Chapter Text
Diluc thinks his brother is an idiot.
For whatever reason, Kaeya thought it was smart to hide the fact that Thoma was coming for Windblume until today. The scene played out like this:
“Hey there, dearest brother,” Kaeya slid into a seat at the bar. “A little birdie told me that a special blond boy is visiting Mondstadt soon.” Diluc’s brain immediately thought of Thoma, but if he told his brother that, Kaeya would never live it down.
So instead, he replied with “Oh?”
Kaeya smiled. That devious little trickster. “Your penpal… what was his name? Thoma? He’s on his way at the present moment. Caught a rumor in the wind that he was on the Alcor, traveling from Liyue.”
Diluc cursed Venti in his mind. Of course he’d be the one to tell Kaeya. He doesn’t trust the lot of them. Not Kaeya, Venti, or Rosaria. Maybe he trusts Eula a little. But she’s a little strange anyways. Then again, Kaeya was alone at the present moment. Bar Venti, who was probably sending him messages with the wind.
“That’s… fascinating,” Diluc said, in an attempt to hide his true feelings. A lousy attempt in Kaeya’s eyes. It was lousy in general, for the direct descendant of one of Mondstadt’s aristocrats of days old. He’d received special training, courtesy of the ladies his father had hired to teach him proper aristocratic etiquette. Diluc had left the family wine business when he was 13 to join the ranks of the Knights of Favonius. It was a complete waste until about four years ago, when he returned and had nothing else to do.
“Only fascinating? You talk about this boy like he’s the light of your life!”
“I could say the same to you about Albedo. If I have to listen to you all night mumbling about his ‘beautiful ice-colored eyes’ again I think I’ll go insane. Or throw you out.”
Kaeya talks about Albedo the second he has two glasses of dandelion wine down his throat. Rosaria once invited Albedo in to just LISTEN to Kaeya talk about him. To this day, Diluc can’t form the proper words for an apology to Albedo. It’s one thing to listen to his brother’s rambles- it’s a completely different thing to be the subject of them.
“Oh, put a cap in it, will you,” Kaeya said. “I’d like a glass of-”
“Wine? It’s nearly noon. Do you not have any work to do?”
Kaeya stared at him and promptly burst into laughter. “Seeing as I’m a Cavalry captain with no cavalry, no, I don’t have work. Though I do have to visit Klee later today. She and I are bringing Albedo and Sucrose back here from Dragonspine.”
“I’d rather you not be intoxicated around a child and your boyfriend,” Diluc responded to him.
“Albedo is not my boyfriend, thank you very much,” Kaeya managed to sputter. “He’s as much my boyfriend as Thoma is yours!”
Then, after a few minutes of silence, Kaeya, assuming that Diluc wouldn’t bring him the wine no matter what he did, left Angel’s share. Diluc was relieved. The more people see him and Kaeya conversing, the more they talk. Mondstadt is a gossipy city. Thoma says Inazuma’s gossip consists of debates of novels and fortune slips the people pulled.
Thoma writes quite a bit of Inazuma. According to what Diluc can make of his letters, Thoma works as the housekeeper for the esteemed Kamisato clan, under the sibling duo of Ayato and Ayaka, the latter of which, as he puts it, “has no friends.” Diluc didn’t hesitate to write that she should have at least one friend, and Thoma responded saying that she has two friends. One being himself and the other being the eccentric fireworks maker who lives on the outskirts of Inazuma City.
He speaks highly of them. Aside from their cooking skills. Diluc found himself promising multiple times that he’d feed Thoma good food once he came to visit. Which he would be doing soon. To Diluc’s great dismay.
He hadn’t even cleaned the mansion. He’d surely get Adelinde, Moco, and Hillie to do that, but at the same time, he didn’t want them going through his paperwork. Paperwork meaning all of Thoma’s letters. Diluc has this one picture he’s saved- It has Jean, Lisa, Kaeya, Eula, Rosaria, Thoma, and himself all standing in a row. Thoma and Diluc each have one arm around the other’s shoulder, and though Thoma isn’t looking at him, Diluc has the widest smile plastered on his face. It makes him look a little stupid, but he treasures that photo with his life.
