Work Text:
Mondstadt’s market district filled with people as the sun was setting. Some stores were closing for the day, some were opening for the night, and people were moving and filling the place with chatter. Kaeya was always fond of people watching, but this was a ritual he had seen many times. And, as always, his eyes were drawn to what looked most out of place, the break in the pattern. She never looked comfortable around this many people.
“Sister Rosaria, what an unexpected pleasure,” Kaeya said as he approached her. “It’s been some time since I’ve seen you in the city.”
“The Church asked me to come. Something about my outfit not being appropriate," she said as they moved away from the crowds. Rosaria wasn't ever very warm, but once you got to know her,
“Oh? And since when do you come when the Church asks you to?”
She shrugged. “If I ignore every time they call, it means more trouble in the long run."
“Do you have to go there tonight?”
“Tomorrow morning.”
“Then why don’t you join me? It’s a lovely evening to have a drink at Angel’s Share. Venti’s already expecting me.”
“Very well,” she agreed, and they started the familiar way to the tavern. “By ‘a lovely evening’, you mean ‘an evening when Diluc is working the bar’, I assume.”
Kaeya chuckled, but didn’t answer. She knew him too well.
“You always have such reliable information on when he’s at the tavern that I wonder if you have him followed,” Rosaria said.
“Oh, no, having him followed would be a waste of time,” he said. “Let’s just say a few people make it a point of mentioning to me when a certain redhead comes into Mondstadt for the evening.”
“Maybe if you were more straightforward and asked to talk to him, you’d get somewhere.”
“Rosaria, you, of all people, telling me to be straight? Now that’s unexpected.” He smirked.
She rolled her eyes, but he caught a glimpse of a smile when she looked away. He’d take it -- even a tiny smile was rare for her.
They arrived at Angel’s Share and walked in to find the place nearly empty -- it was still early in the evening. But of course, Venti had already found one of the best tables in the place and was halfway through a glass of wine. Probably not his first.
“Hey, Kaeya! And Rosaria! Here, here,” he called to them. They sat down at his table, and Kaeya gestured to the bar for three more drinks. Charles, the bartender, nodded and started pouring their wine.
“That’s unusual,” Kaeya said.
“Your intel was wrong?” Rosaria asked.
“Oh, Diluc was supposed to be here? I haven’t seen him yet,” Venti said.
“He definitely came to Mondstadt,” Kaeya said. “But if he’s not here, then what is he doing?”
“Don’t you think that keeping tabs on him is a bit…” Venti struggled to find the right word. That drink was definitely not his first.
“Suspicious?” Rosaria offered.
“I was going to say ‘creepy’, but that works too.”
Kaeya ignored them. He’d had a few reports of more active Abyss activity nearby, but Diluc wouldn’t be stupid enough to try to deal with them alone, would he?
He would.
“I have a fair guess of where he is,” Kaeya said, getting up just as Charles brought them their drinks.
“So I was right, you only come here to see Diluc and not for our delightful company,” Venti complained.
“If I’m right, he might need some help. None of us wants the owner of the best winery in Mondstadt getting hurt, do we?”
Rosaria and Venti shared a look as Kaeya walked out of the tavern. Rosaria claimed Kaeya’s drink for herself -- they all knew he wasn’t coming back so soon.
“So, Rosaria, do you think this is all an elaborate plot Kaeya made up so we wouldn’t find out he and Diluc are fucking?” Venti asked.
“Well, with Kaeya, everything is an elaborate plot.” She took a sip of her drink. “But no. If Kaeya and Diluc were fucking, Kaeya would be in a much better mood.”
***
Nights in Mondstadt were lively and warm, most of the time, but even in the well-lit streets, with noise coming from the open taverns and shops, there were threats lurking in the dark. It wasn’t often that they were as bold as this, though. Diluc had noticed a particularly brave Abyss mage slipping through the city gates when he was getting ready to patrol the outskirts of town, and decided to follow him before he could cause any trouble. The Knights of Favonius would never get him, anyway.
He should have noticed that this was unusual -- too unusual. He should have watched out and been careful. But he was lulled into a false sense of security by the fact that the Abyss mage seemed to be taking every precaution not to get caught, and it might just have worked if Diluc hadn’t been there.
He should have noticed that he was being followed, too.
