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Chapter Text

It is a beautiful, clear night in Mondstadt, and Diluc is walking into a trap.

He knows it’s a trap, of course, as he’s been keeping track of the Abyss Order’s movements in and around Mondstadt dutifully for months, and with his intelligence network, catching wind of someone setting a trap for the Darknight Hero isn’t especially difficult. The tricky part is springing it in a way that doesn’t leave him lying unconscious in the grass for any particularly early-rising travelers on the road to find.

The bait to this particular trap seems to be a handful of hilichurls and an overseer in the form of a Cryo Abyss Mage. Were he a young adventurer, fresh from the fold, he would surely be quaking in his boots and fleeing from the scene. But as it stands, this is nothing compared to what the Abyss Order threw at him some months ago. It should be almost laughably easy, but even so, Diluc knows to have his wits about him.

He approaches cautiously and dispatches the hilichurls in one fell swoop, alerting the mage and springing the trap.

Two Pyro Abyss mages appear to flank their Cryo companion, their otherworldly laughs raising Diluc's hackles more effectively than nails on a chalkboard. He takes a steadying breath and lowers his head before charging into the fray.

To his dismay, the Pyro mages seem to sense the elemental imbalance this matchup provides, swooping in between him and the vulnerable Cryo mage every time its shield breaks, forcing him to back away from their flames while their ally resummons its barrier. He grits his teeth as he comes to the realization that he’s going to have to slowly deal with these two first if he wants to make any real progress on the third, while breaking that one’s shield over and over so he doesn’t have icicles flung at him the entire time. Fun.

Apart from subjecting him to the painstaking process of breaking an elemental shield with a physical weapon, the Abyss Order’s apparent approximation of his abilities seems ridiculously underwhelming, which does not put Diluc at ease. Either the information he received about a trap was faulty, or, more likely, these mages are the bait and the real trap has yet to be sprung.

The thought briefly takes a backseat in his mind as he finally, finally manages to smash through the Pyro shields—both at once with one well-timed swing, he tries not to revel too much in the satisfaction that brings—and release Dawn again on the now oh-so flammable enemies before him.

As he does, there is a dark chuckle and an incantation behind him, but he doesn’t spare it much thought as he watches Dawn fade into the night sky, Pyro mages turned to cinders upon its wings. Fighting through a Cryo shield—again—is nothing compared to what he's just finished, he can clean up the last mage and have time to spare for whatever else decides to show up and—

His thoughts are cut short when something cold and sharp slams into his back, sending him reeling forward as he stumbles in an attempt to correct his footing.

He lashes out blindly behind him, still-flaming claymore connecting with the unprotected mage and sending it flying across the field, landing in a heap before turning to dust. And then…

And then it is quiet, save for the softly-smoldering grass around him.

Diluc waits. Hands clenched around the handle of his claymore, watching and listening for the real trap to spring shut around him and throw him into the fray of another battle.

One minute passes.

Then two.

At last, Diluc is forced to admit defeat at the hands of this little waiting game. He relaxes his stance and banishes his blade, casting a wary eye over the battlefield and finding nothing out of the ordinary.

…Was that it? A cheap shot at the end of an exhausting but otherwise underwhelming fight?

Diluc doesn't entirely believe it, but then again, this would not be the first time the Abyss Order underestimated him, and if luck has it, it won’t be the last. He shakes his head, and begins the long trek back to the Winery.

He arrives unhindered, greeted at the door by Adelinde, who gives him a nod and a welcome home, Master Diluc to which he responds in kind. As he enters the foyer, he tugs off his coat to check the state of it after that Cryo mage’s last cowardly attack.

…Only to find it utterly undamaged, leaving behind no trace of the piercing ice he knows he felt—or rather, feels, as the sensation of something cold has settled uncomfortably onto his mid-back.

Frowning, he removes a glove and twists an arm around to confirm what he’s feeling, only to find nothing out of the ordinary.  No rips, no tears, no odd temperatures or textures. His frown grows even deeper.

“Master Diluc, is everything alright?” Adelinde is giving him a concerned look that only someone who knows he just got back from fighting the Abyss Order could give. He mulls it over for a while.

“…Yes,” he eventually decides. It must be his mind playing tricks on him again; lingering memories of that blow messing with his senses, that’s all. A bit of rest and he’ll be right as rain. He offers Adelinde what passes for a smile these days, and she relaxes in return. “I think I’m alright.”

Chapter Text

It takes Diluc nearly a week to realize something is wrong.

In his defense, the changing of seasons in Mondstadt means the temperature is dropping. So it’s not particularly noteworthy when he has to suppress a shiver getting dressed in the mornings, or that it takes him longer than usual to get out of bed, fighting his way out of half a dozen blankets and last night’s dreams, both of which have decided as of late to cling to him like petulant children.

But when he’s standing, dressed as always in well-insulated clothes, behind the bar at Angel’s Share, which is quite crowded tonight, there is no earthly reason why Diluc should feel cold.

It’s a mystery, to be certain, but he has a job to do, so solving it will simply have to wait.

The night goes on, and patrons come and go, oblivious to Diluc’s discomfort. He pushes through it, willing himself not to shiver and his hands not to shake, serving customers with practiced efficiency and managing to not drop a single glass. A small victory, to be sure, but hard fought.

It’s well past midnight before things begin to wind down, with most of the drunks stumbling home or simply fall asleep at their tables. As the number of people begins to dwindle, Diluc’s gaze easily falls on what he has decided is the only possible explanation for his current condition: the two Cryo users sat in his tavern.

Captain Kaeya and Sister Rosaria are at the secluded back table by the base of the stairs, chatting and laughing—or what passes for such with them, he supposes. Honestly, they’re half the reason Diluc is even here tonight; he still doesn’t entirely trust Charles’s capability to handle them both. Though, it seems his caution was a bit unwarranted, seeing as they didn’t end up drinking quite as heavily as they normally do.

Well, Sister Rosaria didn’t, anyway. She typically drinks as though she has no regard for the possible repercussions, easily downing amounts of alcohol that would send even the hardiest of Mondstadt’s people to the cathedral for urgent medical care. Tonight, at least, she seems to be savoring what she has.

Kaeya, on the other hand…

When he’s on the job, Kaeya usually drinks just enough to convince his informants to join in and spill their secrets. Tonight is one of the rare occasions where he has pleasant company, rather than shitfaced Treasure Hoarders, younger knights he has to keep an eye on, or no one at all, and it seems as though he’s enjoying himself. Diluc is glad to see it.

…

Diluc…isn’t necessarily trying to think about Kaeya. In fact, he usually aims for the opposite, but he’s here, in his bar, not working, and his presence is…not exactly unwelcome, but certainly distracting nonetheless.

And as much as Diluc would love to throw himself into his work again to draw his mind from the fact that his estranged brother is in the same room as him, what tasks remain at this hour rely mostly on muscle memory, leaving his mind unfortunately free to wander.

Things with Kaeya are…better, which Diluc supposes is a rather low bar. Just about anything would be better than how he left things.

The events of the past few months have seen them interacting more times than they have in years, and it feels as though their icy relationship has begun to thaw somewhat, their conversations not quite so sharp, their words not quite so barbed from years’ worth of unspoken hurt.

There’s still a gaping rift between them that neither seems ready, willing, or able to directly address, and Diluc knows full well that their relationship will never again come close to the way it was, but…they’ve made progress. Even if that progress is measured in inches.

He supposes he should be grateful. A shallow, half-civil acquaintanceship with Kaeya is perhaps the best he can ever hope for after what they’ve been through. After what he’s done.

Diluc frowns as he finds a glass on the wrong shelf and moves to correct his mistake.

This is why he tries not to think of Kaeya when he’s on the job, even if it’s mindless work he’s consigned himself to. His brother is one of very few topics that leaves Diluc’s mind muddled and clouded, his hands making clumsy and careless mistakes.

He learned that the hard way early on in his time away, hence his insistence on ignoring Kaeya’s existence to the best of his ability. After all, misplacing cups and bottles is easy enough to deal with. Losing concentration in the middle of a battle is not.

However, Kaeya’s continued presence in Angel’s Share is a rather difficult thing to ignore.

Truth be told, Diluc had expected him to avoid it—and him, after he returned—entirely, but it seems as though affable but knowing stranger is a part he enjoys playing too much to stay away.

Diluc has to remind himself time and again that’s all Kaeya’s presence in his life is. Another role, another mask he crafted for himself, something he dons whenever Diluc is around to keep him from seeing the truth. And that suits him just fine; as long as they can work together when they need to, there’s no need for him to pry into Kaeya’s business anymore.

After all, masks and words that dance around the point are something Diluc understands all too well by now. Picking up on the little song and dance Kaeya choreographed for him in his absence was easy; sharp words and bitter looks exchanged as they begrudgingly worked together for the good of Mond and its people came easily. They settled into their new normal for a time, and things were…not good, but not complicated either.

But things with Kaeya clearly were not destined to stay so blessedly simple for too long. Diluc was—is—apparently not allowed the luxury of forgetting his past, of neatly boxing it up and leaving it to collect dust in some dark corner of his mind. Fate, it seems, takes too great a pleasure in reminding him what he once had.

A golden haired traveler, desperate to reunite with their sibling, stirred something in him. They were willing to travel all of Teyvat in search of what was lost, and Diluc could not help the twinge of pain as he remembered a time when he would have done the same in a heartbeat, without a thought as to whether his brother would be willing to return the favor.

Kaeya on a distant beach, reminiscing about collecting seashells when they were young, sent Diluc’s mind reeling. He still remembered. After all this time, he still remembered, and remembered with a soft smile on his face. Why would he speak so fondly of those times if he so desperately wished to be rid of the Ragnvindr name? Why…

Diluc looks up from his work, across the room to where his answers sit, wrapped in mysteries and fur. As if sensing Diluc’s eyes on him, Kaeya turns his head and meets his gaze.

A half a beat, and then Kaeya smiles, a smile so bright and carefree that Diluc can only assume he’s had enough to drink to forget who he’s looking at.

A half a beat, and then Diluc turns away, chest tight from unbidden memories of when that smile was commonplace, a cold sensation settling over his shoulders like a blanket of snow.

He doesn’t understand. He doesn’t understand why Kaeya would willingly associate with him past what was necessary for any other reason than to watch Diluc suffer, to watch him struggle under the gaze of someone who knows what he’s done to his only family. But then…what of those moments of fond nostalgia, of warm familiarity, of genuine kindness? Are those just to accent the guarded smiles and cutting words, to make them hurt all the more?

He doesn’t understand. He just doesn’t understand.

Diluc stews in his miserable thoughts for a while longer before the sound of metal talons clacking against the bar breaks him out of his stupor. Leaning against the counter in front of him is Sister Rosaria, with an expression that, if he didn’t know any better, could generously be interpreted as “neutral”. But Diluc does know better, and Rosaria is giving him an unimpressed look that says she’s tired of watching him mope behind the bar while she’s been trying to have a good time.

Which, in all honesty, is quite warranted.

“Diluc,” she says, voice as flat as her expression, “you look like shit.”

“I appreciate your candor,” he replies just as dryly, but he means it all the same. If there’s one thing he can count on Rosaria for, besides drinking his best paying customers under the table, it’s to be straightforward.

“You can have some more for free,” she says with a ghost of a smile on her lips. “You’ve been out of it all night. Someone mentioned the Abyss Order an hour ago and you didn’t react at all.”

Diluc frowns, hums in displeased agreement. She’s noticed, so there’s no use denying what he’s been trying to hide all evening. Defending his pride isn’t a hill he’s particularly interested in dying on, these days.

But that doesn’t mean he has to take her shit, either. “You’re certainly free to go somewhere else that’s up to your standards. You are by no means obligated to drink here.”

“Believe me, if it were up to me, I would,” she rolls her eyes, before letting out a long, dramatic sigh, talons still tapping rhythmically against the counter. “Unfortunately, my drinking companion insisted. Can’t possibly imagine why.”

Rosaria locks eyes with him, and that cold feeling he’s been ignoring all night sinks its claws into him. He frowns at her, then scoffs and turns his attention to the glasses on the counter he still needs to wipe down.

“I don’t presume to know the minds of others.”

After a moment, he hears her sigh. “Well, whatever. I just wanted to make sure you weren’t coming down with something.” A pause, and then, “…or planning any other nightly activities after this.”

“My only plans tonight are closing up and going home,” he says evenly.

No vigilante business tonight, he doesn’t say, but knowing her, she hears it all the same.

As for his health…Diluc isn’t entirely sure. His condition doesn’t quite feel like a cold, but then again, he’s no medical professional. Perhaps it would be best to err on the side of caution, just in case Rosaria’s off-hand comment ends up bearing an ounce of truth.

After all, working with an injury is one thing, but working with an illness is another matter entirely. The last thing he wants is to spread whatever he has to those around him, or leave his employees picking up after his subpar work.

…Well, not quite. The actual last thing he wants is to lose control of his abilities on the job, as sick Vision holders are wont to do. One stray spark behind the bar filled to the brim with alcohol could make for a very unpleasant evening that ends in a trip to the Cathedral—for himself and any others unlucky enough to get caught in the blast.

So, perhaps he should take some time off after all. Angel’s Share is well-staffed enough to account for his absence comfortably, as evidenced by the fact that he rarely works the bar at all unless he needs information that only the drunks of Mondstadt can provide.

“Oh?” Rosaria hums, tilting her head as Diluc moves to close up. “I take it that means asking for another round is off the table.”

Diluc lets out a scoff. “You can certainly ask,” he says flatly, punctuating his words with a firm and decisive click of the till’s lock.

“Shame,” she shrugs away from the counter. “Well, we’ll get out of your hair before you start throwing the drunks out. Night.”

A thought strikes him as she turns to leave.

“Rosaria,” the call slips past his lips before he can stop it. She stops short just past the end of the bar, turning back to look at him.

Perhaps if this were any other night, he would shake his head and tell her to forget it. But as previously established, he is possibly quite unwell, so he quietly manages, “…just…make sure he gets home alright.”

Rosaria raises a brow at him, before her lips curve in a sardonic smile. “You don’t need to tell me that. I was already planning on it.”

Unlike you, she doesn’t say, but he hears it all the same.

And with that, she’s gone.

Something twists in Diluc’s chest, and he turns back to continue closing up, pointedly ignoring it.

Chapter Text

Taking time off turns out to be in Diluc’s best interests, as the next few days have his condition worsening at such a rate that even menial tasks like manning the Angel’s Share bar would be out of his wheelhouse.

At first, he attempts to spend his time away from the bar as he normally does, following leads on potential threats against Mond and eliminating them decisively. But his first battle goes…not as decisively as he would like, and the next doesn’t fare much better, nor does the one after that.

Fine.

Diluc is not so prideful as to stubbornly cling to a task he is clearly not fit to complete. As loath as he is to admit it, Mondstadt will survive in the hands of the knights for a few days while he recovers from his mystery illness, stewing in frustration inside the Dawn Winery manor.

The lack of knowledge of his condition has him keeping a wide berth from his employees for caution’s sake, meaning that the tasks available to him are mostly paperwork; documents to sign and requests to read and invitations to parties that he will politely decline to attend and instead send Elzer in his place.

But, when the words on the page before him begin to blur and blend together and Diluc cannot for the life of him string together a coherent response, he begrudgingly delegates the winery matters to Adelinde. Temporarily. Again.

Fine. It’s fine.

At the very least, he can stay busy by going over what information he’s gathered from his intelligence network as of late, and perhaps work out what the Abyss Order or the Fatui are planning next.

…Or so he hopes, but his eyes begin to glaze over the words and settle instead on the grandfather clock in his office, watching it tick-tock the time away and turn his naïve dreams of a productive day to a dull acceptance that he is not going to get anything done like this.

With a heavy sigh, he pushes himself away from the desk and stretches his arms before getting to his feet. A walk around the winery should clear his head; as long as he keeps a respectful distance from everyone else on the property, there should be no issue.

So, he makes his way to the main door, skillfully avoiding catching the eye of Adelinde—who, for the past few days, has been playing the part of a mother hen so proficiently that he almost feels a child again—and pausing just past the threshold to take in the fresh air before heading out to meander the grounds.

