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It’s easier, Diluc finds, to feign ignorance when neither of them knew what they wanted. For a moment, it had been enough. Neither of them wanted much from the start anyway. Sloppy kisses in dark alleyways, hands grappling for coat and lapels, high keens, and labored breathing. It’s quick, dirty, and entirely insignificant in the grander scheme of things. It doesn’t matter, because it shouldn’t matter.
Until it does.
Because of course, Childe has to wear his heart on his sleeves despite the numerous times he has been stabbed there. Diluc has been the one to patch him up after some of those encounters after all. There is a bottle of rubbing alcohol under the sink with Childe’s name labeled on it, a petty fight turned into another mark Childe leaves in his life that Diluc should have thrown away a long time ago.
And of course, Diluc has to lock his heart away beneath the cages of his ribs, far away from anyone’s reach. It is a defense mechanism, a habit that he cannot outgrow. There are thorns piercing his flesh, his lungs, his bones and it suffocates him. He is being crushed beneath the weight of his own secrets, his own hurt, and he has tried. He has tried to cut his way out of the prison of his own making. He only ends up bleeding from his heart, a matching wound to the one he inflicted on Childe.
(Once may be happenstance, twice may be coincidence, but he has done it over and over again, to everyone whom he has loved. How can that be passed as accidental? How many times has had to watch people walk away, bruised and broken and bloodied from a fight against him that they knew they couldn’t win?
Too many. That’s the only answer.)
So here they are now, standing on opposing ends, and there is a crack in the ground that stands between them. He watches it with wary eyes, knowing well enough by now what it can do. Kaeya. Jean. Amber. Eula. The Knights of Favonius. It always starts the same way: a thin thread, thin as a strand of hair on his head, then it grows and grows and grows until it swallows everything—every moment, every bit of history—that once sat between them and leaves nothing behind but barren bones and the sight of their back turned to him.
And Diluc? Diluc always watches them go and pretends his hands are twitching by his side.
He should have known it would inevitably happen with Childe, too. Somehow, somewhere along the way, something has changed between them. It began with late nights in the tavern spent leaning closer to each other as they talked shit about the drunken patrons under their breaths, and it ended with Childe casually waltzing into the Dawn Winery, having been let in by Adelinde, acting as if he owned the damn place.
(Diluc pretends something in him doesn’t ache at the thought of that. Maybe, just maybe, if he plays his cards right, he can come home to that sight every day. He doesn’t, though. He folds all his cards and tucks them away under his vest, close to his heart. It isn’t enough. It will never be enough. And he will only have himself to blame.)
“You love him,” Kaeya said the other day. It was a slow afternoon in the tavern, the evening patrons still yet to return from their jobs and the morning patrons having gone off to sleep the alcohol off. There was just him, Kaeya, and Old Man Simmons who perpetually lives in the far corner of Angel’s Share. “You actually do.”
Diluc couldn’t help the way his hands stuttered for a split second. Had it been anyone else, they would have been entirely oblivious to it, and he would have continued wiping down the glasses. But because it was Kaeya—the very same Kaeya who he had picked snapdragons and chased after crystal flies with—there was no way he could have passed it along as nothing.
“Say that a little louder, won’t you?” he said, scowling. “I don’t think Old Man Simmons can hear you.”
Kaeya didn’t even have the decency to seem sheepish. Instead, he let out a bark of disbelieving laughter, dandelion wine violently sloshing in his cup. “So, I’m right! You do love him!”
“Shut up.”
“Wait.” Suddenly, Kaeya sobered. There was a distant gleam in his eyes, a sight that Diluc didn’t have the energy to translate. “Are you in love with him?”
“Maybe,” Diluc told him in the end. It wasn’t quite the truth, but it wasn’t quite a lie either. Maybe . It toed the thin line between yes and no , opening an endless universe of possibilities. It was the closest answer he could offer.
Kaeya, however, didn’t seem to think so. “Maybe.” He snorted dismissively, taking a sip of his wine. “Please, Diluc. I know you better than that.”
“And, of course, that automatically makes you an expert on my emotions.”
“Obviously,” Kaeya said.
“Obviously.”
Kaeya let out a sigh, placing his glass down on the counter. When he turned back to face Diluc, there was that look on his face: the kind that he always wore when Diluc said that he would take the blame in his place, or when he was trying to convince Jean to take a break. Furrowed brows, pursed lips, steely eyes. Kaeya wouldn’t yield for anything in this matter.
“Diluc,” Kaeya said. “I’m only going to tell you this, for old times’ sake and because you’re a bull-headed idiot—don’t argue with me here, we both know I’m right—but you should consider keeping that Harbinger of yours. Now, while I don’t know much about what’s happening between you two—and I don’t want to know, thank you very much—I also saw you practically skipping your way back to the Dawn Winery after talking to him. And, well, Harbinger or not, that has to be worth something, don’t you think?”
Diluc pursed his lips, looking away. Kaeya didn’t push further, just took another swig of his drink and eyed the door of Angel’s Share as if it held all the answers in the world. Sometimes, Diluc hated Kaeya because of this. He had a penchant for making Diluc think of things he wouldn’t usually dwell in. Ignorance was bliss for a reason, after all. In just a blink of an eye, something so simple can be so, so complicated.
“Maybe,” Diluc settled with at the end.
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Where was this courtesy at the beginning of this conversation,” Diluc said flatly.
“Are you happy?” Kaeya asked.
Diluc blinked, nearly choking on the breath in his throat. “What?”
“Are you happy?” Kaeya repeated. There was a kind of solemnity in his tone that sent Diluc’s head reeling. This was too much for something that should have been so trivial. Childe was nothing but someone he called upon whenever he needed someone to warm his bed, and he was the same to Childe. They were supposed to be nothing.