Only when he decided to strike, in a street far away from the most popular part of the city where he was sure not to hurt any passers-by, did he get surprised by an axe-wielding Mitachurl. By the time he noticed it, it was too late for him to parry or dodge the attack. He started to lift his claymore too late, trying to take at least the brunt of the attack, when Kaeya -- appearing seemingly out of nowhere -- jumped in front of the blow.
He grunted with the force of the blow. Kaeya hadn’t been fast enough to lift his sword, either. The axe had struck him right in his shoulder, and blood started to gush from the wound as he fell to his knees, hitting the ground hard.
Diluc wanted to ask a million questions -- starting with ‘where did you come from?’ and moving on to ‘why did you take that blow for me?’, and last but not least ‘are you crazy?’, but he saw the Mitachurl lifting his axe to hit Kaeya again. He stepped in front of Kaeya and stopped the enemy’s downward swing with his claymore. He disarmed the Mitachurl easily, and as it became defenseless, Diluc slashed him once, then twice for good measure.
As the abyss mage floated up and prepared for battle, Diluc flicked his claymore, the Pyro-infused blade reaching the creature just as its shield was about to close. Suddenly, the shield got disrupted, and the Abyss mage fell flat on the cobble street. Diluc then ran to Kaeya and kneeled down beside him.
The wound was bad. Kaeya was trying to keep pressure, but the cut was too deep and the blood was pooling on the floor next to him.
“Looks pretty bad, huh?” Kaeya panted.
Diluc looked around. They were far from the main streets, and that meant there were no people to ask for help. Their only choice was getting to the church and hoping Barbara was around to fix this — if she even could.
“Can you get up?” Diluc asked, already offering Kaeya his arm for support. Kaeya tried, but almost immediately his knees failed -- he’d lost too much blood. Diluc held him, keeping him from falling, and then picked him up.
He couldn’t do anything except run as fast as he could, and hope it wasn’t too late to fix this.
"Diluc--" Kaeya tried to say, as Diluc ran through the streets of Mondstadt.
"Don't try to speak. Just keep your energy," he said. For once, Kaeya shut his mouth.
Diluc’s grip tightened on Kaeya’s shoulder as the blood made his fingers slippery. But they were almost there -- he just needed to get to the church. Barbara would fix it. She had to.
He couldn’t let Kaeya die like this.
Diluc cursed every step of the massive stairway and shoved the cathedral’s door open with his shoulder, startling the few nuns who were still inside at this hour.
“I need help!” he yelled. “Where’s Barbara?”.
He didn’t process much of the flurry of movement that followed -- all he remembered was not letting go of Kaeya until he was led into a small room up another set of stairs, Barbara asking him to please let her do her job, then shutting the door in his face.
Diluc didn’t know what to do while he waited. He must have bore a hole into the church floor pacing, trying to calm himself down. Trying to keep himself from thinking the worst -- trying to avoid thinking of losing him.
Kaeya had once been one of the most important people in Diluc's life, if not the most -- but he didn’t know what Kaeya meant to him now. Not since the night, years ago, when Kaeya had told him the truth about himself: Kaeya was a spy, planted since he was a child, to gather information on Mondstadt. Kaeya had always been lying -- about himself, about why he was there, about why he had gotten close to Diluc in the first place.
And so, in one night, everything they had built over years of friendship and love had come crashing down. Or rather, Diluc had burned it down, almost literally. It was of a particularly dark humor that Diluc was panicking so terribly over Kaeya’s life, when he had very nearly killed him all those years ago.
He regretted how quickly he was to turn his blade on Kaeya. Considering the circumstances -- Archons, he had lost his father that very day -- he didn’t know what else he could have done, but he regretted it all the same.
He understood now that Kaeya had been handed a lie and told to keep it, and that he'd been a child who didn't know what else to do. He understood that, and he forgave him for it -- it had taken years, and Diluc didn't know when it happened, but at some point he realized that he didn't hold any resentment in his heart for that. No, the problem was that once Kaeya had broken his trust, he’d thought it wasn’t possible for him to get it back.