Autumn in Mondstadt has come and gone, the last vestiges of its presence clinging to the land like the last rays of sunlight at dusk cling to the sky, leaving behind a bitter chill in the air as the cold of night sets in.

The hustle and bustle around the winery that comes with the harvest season has since died down as well, leaving but a few errands in the weeks to come that will make sure the vineyards are well prepared for the coming winter. It’s been strange overseeing such tasks himself, as the past few years’ have been in Adelinde’s hands, and before that, he had observed—mostly by the inviting warmth of the hearth—as his father dealt with the last of the winery’s affairs, so they could spend the winter in the manor inside the city.

Diluc used to like winter, he remembers, and for good reason. The bitter cold of bygones past had long since been chased away by blessed Barbatos, leaving Mondstadt cradled in a winter that makes the nation resemble something out of a fairy tale, rather than the frozen wasteland it used to be. What snow Mondstadt does receive—blowing in from the north or from the curious peak to the south—is always delivered on gentle winds, save perhaps for a particularly playful gust that sends one’s lighter belongings spiraling into the air to dance amidst the falling snowflakes. To a child, winter in Mondstadt is second perhaps only to Ludi Harpastum when it comes to bringing unbridled joy and seasonal mischief.

But Diluc is no longer a child, and the season has largely been soured for him since…well. He finds himself trying not to dwell on that too much. Suffice it to say it was much easier to enjoy the cold when there were maids to bundle him up in ten layers, and a family around him to enjoy it with.

That aside, Mondstadt winters are much milder than those, and he thinks that perhaps he will warm up to them again in due time. After all, Diluc’s previous affection for winter has left him with far more memories of enjoying the season than memories of misery in the frigid weather. Though such thoughts are often muddled and tinged with a hint of grief, as are many things that involved his father, there is still fondness tucked away below the surface, in those memories of winters spent in the safety of the manor, relishing in the comforting warmth of family.

He remembers warm food and drink and pleasant company, the childlike wonder that once filled his heart with every snowfall. He remembers that despite the best efforts of the maids, he more often than not ended up catching a cold as a result of staying out in the snow far longer than he should have. Not least of all because he spent most of that time with…he spent his time with…

The crunching of rocks underfoot comes to a halt as Diluc pauses by the riverbank to the south. The rushing flow of the waterfall fills his ears instead as he remembers the other reason he tends not to reminisce about years past.

…Kaeya. He spent his time with Kaeya.

Diluc catches himself thinking of the Cavalry Captain more often, these days. He would blame it on his illness making him overly nostalgic, but…he thinks, perhaps, that it is simply a result of being back in Mond.

There are, after all, reminders of Kaeya’s presence peppered throughout the land that are increasingly hard to ignore. The children in the town square spinning elaborate tales, the Mist Flowers around the winery that he had been so fond of, the Calla Lilies by the lakeside where they had spent many summers splashing about as children, the seashore where they hunted for shells while Father sat nearby and painted.

It was easier, when he was away, to pretend he did not see Kaeya’s likeness wherever he went. To set his sights exclusively on his goal, pursue those responsible for his father’s death, and forget about his not-brother entirely.

But, despite the rumors Mondstadt spreads about him, no man is infallible, and Diluc did occasionally slip up and think of Kaeya during his travels.

Whenever he did, it was…it was easier to think of Kaeya as a liar. To remember him only as the man who lied to him for his whole childhood, who only saw his place in Diluc’s life as a role he begrudgingly took on and wanted nothing more to do with once Master Crepus passed on.

Easier to remember him as a liar than a brother, easier to focus on why they parted ways than to linger on why his confession had hurt so much in the first place.

Remembering any of the times before, when they were happy, when they were brothers, just made every memory since that night hurt all the more. It hurt less to remember nothing good about him at all. It was easier to forget.

After all, anger was always such a better motivator than the alternative.

Diluc had learned, the night before he left Mondstadt, after making the worst mistake of his life, that guilt and doubt and remorse would only weigh him down and eat him alive. If he wanted to survive in Teyvat on his own—on his own, on his own, when had he ever been on his own?— he needed a clear head. There could be no looking back, no clinging to childish ambitions born from a life made of lies. If he simply focused on his goal, he could achieve it.

But, of course, it is the nature of such fantasies to die, to shatter to pieces and leave one with naught but the reality that they must face the truth and the consequences of their own actions. His quest for vengeance…did not quite come to a close, but to an unfortunate pause after his clash with the Harbingers. He had succeeded in his quest for answers, and that would have to be enough. Vengeance would have to come later, when he wasn’t bound by social and political niceties.

And so he returned to Mondstadt, to be left with the welcome familiarity of routine, a newfound knack for collecting information and eliminating threats from the shadows, a distaste and disillusionment for his former comrades in the Knights, and…

Kaeya.

Kaeya, who had at one point in time been familiar, and who is now someone Diluc is certain he hardly knows at all. Kaeya, who speaks to him as though he is a stranger, albeit one who has done him wrong.

He still thinks about it, sometimes. When he had finally returned to Mondstadt and Kaeya—Kaeya Alberich—had given him that sharp, guarded smile, called him Master Diluc as if he didn’t know him at all, the last nail in the coffin of their false kinship falling into place with a cold and heavy finality.

Diluc lets out a long sigh, running a hand over his face.

Rehashing this particular line of thought over and over has not done him any good so far, and he doubts it will miraculously do so this time. Best to focus on problems he is actually capable of solving.

The sun has since hidden itself away behind distant mountains, taking the day’s warmth with it and painting the clouds in the sky in vivid orange and red. Diluc suppresses a chill as he turns and heads back toward the manor, the lilies by the riverbank swaying gently in the breeze behind him.

The stars have come out by the time he makes it back to the manor, and so too has the cold of night already seeped inside its walls.

Diluc draws the curtains in his office closed, and immediately sets to arranging the fireplace. It’s been cool enough all day that he had considered using it earlier, but ultimately decided against it. Adelinde has been giving him concerned looks whenever she thinks he can’t see, and he doesn’t want to give her more reason to worry about his condition. At this time of night, however, he’s certain no one will fault him for trying to stave off the cold.

And so he kneels by the hearth, and gives the familiar flick of his wrist to light the kindling…only for a jolt of pain to shoot up his arm instead. Diluc lets out a pained hiss as he recoils, clutching his wrist with his other hand.

After a moment, he frowns down at his hand, flexing it as he tries to rationalize what just happened. He’s quite familiar with the burn of phantom cold, the sharp pain that comes from applying heat to something frozen. Perhaps that’s what that was?

He tugs off his gloves and tucks them into a pocket, before rubbing his hands together in an attempt to convince his circulation to return feeling to his fingers. When he has at least somewhat succeeded, he reaches forward to set his hand just over the kindling, and cautiously calls forth another flame.

His whole arm aches in protest, but the fire is lit, so he considers it a victory. Diluc pulls his hand back before he singes himself on the flames—as he has done many times before—and settles in front the fireplace to bask in its warmth for a while, eyes falling shut as the cold is ever-so-slowly chased away.

After what he decides is long enough, Diluc opens his eyes and pushes himself to his feet, ready to return to his work. Out of habit, he sets a hand on his Vision to preserve some of the warmth he’s accumulated even as he moves out of the fire’s immediate range.

The response is a sharp stab of pain lancing through his chest, leaving him gasping for breath and stumbling forward, steadying himself on the cold stone of the mantle with a white-knuckled grip.

The pain slowly subsides, and Diluc takes in deep, shuddering breaths, eyes trained on the hardwood floor. He pushes himself upright, hand falling away from the mantle that has seemingly leeched all warmth from him.

Right. Using a Vision so carelessly while he’s sick is probably not the best of ideas.

That’s fine; he’s used to tools that backfire when misused by now. He’ll just have to keep warm some other way. The way anyone without a Vision would.

“Master Diluc,” Adelinde says flatly, not a few hours later. If the unimpressed look on her face is an indication of anything, it’s that she doesn’t approve of the blanket Diluc has tucked around his shoulders like a shawl.

But he is making progress on his work, and is not ready to give in just yet, so he meets Adelinde’s gaze expectantly, as if waiting for her to bring him some important news. She stares right back at him, unwavering.

“It’s getting quite late, Master Diluc, and you’re still unwell. Might I suggest you get some sleep?”

Diluc lets out a sigh, eyes turning back to the papers in front of him. “I appreciate your concern, Adelinde, but I’m quite alright, thank you.”

“Ah, of course,” she says, with an incredulous click of her tongue. Diluc can practically feel her roll her eyes from across the room. “After all, half the bed is already in here with you, I see. That’s certainly a suitable replacement for proper rest.”

“Adelinde—”

“Master Diluc.” She stands perfectly straight in the doorway, a picture of unfaltering poise. Something in her gaze softens, though, and she sighs. “There’s nothing to be gained from pushing yourself past the point of exhaustion. You need your rest, especially now.”

Silence sits between them for a long while before Diluc sighs, relenting.

“…Alright. Thank you, Adelinde.”

“Of course, Master Diluc.”

Chapter Text

Diluc is cold.

Diluc is so, so cold.

But he supposes that’s to be expected, seeing as he’s stumbling through the snow in the middle of a Snezhnayan blizzard.

The Fatui hideout had been a trap. Of course it had. But he thought he could handle it, he had handled it plenty of times before, after all. Even if he was on his own, he should have been strong enough to handle whatever the Fatui threw at him.

Needless to say he wasn’t expecting the Harbingers themselves to set their sights on him so soon. He managed to escape alive, but he’s not sure how long that will last—he doubts that they’re content to leave him wandering the snowfields without personally seeing to his demise.

Or maybe they are. Maybe they, unlike Diluc, have faith that their Archon will see things through. The howling blizzard raging around him seems to support that theory.

Whatever path he took to get to the base has long since been lost; the storm has cut his visibility so severely that he can hardly see his own hand outstretched before him. The wind’s bitter, biting cold carries a certain malice to it that cuts him to the quick and has him yearning for the gentle breezes of his homeland.

Diluc wonders idly which will kill him first—the storm, or the deep gash in his side weeping blood between the fingers of his hand desperately pressed against it, blood freezing along his clothes or falling into the snow like crimson tears.

He is cold. He is so, so cold.

Clenching his left hand against his wound, he attempts to call forth what warmth he can from his Delusion, but nothing comes.

Ah. They must have taken it from him, then. Reclaimed what rightfully belongs to them.

Not that it makes much difference, he supposes. It was never warm, not really, not compared to the ever-burning font of warm comfort his Vision had been. The Delusion was a fire that needed to be fed— fed with anger and rage and hatred and fear—lest it turn its hunger upon its user and devour them. Like it devoured his father.

But the Harbingers have stripped even that from him, it seems, leaving him to stumble alone through the snowstorm with naught but his own wits. Which, at the moment, are in rather short supply, due in part to the blood loss he’s sustaining.

It isn’t long before his legs give out beneath him and he collapses face-first into the snow.

Everything hurts. Every part of him that isn’t numb aches and he can feel his heartbeat pulsing in the wound in his side, the only thing reminding him that he is, in fact, still alive.

He is cold. And he is tired. So, so tired.

Wouldn’t it be easier? To simply close his eyes and succumb to the storm, let it swallow him whole, snow burying him in its comfort like a blanket and quieting the howling winds? To give in to the Tsaritsa’s welcoming embrace, to forget his quest for vengeance and never worry about anything ever again?

He wants to laugh. What would his father think, if he could see him now?

So much for justice. For courage and duty.

Diluc’s eyes fall shut, and he waits for the cold to take him.

…

He isn’t sure how much time passes. But something shifts in his awareness that brings him back to himself. There’s something…a sound. A presence. Diluc forces his eyes open, squints at the blurry figure seated not two paces from him until they come into focus. His stomach sinks as recognition sets in.

“Kaeya,” he croaks, voice rough and uneven from disuse.

Kaeya’s brows lift in surprise. “Oh, you’re awake.”

“What—” Something catches in his dry throat that sends him into a coughing fit. When it passes, he takes in a deep, shuddering breath and tries again.

“What are you doing here?” he manages, his words sluggish and slow. A sharp contrast to the cold steel and bitter venom that last laced his words to Kaeya, which he expects now and is surprised he doesn’t hear.

After all, it is an instinct that has developed in his time away, to call upon anger and irritation and rage to keep from feeling anything else—anything that would cause him to break apart and fall to pieces, scattered to the winds before he can accomplish his goal.

But he finds that the anger doesn’t come to him as easily as it should. Perhaps it’s the lack of his Delusion, which fueled and fed on his wrath, that makes it so hard to summon up the venom he’s been clinging to for years. Or perhaps it’s the blood loss. Whatever the case may be, it seems right now he is too tired for anger.

“I heard you were calling for me,” Kaeya says with an easy smile, his voice snapping Diluc back to the present. He spreads his hands in a gesture to himself. “So here I am.”

Calling for him…had he? Everything in his mind is fuzzy, so it’s rather hard to recall.  He’s not entirely sure he wants to. Anything the Harbingers did that made him call out to Kaeya of all people can’t be worth remembering, so he changes the subject to something a bit more worthy of his attention.

“This is…quite a ways for you to go,” he says, with no small amount of skepticism in his voice.

Either blessed Barbatos himself swept Kaeya up on northward winds and delivered him here to have the privilege of watching Diluc die at his feet, or he’s hallucinating. He’s a bit more inclined to believe the latter.

Kaeya tilts his head at him, raising a brow. “Did you think I wouldn’t?”

Honestly, Diluc had hardly thought of him at all, save for in those flashes of regret one tends to have when facing the end of their life. He’s not sure if he’s more surprised that Kaeya apparently came when he called, or that he had called for him in the first place. Trust born from a childhood spent together seems to be rather hard to break, after all.

In Diluc’s case, at least. Looking at Kaeya’s carefully neutral expression tells him exactly how easily his trust was broken.

By him.

Diluc broke what they had with his own two hands, and look where it’s gotten him. He turns his gaze away.

“…I wouldn’t blame you…if you hadn’t.”

A beat, and then Kaeya smiles flippantly—defensively, he knows by now—and rests his chin on a hand.

“Well, I couldn’t just leave you here on your own. Father did always tell us to stick together, didn’t he?”

Something twists tighter in Diluc’s chest at the mention of their father, and he closes his eyes to shut it out.

Because…he did. Crepus had always encouraged them to support each other, to watch the other’s back, and for years, they committed his words to heart. They fought together seamlessly, could hold a conversation without speaking a single word, knew each other’s minds like the backs of their hands.

And Diluc left him.

Kaeya absolutely could have left him here on his own. If he had heard Diluc call and turned the other way, it would be justified. It would be nothing more than returning the favor Diluc dealt him all those years ago.

He hears Kaeya let out a weary sigh. “My apologies, Master Diluc. That was thoughtless of me.”

Diluc’s eyes flutter open just in time to catch sight of Kaeya moving to stand. To leave. The jolt of panic that courses through him at the sight has him feeling more alive than he has this entire conversation.

“I shouldn’t trouble you any further. I’ll take my lea—”

“No,” Diluc’s voice comes out hoarse and frightened, hand lashing out and catching Kaeya’s wrist. Kaeya looks down at the contact with a guarded expression, a glint of alarm in his eye, and Diluc immediately realizes his mistake. He shouldn’t—he shouldn’t touch him, not any more, not after what he did—

His grip falters and his hand falls away.

“I’m sorry, I…please. Just…stay with me, until…?”

Wishes of a dying man or no, Kaeya has every right to refuse. To turn on his heel and leave him to die alone, to leave him to rot in the snow until he becomes nothing more than a disappointing memory.

And yet, he settles back down. Retakes his seat by Diluc’s side.

“Thank you.”

Kaeya simply nods.

…

In the silence, the wheels in Diluc’s brain begin to turn.

Kaeya is here. Actually, physically here, not as some hallucination conjured up by his dying conscience to torment him. Brought here because Diluc called, staying because he asked him to.

I’m sorry, he said. The words had come so easily.