When Thoma moved away to find his father, Diluc felt like a chunk of him was missing. Kaeya spent months trying to calm him down. Then he worried for years due to him not hearing a single word from him- until the letters began showing up six years ago. A month after Diluc’s father died, he’d begun adventuring in order to find the secret to Fatui Delusions. He did end up finding them, however, this did get him banned from Snezhnaya. Their loss.
Two years after he began, he took a pit stop home. Adelinde had handed him a letter from Thoma, and he’d basically ripped it open. The littlest word from him and Diluc lost his mind.
The past six years, Thoma and Diluc happily communicated via letter. They told each other everything. From Thoma turning into an accidental criminal to Diluc threatening to kill the anemo archon (an empty threat, but a threat nonetheless). Thoma was a little concerned about the last one, but Diluc brushed it off as nothing. Maybe he’ll get to meet Venti when he arrives.
Diluc begins his long walk home, of which involves running past Donna as fast as humanly possible. It also, today, involves a lengthy conversation with Timmie about how upsetting it is to him that all people aren’t vegetarian. Diluc slowly backs away from that one.
When he got home, he immediately flopped on the couch in one of the rooms on the ground floor. A habit that he needed to break, urgently.
“Diluc, there’s a letter for you,” Adelinde said as she glided over to him. Diluc sat up bolt upright, as he always did when she handed him a letter. She has this particular tone of voice that tells him that it’s from Thoma. She knows everything about him, and she notices even the smallest smile on his face when he reads a letter from Thoma.
Diluc immediately stands up and makes his way towards the center table. Then he reads the letter. It’s shorter than usual, only three sentences long.
Hey Diluc, I’m coming to Mondstadt for Windblume! I’ve missed you so much. Can’t wait to see you! <3
Diluc finds his gaze lingering on the heart for a little too long.
~*~
If Thoma weren’t on the Alcor right now, he would absolutely murder the Kamisato siblings. Actually that’s a lie, he’d never purposefully harm any living being, but. The threat still stands.
It’s not like he doesn’t like it on the ship- Beidou’s absolutely lovely and makes him feel right at home, and Kazuha’s strange poems somehow keep him interested. And it’s definitely not that he doesn’t want to visit Mondstadt. He’s actually super eager to get there already. The Alcor’s been parked in Guyun Stone Forest for DAYS while Beidou runs her errands, and Thoma doesn’t think he can wait any longer. Another hour and he’d get up and sail the ship himself. Some would consider it mutiny. Sorry, Beidou.
No, the problem is the letter that the Kamisato siblings sent to the Knights of Favonius. Thoma remembers reading a copy of the already-sent letter in absolute horror. It had said:
Dear Acting Grandmaster of the Knights of Favonius,
This letter is written on behalf of my housekeeper, Thoma. I have sent him on a break to Mondstadt, to meet Diluc Ragnvindr. This is purely a leisurely trip, and I, Kamisato Ayato, will be arriving to pick him up in about a month. Apologies for this sudden letter.
-Kamisato Ayato, Head Commissioner of the Yashiro Commission.
Thoma had received the news that he was basically getting kicked out during one of Ayato’s dreadful hot pot nights. He’d probably had one too many lavender melons in the bowl and that was when Ayaka decided it was a good time to tell him.
It was not a good time. Thoma wanted to die.
“How’s it going?” Beidou asks, walking over to him. Thoma’d been laying on deck for the past seven days. He helped where he could, but no one really needed him as much as he’d initially thought. After all, here, they all served Beidou. And occasionally Kazuha. Though, the latter wasn’t very sane most of the time.