Every word Kaeya had ever told him had been endlessly scrutinized, doubted, and he still didn’t know if he’d ever been told the truth. And every time he tried to give Kaeya a chance, he found himself doubting every word, trying to figure out if he was truly on his side. How could he trust someone who lied straight-faced with such ease? How could he know that he wasn’t keeping anything else? Diluc couldn’t be sure of anything when it came to him -- not anymore.
And it hurt, that the man he’d trusted more than anyone, the man he loved, could make him doubt like that. If it had been up to Diluc, they would still be together, them against the world, always having each other’s backs like they promised, like it should be. But he couldn’t have that anymore. Because of Kaeya’s lies, he couldn’t trust him anymore, he couldn’t think back on the past without every memory tasting bitter.
He remembered the day they swore their loyalty to each other like it had just happened, even if it felt like a completely different person had made that oath. It had been the day they both got into the Knights of Favonius, a lifetime ago.
"We'll always have each other's back, no matter what," Kaeya had said, holding out his hand.
"No matter what," Diluc echoed, taking it. They were just over thirteen, children who had been playing at being knights because loss had no real meaning to them yet. He truly believed that nothing could come between them -- he couldn't imagine anything strong enough.
When Diluc made captain, his father threw a party to celebrate it. He was only fourteen, and he'd never been more proud of himself in his life. His father even let him have a glass of wine -- one of their best vintages, specially chosen for the celebration. Diluc had taken only one sip and was disappointed to find out he hated it. He still wanted to drink it, though -- he wasn’t going to waste good wine. The pungent taste was still lingering in his mouth when he stepped outside into the balcony for a breath of fresh air.
"Youngest person to ever become captain of the Knights. Should I call you captain from now on?"
Diluc turned around to face Kaeya. Even then, he'd already gotten his smirk right.
"Just Diluc is fine," he said with a chuckle. He tried another sip of the wine and made a face as Kaeya joined him, leaning on the railing. "Soon enough we're going to be throwing this same celebration for you."
Kaeya laughed. "I don't think so."
"You don't want to be captain?"
"Not really."
"Why not?" Diluc couldn't imagine not wanting this. It was all he'd ever strived for.
"If I do, I'll have to go to another division. If we get assigned to different places, how am I gonna watch out for you?" Kaeya said. "I promised, remember?"
"Don't be stupid," Diluc said. "You don't have to hold yourself back for me."
"I'd rather stay with you."
“I’m serious,” he said. “You don’t have to hold back for me. You know you could have made captain too, if you wanted.”
“I’d rather let you deal with all that responsibility,” Kaeya said, with a smirk.
“If you’re sure,” Diluc said, still not convinced.
“I am.”
Diluc wanted to blame the wine for this, but he hadn’t drunk nearly enough to give him the push to take Kaeya’s hand. Kaeya hadn’t drunk at all, but he was brave enough to lace his fingers with Diluc’s. Kaeya’s hand was slimmer than Diluc’s, but they had calluses in the same places from practice. They fit together well -- they always had.
Diluc moved toward him and kissed him. His lips fit together just as well.
He pulled back, feeling the blood rushing past his ears. Kaeya was wide-eyed, dumb-founded, for just a moment -- and then he smiled and pulled him in for another kiss.
They kissed for a while, two kids experimenting with something new. When they pulled away from each other, he put an arm around Kaeya’s shoulder, clumsily -- they’d done this a thousand times, but never after a kiss. It felt like it had changed everything, and yet it didn’t. Diluc didn’t want to be anywhere else in the world.
“Alright. We’ll stay together, then.”
“No matter what,” Kaeya said.
Kaeya had kept that oath. Even when Diluc wasn’t sure he would have kept it, even when Diluc didn’t know how he felt about it, Kaeya still did not break their promise. And he’d been keeping it for a while. When Diluc came back to Mondstadt, four years after that night, Kaeya had kept his Vision for him and found a way to give it back even when Diluc refused to see him.
In the end, Diluc had been the one who broke it when he turned his blade and Vision on him. Kaeya was still trying to keep it -- even if Diluc wasn’t.
“Master Diluc?” Barbara called out to him, snapping him out of his reverie.
“Is he alright?”
“He’ll be fine. He’s resting now,” she said, then hesitated. “You can stay with him until he wakes up, if you want.”
“Thank you,” he said. She smiled gently, with a hint of worry, but walked away, her footsteps echoing in the empty church as she left.
