crepus, despite being adopted into the family.
Diluc might resent him for enjoying this circus a little bit.
"Maybe Diluc means to scare his wife back to Snezhnaya with his face."
Or maybe a lot.
"You're not helping Kaeya," Crepus intervenes, before Diluc's scowl gets worse. "Diluc, just try to think of this as a transaction. You can't be hostile to business partners, okay?"
"I know that," Diluc sighed, rolling his eyes and trying to will himself to not feel so annoyed. "I will behave, as much as I don't like this."
"Good. Okay. Now, do you want to do your hair now?"
"...What's wrong keeping it like this?" Diluc asked, genuinely confused. His low ponytail was what he always wore, afterall.
Crepus and Kaeya exchanged glances before Kaeya broke into a smile and Crepus sighed. "Let me… at least brush it a little more."
One unsuccessful attempt to tame Diluc's hair later, he was ready to stand at the altar. The ceremony was taking place in Mondstadt for various reasons, but mostly because the Ragnvindr family was banking the costs. Other reasons included the fact that Mondstadt was always blessed with good weather while Snezhnaya normally had to endure biting cold, and even the bride’s family wanted to avoid that.
Diluc felt odd in his white suit, a sharp contrast to his usual black clothes, but he had to admit the suit wasn’t bad. It had little gold details embroidered in the cuffs of his sleeves and in his black vest, as well as in small details of his black shoes. He didn’t figure he looked half bad, but he wouldn’t say so out loud, lest Kaeya overheard him. He wondered how the bride would be dressed, as he knew the bride’s dress usually made an effort to outshine all other outfits.
… Diluc forgot to ask what the bride’s name was, again . He’ll have to try to pay attention during vows.
It didn’t take that long for the bride to show up, and true enough the dress was beautiful. It wasn’t as lavish and extravagant as some wedding dresses Diluc had seen before, but he was very thankful for that. He didn’t risk stepping on it this way. The dress itself was an empire waist cut with sleeves — and if Diluc wasn’t mistaken — that kind of dress was more popular in his father’s generation. Maybe it was a Snezhnayan tradition to pass along the wedding dress to the eldest? Maybe it was a way to cut costs? He didn’t know and wouldn’t ask. It didn’t really matter anyway.
He was, however, very surprised once the bride stood by his side. Not because he remembered her any, but because she was taller than he was. Well, this was certainly… different. It wasn’t a huge difference but it was noticeable enough. He decided to shrug it off for the time being and faced the priest, not really sparing the bride a second glance. The veil she was wearing covered enough of her face there was no point anyway.
As the priest spoke, Diluc zoned out, not really giving a damn about what the priest was saying. It was just a marriage of convenience, arranged by their families; there was no need for a wedding like this.
If Diluc had had his way, he’d just sign the papers and be done with it, but of course, society would not stand for his simple, practical ways. ‘ It’d be very weird to not host a wedding for such an occasion, Diluc’ , he heard, along with ‘ there’s expectations for a party afterwards many want to attend ’, or whatever.
It was boring.
The priest was monologuing about something of love or whatever, but it was obvious no one was really paying attention, and then later Diluc would still have to greet all the guests and host the party. Clearly, whoever planned this wedding hadn’t been thinking of the couple. They just wanted an excuse to have a party at someone else’s expense.
“... in wealth and poverty, until death do you part?”
There was a pause as Diluc processed that the priest was directing the question at him. He managed to tune him out for most of the vows, and he wasn’t sure if he should be thankful for that or curse the fact there was a moment of silence before he replied, almost as if in hesitation.
“I do.”
He hoped no one caught on that he was zoning out during his own wedding.
As his partner said her own “I do,” Diluc couldn’t help but realize it was the first time he heard her speak. Her voice was deeper than he imagined.
As the priest proceeded to tell them to exchange the rings, he would have forgotten, if not for the fact the bride’s hands were a tad bit larger than usual for feminine hands.
Now, Diluc could do one of two things. He could draw attention to it, as this was likely not the eldest daughter he was supposed to marry, or he could just go along with it, and frankly, he was already going along with this entire ordeal of a wedding. Drawing attention to this and having to question this person’s identity was not something he looked forward to. It’d just drag this out further. So, he exchanged rings and didn’t say anything. Diluc was pretty sure no one wanted him dead so it shouldn’t be something ridiculous as an assassin in disguise or something.
Even if it was, Diluc wasn’t the type to go down easy.
Finally, the priest spoke the final words to conclude the wedding itself “And I hereby declare you husband and wife,” but was interrupted by said wife.
“Actually, could you make it husband and husband?”
So much for not raising attention to it in the middle of the wedding , Diluc thought.
At the priest’s and guest’s confusion, the bride sighed, despite the wide smile Diluc had a gut feeling it was underneath the veil, from the tone of the voice. “I just thought I’d clear up that bit before we got to the good part! Plus, this wig’s itchy I can take it off now right?”
Much to the guest’s absolute shock, he pulled off the veil and long wig that matched his own shorter auburn hair, letting it fall behind him, as he turned to Diluc and, without warning, kissed him.
Diluc wasn’t expecting him to carry on with the kiss as he interrupted the priest before, so he mostly blinked in surprise. He was sure he heard a scream and the sound of someone fainting, before several unidentifiable noises followed. Well, this day probably couldn’t get any worse.