He is dying. He is well and truly dying, and there is nothing anyone can do about it, but perhaps…perhaps he can make his last words worth something.

He looks up at Kaeya, waiting patiently beside him, snow dusting his hair. The last time they had seen each other, Diluc had been angry. Maybe he still should be. But right now…

Right now, he is too tired for anger. And without it, what does he have but grief?

What does he have but the loss of his father, his friends, his brother? What does he have left but grief and the gnawing guilt from killing his father, from turning his sword on his brother?

His brother. His brother.

He sees Kaeya and remembers him as his brother. He’s hardly been able to think of him as anything but a traitor and a liar this entire journey. Why has it taken him this long to remember? Why has it taken him being on his deathbed to remember his brother?

“Diluc..?” Kaeya says, a note of hesitation in his voice.

It is then that he realizes he is crying.

“I’m…I’m sorry,” he manages, choking on a sob. “Kaeya, I’m so sorry—”

“No no no, hey—”

He can hardly force any words out past the tightness constricting his throat, but he needs to say them, Kaeya deserves to know—he deserves a lot of things, a better brother for one, but this is all Diluc has to offer. If only his dying body would permit him to say the words.

Something warm brushes against his cheek, and Diluc blinks away the blurriness in his eyes. Kaeya is hovering over him, a look of thinly-veiled concern on his face as he brushes away Diluc’s tears before they can freeze his eyes shut.

Looking at him like Diluc never raised his blade against him, never burnt the very hands touching his face with such kindness, never abandoned him in Mondstadt to live with the aftermath of Father’s death while he ran away from home chasing ghosts.

Looking at him like he cares, like he’s always cared, and hasn’t stopped even to this day.

With that expression on his face, Diluc wonders in despair how he could have ever been so blinded by grief as to think that his brother never cared for him at all.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, Kaeya—” he wishes he could say something more coherent, more meaningful, to actually put into words the hurt he’s caused, to let Kaeya know he doesn’t hate him, doesn’t blame him for Father’s death, to tell him that he’s always been—

“Enough, ‘Luc,” Kaeya says, not unkindly. His hand is so warm.

“I’m sorry,” he says again, quietly, the voice of a child escaping his throat. “You deserved better.”

Better than me. Better than what I gave you. He doesn’t say it, but he hopes Kaeya hears him. With the way his face twists ever so slightly at his words, Diluc thinks he does.

“Get some sleep,” he says softly, and Diluc’s eyes fall closed to comply with the command. Kaeya’s hand lingers on the side of his face even as his consciousness fades, a point of warmth amidst the freezing cold.

Chapter Text

When Diluc wakes, he is alone.

Of course he is. He went to sleep alone, and the maids aren’t exactly in the habit of waking him for anything that isn’t an emergency. Even if they were, he’s certain Adelinde would have warned them off so he could get the proper amount of rest—however much she thinks that is.

He knows this, and yet as he stares up at the ceiling, there is a cold, hollow feeling in the center of his chest like something is missing. Like someone should be there.

Which is nonsense, of course. He almost wants to laugh—who would be here, exactly? The feeling is a remnant of happier times, one that he did his best to quash while he was on his own. Its return is nothing more than a side effect of his strange condition, much like the lingering fragments of dreams that have begun to dissipate in the morning light.

Diluc lets out a groan as he pushes himself up into a sitting position to better assess the state of his illness.

After some testing, it seems to him that things have taken a turn for the better. The cold hasn’t entirely left, remaining in the form of a pervading chill and the pit of ice in his chest, but it’s nowhere near the all-consuming ache it was previously. Perhaps Adelinde was right, after all, and he simply needed some rest.

The thought of an end to the restless days inside the manor sparks something akin to hope inside him. Adelinde will try convincing him to stay in bed for a while longer, as is her nature, but he’s certain he can fake wellness enough to return to his duties. If she’s still worried about the safety of those around him, as they both rightly were, perhaps he can at least go back to protecting Mondstadt, instead of lying uselessly in bed.

Out of the corner of his eye, the door silently begins to open. Diluc adjusts his position ever so slightly, to appear a touch more composed when Adelinde enters and inevitably asks after his health.

…And is utterly surprised when the person who enters is very much not Adelinde, nor any of the house staff.

Kaeya is already shutting the door behind him before he turns and meets Diluc’s gaze, freezing on the spot with a wide eye and blinking at him in a way that would be comical if it weren’t so utterly confusing.

“Oh,” he says, “you’re awake.”

“Yes,” Diluc says, mind racing to follow that train of thought. How long has he been asleep? How long has Kaeya been here, for him to expect Diluc to be? “I am.”

“Right,” Kaeya clears his throat after a beat and crosses the room, settling into a chair beside the bed. He props a foot up on his opposite knee, rests his chin on a hand, and dons a bright smile. “How are you feeling?”

All of this—Kaeya being here, apparently having been watching over him for some undisclosed amount of time, and now asking after his wellbeing—feels wrong. Something is wrong. Something is terribly, horribly wrong, and Diluc doesn’t know what it is. Is he hallucinating? Did he fall into an alternate timeline when he wasn’t looking?

“Fine,” he ventures cautiously. “Better.”

“That’s good,” Kaeya says pleasantly, in such a disingenuous way it makes Diluc’s skin crawl. He looks toward the door with a dramatic sigh. “The staff are all quite worried about you, you know. Adelinde especially. She looks so tired, recently—you haven’t saddled her with more work, have you?”

“She has…temporarily taken on a few of my duties while I recover.”

“Again?” Kaeya clicks his tongue, something rotten coming close to the surface of his false cheer. “Does your cruelty know no bounds, Master Diluc?”

“Taking on such responsibilities myself would be to the detriment of the winery,” Diluc counters evenly. “Besides, Adelinde works as hard as she pleases,” as you no doubt recall, “I could hardly convince her to do otherwise.”

He turns and meets Kaeya’s eye. “And I imagine she’s just as worried about you, for being in here with me.”

The neutral expression with a single raised eyebrow that Kaeya gives him betrays nothing of his thoughts other than a request to elaborate. Diluc stifles the urge to sigh.

“This—” he gestures vaguely to himself with one hand. “She’s worried it might be contagious.”

“Ah,” Kaeya says, clasping his hands as he leans back. “And what is this, exactly?”

“I’m…not entirely sure,” Diluc admits slowly, casting a wary look towards him. “Though, I assume you’ve heard all of this already; Adelinde has given you most of the details, I’m sure.”

Kaeya lets out a single, cheerful laugh. It is the coldest sound Diluc has heard in a long while. “Oh, she’s shared a fair bit. But I imagine it would sound much better coming from you, Master Diluc. Wouldn’t you agree?”

Don’t let her hear you say that, he almost says, with a chuckle and sense of companionship he hasn’t felt in years. Instead, he bites his tongue and sticks to the script, the taste of distrust palpable in his words.

“What does it matter to you, anyway?”

Kaeya blinks at him in shock, placing a hand to his heart with a look of mock offense. “Why, Master Diluc, as a Knight of Favonius, it’s my job to look out for the people of Mondstadt!” He tilts his head, a hint of a smile on his lips. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten about that. Is memory loss among your list of symptoms, then?”

Diluc’s hands curl into the fabric of the blanket thrown over him.

Kaeya is trying to get a reaction out of him. He knows that. On a better day, perhaps it would take more than a mere mention of the Knights and their supposed duties to rile him, but he’s already unwell, and it’s nearly working.

So, he closes his eyes, taking in a deep steadying breath. When he releases it, he lets his growing irritation out with it, forcing himself to relax. He opens his eyes and looks down at his hands, lying flat against the blanket.

He won’t give him the satisfaction.

“I feel…cold,” he says at last. “I’ve found I have trouble staying warm.”

“Hence the seven blankets,” Kaeya says, though there’s a note of seriousness to his voice now that sets Diluc at ease. Finally, they’ve passed the joking stage and can get down to business. “Anything else?”

He wracks his brain for a moment. “General aches, I suppose? I haven’t noticed much else.”

Kaeya nods. “And when did this start, exactly?”

“About a week ago. I was informed while working at Angel’s Share that I was not at my best.” The memory tilts his voice towards amusement near the end. Maybe he should give Rosaria a round on the house next time, as thanks. Just one. He’d go out of business, otherwise.

“Did you come into contact with anything before then that might have caused this?”

Diluc stifles a sigh. This is a routine question. He knows that, but it’s an aggravating one nonetheless. “That is a rather hard thing to narrow down when I don’t even know what this…”

He trails off, a memory slowly but surely coming to the surface of his mind.

Oh. There was something, wasn’t there?

“Diluc?”

Something he brushed off as odd, something with loose ends left hanging that seem to have ended up tangled around him.

“…There was something,” he admits. “Maybe…two weeks ago, now? I didn’t think much of it at the time, but given the circumstances…”

He recounts his encounter with the Abyss Mages to Kaeya, who, by the end of it, is pinching the bridge of his nose, eye shut tight.

“You were lured into an ambush, hit by a spell that seemingly had no effect, and didn’t think much of it at the time? Really?”

“I wasn’t lured in,” Diluc says, a touch defensively. “I knew the ambush was there, I was going in to deal with it.”

Kaeya gives him a flat look. “You heard someone was setting a trap for you and ran right for it.”

Annoyance bubbles up within him. “And what would you have done, exactly? Sent in someone else to deal with it in your stead?”

His expression turns cold. “I’d love to think I would at least have the sense not to go in alone, for starters. Where is your assistant, anyway? I imagine our Honorary Knight will be quite disappointed you decided to exclude them from this little endeavor.”

“They’re in Inazuma, as you no doubt recall,” he bites back. “I thought asking them to travel six thousand miles to deal with something so trivial was in poor taste.”

“And, what? Without them, you have no one else to rely on, is that right?”

A long silence stretches between them. Diluc sets his jaw as he looks Kaeya in the eye. He knows the answer to that better than anyone. His reminder is rather unnecessary.

Eventually, he turns his gaze away.

“That’s suited me just fine so far.”

“Evidently,” he hears Kaeya mutter under his breath. Before Diluc can make anything of it, Kaeya stands and continues on at normal volume. “Well, there’s no need for you to pursue this particular matter on your own. I’ll do a sweep of the grounds to look for Abyss Order activity and anything else out of the ordinary.”

“How very conscientious of you,” he says dryly.

“Only the best for our resident Ragnvindr,” Kaeya gives him a wry smile. “If the Abyss Order really has set its sights on you… Well, Archons forbid something should happen to the wine industry.”

He scoffs. “Of course that’s what you would worry about.”

“Master Diluc, you wound me,” he chuckles, a bright smile on his features. The smile falters ever so slightly, and his voice softens a touch. “Surely you know that’s not all I’m worried about?”

Something about his tone seems to reach right into Diluc’s chest and twist, forcing him to look up and meet his brother’s eye. There’s an emotion there that he can’t quite place.

Kaeya’s lips tilt upwards again, and whatever it is he saw vanishes.

“I’m worried about our dear Darknight Hero as well, of course,” he says brightly, an infuriating smile on his face. “Now that I think about it, you are rather popular among the Abyss Order’s ranks. Perhaps this is all some elaborate scheme to get an autograph?”

Annoyance boils over into genuine anger.

Gods, he can’t believe he fell for that. Kaeya dangles any sort of hint that he still cares in front of him and Diluc reaches for it like the fool he is. Stupid. Predictable. And probably endlessly entertaining; no wonder Kaeya sticks around.

He lets out a scoff and moves to get up—for what purpose, he’s not entirely sure. To see him out, maybe, or perhaps just to leave, and not have to be in the same room as Kaeya anymore.

“If all you’re going to do is make light of this,” he snaps, “you can—”

The moment he stands, the world spins around him and he stumbles forward, bracing himself on the bedside table. He closes his eyes tightly and takes in breaths through gritted teeth as he waits for the disorientation to pass. When it finally does, he lets out a ragged sigh, his anger draining out with it.

“…you can see yourself out,” he manages tiredly.

There is a long silence. Neither of them move.

Eventually, Kaeya lets out a quiet sigh. “Very well, Master Diluc. If you’ll permit it, I’ll conduct my search as quickly as I can and inform you if I find anything. Otherwise, I won’t trouble you further.”

“I can do it—”

“Yourself? I doubt Miss Adelinde would take too kindly to her sickly master poking around at the Abyss Order’s work. Nor to me allowing it to happen. Wouldn’t you agree?”

Diluc does not protest. Kaeya seems to take that as permission enough, and turns to leave. He opens the door and pauses at the threshold.

“Get some rest, Master Diluc. I’ll be out of your hair soon enough.”

The door shuts behind him without a sound.

And it’s strange, really, how in his absence, in the empty silence of the room, that cold and hollow feeling returns to Diluc’s chest.

Funny. He hadn’t even noticed it was gone at all.

Chapter Text

After his meeting with Kaeya, Diluc cannot return to sleep. Restlessness takes hold, and he finds himself pacing his room, turning their conversation over in his mind again and again.

So, when he hears the tell-tale sounds of a fight coming from outside, he’s through the main doors of the manor in moments, greatsword in hand.

There’s a great deal of commotion, from people running this way and that, rushed conversation, and the occasional shout. Diluc pushes through the sparse crowd to find the cause.

On the path leading up to the manor are a dozen or more scattered hilichurls. Most are lying unmoving in the grass, but a handful are picking themselves up off the ground, clearly dazed. They shout when they spot him, but by then it’s too late. Diluc swings his claymore and brings them down to join their companions, before pressing on.

At the edge of the orchard, where the path around the winery bleeds into the western road, there are three Abyss Mages in pale shields and white fur. His stomach sinks. Cryo would be a good matchup for him at any other time, but at this very moment… The surprise attack he got on those hilichurls aside, Diluc’s fairly certain a stiff breeze could beat him in a fight right now.

But that hardly matters, because—

There’s a fourth form dancing between the crystalline shields, drawn sword glinting in the setting sun’s light. Its wielder’s flourishes are achingly familiar.

Kaeya’s the one fighting.

Trying to take down three mages with naught but a blade is getting him nowhere fast, and even with his nimble dodging and self-healing ability, he’s taking hits. There’s no way he wins this on his own.

Diluc doesn’t think.

“Kaeya!” he shouts, swinging his claymore over his shoulder. His brother spots him through a shield, and even at this distance Diluc can see his eye widen in confusion. “Get down!”

A half-second later and he obliges, and Diluc sends Dawn soaring over him, breaking the Abyss Mages’ shields and sweeping them up on its wings before leaving them to plummet to the earth. Kaeya jumps to his feet and turns to dispatch the unprotected mages.

Diluc is glad to see it, because there isn’t much else he can do to help; the adrenaline coursing through him does nothing to combat the all-consuming piercing cold that erupts from the center of his chest.

He plants his claymore in the ground in front of him, leaning heavily on it to keep from falling over completely. The flames along his blade flicker and die out in moments, the fleeting comfort of their meager warmth disappearing with them.

The cold unfurls past that point in his chest, greedily clawing at his shoulders and digging into his stomach. It hurts. It hurts and he can hardly breathe past it but it’s fine. It’s fine, and if it’s worth it if it means that—

The sound of boots crunching against the dirt path catches his attention. A very familiar pair enters his line of sight.

“You got them all?” Diluc manages, forcing himself to look up. His stomach drops as he catches sight of the injuries Kaeya earned during his fight. He doesn’t appear to be too grievously hurt, but… “Are you alr—”

“Yes,” he cuts in, voice unusually sharp. “Assuming that was the last of them, I got them all.”

Diluc nods slowly. “Good. That…that’s good.”

Kaeya crosses his arms over his chest and gives a smile that says he is holding onto patience by a thread. “Enlighten me, would you? I’d love to know what could possibly motivate the master of the Dawn Winery to come rushing headlong into a fight when he’s supposed to be resting in bed.”

There’s a retort there on the tip of his tongue about how, unlike a certain group of people, he refuses to be idle when others are in danger, but he can’t find the strength within him to voice it. He simply does not have the energy for their constant back and forth bickering, not with his adrenaline fading and the biting cold slowly curling around his neck.

