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The Favonius ballroom is sweltering. Kaeya’s sweating through his dress shirt, even though he ditched his jacket and tie at the coat check a while ago and undid the first four buttons on his shirt. He winds his way through the crowd of Mondstadt’s richest citizens: women with gems the size of Kaeya’s yearly salary weighing down their necks; loud, ruddy-faced men on their fourth, fifth, sixth glass of wine. The heat of all these bodies pressed together is stifling, but it’s still marginally more bearable than the weight of all these egos.
Kaeya scans the crowd. The guests all seem to be having a good time (especially the two guys wrapped around each other behind that pillar, who are definitely going to be making some bad decisions tonight). He’s glad—it’s the Knights’ biggest fundraiser of the year, and it needs to go perfectly so the rich people will loosen their purse strings. Jean, never the most adept at social events, has been working herself to the bone to ensure this goes off without a hitch, spending sleepless nights planning dishes and curtains and napkin colours. Kaeya needs to make sure everything goes well—for Jean, if for no one else. Even if he wishes he had a good glass of red to drown himself in, or that he could back slowly out of the room and not come back (Diluc’s signature move). Even if he’s about to peel off his own skin for a moment of respite from the muggy air.
“Gods, it’s hot in here,” he hears a lilting female voice say. He turns and sees Lisa and Albedo chatting against the wall.
Both of them nod to Kaeya as he reaches them, and Albedo raises his eyebrows at the expanse of chest that Kaeya’s unbuttoned shirt is exposing to the world. “Not sure this is that kind of party, Kaeya,” he says.
“It could be, if you weren’t a coward,” Kaeya drawls, leaning towards him. He winks, realizes that his eyepatch makes it just look like a blink, and settles for biting his lower lip instead. Albedo looks thoroughly unimpressed.
“How are you enjoying the party, Kaeya?” Lisa asks, as if the sweat stains under his arms aren’t answer enough.
“Oh, it’s just lovely,” Kaeya says, the corner of his smile like a knife’s edge. “Mingling with Mondstadt’s most insufferable citizens, all under one roof at the height of summer? If it gets any more delightful in here, I might need to gouge my windpipe out of my throat.”
“I wouldn’t recommend that. I’m not sure I’d be able to put it back afterwards,” Albedo says. Then he adds thoughtfully, “Although… I wouldn’t mind trying.”
“Not the most fun party I’ve ever been to. I think I’m probably going to make one more round, just for show, and then get out of here,” Lisa says, yawning.
“I’ll come with you,” Albedo says, offering her his arm. “Coming, Kaeya?”
Kaeya has never wanted to do anything more. He desperately needs to get out of the stifling air and away from the worst people Mondstadt has to offer. But… Jean is counting on him to make sure this party goes well. “You two go on,” he says, waving them away with what he hopes looks like a charming smile (and not a grimace).
Lisa raises her eyebrows at him, taking Albedo’s arm. “You’d rather stay here and do some throat gouging?”
Kaeya sighs. “Jean needs me. To stay,” he clarifies quickly.
Lisa’s mouth quirks up. She exchanges an amused glance with Albedo, and they both fix Kaeya with a knowing look. He doesn’t like it. “What’s so funny?” he asks, an edge creeping into his voice.
Albedo pauses before answering, voice carefully neutral. “You’re very… supportive of the Acting Grandmaster.”
“I know she really appreciates your… support,” Lisa adds, eyes wide and innocent.
They smile sweetly and bid him goodnight. Kaeya narrows his eye at them as they leave. That was weird. He’s not sure what they were insinuating, and he’s definitely not going to think too hard about it.
A humid gust of wind blows against his cheek, and he winces. He doesn’t love the feeling of other people’s sweat on his body. The band strikes up a lively song, and to Kaeya’s ears it is too loud, too grating, too much. His skin is starting to feel wrong, like it belongs to someone else. Like the time he borrowed a suit from Diluc, who was a bit skinnier than him at the time, and spent the entire evening with his shoulders ever so slightly cramped. He rolls his shoulder, adjusts his shirt, rolls his shoulder again—but the feeling of physical wrongness remains. He thinks idly about jumping off the balcony.
Wait. He’d forgotten that there was a balcony attached to this ballroom. It’s tiny, and not technically supposed to be open to guests, but he’s not a guest—and it has to be cooler and less stifling than this. He scans the room, spots the small door set inconspicuously in the outer wall, and makes a beeline for it.