He wasn’t sure if he should stay with Kaeya. He wasn’t sure if Kaeya would want him to -- Diluc hadn’t been warm toward him for a very long time. He wasn’t sure what he felt, either. But he didn’t want Kaeya to wake up in an empty room.
He walked into a small room with only a bed, a chair and a small high window through which the moonlight came in, tinting the room silver. Kaeya was lying shirtless on the bed, with bandages covering most of his torso, sleeping profoundly enough not to wake up when Diluc carefully shut the door behind him. Kaeya had always been a light sleeper.
Diluc was out of practice caring for Kaeya, but it fit him like an old favorite coat, briefly forgotten but found again.
**********
Kaeya woke up in a strange, small room, and it took him a few moments for the events of the previous nights to come back to him. He sat up in the bed, feeling the faint pain of freshly healed wounds -- Barbara’s handiwork, he assumed. And asleep in an awkward position on a chair beside him was Diluc, looking worn and tired.
He supposed Diluc was right about one thing: drinking was going to be the end of him. If he hadn’t been leaving the tavern when he ran into Diluc walking suspiciously through the city with a Mitachurl trailing after him, his reflexes would have been better and he wouldn’t have gotten so badly hurt.
Kaeya took the opportunity to stare at Diluc for longer than a moment. It had been a long time since he’d been able to look at him without feeling contempt behind his eyes. He was beautiful, of course. His long eyelashes fluttered slightly as he slept, and his hair was slipping out of his ponytail, a few strands stuck to his face. He looked paler than usual, even in the sunlight coming in from the window. His brow was furrowed even as he slept, and Kaeya had to hold back from smoothing it out.
He didn’t know how long he’d stared. The truth was, he didn’t know when he’d have the chance again -- this was a precious moment. Diluc was here just because he felt bad that Kaeya had been stupid enough to throw himself in front of a sword for him, and he felt a sense of obligation. There was nothing more to it than that, for sure. He didn’t want to be anywhere near Kaeya in normal circumstances, and that wasn’t about to change. No, Kaeya was the one who was still stuck in the past, enough to risk his life trying to block a hit for a man who didn’t want anything to do with him anymore.
He still felt guilty about the way things had turned out between them. How could he not? Even if he knew he had no other choice but to lie to Diluc. There was no way he could have avoided it, even if it tore apart the one relationship he cherished the most. He had been a child left in an impossible situation -- he had been too young to deal with the choice, and he’d chosen not to do anything about it, even if the guilt and doubt burned him up from the inside.
It had taken him years to start to forgive himself. He knew now that he was as much a victim of this plot as Diluc. But old habits die hard, and guilt was his constant companion as Kaeya navigated his life without him.
Everything had fallen apart so fast. One moment, they loved each other and things were, well, not exactly fine -- Diluc had gone through the biggest loss of his life, but at least Kaeya was still by his side. But he couldn’t take the lying anymore. He couldn’t keep the truth from Diluc when he needed Kaeya the most, couldn’t deal with the fact that Kaeya himself was too busy grappling with his old dilemma to truly be there for him.
He supposed he walked into that room to tell Diluc the truth with a certain childish belief that they would be able to overcome this, no matter what. He knew -- of course he knew -- that Diluc would be angry, but he never expected that he could pull his sword on Kaeya, or worse, his Vision. Diluc was torn by grief and rage, but still he turned on Kaeya so easily, and if Kaeya’s own Vision hadn’t manifested to counter Diluc’s flames, he didn’t know what could have happened.
And he still held, somewhere, that childish belief that maybe they could fix this. He couldn’t keep himself from trying, from teasing Diluc like he used to in the old days, from trying to start a conversation every opportunity he could. But every word felt wrong, the teasing sounded sarcastic, and Diluc never gave him a chance to explain.
He supposed the fact that Diluc was even here was something, but to be fair, Diluc had an incredibly strong sense of justice and wouldn’t leave anyone alone in these circumstances. It probably didn’t mean anything at all.
He noticed the moment Diluc started to wake up, but he didn’t avert his eyes. Diluc blinked a few times, confused, and then his eyes settled onto him.
“Kaeya,” he said, with a tone much more worried than Kaeya expected him to muster up. Diluc looked at him with concern, his eyes running from Kaeya’s face to the bandages across his chest back to his eyes.