He must make some sort of face, because Kaeya sighs and his arms uncross.

“Are you quite alright, Master Diluc?”

“Fine,” he manages, a bit sharper than he intended, as he pushes himself up to his full height. His claymore disappears the moment his hands fall away from it, and he gestures vaguely to his Vision. “Just—”

Kaeya’s brows furrow ever so slightly, as if he doesn’t quite follow. Instead, his gaze sharpens as he meets Diluc’s eyes.

“I take it this has happened before, then?”

He says nothing, which serves as answer enough. Kaeya lets out a frustrated sigh through his nose, turning his attention to the sprawling fields of grapevines on the hill above them.

“You didn’t think to mention it earlier,” he says. “I’d ask why, but I assume that would just be a waste of time.”

His eye finds him again, cold and resolute as he continues. “Much like asking you to get some rest, it seems. Do you usually disregard such requests from the people around you, or am I special case?”

Diluc almost bites back with something along the lines of being out here to protect the people around him, but he holds back. He wants to say it. Kaeya wants him to say it, to draw out this bitter exchange until it becomes something terrible and has both of them turning away from it with a newfound distaste for each other’s company.

But he doesn’t. There’s something about this situation, with the added weariness of the gnawing cold in his chest that makes him reluctant to continue this fight.

Maybe it’s the thought of Kaeya patrolling the grounds with the knowledge that he is eventually going to leave. This place was his home, once. The two of them used to run through these same fields playing Knights and chasing crystalflies, used to walk the paths and speak to each other of things they could share with no one else. It’s no surprise, then, that there is a small part of him that says Kaeya shouldn’t have to leave.

Maybe it’s the dissonance of Kaeya being here at the Winery after so long, with all of the cold formalities between them that the past few years have bred. Maybe it’s the way the setting sun’s light colors his hair, maybe it’s the growing tiredness in his eye as he waits for Diluc to respond.

Maybe it’s a million things at once and nothing at all, coalescing into this moment of realization that it is always going to be this way.

No matter how many steps forward they take, no matter how many times they work well together, this is always going to be the heart of their relationship. Bitter bickering and harsh words exchanged with the sole purpose of hurting the other and driving them away.

This is what it’s come to. This is what it’s always going to be.

And, well, it’s not supposed to be them that reaches out and closes the distance, is it? It’s supposed to be fate. Circumstance. They’re supposed to begrudgingly unite for a common cause and then go their separate ways.

Kaeya is upset with him, it seems, for overstepping that invisible line, for calling him here before, and now for stepping out to help him. Rightfully so; there is, after all, a certain selfishness and cruelty in asking Kaeya to associate with him past what is necessary for the defense of Mondstadt, even if he did it unknowingly.

“My apologies for troubling you, Captain,” Diluc says quietly after a long while, swallowing the cold and emotion both. “If you have everything under control, then I won’t interfere with your work any further.”

He turns. Pauses.

Then, “…Thank you for all your help thus far.”

He leaves.

Kaeya does not call after him.

Most of the commotion has died down by the time he makes it back to the manor. He stops a few people in his path to ask if they’re alright, what happened, and to make sure the threat is well and truly dealt with. The responses inform him of a surprise attack, fended off easily enough thanks to the Cavalry Captain and a few workers ready and able to fight.

Adelinde ushers him off to bed with a particularly well-timed flat look from across the way, which a maid behind him apparently thinks is aimed at her, if the way she hurries inside is any indication. Diluc simply nods in acquiescence and follows suit.

And as he climbs the stairs to the upper floor, he finds himself once again without anything to busy his mind, nothing distracting him from the unpleasant subject that has been haunting him incessantly for weeks. The moment he closes the bedroom door behind him, his realization from the orchard returns to him in full force, coupled with a wave of cold weariness.

The fighting. The bickering. The almost-not-quite moments where Diluc is convinced there’s something left there he can salvage.

He is tired. He is so, so tired of this. He wants…well. It doesn’t matter what he wants.

Kaeya wants it to be this way.

Of course he does. Diluc can hardly imagine why he wouldn’t. Masks and mind games are his forte, after all, and it’s not as though he carries the same lingering fondness that haunts Diluc with each passing interaction.

He has no right to presume that he does, anyway. He has no right to impose himself upon Kaeya’s life at all.

Diluc tears his hair down—hastily tied up before, as he rushed out of the manor—and lets out a ragged, frustrated breath, that horrible feeling in his chest twisting tighter with each passing moment.

Why can’t he simply be satisfied with what he’s been given? What he has now is far more than he deserves. After what he’s done, he doesn’t deserve a more significant place in Kaeya’s life, and he never will.

He knows that. He’s known that for ages; it’s not as though he left Mondstadt all those years ago seeking redemption, of all things.

No, though his foolish heart sometimes dared to dream, he refused to let himself truly believe that he would ever again find a place in Kaeya’s life, or that Kaeya would ever want him to. His dreams from that time focused mostly on violently excising those responsible for his father’s death from this plane of existence. …Sometimes those dreams even included the one who wielded the knife, at the end.

But, well, he knows by now that it is the nature of dreams to go unfulfilled.

Now Diluc is left with the bitter reality that those who are responsible will go ever unpunished, and that the person he cares about most in the world probably wishes he never came home at all.

The biting cold grows ever sharper and sharper, digging its teeth right down to the bone until finally—

Something in Diluc’s chest snaps.

The growing cold overtakes him, and his entire body goes numb. His legs buckle and he hits the ground hard, with barely the time or presence of mind to catch the edge of the table next to him to stop himself from crumpling to the floor entirely.

There, on his knees, he hears a horribly familiar tearing noise from behind him that settles dread in his stomach even before he hears the heavy pair of boots hit the floor.

Panic rises in his chest as they approach—slowly, like his would-be assassin knows they have all the time in the world—and Diluc can hardly breathe around it.

Think. Think, Diluc, fucking think of something.

Except he can’t feel his limbs, can hardly feel anything at all except for the ball of terror and dread somewhere in his abdomen as the footsteps draw ever closer.

Footsteps.

Footsteps down the hall, approaching his door.

There’s a brief knock, and a muffled voice. “Master Diluc?”

He can’t—what can he say, exactly, through the panic constricting his throat? Help? Run?

The door opens slowly with a soft creak, and the voice returns. “I—I’m so sorry for intruding, Master Diluc, but I thought I heard something…fall..?”

He can pinpoint the exact moment the young maid spots the figure standing behind him, if only because a second later she lets out a sharp scream and slams the door closed. The sound of hydro blades crashing against wood soon follows it, echoed by quickly retreating footsteps.

Diluc turns his head just enough to see his attacker, stance shifted ever so slightly to face the door. He can’t—he won’t let this thing go after his staff. It takes one step forward and Diluc uses the table to leverage himself off the floor, uses that momentum to throw himself at the intruder.

The Abyssal envoy’s attention snaps back to him, but Diluc accomplishes little else past that, other than quite literally playing into its hands. A hand sweeps forward to meet him halfway, lifting him into the air with ease and bringing him face to face with his assailant.

In his journeys with the Traveler, he’s really only encountered Abyss Heralds a handful of times. The Traveler once told him they’re a rather rare sight outside of places like sunken Enkanomiya.

So, perhaps Kaeya was onto something after all when he said the Abyss Order thinks quite highly of him indeed, if they’re willing to send a Herald after him. Perhaps at any other time he would feel proud, maybe even something close to honored.

But at the moment, he is a bit preoccupied with the hand clenched around his windpipe to feel anything of the sort.

It’s all he can do to kick his leaden legs beneath him, one hand loosely clutching the Abyss Herald’s wrist as he twists in its grasp, struggling to breathe.

He should be stronger than this. He should be fighting back, shouldn’t he?

Diluc twitches the numbed hand at his side in an attempt to summon his claymore, but there’s no response. Of course.

Well, he supposes there would be little point to trying to fight in his current state, anyway.

The Abyss Order has obviously been planning this for some time now, and when has Diluc ever done anything but blunder blindly into traps set for him?

He’s escaped death twice already. He should have known that luck couldn’t last.

Wouldn’t it be easier? To simply close his eyes and accept his fate?

He is tired. Any part of him that isn’t completely numb aches from the biting cold. His lungs burn. Black spots dance around the edges of his vision. Just keeping his eyes open feels like a monumental effort.

Wouldn’t it be easier?

His grip falters. His hand falls away from the Herald’s arm, and his eyes fall closed as unconsciousness takes him.

...

When Diluc comes to, he’s no longer in the air. He’s horizontal, lying on something very hard. Someone is coughing, the sound loud and grating against his ears and—oh. That’s him. He’s the one coughing.

There’s a voice, then. Speaking rather insistently, swimming in and out of focus. He can’t quite understand what it’s saying. Diluc opens his eyes and looks around blearily for the source of it. He catches sight of dark clothing, blue accents—his last waking moments come rushing back, and for one terrifying moment he thinks the Herald is next to him, that the Abyss Order has some horrific plan for him that doesn’t end in his death—

But…no. There are flashes of white, of lighter blue, and…

Diluc locks eyes with the form hovering over him, and…oh. He knows that eye. He would know that eye anywhere.

The eye, the voice, and his brother’s attention all turn away, so Diluc lets his eyes fall closed. He’s tired. Surely there’s no harm in a touch more rest?

The voice returns, more insistently this time, and he forces his eyes open again, refocusing on that familiar four-pointed star. The voice turns gentler. Wavers a touch. Something brushes the hair out of his face, tucks it behind his ear, and…oh.

He knows he should be focusing on trying to understand what the voice is saying, or perhaps on the fact that the Abyss Order targeted him in his own home, but all he can think about as he drifts off is how tired he is, and how nice it feels to have someone’s hand in his hair.

Chapter Text

Diluc drifts in and out of consciousness for a while, called back to the waking world only when a sharp, clear scent reaches his nose. He snaps awake to find himself sitting on the floor, his back against a wall. He’s in his bedroom, still, moonlight streaming through the curtains and spilling across the floor.

Adelinde is kneeling in front of him, some sort of container held in her hand. When his eyes meet hers, her furrowed brow and shoulders both relax.

“Master Diluc,” she says with a relieved smile, tucking the container away.

He opens his mouth to respond, but something catches in his throat that sends him into a coughing fit, turning his head to the side and all but doubling over. As he does, a hand comes to rest on his shoulder, a comforting and reassuring weight.

Once he’s finished, he takes in a deep, shuddering breath and slowly straightens up again.

“Addie,” he croaks. His voice feels rough and splintered and small, more than what comes from lack of use.

“How are you feeling?” she asks softly.

Fine is on the tip of his tongue, a familiar and empty reassurance, but the worried scrunch to Adelinde’s brow gives him pause.

“Cold. Tired,” he admits. “Sort of…numb. Throat hurts.”

“Well, that last part’s to be expected,” she huffs good-naturedly, before tapping him under the chin. “Here, look up for me, will you? I want to get a look at your neck.”

He complies, but the lack of formalities between them has a subtle confusion roiling amidst the fog clouding his mind. Adelinde’s never this informal unless she’s stressed out of her mind and stopped caring about how she presents herself. What happened, again..?

His memories are fuzzy and vague, but if he really pushes himself—

Dread drops like a stone into his stomach.

“The Abyss Herald—”

“It was dealt with,” she says calmly. She doesn’t elaborate further, but…

It doesn’t take much to figure out by whom.

They don’t say anything more for a long while as she inspects his injuries. The silence begins to gnaw at him.

His hands are bare, Diluc realizes somewhat belatedly. They so rarely are these days, but he’s been in bed so often recently that putting on a pair of gloves felt a bit pointless. Right now, however, he feels rather exposed without them and the familiar pressure they provide. He finds himself gripping his hands together in an attempt to simulate it and stave off the discomfort the quiet brings.

“Was anyone else..?”

“Just you,” she says, dabbing a cloth along the side of his neck. It stings, a little. “Everyone else is alright.”

The knots in his stomach slowly begin to unwind. “Good. That’s…that’s good.”

“Is it?” she says sharply, releasing his chin so he can look her in the eye. There is a cold steel in her expression that he hardly ever sees. “Is it good, that you almost—” her voice pitches dangerously upward and she turns away, taking in a steadying breath as she sets to tidying the open medical kit at her side.

“It doesn’t look like the skin has broken, so there’s no risk of infection, at least. Just some bruising.”

“…Thank you, Addie,” he says softly.

“It’s nothing, Master Diluc.”

“It’s not nothing,” he insists. “You do so much for me, I…I’m sorry all I seem to do is make you worry.”

Adelinde lets out a shaky breath as she closes the medical kit, and turns to face him. There are tears shining in her eyes.

“I just wish you would take better care of yourself,” she says quietly, voice wavering. After a moment of deliberation, she reaches forward and gently clasps Diluc’s bare hands in her own. “There are so many people who care about you, Master Diluc. We—I—can’t bear the thought of anything happening to you.”

Diluc looks down at their joined hands, at the warm contact cutting through the numbness settled over him. Something pulls his throat tight, and a strange blurriness overtakes his vision.

How long has it been, exactly?

Most of the people Diluc encounters only touch him with the intent to hurt, to maim, to kill. For those who have friendlier intentions, however, he typically wears enough layers to muffle any sort of unwanted contact. It’s a level of separation that keeps others distanced. Keeps him safe.

But here, and now, he can’t help but wonder.

When was the last time someone touched him like this? …Has it really been since before he left Mondstadt?

No, certainly not. There was that older woman in Sumeru who grasped his hands and gave him a pleasant smile when he stopped to light her stove for her. And he’s fairly certain the person who rescued him in Snezhnaya once pressed a hand against his forehead to check his temperature.

It’s only when the blurriness in his eyes clears that he recognizes his own tears for what they are.

Adelinde lets out a small noise and brings a hand up to his cheek. Diluc feels his face contort with emotion as he leans into the contact, and she guides him forward to rest his head against her shoulder. Her hand shifts through his hair to cradle the back of his head, and Diluc tries very hard not to start sobbing into her shoulder like a child, his spare hand clutching at her sleeve.

“I’m so sorry, Addie.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for.”

“I left you behind to handle everything—I throw myself at every problem I see and I never think about how it would affect you if I—”

“Enough, Master Diluc,” she says. “I want you to be well. Your enemies torment you enough; you don’t need to do their work for them.”

They sit like that for a long while, Diluc sniffling into her shoulder as he slowly pulls himself back together. When he feels in control of his emotions enough that he’s not about to start openly weeping, he pulls away, and Adelinde’s hands slowly retreat. He bites his tongue so as not to protest.

“…Thank you.”

Something in her eyes softens. “Of course, Master Diluc.” They sit together for a moment more, before she clears her throat and moves to stand, picking up the medical kit. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“No, thank you, Addie,” Diluc says as he joins her on his feet. She reaches out a hand to steady him when he stumbles, and he offers her a small smile. “You’ve done far more than enough for me, I think.”

Adelinde mirrors the smile as she nods and turns to leave. She pauses at the door, turns back with a furrowed brow.

“Master Diluc, forgive me if I’m speaking out of turn, but…I do believe there’s someone else you should speak to, as well.”

Ah.

Right.

“…He’s still here?”

“He’s surveying the grounds. Again. I’m not entirely sure if he actually expects to find anything, or…”

Or if throwing oneself into work as a distraction is a habit that runs in the family.

Diluc sits on the edge of the bed, letting out a heavy sigh. “…Will you see him in, please?”

“Of course, Master Diluc.”

The door clicks shut behind her, and Diluc is left in the cold darkness of his room to wait.

It feels like ages before a polite knock raps against his door.

“Master Diluc? I’ve brought Sir Kaeya.”

“Thank you, Adelinde,” he calls with all the strength he can muster—which, at the moment, still isn’t much.

The door opens without a sound, and Kaeya steps into the room. From behind him, Adelinde gives Diluc a brief look of sympathy—one that quickly morphs into something just short of a glare at the sight of a blanket once again tucked around his shoulders. But she says nothing, and softly closes the door.

…

The silence between them is stifling.

He half expects Kaeya to break it, as he so often does, with a smirk and a laugh and some infuriating nonsense that sends them both spiraling into another argument. But Kaeya just stands there, hands at his sides, like for the first time in his life he has no idea what to say.