A thin, pinched man steps into Kaeya’s path, offers him a sharp smile. “Captain Alberich,” he says, and it sounds like an insult in his mouth.
Kaeya wants to punch him. Or at least shove him out of the way. But Jean has worked too hard on this party to have Kaeya ruin it with a brawl (as fun as that would be). So he smiles blandly and says, “Lord Lawrence.” The man preens visibly at the use of his ill-deserved title, and launches into a self-pitying monologue about… something or other.
Kaeya nods along, barely listening, every inch of his skin screaming for him to get out of here. He’d practically begged Jean not to invite the Lawrences, citing their pretentiousness and stinginess and general horrible-ness, but Jean had only said, “It’s the right thing to do, Kaeya,” and sent out the invites anyway.
“… don’t you think?” Schubert finishes talking and stares at Kaeya expectantly. Kaeya casts around in his mind for the beginning of the question and comes up short, so he just makes a noise that he hopes sounds like whatever Schubert wants to hear. It seems to work—Schubert smirks in a horrifically self-satisfied manner and Kaeya wonders what the hell he just agreed to.
The noble opens his mouth again and Kaeya cuts him off. “My apologies, Lord Lawrence, but I’m afraid the Acting Grandmaster requires my assistance.” It’s a bald-faced lie, but Jean will cover for him if Schubert complains. She always does.
He brushes past the man and elbows his way to the balcony door. He glances around to make sure no one is about to follow him out, and then slips outside, closing the door quietly behind him.
The cool night air feels like salvation as it washes over his heated skin. Kaeya draws in a breath—the first in hours that isn’t tainted by other people’s body odours.
Then he realizes that he’s not alone on the balcony. A figure is pressed guiltily against the balcony’s stone railing.
Kaeya’s hand goes to his sword. Wonderful—maybe he’ll actually get that fight he’s been itching for. “Well now, who do we have here?”
The figure’s shoulders relax, which is weird. Kaeya’s usually pretty good at making people more stressed, not less. Maybe he’s losing his touch.
“Kaeya?” the person asks, their voice achingly familiar.
Kaeya’s eyebrows jump. “Jean? Why are you skulking about in the dark?”
Jean chuckles guiltily. Kaeya’s eye adjusts to the dark as he walks towards her, and he sees how the moonlight glints off her golden hair. A few curls have fallen out of her updo—Jean had wanted to keep her usual ponytail for the party, but Lisa had vetoed that—and Kaeya fights the urge to tuck them behind her ear. He may be her most trusted aide, but he doesn’t have the right to touch her like that.
“I’m, uh, hiding,” Jean admits, as Kaeya stops less than an arm’s length from her and leans against the railing. “The party is all just a little”—she gestures vaguely, trying to find the words and coming up short—”you know?”
“I do know,” Kaeya says ruefully. “That’s exactly why I’m out here.”
Jean laughs, reaches out to pat him on the arm. “Birds of a feather, huh?”
He hums, looking out on the moonlit streets of Mondstadt. It’s peaceful out here. The normally bright colours of the city are muted by nighttime, a mosaic of greys and blues. He feels himself settle back into his body, the sense of wrongness sloughing off him like layers of dead skin.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Jean says, eyes fixed on a windmill’s slowly spinning blades.
“Mm,” Kaeya agrees. But he glances at her out of the corner of his eye and finds he can’t look away. The moonlight highlights the locks of hair framing her face, the planes of her sharp cheekbones. It soothes the circles under her eyes, obscured by concealer but still visible. He drinks in the sight of her, soft and languid under the moonlight, tucks the moment away in his back pocket for later.
Jean glances up at him from under her eyelashes and Kaeya snaps his eyes away from her, examining the night sky like it’s the most interesting thing in the world. “Was the party going okay?” she asks softly.
“It was fine,” he says, staring out at the constellations. “It was just… a lot. I couldn’t stay in there for much longer.”
Jean makes a little noise of understanding. “Yeah,” she says, and they fall into silence again.
A cloud passes over the moon, dropping them into darkness for a second. Kaeya breathes deep, savouring the warmth of the woman beside him and the chill of the wind on his cheek.
