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There are feathers smothering him again. Covering his face, tickling his nose. Diluc groans, and bats them away, keeping his eyes firmly shut against the harsh light of the morning sun.
Kaeya takes up far too much room in bed. Much like a cat would stretch out to sunbathe, Kaeya enjoys laying his wings flat across the entire bedspread—it's lead to plenty of accidents involving Diluc accidentally rolling onto them, asleep or not.
Diluc rubs at his eyes to see that Kaeya’s back is turned to him, his wings draped over Diluc’s body, almost like a blanket. He must have turned around during the night, then. It is tempting to let Kaeya sleep—Diluc is loath to disturb him, not when he looks so peaceful—but memories of Kaeya teasing Diluc in that infuriating way of his pushes Diluc to shake Kaeya awake.
(Perhaps he's a little petty).
“Kaeya,” Diluc hisses. “Kaeya.”
He receives a drowsy groan in response; Kaeya’s wings flutter, just the tiniest bit, and Diluc has to push them away from his face again.
“ Kaeya.”
“Mm?” Kaeya stirs, sounding a little more awake. “Diluc? Is something wrong?”
Diluc certainly doesn’t forget to answer as he watches Kaeya stretch, enraptured by the ripple of his muscles beneath his bare skin.
(He recalls a time he and Kaeya had fallen asleep in a room upstairs at Angel’s Share, too tired to make their way back home. That night, Kaeya hid his wings. In bed, his back was to Diluc and Diluc spent the night tracing the pattern of his wings snaking across his back.
“It’s just me,” Diluc had whispered. “You don’t have to.”
“Perhaps you can call it paranoia,” was Kaeya’s only answer. The curtains were drawn, the door locked, and nobody was stupid enough to sneak into Diluc Ragnvindr’s bar. Yet, Kaeya still hid.
If Kaeya felt Diluc hugging him a little more tightly than usual, he never commented on it.)
“Diluc?” Kaeya says again, and he shifts, turning over so that he’s facing Diluc. His face is full of confusion; his hair is a mess and Diluc would perhaps tease him for it if he didn’t look so endearing like this.
Kaeya reaches out, and plucks a feather off Diluc’s shoulder. “Ah,” he says, “I woke you up.”
“No,” Diluc insists. “Well—yes, you were taking up the entire bed again, but—”
It’s different, from the way he does it to annoy Diluc, or the way he’s too damned tall for his own good.
It’s not his wings, even if it is.
“Come here,” Diluc says, motioning towards Kaeya, who shuffles over to Diluc with no hesitation. He rests his head on Diluc’s chest, and Diluc instinctively wraps his arm around him; Kaeya shivers as Diluc cards his fingers through the feathers at the base of his wing.
“Better?” Kaeya asks.
Diluc hums.
Kaeya spreads his wings to cover the bedspread, to rest on-top of Diluc. Covering him. Diluc’s eyes wander from Kaeya’s plush lips, barely parted, to the gentle rise-and-fall of his back.
His weight on Diluc’s chest is comforting. The sunrise that peeks through the window casts a golden glow on Kaeya’s skin; the warmth wraps around them like an embrace and Kaeya has already fallen fast asleep again.
They’ll have to get out of bed soon. The journey back to Mondstadt isn’t a short one, and they have much to do. For now, though, Diluc’s world has shrunk to just himself and Kaeya.
For now, he holds Kaeya close, and they rest.