Diluc clears his throat after a while.

“Do you…want to sit?”

Kaeya seems to snap out of some sort of daze at his words, nodding stiffly and crossing the distance to retake his seat in the chair by the bed. He says nothing for a while, fidgeting with his hands.

Then, “How are you feeling?”

Diluc catches the fine that so readily supplies itself before it can fall from his tongue. He doesn’t particularly feel like rehashing a conversation they’ve already had once before.

Besides, Kaeya sounds…perhaps a touch more genuine than the last time he asked. The least he can do is return the favor.

“Like shit,” he admits. “You?”

Kaeya looks up at him, surprise written across his face. “Me?” He lets out an incredulous laugh when Diluc nods. “I’m not the one who almost got strangled to death by an Abyss Herald, Master Diluc.”

“You fought it, though.”

He lets out a sigh, shakes his head. “Fought is…a bit of a generous description. I made sure it left. And from what I can tell, it doesn’t seem keen on returning.”

“…Thank you.”

“Only doing my duty,” Kaeya says with a tight smile.

Right. He probably wants to leave, by now.

Diluc opens his mouth to tell him he doesn’t have to stay if he doesn’t want to; he’s already troubled him plenty already—

“Are you still cold?”

He blinks for a moment. Looks up to meet Kaeya’s eye, watching him carefully.

“What?”

“You said you were cold, before. If this really was the last stage of the Abyss Order’s plan, I’m curious to know if your…ailment…has worn off by now.”

“…No.”

“You’re not?”

“No, I mean—” he lets out a frustrated sigh. “No, it hasn’t worn off.”

Kaeya lets out a displeased hum, frown creeping onto his features as he looks off to the side, lost in thought. “Do they intend to do something more, then?”

Diluc huffs. “Something tells me they haven’t planned that far ahead. They likely didn’t consider failure as an option, so why concern themselves with what comes after?”

After mulling it over for a moment, Kaeya lets out a sigh. “True. The Abyss Order isn’t exactly known for its great fallback plans.” His eye meets Diluc’s own. “But they may try again in the future.”

“…I know.”

A long silence stretches between them.

Eventually, Kaeya shifts in the chair, throwing a foot up onto his opposite knee with a smile. “Well, that’s neither here nor there. Best to focus on the present, hm? If your mysterious cold hasn’t gone away on its own, we should probably see to getting rid of it ourselves.”

We. Where is Kaeya getting this we from? Doesn’t he plan on leaving, now that his job is done?

“Do you remember anything that helped at all?”

The image of Adelinde’s hands clasped in his own immediately jumps to mind. It’s joined by the previous realization that Kaeya’s presence chased the cold away, and a fuzzy memory of his brother kneeling next to him, a hand in his hair as his consciousness faded.

Diluc had originally dismissed that as a dream—added to the apparently growing collection of dreams wherein Kaeya offers him some sort of comfort as he slowly dies—but if he truly did defeat the Abyss Herald, chances are he would have been the first to wake him. So perhaps there is more truth to it than he originally thought.

But…he can’t exactly say any of that, can he? He can’t tell Kaeya what helped, because, indirectly or not, it sounds quite like a request for it to happen again.

The thought of asking someone to care for him is uncomfortable enough as it is. But the thought of asking Kaeya for any sort of affection after what Diluc’s done to him…it makes him feel physically ill.

“If you can’t think of anything, that’s alright,” Kaeya’s voice cuts through his spiraling thoughts. “I can stop by the library tomorrow, ask if Lisa knows anything about—”

“Why are you here, Kaeya?”

Kaeya’s voice trails off. He blinks at him, bafflement written across his face. “…Excuse me?”

“What are you doing here, Kaeya?”

“Trying to help you dispel a curse from the Abyss Order?” Kaeya scoffs. “Oh, have I overstayed my welcome? If that’s the case, feel free to show me to the door, Master Diluc. You’re quite good at that.”

Diluc holds his gaze for a long moment—resolutely not asking him to leave—before sighing heavily, looking down at his entwined hands. “I just…don’t understand. Shouldn’t you have…reported this to someone by now? Jean? I’ve never known the Knights to be so—”

“I’m not doing this for the Knights,” he says sharply.

Diluc looks up at him in surprise, watches the anger slowly seep away from him as he rests his temple in his palm with a sigh.

“I…Adelinde sent word you were asking for me, so…”

“So…what? You just…” Diluc wrings his hands a little tighter, shakes his head. “You could have said no.”

“Far be it from me to spurn an audience with the richest man in Mondstadt, if he wants to see me. For all I know, you might have denied me service at Angel’s Share indefinitely if I declined to stop by.”

Diluc stares at him, ultimately ignoring what’s either bitterness born from exhaustion, or a sorry attempt at deflection. Or both. “You didn’t have to stay.”

Kaeya’s eye sharpens. “Well, I’m certainly glad I did, if it means you didn’t end up—” his voice falters. He turns away.

Oh. Right.

If Kaeya was the one who defeated the Herald, then…he very nearly watched him die, didn’t he?

“Really?” There’s a quietness to his voice that has nothing to do with the fact that he was almost strangled to death a few hours prior. His eyes fall back to his hands. “I would have thought you would be glad to see it.”

Kaeya lets out a small, startled sound like he’s just been punched in the lungs. After a beat, he recovers, clears his throat, forces a smile. “I…I told you before, didn’t I? What is Mondstadt without its wine industry, and its Darknight Hero to defend it?”

Diluc grits his teeth. “I’m not asking about Mondstadt. I’m not asking about the wine industry. I’m asking about you.”

It’s cruel of him, really, to try and demand honesty from Kaeya. Especially when the last time he was well and truly honest with him, Diluc met that vulnerability with violence.

But even so, he needs to know for certain. No more dancing around the point and wondering, hoping, grasping for anything that means there’s a chance to salvage what they once had. He needs to know for certain, to lay to rest the question that’s been on his mind since he set foot in Mond.

So, he forces himself to look Kaeya in the eye, despite knowing just how much hearing the answer out loud will hurt.

“Would you have preferred it, if I had died?”

And he watches, then, as Kaeya’s carefully constructed mask falters, and begins to fall apart.

“No,” Kaeya gasps. “No, I—of course not—” his voice catches and he turns away, hands curling into his sleeves.

Diluc doesn’t press him any further, if only because he doesn’t think to, mind reeling in the wake of the words ringing like a bell in his ears.

Of course not.

As if it should have been obvious, as if Kaeya didn’t think for a second that he would have been better off if Diluc died, or if he never came home from that trip at all. As if…as if he—

As if he cares, as if he’s always cared, and hasn’t stopped even to this day.

Diluc does not remember calling out to Kaeya. Nor does he remember asking Adelinde to call Kaeya here, however long ago that was.

But he does remember dreaming. Dreaming of his brother, there with him in what might be the worst place in the world. He didn’t seem bothered then, but…

Perhaps in the face of Diluc’s imminent death, Kaeya would not be so calm after all.

Kaeya chooses that moment to compose himself, inhaling deeply and letting out a shaky breath. “To answer your question: no.” He begins, with a waver to his voice. “…Mondstadt is…a very empty place without you, ‘Luc. Believe me.” Kaeya looks at him, then, and there is something shining in his eye. “I don’t want to live in that kind of Mondstadt again.”

The room seems to spin around him. Diluc feels as though he might fall over.

Empty. Empty. He’s never thought of Mondstadt as empty. If he didn’t know any better, he’d think that Kaeya was saying he wants him around. That during Diluc’s time away, Kaeya had wanted him to come home, almost as though he…

Oh.

“I…missed you too,” Diluc says very quietly, half a confession and half a revelation. He had, hadn’t he? When he was turning his eyes away from everything in the world that reminded him of his brother, what could that be called, if not an avoidance of longing?

Kaeya makes a small, strangled little noise, but says nothing, allowing a heavy silence to settle between them.

“I’m sorry,” Diluc says at last. Out of the corner of his eye, Kaeya snaps to attention, watching him intently. “I…Before, I shouldn’t have told you to leave.”

Before as in before he almost got strangled to death, yes, but also before as in before, on that rainy night all those years ago when Diluc had said…a lot of things he isn’t proud of. A lot of things he still needs to apologize for.

Kaeya lets out a choked laugh, and offers him a watery smile. “I understand. I wasn’t exactly the most tolerable person to be around, at the time.”

“That’s no excuse,” Diluc says weakly, throat clogged with emotion. “That’s no excuse for what I—” his voice catches and he closes his eyes. That’s no excuse for how I treated you. For what I did to you. For what I almost did—

Something interrupts the rough back and forth of his wringing hands; carefully pulls them apart and wraps its warmth around them.

Diluc opens his eyes.

…

Kaeya’s hands.

Kaeya’s hands, holding his so gently like he’s afraid Diluc might fall apart. If the past few days—and truly, the past few hours—are any indication, that’s not an entirely unfair assumption to make.

“Save your apologies,” Kaeya says softly.

Diluc looks up at him in surprise, meets his eye to find an exhaustion settled behind it that he feels right down to his bones. Kaeya lets out a weary sigh.

“We’re both tired. I…I don’t think either of us is up for that conversation tonight, so just…save it. Later.”

He’s right; they are both tired. The past few days have obviously taken quite a toll on them, if they’ve reached this point at all.

But…the thought of putting off this conversation even longer, of leaving his guilt to fester, of giving Kaeya time to reconstruct his emotional walls and slip away, is not exactly an appealing one. Diluc opens his mouth to protest, but his brother beats him to it.

“I…” Kaeya’s face twists like he’s prying the words out of himself with a knife. “I care about you, ‘Luc. Can that be enough, for now? Can we just…deal with the rest of it later?”

…It’s not an appealing thought, no.

But the thought of having a later with Kaeya is.

“Okay,” he agrees quietly, a solemn vow to his brother and himself. Diluc offers him a small, hopeful smile, which Kaeya returns in kind. “Later.”

They stay like that for a long while in a contemplative silence, before Kaeya clears his throat loudly.

“You didn’t…answer my question, earlier. About the cold. If anything helped.”

Right. That’s still a problem.

“I…yes,” he manages. It seemed a daunting task to admit it, before. But now, with Kaeya’s hands already holding his own, it seems a bit more doable. “There was something.”

Kaeya’s eye lights up. “Really?”

He swallows past the embarrassment and guilt and fear, gives his brother’s hands a light squeeze. “This.”

Kaeya stares at him for a moment, before his gaze drifts down to their joined hands. “Oh.”

Diluc’s stomach twists as he waits for him to pull away with a hesitant laugh, or make some joke about it, or tell him that he wasn’t thinking about it, this was an accident, really, he still can’t stand to—

“Do you want me to stay?”

It takes a long, long moment for his mind to process the words. When it finishes, Diluc blinks at him with wide eyes. “Wh—you would do that?”

Kaeya cares about him, yes. But they haven’t talked things through yet, surely he doesn’t want to stay in close proximity to him for a long period of time..?

His brother rolls his eye. “If it means you’ll finally get some goddamn rest, absolutely.”

Diluc’s stomach drops. Oh.

He does want Kaeya to stay. But…he wants Kaeya to want to stay. He wants—

It doesn’t matter what he wants.

He carefully pulls his hands away. “…I’ll rest with or without…I’ll rest either way. Don’t feel obligated to stay on my behalf. I have no intention of making things harder for you.”

“And here I was hoping you’d say you wouldn’t be able to get any rest without me.”

Diluc blinks.

“That you’d sleep fitfully without your brother by your side to keep you safe?” Kaeya smiles at him, nothing but warm humor in his expression. “If anything, it would make things easier for me, since I don’t intend to let you out of my sight for, oh, say, the next year, at least.”

Oh. Oh.

As much as he desperately, selfishly wanted it, Diluc never actually imagined Kaeya would want to stay. But, well, a lot of things Diluc never imagined have happened today.

“If you…want to stay,” he begins cautiously, trying not to let the unrestrained hope growing within him bloom to the surface of his words, “…then by all means. I…I’d like that.”

There’s that emotion in Kaeya’s eye again. Something soft that he can’t quite place, perhaps because he hasn’t seen it in years.

“Good,” he says, clearing his throat and getting to his feet. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to steal some of your nightclothes and go change, because I’m not sleeping in…this,” he gestures down at his outfit, with bits of grass and dirt and blood and unidentified Abyssal residue spattered across it.

Diluc doesn’t stop the smile that creeps to his face as he watches Kaeya rifle through his drawers. “What happened to not letting me out of your sight for the next year?”

“Oh, you’ll give me bathroom breaks and the like, won’t you? You can hardly expect me to watch you night and day.”

“You make it sound like I’m forcing this on you. If memory serves, you volunteered.”

Kaeya gives him a flat look. “You certainly forced my hand; what with how you dive headfirst into every unknown danger you come across, Diluc.”He shakes his head in disbelief. “If I come back and you’ve managed to injure yourself again, I’ll be very upset.”

“I’ll be alright, I promise.”

His brother watches him for a moment longer, before relenting and turning to leave.

A thought strikes him.

“Kaeya,” the call slips past his lips the moment his brother’s hand touches the door handle.

He turns back to face him, eyebrows raised. Perhaps he should let this moment pass, continue to revel in their shared levity and tell him to forget it, but…no. It’s too important to leave unsaid.

“I…I care about you, too,” he says quietly. “And…I’m sorry it’s taken me this long to say it.”

Kaeya holds his gaze for a moment before looking away. “…Me too.”

The door opens and closes silently, leaving Diluc alone once again, hope mingling with the cold in his chest and taking away its bitter sting.

A minute later and a set of footsteps echo down the hall, giving him an idea. Diluc stands, and opens the door just in time to see Adelinde pass by.

“Adelinde,” he calls. “Would you do something for me?”

She turns to face him, blinking in surprise. “Of course, Master Diluc. What is it?”

“It’s…Kaeya is going to be staying another night. I was wondering if you would fetch one of his old sleeping patches for him,” he pauses. “…if you haven’t already.”

Adelinde stares at him for a moment before a soft smile graces her features. “I have not. But I would be glad to.”

“Thank you, Addie.”

“With all due respect, I’m not just doing this for you,” she says with a glint of amusement in her eye. “I’m doing it for Master Kaeya, as well.”

“I can’t believe your sleep clothes are tailored to you, you absolute madman.”

Kaeya is complaining, it seems, because Diluc’s clothes do not quite fit him.

When they were children, it was much easier for them to swap clothes as they saw fit, but now that they’ve grown, it seems it’s not so simple. Kaeya’s a touch taller than him now, and doesn’t have the same build Diluc does that comes from using a claymore for years.

“Is there a reason I should be uncomfortable while I sleep?”

“I suppose not,” he begrudgingly admits, “but it is a rather ridiculous way to flaunt your unfathomable wealth.”

“Flaunting implies I’m showing off, somehow. It’s not like anyone else is going to see what I sleep in.”

“Really?” Kaeya smirks at him. “Not a soul?”

“Just the maids who clean them, and you,” Diluc says, giving him a flat look.

A moment later, and the smirk disappears, probably right as Kaeya remembers Diluc has no interest in that sort of thing. “Oh. Right.”

Diluc snorts and rolls his eyes, and decides to mercifully return to the matter at hand. “You could get some tailored for yourself, if you like.”

“Did you not hear me when I said unfathomable wealth? Do I look like I can afford to go around spending money on things like this?”

“Honestly, you probably can,” he shrugs. Kaeya stares at him. “After all, half of this unfathomable wealth belongs to you.”

“Diluc,” Kaeya draws his name out in an exaggerated groan as he drops down to sit with him on the bed. “Not tonight. You promised.”

“Hmph. Fine,” Diluc turns away, tucking himself under the covers. “Stop complaining about it, then.”

Kaeya grumbles a while longer before he follows suit, slipping under the covers and settling down so they’re facing each other. The two of them lapse into silence.

It begins to gnaw at him, again, those things left unsaid and unaddressed. That sense that he shouldn’t be doing this, he’s leeching off of Kaeya’s kindness, he said he wanted to be here, but…

His inner turmoil must show on his face, because Kaeya reaches forward and takes his hand, chasing away the cold nipping at his fingers.

