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Wine, unlike love, only gets better with age.
That’s why Kaeya trusts it more; why he’d rather have a glass in his hand than a wedding ring on his finger. He’d sooner die, actually, than allow anyone in Teyvat or beyond into the wretched, crystallized thing he calls a heart. Eventually, they’ll die, he will, or they’ll hate him.
Any way you write the story, he ends up alone at the end.
Time is a cruel mistress, and more often than not, love is her victim.
“Stop feeling sorry for yourself.”
Rosaria, also a cruel mistress, has never been one to sugarcoat the sorry state of Kaeya’s life, and he’s been grateful for that since the moment they met.
She’s taken off her habit, the soft curls of her hair barely brushing her face. A half-empty glass of wine – her fifth, if Kaeya’s counting correctly – dangles from her hand as she fixes him with a flush-faced glare that would be at least five times more effective if they both weren’t drunk off their respective asses.
“I’m not.” He says lightly, refusing to meet her eye. “Not today, anyways.”
Which is true. Mostly. There’s nothing wrong, really, with today, or yesterday, or any of the days before that. But it’s still a Friday night, and Kaeya’s drunk, and he still feels like shit.
“Liar.”
Rosaria shifts in her seat to face him, putting her glass down on the counter. She crosses one leg over the other and leans forward, bracing an elbow against the counter and letting her chin rest in the palm of her hand. It squishes her cheek, which is cute, but it’s Rosaria, so at the same time, it’s a little threatening.
Maybe he’s a little too drunk.
“Come on, Captain, confess your sins.” She hums, a slight grin curving the corner of her mouth. “Barbatos forgives and whatnot.”
“My, my, is this an offer?” Kaeya gives her a grin in return. “Will the Church forgive my sins, if only I let them slip to a beautiful holy woman?”
Rosaria snorts at that, hiding her face with her hand.
“Holy. Yeah, yeah.”
They fall into silence again, the sounds of the bard’s lyre and laughter of the other patrons washing over them. It’s almost unbearably warm in Angel’s Share tonight, despite the autumn chill waiting just outside, and Kaeya’s tempted to freeze the glass in his hand and press it to his burning cheeks.
Instead, he signals Diluc – who looks awfully uncomfortable talking to a young maiden at the side of the bar – and taps his glass with a finger, letting his ex-brother know he wants a refill.
Diluc scowls, as always, but brings a bottle over to him anyways, as always.
“I’m cutting you off after this one.” Diluc says as he pours the wine. “Go home.”
“Home, home, home.” Kaeya murmurs, watching the red liquid swirl. “Back home.”
Where is home?
Khaenri’ah, no. Dawn Winery, no.
He thinks of his apartment – right next to Jean’s, courtesy of the Knights of Favonius. A gift he never wanted to receive; something given to him when he became Captain Kaeya Alberich instead of Crepus Ragnvindr’s son or Diluc Ragnvindr’s brother. It’s barely decorated; a place to sleep and eat and nothing more. Even his office at HQ, strewn with papers and clothes and books, is merely a place to work.
“Kaeya.” Diluc taps the smooth wood of the counter, a stern look on his face. “Last glass.”
“Oooh, Captain, getting the cutoff.” Rosaria makes a sound that’s almost a giggle, and that’s how he knows she’s absolutely fucking wasted.
“You too, Sister Rosaria.” Diluc tells her, trying to discreetly slide her glass away from her, but she snatches it back.
“Master Diluc, so cruel.” Kaeya sighs. “Would you deprive such upstanding Mondstat citizens of their nation’s greatest product?”
“Yes.”
Diluc fixes them with one last stern look, and goes to help another patron. It’s the last warning they’ll get, and they both know it.
“Well, that’s no fun.” Rosaria grumbles. “I’m not nearly drunk enough to hear your sins.”
“Nor am I drunk enough to expose them to you.”
The idea seems to hit both of them at the same time; twin grins spreading across their flushed faces.
“Perhaps we can remedy that.”
Kaeya stands, fighting back the wave of nausea that hits him with the sudden movement, and offers his hand to Rosaria. She takes it, and lets him pull her up. Her compliance means he accidentally uses a little too much force, causing her to tumble into his arms.
“Would you like to dance?” Kaeya murmurs.
Their faces are inches apart, now, Rosaria barely keeping the distance between them with her hands braced against his chest. She looks up at him with heavy eyes, sparkling in the dim light.