Kaeya didn’t know what he expected, but it certainly wasn’t this. So he did what he did best: deflected with a joke.
“You look terrible,” he said, with a chuckle.
He expected the next thing Diluc did even less: Diluc reached and pulled him close, hugging him tightly. For a moment, Kaeya tensed, unsure how to even react. But the familiarity of the embrace, the feeling of Diluc’s arms around him -- he missed it too much. He hugged him back.
They stayed like that for a long time before Diluc pulled back. For a moment, neither of them said anything. What was there to say? There was so much on his mind, but nothing felt right.
Diluc broke the silence first.
"Why?"
Kaeya raised an eyebrow.
"Why would you risk your life for me? I spent all this time doubting you, thinking I couldn't trust you, and you still…" Diluc sighed. "You shouldn't have."
Kaeya didn't know what to say. If he'd been asked the day before, 'would you sacrifice yourself for Diluc?', he would have thought ‘no’. His whole life, he'd stayed alive by knowing exactly how much he was willing to bet on any given goal. His survival was the most important thing -- even when he wasn't sure which side he was on, he wanted to make sure he would be left standing no matter the outcome. Sacrificing himself wasn't part of any of his plans. And yet, there wasn't a doubt in his mind when he saw someone sneaking up on Diluc.
"I couldn't just stand by and watch you get hurt."
"You're still keeping our oath."
Kaeya stood still. He hadn't thought about that oath -- hadn't let himself think about it -- in so long. 'Always having each other's back' -- what a childish promise, made by a scared boy hoping to create even the smallest of obstacles in case his true mission was discovered. In his mind, it was broken the moment he'd told Diluc everything.
Diluc kept going. "After everything you told me, I thought I couldn't trust anything you ever said. I thought--"
"Why would I have told you the truth if I was planning on keeping up the facade?" Kaeya asked. "I couldn't keep lying to you. I never wanted to lie to you, Luc, I just didn't know how to stop. But you needed me, and I couldn't really be there for you when I wasn't telling you the whole truth. I just picked a shit timing," he said with a chuckle. "Every time I ever told you I was there for you, I meant it."
Every time I told you I loved you, I meant it, he didn’t say.
“It’s just…” Diluc started to say. “How can I trust you, after all the lies? How do I know you’re not keeping everything from me again?”
“I don’t know,” Kaeya said, and the honesty that coated the words felt almost foreign in his lips. “All I can offer you is my word, and we both know that doesn’t mean much,” he said with a chuckle. “I can lie about anything, but I’ll never lie about how much you mean to me, Luc. I hate that I’m the reason we lost that. I’d do almost anything to get it back.”
"And I want to give you that chance. I want to try again, Kaeya. But I can't take another fallout like that."
Kaeya sighed. "Me neither." He hesitated. "I thought you hated me. I wouldn’t blame you if you did."
Diluc was the one who made the first move. He reached for Kaeya’s hand, holding it where it lay on the bed.
"I never hated you." He sighed too. For a moment, Kaeya let himself hope. “We know what’s at stake. Maybe that’s why we won’t break it this time,” he said. It sounded like he was trying to convince himself more than Kaeya. All the better -- Kaeya didn’t need convincing.
“Are you saying you forgive me?”
“I’m saying I can put it behind us.” Diluc’s brown eyes were fixed on Kaeya’s. “As long as that’s the last lie you tell me.”
“I promise, I won’t lie to you again. And you won’t turn on me again, either.”
Diluc nodded solemnly. “I promise.”
The distance between them felt electrically charged. Kaeya clenched his fist, gripping the sheets on the bed with the hand that wasn’t holding Diluc’s. What he had most wanted in years, the impossible hope he shut down in the back of his mind, felt within reach -- and yet so fragile he didn’t want to make a wrong move. Diluc stood so still Kaeya wondered if he was holding his breath.
He found the courage to come closer -- at the same time Diluc did, and they met in the middle in a kiss.
Diluc was warm. He knew that, but it had been so long since he’d actually been so close to Diluc, he was taken by surprise. His lips were soft, and Kaeya’s fingers brushed against long, soft hair as he took Diluc’s face in his hands to pull him closer.
At long last, Kaeya was home.