“…Diluc? Are you sure you’re alright with this?”

He hums, squeezes Kaeya’s hand a bit tighter.

It’s hard for him to admit that he’s more than alright with this—this display of affection that he’s done absolutely nothing to earn. If anything, it’s Kaeya’s comfort he’s worried about, but he can’t say as much; not without sounding like he wasn’t listening to his brother’s confession at all.

But…there is some small, selfish part of him—perhaps nestled between the broken shards of ice in his chest—that keeps telling him that this isn’t close enough.

“If…If the Abyss Order tries something,” he begins lamely, because they won’t, not tonight, “…you’d be…sleeping on your good eye.”

Not that that means anything at all, but it’s the only excuse he can think of.

“Oh?”

He can’t look at him. The familiar heat of embarrassment crawls up his neck and settles upon his face and ears as the silence stretches on. Maybe he should just settle for the cold, if it means he never has to feel this particular warmth ever again.

He can’t look at him, but Diluc can hear the smug smile in Kaeya’s voice when he speaks. “So, what you’re saying is I should be facing the other way?”

They both know what he’s asking for.

“Forget it. It was a stupid id—”

“Alright, alright,” Kaeya cuts him off with a chuckle, already shifting in place. He clambers over him and flops down on his other side, shuffling around until he’s made himself comfortable, settled against Diluc’s back.

“Better?” he asks after a beat, voice light, as if he’s completely unaware of how Diluc’s mind is spinning at the contact.

They used to do this a lot. Whenever Kaeya had a nightmare, whenever it was cold outside and they wanted to stay warm, whenever one of them had a particularly bad day and didn’t want to talk about it but didn’t want to be alone either. It was always such an unspoken thing between them. Perhaps that’s why he has so much trouble asking for it, these days.

The weight and warmth of someone in his arms—or, like now, tucked against his back—was always a familiar, reassuring presence that set him at ease. It was something he ached for in those years on his own, made him wish he still had anyone he trusted enough to be close to him. Made him wish he had treasured the moments more instead of taking them for granted.

…How long has it been?

How long has it been, since Diluc trusted Kaeya—or, gods, trusted anyone—to have his back like this? How long has it been since anyone—

“’Luc?” Kaeya mumbles against his shoulder, settled against Diluc’s back like he’d never left at all.

Diluc doesn’t respond—can’t, he’s pretty sure if he opens his mouth right now all he’ll let out is a choked sob—and instead takes the hand Kaeya has draped over his abdomen in his own, entwining their fingers and pressing a gentle kiss to his palm, before settling their joined hands over his chest.

He breathes in. Out. Shakily.

“Better,” he croaks. Kaeya lets out a soft hum from behind him.

With his brother once more at his back, Diluc begins to drift off, comforted by the feeling of something within him—and something between them both—beginning to thaw.

Chapter Text

Kaeya is not exactly in the habit of visiting Diluc Ragnvindr.

Not at the Winery, anyway. Not unless he has to. There’s more than enough bad blood between the two of them to make the prospect immensely unappealing, so he makes a point of avoiding Dawn Winery on principle. He tries to keep as much distance as possible between himself and the past that he has no hope of returning to.

But...well. Diluc asked for him, and he’s here, fool that he is. Funny how after all this time, he still comes running when his brother calls.

Though, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that Adelinde asked for him, seeing as Diluc is currently unconscious and in no state to be coherently calling for anyone. Kaeya has been sitting at his bedside for quite some time now, waiting for him to wake.

…That’s what he tells himself he’s doing, anyway. For the most part, he’s just been listening to Diluc dream.

He doesn’t dream quietly; never has, especially not when he’s having nightmares. There’s a lot of incoherent mumbling, muffled by the dozen blankets thrown over him, but occasionally Kaeya catches a snippet of what’s being said. He hears a lot of names—his own, Adelinde’s, their father’s, the Traveler’s…and one he doesn’t recognize.

Ah. There it is again.

Diluc’s face twists. “…don’t leave—don’t leave me here, please—I want to go home…” His hands curl into the blankets, pulling them closer as he shivers and shakes.

Is he still cold? Kaeya can’t fathom how he could be, what with the roaring fire in the hearth and the numerous blankets, but he supposes illnesses are funny like that.

…not that any illness ever affected Diluc this way when they were children.

No, every time he got sick, his temperature would turn dangerously feverish, a bundle of warmth hotter than the sun, thanks to his Vision acting as a secondary, magical immune system. Kaeya doesn’t remember him ever being cold like this.

But, well. Things change, don’t they? Maybe Diluc has had whatever this is before, during his time away, and no one knows about it. Maybe he’ll come out the other side of this no more worse for wear than when he caught it, and Kaeya will look the fool for worrying so much.

As much as he claims he has a reputation to uphold, he does hope that’s the case.

“Kaeya.”

Diluc’s voice snaps him back to the present. He sounds more lucid, now, and when Kaeya looks at him—ah. Diluc is staring right back at him.

“Oh,” he blinks in surprise, now realizing he hasn’t planned out what he’s going to say at all. “You’re awake.”

“What—” Diluc breaks off into coughs, curling in on himself. It’s such a pitiful sight that Kaeya considers calling for Adelinde. When he opens his mouth to do just that, Diluc pulls himself together, taking in a deep, shaky breath.

“What are you doing here?”

Isn’t that the question of the hour.

What is he doing here? Keeping vigil by Diluc’s bedside, waiting for him to recover? He doesn’t need to do that. He could get up and leave, if he wanted to. It’s not as though anyone is expecting him to stay—that isn’t the sort of thing either of them do for each other, anymore.

Maybe he’s just been waiting for Diluc to tell him to leave. To wake up and tell him that he isn’t welcome here anymore, and he never will be again. Then he’ll know he’s recovered enough and come to his senses.

“I heard you were calling for me,” Kaeya says, flashing a smile and spreading his hands to gesture to himself. “So here I am.”

Diluc stares at him, brow furrowed, as if he doesn’t quite believe it. “This is…quite a ways for you to go.”

It’s a little out of the way of his usual route, sure, but it’s not like he’s on the moon or anything. Dawn Winery isn’t that far from Mondstadt, and Kaeya knows the quickest roads to it like the back of his hand. How quickly Diluc forgets that this was his home, once, too.

But…if he’s reading his tone right, it seems like the distance itself is less of an issue. Rather, Diluc seems skeptical of his reason for crossing it.

Kaeya tilts his head to better look him in the eye. “Did you think I wouldn’t?”

After a long moment, Diluc breaks his gaze away.

Then, miserably, and so quiet he almost doesn’t hear it, “…I wouldn’t blame you…if you hadn’t.”

Not I would have preferred if you hadn’t.

Just I would understand if you didn’t want to see me. I would understand if you heard me call for you and turned the other way.

It’s such a raw, honest admission compared to the rest of their conversations these days that, for a moment, Kaeya isn’t entirely sure what to do with it. But then he smiles, leans in, and turns his words back on him like a knife, as is custom.

“Well, I couldn’t just leave you here on your own. Father did always tell us to stick together, didn’t he?”

By all accounts, the barb should work. Bringing up their father is a low blow, to be certain, but Diluc has a certain distaste for Kaeya speaking of Master Crepus in any capacity, enough so that it’s been a way out of a handful of unwanted conversations since Diluc’s return.

But, instead of biting back with a don’t you dare talk about him, don’t you dare speak his name when you so easily threw away what he gave you, get out—

Diluc looks at him as though he’s been struck, and then closes his eyes, curling in on himself further.

…He’s really out of it, isn’t he? It’s like he doesn’t even have it in him to be upset.

Guilt twists in his stomach as he watches Diluc hide his face from view.

He shouldn’t be here. There’s a reason they keep each other at arm’s length, a reason they push each other away. All the two of them ever do is make things worse for each other.

Kaeya lets out a heavy sigh. Diluc is too delirious to ask him to go, so he’ll just have to see himself out. He’s fulfilled Adelinde’s request to speak with him, now the kindest thing he can do is leave and not look back.

“My apologies, Master Diluc. That was thoughtless of me,” he says, standing to do just that. “I shouldn’t trouble you any further. I’ll take my lea—”

“No!”

A hand shoots out and catches his wrist. The fact that Diluc never touches him anymore, certainly not barehanded, aside—fucking hell, Diluc’s hand is freezing. The fire’s burning and he’s huddled under ten blankets, there is absolutely no reason he should be this cold.

The hand falls away after a brief moment, and when Kaeya meets his eye, there is something small and scared in Diluc’s expression that he hasn’t seen in years. He feels sick.

He’s not—he’s not supposed to look at him like that. He’s not supposed to trust him enough to be so open with him, not anymore, he’s not supposed to show weakness in front of some Khaenri’ahn traitor—

“I’m sorry,” Diluc whispers. “I…please. Just…stay with me, until..?”

The guilt and grief coiling in his gut make it easy to fight back the smile that the question instinctively brings. How many times had the two of them exchanged that same request as children?

...just until I fall asleep, then you can go. They always lingered long after the other succumbed to slumber, usually nodding off themselves and waking to find their limbs tangled together, holding the other close.

Better times.

Diluc shouldn’t trust him enough to ask that, to ask him to stay until he falls asleep. But if he’s delirious enough to trust him, maybe he’s delirious enough to forget. Or at the very least, dismiss this moment of vulnerability and weakness as a dream.

So, Kaeya settles back down in the chair, does his best to make himself comfortable. Diluc watches him.

“…Thank you,” he says, very quietly. Kaeya nods, and waits.

And waits.

…And then, to his continued shock and horror, tears well up in Diluc’s eyes, and he begins to cry.

Diluc—Diluc does not cry. Not in front of him, at least. Not anymore. The last time he showed such vulnerability was that night—Kaeya still remembers the way his tears glinted in the firelight radiating off of his blade.

…These days, Diluc is comparable to a stone wall when it comes to expressing emotions. The only ones that ever seem to fall through the cracks with any sort of consistency are mild distaste and irritation. So, even if he is delirious…this is bad. This is very, very bad.

“…Diluc?” he ventures cautiously.

Diluc’s gaze—distant and unfocused—snaps back to attention, and in an instant, his face contorts with emotion.

“I’m…I’m sorry,” he sobs, “Kaeya, I’m so sorry—”

His heart drops like a stone.

He doesn’t think before he moves, words spilling out of his mouth in a rush. “No no no, hey—”

By the time his mind can catch up with him—to remind him that he shouldn’t be here, he shouldn’t be doing this, he has no right to, they’re supposed to be keeping each other at arm’s length—he’s already closed the distance between them.

And he’s reaching out a hand, brushing away his brother’s tears.

It’s a testament to how sick he really is, that Kaeya of all people is warmer than him. Even when they were children, when they had been stuck outside in the snow for hours and Diluc complained that he was freezing; even then, his face had been warmer than Kaeya’s hands.

Diluc has always been—had always been, Kaeya does not allow himself such indulgences now—a font of warmth that he relished in, being unable to conjure up the same heat himself. Nowadays he runs even colder, due in no small part to the Cryo Vision at his hip. The thought of Diluc being cold, colder than one touched by ice itself…it carries such a heavy wrongness to it that leaves a pit of dread settling in his stomach.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, Kaeya—”

“Enough, ‘Luc,” he says, unable to keep the waver out of his voice. He's not an idiot; he knows what Diluc is apologizing for. He knows. He just can’t—not now. Not like this.

“I’m sorry,” Diluc says again, quietly, sounding very small. “…You deserved better.”

Some emotion he can’t name lodges itself in his throat. He swallows past it.

“Get some sleep,” he manages, and tries not to think about how quickly, how easily Diluc complies with his words. Slowly, slowly, his tears cease and his breathing evens out. Kaeya remains by his side all the while, hand cradling his brother’s face, thumb brushing gently against his cheekbone.

When he’s certain he’s asleep, Kaeya slowly, carefully pulls away. He collapses back into the chair, burying his face in his other hand.

…Fuck.

Diluc felt remorseful that night. Kaeya knows it. He remembers the look of horror on his now not-brother’s face as his greatsword hit the ground.

But he had thought—surely, surely, after the heat of the moment passed, after four years apart, any lingering guilt or regret had been overridden by anger. Any remaining trust or fondness had since turned to kindling to fuel the fire of his rage. Surely by now Diluc blamed Kaeya for what happened, rather than himself.

Kaeya scrubs a hand down his face.

He’s delirious, he reminds himself. He’ll wake up later and be angry with you and it’ll be back to business as usual. It’s fine. It’s fine.

Taking in a shaky breath, Kaeya stands and turns to leave the room. He needs some air.

Chapter Text

Night is falling for the second time since Kaeya arrived at Dawn Winery. By all accounts, he should be heading indoors, as there will be little light to see by other than a few scattered lanterns and the soft, steady glow of his Vision. But he has a job to do, and he’s going to see it through.

Even if he’s seething all the while.

Kaeya truly, honestly, cannot fucking believe Diluc. What was he planning to do, exactly, charging headfirst into a fight that left him doubled over in exhaustion in seconds? He always has to play the hero, doesn’t he, even when he’s in no state to fight and doing so is actively detrimental to his health. Kaeya’s pretty sure his brother doesn’t know what the word rest even means. Bastard.

So he’s here, scouring the orchards again for any clues that the Abyss Order might have left behind, trying to get his shaking hands to cooperate.

The adrenaline from the fight has long since worn off, but his clash with the Abyss Mages didn’t leave him in the best state, physically or mentally. The scattered injuries he’s sustained are small enough that he can keep going, but…

(“Kaeya!” Diluc’s voice. Diluc, swinging his claymore over his shoulder in preparation, something fierce burning in his eyes—

And for a split second, Kaeya is seventeen again, heavy rain pouring down from the skies above, and his brother is about to strike him down with the heavens’ vengeance and wipe his pathetic existence off the face of the earth.)

He takes in a shuddering breath and does his best to shove the memory to the back of his mind. He has a job to do. He has a job to do. He has to make sure the threat has well and truly been dealt with; he has to make sure his brother is—

The Winery doors slam open somewhere behind him.

“Sir Kaeya!”

His head snaps around at the shrill call of his name to find a young maid stood in the doorway, eyes wide with terror. When she finally sees him, there is the barest hint of relief in her expression.

“Sir Kaeya, please come quickly! It’s Master Diluc, he—there’s—”

She doesn’t need to finish. There is only one reason someone would be calling for him instead of Adelinde.

So he charges past her without a second thought, through the doorway up the stairs down the hall to Diluc’s room—

The door flies open as he bursts in, sword drawn and fully prepared for a fight. He stops short at the scene before him.

He’s only seen Abyss Heralds a few times before, while traveling with the Honorary Knight. He knows exactly what a rare sight they are, what an honor the Abyss claims it is to behold them. Some remark about Diluc being popular with the Abyss Order turns to ash on his tongue, because—

Because Diluc isn’t moving.

The Abyss Herald holds him aloft by the throat, and his arms are limp at his sides. Unmoving. Lifeless.

All the sharp words and clever strategy Kaeya has so carefully cultivated over the years are gone in an instant, whisked from his mind as he lurches forward on instinct. He swings his sword in a high arc overhead and brings it down hard, rime and rage alike coalescing on his blade and cleaving through the arm holding his brother.

Diluc hits the floor with a thump that’s almost completely drowned out by the otherworldly howl the Abyss Herald lets out as it staggers back, clutching the wound that leaks dark, foul ichor onto the hardwood floor. Kaeya steps forward, positioning himself in a defensive stance between his brother and the Herald.

He watches it, watches it watch him, clearly weighing its options. This is not a good place for it to fight—too confined, the room doesn’t allow for the large swipes that Kaeya knows Heralds favor—and if the coloring on this one is any indication, this is not a good elemental matchup for it, either.

After a long staredown, the Herald lets out a low growl and hops backwards into a portal that vanishes as quickly as it came, leaving Kaeya standing alone in a silent room, on edge as he waits for the Abyss Order’s next move.