Diluc reflected on how he not only agreed to marry someone for the rest of his life but this person had to be someone insufferable enough to cause a scandal after tricking all the guests and the groom included. Even if Diluc caught on at some point.
He could feel a headache approaching.
Once the bride — groom? husband? — pulled back, Diluc just stared at blue eyes as he managed to ask, despite all the noise from the confusion around them “Who are you, anyway?”
“I’m wounded! You don’t recognize me, Diluc?” The dramatic man clasped a hand over his heart, a look of pain dancing on his face, only revealed as fake from the amusement that lingered in his eyes as Diluc felt the gears turning in his head. Wait, no way…
“... Ajax? ”
“So you do remember me!” The bride—now identified as Ajax— grinned as he laced his arm with Diluc’s “C’mon, let’s get out of here, the party awaits!”
Diluc did not fight, as he considered it best to just leave the center of the commotion, though he did eye his old friend with some suspicion. Why would he pull all of this? Was there something Diluc didn’t know that he should? Why was Ajax taller than he was now? Just important questions.
Once they were out of the church, and far enough from most guests to not be bombarded with noise, Diluc stopped.
“Is there any reason for pulling this off?” Diluc asked, face as stoic as usual, wanting to get this out of the way before he had to deal with the tornado that would be their families. It’s bound to be extremely chaotic. While in the end the result was the same—Diluc married someone from Snezhnayan nobility—the fact that it wasn’t the daughter they had agreed upon but instead a man who caused a scandal in the middle of the ceremony were not facts their families would leave alone. Society was even less likely to.
“Well,” Ajax looked sheepish as he shrugged. “Big sis has a boyfriend, you see. She was real torn up about separating from him to marry you, so I volunteered to take her place.” Then he grinned. “You don’t seem mad about it, though. Were you happy to see me?”
Happy? There were fifty thousand thoughts running through Diluc’s mind, and many emotions, so he wasn’t sure what or how to classify his state of mind. He looked to the side as he saw guests starting to enter the party revenue, immediately whispering to themselves as they spotted the couple.
“Surprised? Definitely. Mad? Not really. Happy… It’ll all depend on how much you planned to avoid making this party an extreme headache to deal with later.”
“Wee eeell ,” oh, no, Diluc did not like that tone “I planned up to the part where we said ‘I do,’ which was the important part. We’re married now; until death do us part, right? So there’s no take backsies!”
Diluc groaned. “Not happy, then.”
Ajax had the audacity to pat his back “Aw, it won’t be that bad. After all, the fault should mostly fall on me, right? Anyway, onto more important things, how do I look? I’m killing it in this dress, am I not?”
“Yes. You’re killing me,” Diluc retorted “I can’t believe you grew up to be insufferable.”
Ajax merely laughed as he played with the skirt of his dress. It was a nice dress, but Diluc wasn’t going to admit the other looked good in it anytime soon.
He also didn’t want to admit that marrying Ajax instead of his older sister was much more agreeable for him to accept. They hadn’t seen each other for several years, so they’ll have to relearn a lot of each other, but… Diluc found himself more willing to share his life with someone he once called a friend than a virtual stranger.
Turns out, there were aspects of Ajax that didn't change, like his outgoing, carefree nature.
However, that led him to grow up into what Diluc could only call a menace .
Starting with how he seemed to easily ignore all the talk about what he did and mingled with the guests in their wedding party, continuing on to how he drank a ton, and then almost fought a particularly rude man. He really didn't plan to stop giving everyone a wild impression of himself.
Considering most of the guests were from Mondstadt, and that was where he'd live, it'd be an interesting if not troublesome turn of events.
Moving past that, he'd also play around with Diluc: trying to spoon feed him, dance, or just being overly affectionate in general… Diluc had no idea how to react, so he mostly stared at him. What was he supposed to do, anyway? This situation was so strange. It was hard for him to wrap his head around on how to act. He did, however, toss a pillow at him and yell at him to shut up and sleep once they were home and Ajax asked how Diluc planned to consummate their wedding. Needless to say, Ajax pouted .
Unfortunately, Ajax also made fast friends with Kaeya, and they'd often spend their free time together when Kaeya wasn't busy with Albedo.
With Crepus, things would still take a while to warm over, but it did not stop Ajax from being overly friendly anyway. He also quickly got acquaintanced with Adelinde and seemed to dig for Diluc's childhood stories.
It took about two weeks for Diluc to get used to and admittedly warm up to this grown up Ajax in general. It was also around that time that Ajax finally opened up a little more on how he was nervous to marry in his sister's place, but he was glad his partner was Diluc. It made Diluc feel bashful, yet he did offer Ajax an empathic smile.
He was, surprisingly, not teased about his rare smile.
Soon after, Crepus decided to directly question Diluc if he really was okay with all of this.
His initial thought was to say he was as okay as he'd be if it was Ajax's older sister, but he thought better about it and decided that no, it wasn’t the same.
"The end result for you is the same, is it not? Plus, it's not like we can annul it."
"But are you happy with this?"
Happy? He remembered Ajax's question back on their wedding day, and for once, he decided to not overthink and answer plainly, a small smile crossing his features.
"Yeah, I guess I am."