Any onlooker would think them lovers; a knight in love with a pretty girl. And they look the damn part, he knows, with their bodies pressed together, and the stupid, wine-drunk looks on their faces as they stand in the middle of this tavern.
But Kaeya’s not in love with Rosaria, and Rosaria’s not in love with him.
“With you?” Rosaria says, with a voice far softer and warmer than he deserves. “Not a fucking chance.”
-
“This is shit.”
Rosaria shakes her head and scrunches up her face in disgust, handing the bottle back to him. It’s something that’s been sitting in the depths of Kaeya’s kitchen for years; something so old the label is partially gone.
Kaeya shrugs and takes a drink anyways. It is shit, but it doesn’t matter.
Neither of them drinks for the taste, anyways.
He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and sets the bottle on his nightstand.
This scene is too familiar to the both of them; some blurred, wine-tinted memory of a night that they keep reenacting, over and over again. Rosaria sits with her back to the headboard of his bed, a sheet pulled up to her bare chest. Kaeya sits in nearly the same position, with his hands behind his head.
“Light?” Rosaria asks him, producing a cigarette from seemingly nowhere.
He leans over and takes out the lighter he always keeps in his nightstand, handing it to her. She flicks it open and lights the cigarette, putting it between her lips so fast you’d think she was on the verge of death without it.
Kaeya watches as she breathes out. He’s mesmerized by the way her chest rises and falls; by the way smoke curls from her mouth. It rises and curves around her head like a gray, pale imitation of a halo, fading into the shadows of his room.
He does not allow himself much but he allows himself this, because nothing in this room is real. Here, he can look at her as much as he wants. Here, he can stare into her lust-drunk eyes and kiss her lipstick-smeared lips and pretend, for just a little bit.
“Smoke that shit somewhere else.” He mumbles, forcing his eyes away from her.
The only acknowledgement she gives is turning her head slightly to the side.
Kaeya sighs and rolls onto his side, one arm slipping under his pillow. He knows from the dozens of other nights they’ve shared that Rosaria won’t stay, so he doesn’t expect anything else from her. She’ll let him shove his tongue down her throat and touch her in places no one else gets to, but spending the night is too intimate. It’s too close; something only lovers would do.
And both of them know that they aren’t.
“Do you ever wish you were given a different Vision?”
Expecting nothing from Rosaria is a dangerous game, it seems. Somehow, she still manages to surprise him; asking a question like that.
“I wish I wasn’t given one at all.” Kaeya replies, voice softer than he intended.
The Vision in question is on the floor, about five feet away, glittering atop the piles of their clothes. Rosaria’s lies next to it, partially buried in her shirt.
“Cryo is so…cruel.” She murmurs thoughtfully. “Ice is unforgiving.”
Kaeya knows all too well how unforgiving ice is, but Rosaria might know more. He’s seen the frostbitten, mangled corpses that appear in Dragonspine periodically. Rosaria’s the one who finds them. Some sick, terrified part of him, is convinced that one day, she’ll be one of them. That Albedo or Sucrose – or, gods forbid, Klee – will be one of the frozen husks that shows up in the Knight’s morgue.
He doesn’t turn around, but he can almost see her in his mind’s eye – the cigarette between her fingers, her pale, almost translucent skin, the curve of her body under the thin sheets of his bed. Her hair, curling around the base of her neck, barely covering the marks he left there.
It’s her expression he can’t conjure; the unnatural softness of her tone throwing him off.
“And what would you have preferred instead?” He hums, rolling onto his back. “You’re cruel, too, you know. I think ice suits you, Sister Rosaria.”
“You’re right, Captain.”
Rosaria leans over, a slight grin on her face. The movement causes the sheet to slip down, and his eyes follow, lingering for a second before snapping back up to meet her gaze.
“Ice does suit me. But it suits you, too.”
“And what does the lovely Tsaritsa see in two cold people like us, I wonder?”
Her grin fades as she leans back, falling against the pillows. She takes another drag from the cigarette and blows the smoke upwards, creating a small cloud above them.
“A charity case, maybe. The goddess of love, isn’t she? Perhaps she pities us.”
Kaeya snorts at that.
The goddess of love, bestowing her blessing upon two unlovable people.
What a sick joke.
(And when he wakes up alone, with nothing but the faint scent of smoke and valberries on his pillow, he’s not surprised.
Any way you write the damn story, he ends up alone at the end.)