The tense silence is broken, however, by a terrible hacking cough from behind him. Right. Not completely alone.

In a heartbeat, Kaeya’s sword is gone and he’s kneeling by Diluc’s side, taking stock of his injuries as his brother takes in deep, shaking breaths. The Abyss Herald’s severed hand is gone, crumbled to dust and scattered across the floor, leaving naught but the blooming bruises on Diluc’s neck as a reminder of its existence.

“Diluc,” he says urgently, resting a hand on his shoulder, “Diluc, stay with me—look at me, can you do that?”

His brother opens his eyes, breathing turning short and shallow and panicked as his eyes dart around, unfocused—

And then Diluc locks eyes with him, and his breathing begins to steady. Kaeya swallows around a lump in his throat.

“You’re alright. You’re alright, just stay with me, okay? You’re going to be fine.”

Kaeya suddenly becomes aware of a presence some ways behind him. He turns to find Adelinde standing in the doorway, a hand covering her mouth and a look of undisguised horror on her face.

“He’s alright—” Kaeya’s not entirely sure that’s true, but he’s breathing, isn’t he? “—but he’ll need medical attention. Do you have a kit in the house?”

Of course she does. Of course Diluc has a well-used, readily accessible medical kit on hand. He injures himself enough in his self-imposed duties to keep one, surely.

Adelinde’s eyes snap to him and she nods seriously, before turning on her heel and hurrying to fetch it.

With her absence, Kaeya returns his attention back to the matter at hand—to his brother, whose eyes have drifted closed, crimson hair splayed out around his head like a pool of blood. Maybe the sight shouldn’t induce as much dread in him as it does.

“No no no, Diluc,” he shakes his shoulder, unrestrained fear creeping into his voice. “’Luc, hey—stay with me, open your eyes, look at me—”

Those red eyes find his again, and Kaeya lets out a shuddering breath of relief.

He doesn’t even know if he should be trying to keep him awake. Does it matter? You’re supposed to, after someone suffers a concussion or blood loss, but this? He doesn’t know. He doesn’t remember. Panic is scrambling his brain, taking any relevant thoughts or memories and leaving him with a useless, childish desperation.

He just wants his brother to be okay. He has to be. He has to be okay.

“You’re going to be okay,” he says, like he can will the words into being. “Just stay with me. You’re going to be alright, I promise. I promise.”

Unbidden tears well up in his eye and he takes in a shaky breath, reaching forward to push a lock of hair out of Diluc’s eyes, tucking it behind his ear.

“You’re going to be fine. Just…Just stay with me, okay? I—” I love you.

The words almost fall right out of his mouth, but he catches himself. He can’t—saying those words out loud feels like admitting that the worst is going to happen, so he bites his tongue.

Diluc is not going to die. He won’t. He can’t.

Kaeya settles for running a hand through his brother’s hair, whispering gentle reassurances and forcing himself to stay calm as Diluc’s eyes eventually fall shut.

He’s breathing. He’s still breathing. That means he’s alive. He’s fine. He’s fine. He’s going to be fine. He has to be, he will be, if only because Kaeya hears the tell-tale hurried footsteps of Adelinde, coming to his side with a medical kit in hand.

Kaeya almost offers to take care of Diluc himself, but his hands are shaking so badly he doubts he’d be any help at all. So he stands, allowing Adelinde to take his brother into her far-steadier hands. He lingers for a moment—watches as she opens up the medical kit and begins to fuss over him—before he turns on his heel and leaves. There is nothing he can do to help here. He’d only be in the way.

…Besides, there’s no use hovering and worrying when there’s a job to be done.

The Abyss Order will not lay another hand on his brother. Kaeya is going to make certain of it.

Chapter Text

“Master Diluc? I’ve brought Sir Kaeya.”

“Thank you, Adelinde,” is the muffled reply.

The door opens, and Kaeya steps into the room. The door closes behind him.

He stands there in silence. Neither of them says a word.

He wants to. He wants to say something clever to break the tension, but it’s rather hard to arrange his thoughts into anything coherent at all when his eye is continually drawn to the ring of dark, ugly bruising around Diluc’s throat. He looks so small like this, with the blanket around his shoulders diminishing his form. The sight reminds him just how fragile his life is. How it seems to hang from a thread, these days.

Diluc politely clears his throat, breaking the silence.

“Do you…want to sit?”

Oh. Right. He probably should, shouldn’t he?  It’s certainly a better option than hovering awkwardly just past the door.

He settles in the chair, trying not to think about—well, trying not to think about a lot of things, honestly. He fidgets with his hands, his gloves, tries to find something useful to say.

“…How are you feeling?” is what he lands on.

A beat.

“Like shit,” Diluc says, with a voice like gravel. “You?”

Kaeya blinks, looks up at him. What? “Me?”

Diluc nods, face impassive. A laugh bubbles up from Kaeya’s chest.

“I’m not the one who almost got strangled to death by an Abyss Herald, Master Diluc.” Just saying the words out loud leaves a foul taste in his mouth. He almost died. He almost died, he really almost—

“You fought it, though.”

Yeah, right. Is that what Adelinde told him? He chopped its arm off in a fit of protective rage; he doesn’t really think that constitutes a fight. He sighs.

“Fought is…a bit of a generous description,” he shakes his head. “I made sure it left. And from what I can tell, it doesn’t seem keen on returning.”

Though, he could be wrong. Kaeya had been scouring the orchards in the dark, looking for anything to occupy his mind and draw his attention away from the fact that he’d just let his unconscious, injured brother out of his sight again. He could easily have missed something.

“…Thank you.”

Kaeya gives him a tight smile, pushing those thoughts back. “Only doing my duty.”

The complicated look on Diluc’s face is his cue to move on to something more productive.

“Are you still cold?”

Diluc blinks at him. “What?”

“You said you were cold, before. If this really was the last stage of the Abyss Order’s plan, I’m curious to know if your…” Curse? Illness? “…ailment…has worn off by now.”

“…No.”

Something like hope sparks within him. “You’re not?”

“No, I mean—” a frustrated sigh. “No, it hasn’t worn off.”

That spark of hope fizzles out. Oh. Of course.

Kaeya frowns, letting out a hum of discontent. “Do they intend to do something more, then?”

What further steps could possibly come after this? He obviously foiled one step of their plan, but is the cold a sign of continued malicious intent? Is it going to grow into something more?

“Something tells me they haven’t thought that far ahead,” Diluc’s voice cuts through his spiraling thoughts. “They likely didn’t consider failure as an option, so why concern themselves with what comes after?”

He has a point. The Abyss Order does often seem convinced of the inevitable success of its own plans, right up until they’re thwarted, at which point they switch to another plan altogether. To leave unpleasant loose ends is not entirely unheard of; the Abyss Order isn’t really in the habit of caring too much about the comfort of its victims.

“True,” he admits at last. “The Abyss Order isn’t exactly known for its great fallback plans.” He looks up and meets Diluc’s eye. “…But they may try again in the future.”

Something grim creeps onto Diluc’s expression and he nods once, head bowed and eyes distant. “I know.”

Kaeya really, really wishes Diluc weren’t so calm about this. Have attempts on his life really become so commonplace that he’s simply tired of them, by now? Why is Kaeya the only one frightened here, by the threat of his brother’s life being cut short so easily?

He tries in vain to make himself comfortable, in the chair and conversation both. “Well, that’s neither here nor there. Best to focus on the present, hm? If your mysterious cold hasn’t gone away on its own, we should probably see to getting rid of it ourselves.”

Diluc’s clasped hands twitch ever so slightly, but he does not protest. Good. If he thinks for a second that Kaeya is leaving him to deal with this alone, after what happened…

“Do you remember anything that helped at all?”

Something like realization lights up in Diluc’s eyes, but it’s quickly snuffed out by frustration as his brow furrows. A sense of helplessness claws out a home in Kaeya’s chest as the silence stretches on.

“If you can’t think of anything, that’s alright.” Asking Diluc to pinpoint how he feels—or remember how he felt—has always been something of a futile endeavor. That’s fine. Kaeya’s mind is already jumping eight steps ahead. What was that Sumeru scholar’s name, again? “I can stop by the library tomorrow, ask if Lisa knows anything about—”

“Why are you here, Kaeya?”

Diluc’s voice cuts through his growing tirade, grinds his plans to a halt before they can even begin.

“Excuse me?”

His face twists, but he does not look up. “What are you doing here, Kaeya?”

Some sort of indignant anger bubbles up within him. I am trying to save your life, you bastard, he doesn’t say.

“Trying to help you dispel a curse from the Abyss Order?” he says instead. A bitter laugh escapes him. “Oh, have I overstayed my welcome? If that’s the case, feel free to show me to the door, Master Diluc. You’re quite good at that.”

Diluc stares at him, long enough that Kaeya begins to grow uncomfortable, both under his gaze and in the realization that he’s not going to be thrown out, again. Then Diluc breaks his gaze away with a heavy sigh.

“I just…don’t understand,” he says quietly. “Shouldn’t you have…reported this to someone by now? Jean? I’ve never known the Knights to be so—”

“I’m not doing this for the Knights.”

The words escape him before he can think better of it. Diluc looks up at him, eyes wide in surprise, and Kaeya’s frustration fizzles out. He rests his head in a hand with a sigh.

“I…Adelinde sent word you were asking for me, so…”

“So…what? You just…” he watches Diluc wring his hands—back and forth, back and forth—and shake his head. “You could have said no.”

“Far be it from me to spurn an audience with the richest man in Mondstadt, if he wants to see me,” he snaps, frustration sharpening his words. Does he really not get it, yet? “For all I know, you might have denied me service at Angel’s Share indefinitely if I declined to stop by.”

“You didn’t have to stay.”

“Well, I’m certainly glad I did, if it means you didn’t end up—” his voice wavers, catches on the lump in his throat. Fuck. Fuck. He can’t—he doesn’t want to think about that. He can’t even manage the words without a joke behind them.

“Really?” Diluc asks, so quiet he almost doesn’t hear it over his racing thoughts. “I would have thought you would be glad to see it.”

Kaeya’s breath escapes him in a wheeze, Diluc’s words driving into his chest like a knife. Glad to see it. Glad to see it. In what world would he be—

It takes him longer than it should to collect himself. Kaeya turns back to face him, forces a smile. “I…I told you before, didn’t I? What is Mondstadt without its wine industry, and its Darknight Hero to defend it?”

Diluc’s brows knit together in the frustration he’d been hoping to draw out, but it only serves as motivation for him to press on. “I’m not asking about Mondstadt. I’m not asking about the wine industry. I’m asking about you.”

He looks him in the eye, then, equal amounts resolve and desperation in his face.

“Would you have preferred it, if I had died?”

Kaeya feels sick, all of a sudden. Dizzy. The whole room seems to spin around him.

“No,” he chokes out. “No, I—of course not—” his voice breaks somewhere in the middle and he forces himself to turn away, clutching at his own sleeves.

Of course not. Of course not. Of course not.

The very notion that Kaeya would prefer to live in a world where Diluc was gone, was nothing but a headstone next to their father’s or was lost somewhere in Teyvat never to return, is so ridiculous he wants to laugh. Or cry. Or both. He might as well have asked if he preferred to live in a world without the sun.

He can’t say that, though, surely. He shouldn’t. He shouldn’t even be here, should he? They’re supposed to be keeping each other at a distance, pushing each other away. It’s safer that way. Better for them both, in the long run.

After all, the alternative is to let Diluc trust and love him, to have another anchor to Mondstadt in the form of the one person in the world who truly understands who he is—

—and having to live with the fact that one day, Kaeya will be asked to make a choice that will completely, irrevocably break that trust all over again.

It would be so easy. So damn easy, he tells himself, to continue to stoke the fire of Diluc’s rage, to get him to push him away again before it’s too late.

…But where will that really get either of them, in the end?

The image burned into his mind of Diluc’s lifeless body in the hands of an Abyss Herald tells him exactly where that path leads.

He was almost too late, again. If he had been a second slower…

That thought seems to open a floodgate of memories, images rushing to join the one he can’t stop seeing in his mind’s eye.

Diluc facing away from him, kneeling in the mud next to their father’s corpse, blood on his hands, dead to the world. A dim, flickering Vision clutched in Kaeya’s hands as he begs anyone and anything that can hear to bring his brother home safe.

Three times, now. Three times that his brother’s life has come dangerously close to being snuffed out, while Kaeya was close enough to watch but too far away to do anything about it.

Here and now, he makes up his mind. Whatever safety or comfort he might gain from pushing Diluc away is not worth the cost of his brother’s life in exchange.

Kaeya takes in a deep, shaking breath and lets it out slowly.

“To answer your question: no. Mondstadt is…a very empty place without you, ‘Luc. Believe me.” Kaeya forces himself to look up, to meet Diluc’s gaze—there’s something akin to confusion or concern pinching his brows, something suspiciously like tears glittering in his eyes. “I don’t want to live in that kind of Mondstadt again.”

He still remembers that hollowed out feeling in his chest when he found his abandoned Vision, when someone told him Diluc had left Mondstadt and didn’t say if or when he would be back. Remembers how gutted the place was without that bright smile to light up the dark, how exposed he felt without that steadying presence by his side. He remembers jumping at every flash of red he saw for months—is he back? Is he home?

Something like revelation makes its way onto Diluc’s face. “I…missed you, too.”

Whatever response he could give to that gets caught in his throat. All that escapes him is a small, pitiful noise. Diluc says nothing more, and they sit like that in silence for a long while.

“I’m sorry.”

Kaeya’s heart jumps into his throat at the words, memories of Diluc’s delirious apologies eagerly rushing to the forefront of his mind. He doesn’t think he can handle another round of those, right now.

“I…Before,” Diluc clarifies, wringing his hands, “I shouldn’t have told you to leave.”

Before. Before, as in…

A startled, suspiciously wet laugh escapes him. He smiles through the tears. “I understand. I wasn’t exactly the most tolerable person to be around, at the time.” That was kind of on purpose.

“That’s no excuse. That’s no excuse for what I—” Diluc’s hoarse voice breaks entirely and he shuts his eyes and shakes his head, wringing his hands so roughly Kaeya fears he might bruise. Something clenches in his chest at the sight.

He reaches out, slowly, hesitantly, and slips his own hands between Diluc’s, tugging them apart, away from the anxious motion between them. They’re still just as cold as the last time. Kaeya curls his hands around them, trying to instill in them what little warmth he has to give.

Diluc slowly, slowly opens his eyes, looks upon their joined hands with open, heartbreaking confusion, tears threatening to fall from his eyes.

Looking at him like this…Kaeya wonders how he could have ever been so foolish as to think that Diluc wouldn’t blame himself for what he did. That his brother wouldn’t carry the same guilt Kaeya saw in his eyes that night for the rest of his life.

It’s not something he can leave unaddressed, not anymore, but even so, there’s only so much he can handle tonight.

“Save your apologies.”

Diluc looks up in surprise, but once he meets his eye his expression quickly melts into one of quiet understanding. Kaeya must look more worn-out than he thought. He lets out a heavy sigh.

“We’re both tired,” he says quietly. “I…I don’t think either of us is up for that conversation tonight, so just…save it. Later.” Please. Please don’t make me do this now.

Diluc looks like he might protest, so Kaeya continues.

“I—” I love you. I love you. I love you. Kaeya catches the words on the tip of his tongue.

He can’t—he can’t say it. If he starts saying it, he’s not entirely sure he’ll be able to stop. It might get the point across, finally, but the last thing he wants is to actually, fully break down crying, like he’s sure he will if those words leave his mouth. So he settles for something else, something close.

“I care about you, ‘Luc,” he says instead. “Can that be enough, for now? Can we just…deal with the rest of it later?”

Diluc holds his gaze for a long while. Just as Kaeya begins to consider how embarrassing it will be to have to beg him not to have this conversation now, Diluc nods.

“Okay,” he says quietly. A small smile grows on his face, which Kaeya feels himself mirror instinctively. “Later.”

Later. Later.

Oh, gods, he’s going to have a later with Diluc. The thought of it—of getting to talk things through, of a possible second chance—is as exciting as it is downright terrifying.