So why were his heart racing and his hand clamming? He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. Are you happy? What did it mean to be happy anymore? He remembered the faraway years of his childhood spent at the beach, racing after Kaeya and sometimes even Jean. It was such a different kind of happiness back then; pure and unadulterated, full of flushed cheeks and high laughter.
Now, happiness meant watching Kaeya laugh and smile with the rest of his friends in the tavern, remembering how much of a struggle it had been for Diluc to approach him when he had been younger. It meant discreetly funding the birthday celebrations of the people he once called his friends and keeping his silence when the Knights of Favonius headquarters blew up in rambunctious cheers. It meant bittersweet smiles hidden in the collars of his coat, his head bent down to hide the emotions he knew reflected in his eyes, and a hollow yearning in his chest.
And somehow, somewhere along the way, it also meant the warmth that seeped through his bones whenever Childe would throw his head back in bright laughter. It also meant the adrenaline in his veins when he would be meant with Childe’s sharp tauntings, claymore in his hand and head fuzzy from the high that came with battle. It also meant the feeling of Childe’s reverent hands on his skin, carefully tracing along the outlines of his body, and the sight of him coming undone.
Are you happy?
“I am,” Diluc found himself answering.
Kaeya nodded, blue eyes glinting with knowing. “Then keep him, Diluc. Don’t be an idiot.”
It’s easier said than done.
His jaw is locked, the words he wishes he can say caught behind the bars of his teeth. His breath hitches with every beat of silence that passes between them, the sound of his dull heartbeat ringing high in his ears. Had he been a weaker man, he would have torn himself to shreds trying to swallow the knives before they could reach Childe.
But he is Diluc Ragnvindr, built of steel in place of bones and iron in place of flesh. There is a whirring at the back of his head, almost mechanic-like with the way it controls him, and he builds the fortress guarding his heart higher and higher until he can barely see Childe’s eyes. There is blood on his hands and bile at the back of his throat, but Diluc cannot give in. Not now. Not when he is so close.
The words they have exchanged in the past hour are enough to ruin Childe entirely, incisors digging into his skin and ripping out his organs for the eagles to devour. If he knows what is good for him, Childe will leave soon—leave their arrangement, leave Mondstadt, leave him . There will be slamming doors and destroyed furniture and ruined throats and that will be it. It will be the end of it.
But Childe is foolish and reckless and admirable in his most inherent way and he doesn’t leave. Instead, he lashes back at Diluc ten-fold, but he isn’t aiming to kill. He aims to disarm Diluc. Each retort is meant to catch him off-guard, not to dig into flesh and rip out tendons the way Diluc is doing to him. Childe always fights to defend the things that he loves, and Diluc cannot afford to be part of that, so he snarls and he bites and he is cruel and vicious and leaves behind nothing to spare.
Childe scoffs, disbelieving, but even then, he sounds defeated. He is growing weary from this fight, Diluc knows. He can see it in the knit of his brows, the flexing of his hands, the turn of his face. Good. This means that whatever this is— they are —is coming to an end.
“You honestly can’t say this isn’t worth something,” Childe begins.
Diluc cuts him off before he can finish. Maybe, if he was a kinder man, he would have let Childe finish. But Diluc has never claimed to be selfless. He takes up late evenings, and early mornings, and every single second that comes in between. He walks into places he knows would hurt those who see him, and he walks out with a sick kind of pride in knowing that they are bleeding. He hogs up Childe’s time under various guises and hoards on those moments Diluc spends drinking every inch, every detail of him. Diluc Ragnvindr is selfish, and that is almost ruinous in its nature.
“It’s not,” Diluc bites out. It’s harsh, barely a breath above a snarl. He cannot afford anything less, not if he wants the poison to administer.
A beat. A breath too long, suspended.
“What?”
The glass falls.
“It’s nothing.” Diluc meets Childe’s eyes, red colliding against blue. “This means nothing.”
It shatters.
Diluc sees the moment the dagger lands. Childe physically recoils, jerking back sharply as if he had been dealt with a true, physical blow. Something shifts in the air between them, suddenly, tension bleeding away into bone-deep exhaustion.
“Oh,” Childe says. He sounds utterly ruined and utterly ruinous. “I understand.”
Childe doesn’t even bother prowling around him, poking and prodding at Diluc for some kind of reaction the way he usually does. There is just a sickening defeat there in the way Childe looks at him, shoulders sagged with weariness and eyes half-closed as if he is in pain. Maybe he is. Maybe looking at Diluc, being with him after everything, hurts him in a fundamental way that Diluc cannot begin to understand. Maybe Diluc doesn’t want to understand, not when he has to watch the way Childe rebuilds his armor right before his very eyes.
The crack on the ground has split into a chasm now, a gaping maw waiting to swallow yet another piece of Diluc’s rotten, broken heart. Childe stands on the other end of the world, far beyond his grasp, and Diluc knows that he can never salvage this. There is no coming back from destruction like this.
“In that case.” Childe’s voice is strained and when he finally meets Diluc’s eyes, there is something stilted in the way he smiles. His eyes are dull, darkened into the shade of the churning sea. There is nothing left in those hollow eyes, not even that damn bloodthirsty glint that Diluc has learned to navigate. “I shall be taking my leave, then. Thank you, Mr. Ragnvindr for your hospitality these past few weeks.”
Diluc doesn’t say a thing when Childe grabs his coat. He keeps his mouth shut when Childe quietly pulls it over his shoulder. He locks his hands in fists by his side when Childe begins to walk away. He has no right to reach out, not when it is his fault entirely. He has done exactly what he had wanted to from the very start. There is no resurrection from this kind of death, not properly.
Are you happy?
The door closes with a click.