“Good!” He says, sitting up and plastering his usual friendly smile on his face. Ayaka said he looked like a happy puppy most of the time. Thoma didn’t know if that was a compliment or not. Ayaka was in her late teenage years, and even if she was one of the more mature teenagers, Thoma couldn’t decipher what she said much of the time. Thoma wouldn’t call it an emo phase- she was much too elegant and somewhat bubbly for that, but he’d say it was definitely borderline. She didn’t talk to anyone who wasn’t Yoimiya, Thoma, or Ayato willingly.
“Keep telling yourself that,” Beidou muttered. “You look so gloomy. We’re setting sail in a bit. Excited to see your friends?”
“Now that I am excited about,” Thoma responds. This wasn’t a lie at all. He missed all of Kaeya, Jean, Albedo, Sucrose, Eula, Lisa, and even little Amber, who wasn’t very old when he left. She was only six, and he was fourteen.
He perhaps misses Diluc more than any of them. Which may sound a little biased. But Diluc was his best friend for many, many years, and Thoma’d even had a crush on him for a while. Which was unexpected, considering at the time he’d thought he was straight and crushing on his best friend made him want to disappear forever.
Then they became pen pals, and Thoma maybe thinks those feelings came back slightly.
This was exactly how Ayaka found out: Diluc’s letters. Thoma likes to isolate himself when reading them, just so he has a moment of peace and quiet without being disturbed. Ayaka walked in one day and Thoma was happily smiling at all of the loops in Diluc’s handwriting, so when she walked in, he jumped halfway across the room. Her face went from somewhat fear to the most devious smirk in a matter of three seconds, and that evening, he’d had to spill the beans on whose letters he was “lovingly gazing at” as Ayaka put it.
That’s how he’d been hauled aboard the Alcor against his will.
~*~
Jean did not know Thoma was alive. Now, this was partially her fault– she barely made time for her personal life anymore– but still. Most of Mondstadt thought they’d lost him in the shipwreck twelve years ago. So receiving the letter from the Yashiro Commission that he was still alive… well, it was completely world shattering for her.
She’d offer for him to stay here in the Knights’ headquarters with Lisa, Klee, Kaeya, Amber, and herself, but the letter had specifically stated that he’d be there to meet Diluc. Jean wasn’t that stupid as to not notice the very reason why. When they were younger, Thoma and Diluc both had the most massive crushes on eachother. She’d been a very perceptive little girl, and as she was younger than most of their friend group, she’d been slightly more interested in drama. Specifically in the form of romance novels. She still has the entire set of Vera’s Melancholy books laying on one of the shelves in her office.
Jean decides to walk over to those books– After all, these exact books had started her little relationship with Lisa. They used to read each chapter of the books together, and they squealed each time Vera met with her lover. They were about twelve and thirteen then.
Jean stared at the ring on her fourth finger. Lisa proposed to her four months ago, and their wedding was due to be in twenty days. Jean cleared her schedule for that day and for the week afterwards.
She might invite Thoma. He’d be here in a day, and stay in Mondstadt for a month, after all. He’d be here for the wedding. Why not invite an old friend?
Maybe it was perfect timing that Lisa walked into the room then. Or maybe it was just Lisa’s impeccable intuition that her fiancée needed comfort.
“I sensed that my darling was stressed,” Lisa announces, walking into the room with the air of confidence that she always carries. Jean thinks maybe that was what made it so easy to fall in love with her. She can’t believe she’s getting married to her in less than a month.
“Hello to you too,” Jean smiles at her. Lisa sighs and shakes her head.
She has a little habit of playing with Jean’s hands or hair. Today’s target was Jean’s hands. The second Lisa stepped within three feet of her fiancée, she picked up Jean’s hands and began playing with her fingers.
“Give yourself time to breathe, babe,” she said, “Thoma’s going to worry if you don’t make it out of your office. I’m beginning to worry if you’re actually sleeping at night!”
“Lisa, I sleep next to you.”
“Riiiight.”
Jean presses her lips to Lisa’s forehead. Lisa worries for no one but Jean. She finds it endearing. Jean can’t believe she’s spending the rest of her life with the woman before her.
~*~