But there’s still something they need to fix, first, preferably before the Abyss Order gets its act together and tries something, again. Kaeya clears his throat of any lingering emotion so he can get to the point without choking up.

“You didn’t…answer my question, earlier. About the cold. If anything helped.”

Diluc nods once, slowly. “I…yes. There was something.”

Something like hope swells in his chest. “Really?”

Diluc bows his head, eyes trained on their interlocked hands. A moment later and he squeezes them for emphasis. “This.”

Oh. Oh.

“Oh,” he says helpfully.

That…actually makes some sense.  It certainly explains some things, if nothing else.

Not that Kaeya wants to take all the credit, but…Diluc’s condition did seem to recover from deliriously cold to something approaching normal after he was touched. Even now, his hands seem a bit warmer than before; though that might be wishful thinking and his imagination at work.

If this helps...Kaeya is more than willing to stay. Whether he does or not hinges more on whether Diluc can stand to have him around, of course, but Kaeya can’t imagine him going to anyone else and asking them for help with this, even if it means he’s suffering and miserable for the rest of his life.

“Do you want me to stay?”

He doesn’t respond for a long moment, long enough that Kaeya begins to think he perhaps didn’t hear him, or is attempting to formulate a polite way to say no.

But then, Diluc looks up at him, eyes wide in surprise. “Wh—you would do that?”

Kaeya still isn’t entirely sure what to do with the undisguised hope in his tone just yet, so he rolls his eye and opts for humor.

“If it means you’ll finally get some goddamn rest, absolutely.”

Something fragile in Diluc’s expression breaks at his words. Kaeya’s heart drops like a stone as his freezing hands pull away.

No, wait—shit, he’s going to think he doesn’t want to—that’s not what he meant—

“I’ll rest with or without…” Diluc closes his eyes a moment longer than a blink before trying again. “…I’ll rest either way. Don’t feel obligated to stay on my behalf. I have no intention of making things harder for you.”

Just like that, Diluc’s wall of manners is back up. Fuck. Kaeya doesn’t want him to think he doesn’t want to stay, that he has any intention of letting go of this shred of brotherhood they’ve managed to salvage from the flames.

“And here I was hoping you’d say you wouldn’t be able to get any rest without me.”

That stone wall melts away as quickly as it came, leaving Diluc blinking at him owlishly. Kaeya doesn’t quite laugh at the sight, but his lips twist into a fond smile nonetheless.

“That you’d sleep fitfully without your brother by your side to keep you safe?” That’s a bit too far, maybe, too familiar. He’s not sure if they’re at the level where they can call each other brothers out loud again, but right now it doesn’t matter; if it gets his message across, it’s worth saying. “If anything, it would make things easier for me, since I don’t intend to let you out of my sight for, oh, say, the next year, at least.”

Realization slowly creeps onto his brother’s face. Realization, hope, relief—and then he reigns it all in, nodding once, slowly.

“If you…want to stay…then by all means.” A small smile makes its way to his face. “I…I’d like that.”

Has Diluc smiled more in the past hour than he has since he returned to Mondstadt? Kaeya thinks so. He also thinks he could get used to seeing it.

But right now, he has more urgent matters to attend to. Like making sure he doesn’t break down crying because he saw his brother smile—at him—for the second time in years.

He clears his throat loudly and gets to his feet. “Good! Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to steal some of your nightclothes and go change, because I’m not sleeping in…this,” he gestures vaguely at himself. Sleeping in his own clothes was alright before, but after getting into two separate altercations today, his outfit is not exactly in the best state for sleeping.

There’s a soft huff as he turns around to dig through Diluc’s drawers, and Kaeya can hear the smile in his voice when he speaks.

“What happened to not letting me out of your sight for the next year?”

There’s a surely matching smile on his face as he responds. “Oh, you’ll give me bathroom breaks and the like, won’t you?” He pulls out a shirt and begins rifling around in a different drawer for pants. “You can hardly expect me to watch you night and day.”

“You make it sound like I’m forcing this on you. If memory serves, you volunteered.”

Volunteered because you keep almost getting yourself killed, Kaeya kindly doesn’t say. He gives a flat look that he hopes conveys that feeling, but spins his words into something nicer. “You certainly forced my hand; what with how you dive headfirst into every unknown danger you come across, Diluc.”

He shakes his head as he pulls out a suitable-looking pair of pants, draping them over his arm. And with that, he should be good to go.

Go. And leave his brother unattended, again. Maybe that thought shouldn’t twist his stomach into knots the way it does.

“If I come back and you’ve managed to injure yourself again,” he says with forced levity, “I’ll be very upset.”

“I’ll be alright, I promise.”

I’ll hold you to that, you jerk. Kaeya releases a sigh through his nose and turns to leave.

“Kaeya.”

He stops, hand on the door handle, turning back to face his brother. There’s a complicated expression on his face.

“I…I care about you too,” he says quietly. His eyes drift away for a moment before meeting his again. “And…I’m sorry it’s taken me this long to say it.”

Guilt and grief and regret tangle in his gut at his words, but he forces them down. Looks away from the raw emotion in Diluc’s eyes.

“…Me too.”

He leaves before either of them can say anything more.

The door shuts quietly behind him and he leans back against it, letting out a deep, shuddering breath. A thousand thoughts spin through his head in a chaotic whirlwind—he’ll be fine, he’ll be fine, you won’t be gone that long, you’re close enough to come back if anything happens, he’ll be fine.

Shaking his head, he steps away from the door, doing his best to put those anxieties behind him and think of something else as he heads for one of the guest rooms to change.

“I can’t believe your sleep clothes are tailored to you, you absolute madman,” Kaeya seethes.

The pants he picked out are just ever so slightly too short for his liking, and it is driving him up the wall. He misses the old days when he could steal whatever he wanted from Diluc’s closet and not have the clothes he picked out be quite so ill-fitting. It’s annoying to be reminded of just how much the two of them have changed.

“Is there a reason I should be uncomfortable while I sleep?”

Worst of all, he hates how reasonable Diluc is about it. He can’t rightly complain about Diluc’s clothes not fitting him, because, well, Diluc hasn’t exactly had to worry about other people wearing his clothes in recent years, now has he?

“I suppose not, but it is a rather ridiculous way to flaunt your unfathomable wealth.” Seriously. Only the richest man in Mondstadt would think to have his sleep clothes tailored.

“Flaunting implies I’m showing off, somehow,” Diluc says with a raised brow. “It’s not like anyone else is going to see what I sleep in.”

“Really?” Kaeya says, lips curving into a smirk before his mind can catch up with him. “Not a soul?”

“Just the maids who clean them, and you.”

…

“Oh. Right.”

Most of the time when Kaeya teases one of his informants with something like that, they either chuckle along or turn bashful; moving the conversation away from strictly business and lowering their guard. Diluc’s never shown any interest in those kinds of things, though; even when they were growing up. Kaeya must be more tired than he thought if that’s slipped his mind. ...And if he's just tried to use one of his work techniques on his brother.

He’s half ready to apologize for what’s habit by this point, but Diluc just rolls his eyes and steers the conversation back to what they were talking about, not seeming to mind.

“You could get some tailored for yourself, if you like.”

“Did you not hear me when I said unfathomable wealth? Do I look like I can afford to go around spending money on things like this?”

“Honestly, you probably can,” Diluc shrugs. Kaeya stares at him. The corners of Diluc’s mouth twitch upwards. “After all, half of this unfathomable wealth belongs to you.”

“Diluc,” Kaeya groans, dropping down next to him on the bed. He does not have it in him to talk about any inheritance he may or may not have claim to, nor does he want to think too hard about the not-so subtle implication that Diluc once again—or perhaps still—considers him family. “Not tonight. You promised.”

“Hmph. Fine,” Diluc huffs, turning away. Then, over his shoulder: “Stop complaining about it, then.”

Ugh. But he loves to complain.

He grumbles as he tugs at the covers, slipping under them and lying down so he’s facing his brother. He shuffles around a little until he’s comfortable, and the two of them say nothing for a while. Kaeya lets his eye drift closed.

When he opens it, there is a complicated expression on Diluc’s face. His eyes are distant, his brow furrowed. It doesn’t take much to guess what’s on his mind.

Kaeya reaches out and takes Diluc’s freezing hand in his own.

“Diluc?” he says softly. “…Are you sure you’re alright with this?”

Diluc squeezes his hand in lieu of an immediate response. Kaeya waits patiently for him to collect his thoughts.

Eventually, he opens his mouth to speak.

“If…If the Abyss Order tries something…” he says hesitantly, face twisting in a way that says he’s not convinced of that, himself, “…you’d be…sleeping on your good eye.”

…

“Oh?”

Kaeya has spent a lifetime learning to defend himself with one eye; sleeping on one side as opposed to the other makes practically no difference, save perhaps for the fact that someone sneaking up on him might believe it does.

Diluc has spent a good portion of that lifetime with him. He knows Kaeya is capable of defending himself regardless. So, why..?

With the low light, it takes a moment to notice, but if he squints…huh. There’s a familiar flush to Diluc’s face.

...Is he embarrassed?

Kaeya’s lips tilt into a smile as he watches Diluc turn away so his face is half-buried in a pillow. Now that he’s noticed…yes, there is a touch of pink to his ears, isn’t there? It’s endearing. He almost forgot how cute his brother could be, sometimes, beneath that icy exterior. Part of him wants to see how long he can make this last; it’s not often Kaeya gets to see him this shy.

“So, what you’re saying is…” his thumb brushes against Diluc’s knuckles as he speaks, once, twice, “…I should be facing the other way?”

Wow, he didn’t think Diluc could get any redder. If the lights were on, Kaeya’s certain he would have the privilege of seeing his brother flush the same shade as his hair.

“Forget it,” Diluc grumbles, as if he could possibly get out of what he’s asked for that easily. “It was a stupid id—”

“Alright, alright,” Kaeya relents—because he is a kind and merciful brother—and moves to comply with Diluc’s request.

Realistically, it would be easier for him to just roll over, but…Diluc wouldn’t be so embarrassed if that’s what he was asking for, would he? And, besides; if there’s a small, selfish part of Kaeya that wants to hold his brother in his arms after everything that’s happened…is that so wrong?

So, ignoring the small noise of protest Diluc lets out, Kaeya clambers over him and flops down unceremoniously on his other side. He shuffles around again until he’s comfortable, makes sure he hasn’t stolen all the blankets—he would at any other time, but right now he’s pretty sure Diluc needs them more—and eventually settles against Diluc’s back, throwing an arm over him to keep him close. He can’t help the smile that grows on his face.

“Better?”

There is no response. Kaeya doesn’t miss the way Diluc’s breath hitches ever so slightly.

…Shit, is this too forward? Maybe Diluc isn’t as ready to dive headfirst into contact like this as Kaeya is. Maybe they need to talk about things first before he’s ready for anything of this caliber—maybe his guilt is messing with his head. Kaeya, at least, can rationalize this as helping, even if his intentions aren’t entirely selfless. Diluc doesn’t have that luxury.

…Maybe he doesn’t want this at all. Maybe he’s regretting asking for this, and Kaeya’s crossed a line and he needs to apologize.

Or, maybe…

…Something tells him there wasn’t much in the way of positive physical contact during Diluc’s time abroad. Maybe—just maybe—he’s been as starved for this as Kaeya has.

“…’Luc?”

Diluc doesn’t respond, but this time his hand finds Kaeya’s own, twining their fingers together and moving their joined hands to—to—

Oh.

A rush of warmth surges through him at the kiss Diluc presses to his palm, melting away the guilt and concern tangling in his gut. Kaeya finds himself infinitely more grateful for his position behind his brother; if only because he doesn’t want Diluc seeing the wide smile and warm flush to his face that the gesture brings. The last thing he needs is his brother getting ideas on how to embarrass him.

Their joined hands settle over Diluc’s chest, his heartbeat slowing to a steady, calming pace beneath Kaeya’s palm.

Alive. Here.

“Better.”

Kaeya lets out a contented hum at the response, pulling himself closer.

Slowly, slowly, Diluc’s breathing evens out, signifying he’s fallen asleep. Kaeya can’t help the soft chuckle that escapes him; it’s cute that after all this time, his brother still goes out like a light whenever he’s around.

The exhaustion of the day is getting to him, too. He’s not looking forward to the chaotic jumble of dreams his mind surely has waiting for him, but sleep begins to pull him under nonetheless.

It’s alright. Tomorrow will be better. Tomorrow will be better, because he will have his brother by his side again, for the first time in years.

In his last waking moments, Kaeya presses a kiss to Diluc’s shoulder.

“G’night, ‘Luc,” he mumbles. “Love you.”

Chapter Text

When Kaeya wakes, he is warm. Warmer than he usually is, seeing as he typically runs on the cool side, even after recently waking. It’s not a wholly unwelcome change, but certainly worth noting.

The bed—and indeed, the room—he’s in is not his own. Not entirely surprising; he’s no stranger to waking up to unfamiliar surroundings, especially if he’s suffered an injury.

No wounds jump to the immediate forefront of his attention, though. Has he healed, already? Or did he get injured and then forget about it?

The warm comfort surrounding him makes it hard to recall anything with clarity, but when he pushes past the cotton clouding his thoughts, he remembers…he remembers falling asleep with something in his arms? Something important. Something he thought needed protecting. Something he didn’t want to let go of.

He shifts for a moment, trying to get a better measure of where exactly he is, but freezes when he hears a muffled noise from the something in his arms. When he looks down, Kaeya is greeted with the sight of a familiar head of red hair.

Diluc must have shifted around in his sleep, because Kaeya distinctly remembers lying against his back. But now here he is, curled around him with his face buried against his chest. If his breathing is any indication, he’s fast asleep.

The memories return to him in fragments—Diluc’s mysterious cold, the Abyss Herald, Kaeya’s offer to stay. He’s not entirely sure what he had been expecting. But after the conversation they had last night, maybe Kaeya should have expected to wake up and find Diluc clinging to him like a lifeline.

The thought of his brother’s condition—cold, ice cold, worryingly so—has Kaeya reaching out and resting a hand against his forehead. The warmth that greets him is just as he remembers; like touching a rock that’s been left out in the sun. Diluc lets out a soft hum and leans into his touch readily.

The contented look on his face is at odds with the dark, mottled bruising coiled around his throat that seems to look even worse in the morning light. Kaeya frowns, absentmindedly bringing a hand up to it, brushing a thumb against the ring of bruises. Diluc’s face twists ever so slightly at the contact.

His eyes flutter open right as Kaeya pulls his hand away. Diluc must have been close to consciousness already, if it took that little to wake him. Either that or he’s become a lighter sleeper than Kaeya remembers him being.

“Mm,” Diluc groans. He looks around blearily for a moment before his eyes find Kaeya’s face. “…Kaeya?”

“That’s me,” he says with as much levity as he can manage this early in the morning. Or…whatever time it is.

Diluc stares at him. Kaeya’s stomach twists into knots as he waits for this dream to come to an abrupt end, for his brother to wake up and realize what he’s done, to pull away and coldly ask him to leave.

Instead, he brings one hand up to cup his cheek—and his hands are so warm again; the relief that floods him washes out any discomfort the heat brings—searching his face intently. After a long moment, he seems satisfied with whatever he finds there, hand dropping back into the space between them as his eyes fall closed again.

“Is you,” he mumbles.

…

And with that, he’s back out. Kaeya doesn’t know how he manages it. He shakes his head in disbelief, turning his eye to the rest of the room.

The angle of the slim beams of sunlight streaming through the closed curtains seem to suggest that it’s much later than Diluc normally rises, but Kaeya isn’t exactly jumping at the chance to wake him back up. His brother obviously needs the rest, and…well, if there’s a selfish part of Kaeya telling him to revel in this comfort for as long as he’s allowed, he’s certainly not going to start ignoring it now.

So, he settles back into a comfortable position and watches, endeared, as Diluc unconsciously follows to close the gap between them. Kaeya presses a kiss into his brother’s hair, drawing out a soft and contented hum. He allows himself a smile, relishing in the moment, as he closes his eye and slips back into a dreamless sleep.