Inside the ballroom, the band finishes a song and launches into another. Kaeya recognizes it from a musical on the fall of Old Mondstadt that was popular a few years ago. It’s Amos’s theme: a slow ballad, the kind that’s practically bait for hopeless romantics.
“I love this song,” Jean says.
Kaeya laughs, nose wrinkling. “You would,” he says, in a voice that’s meant to be teasing but instead comes out horribly affectionate.
“Amos’s theme is a beautiful song!” Jean protests, bumping her shoulder into his. “It makes me feel like everything is going to be okay.”
“Amos turned on her lover and died in the subsequent rebellion,” Kaeya points out, never one for romanticizing the past.
“But it was beautiful while it lasted,” Jean says emphatically. She straightens up and holds out her hand to Kaeya. “Dance with me?”
Kaeya blinks, caught off guard. They haven’t danced together since they were eight years old and their parents forced them to take dance classes. This is… not where he expected his evening to go. “Uh? I– You know I don’t really dance, Jean.”
“Nonsense,” she says, hand still outstretched. “You’re one of the most graceful fighters I know. You can manage to spin slowly in a circle for a few minutes.”
Kaeya stares at the hand she’s holding out to him. It’s calloused, ink-stained, with a long scar across the palm from when they were children and she convinced him to raid a hilichurl camp with her. They’d come out with battle wounds and received a horrible scolding from their parents, but the part that sticks most vividly in Kaeya’s mind is the look of breathless triumph on Jean’s face when he’d agreed to come along.
He doesn’t have the right to touch her like this. But he has never been able to say no to her.
He puts his hand in hers and watches her eyes light up. She pulls him close, her other hand sliding down to the small of his back, and he rests his left hand on her right shoulder. He can feel the velvet of her vest brush against the skin of his bare chest. His cheeks are hot.
“Here, like this,” Jean says, starting to sway. Kaeya tries to follow her lead and stumbles over his own feet. She huffs a laugh and presses her palm to his back to guide him the way she wants him to go. They find a tentative rhythm, moving slowly together as the muffled strains of music seep through the door.
It’s not as horrible as Kaeya was expecting. It’s not really horrible at all, actually. He’s not ordinarily one for physical touch, but he finds he doesn’t much mind when Jean tucks her head into the crook of his neck. Her body is warm, pressed against him, and it offers him a measure of protection from the wind, like a bulwark against a crashing tide.
Jean hums tunelessly as they dance, and the vibrations reverberate through Kaeya’s chest. Their bodies cast a stark shadow in the moonlight pooling on the cool stone of the balcony, the lines of her figure melding seamlessly into his. Kaeya’s pulse thumps in the tips of his fingers. He wonders if Jean can feel it.
The wind picks up and Jean shivers. Instinctively, Kaeya pulls her closer, tucking her into his body like he wants to keep her with him forever, like he wants to hollow out his chest and carry her around next to his heart. He realizes what he’s done a second too late to stop himself from doing it, and winces inwardly. He expects her to stiffen up and pull away, but instead she exhales and nestles into him. Her hand presses hard against the small of his back. They fit together, Kaeya realizes with no small measure of awe.
Part of Kaeya—the smarter part, the part that houses his self-preservation instinct—knows that he shouldn’t be touching her like this. His hands are too clumsy, bloodstained, made for war and treachery, not for… whatever this is. His fingers are rough from countless battles. He will break her, break them both apart, shards of their bodies skittering across the stone of the balcony.
But part of him—the part he tries to suppress—is stupid and selfish and greedy. He wants what he cannot have. He wants, and he wants, and he wants. And he aches. Gods, he aches.
The song comes to a close, the last note stretching, elastic, in the night air. Their bodies slow and stop, but neither of them makes to pull away. Kaeya wishes, absurdly, that he could freeze time as easily as he freezes water—crystallize this moment, keep their bodies pressed together for eternity.
Then Jean sighs, a long exhale. Pulls away, just a little. “Thank you,” she murmurs, her eyes meeting his.
And Kaeya, fool that he is, reaches up and tucks a stray lock of hair behind her ear.
Jean’s breath hitches. Kaeya doesn’t breathe at all.
They stare at each other, frozen in time. One of his hands cups her jaw, the fingers of the other hand still intertwined with hers. Her lips part, and his gaze traces the curve of her mouth greedily.
Then someone laughs raucously right behind the balcony door, and the moment shatters. Kaeya jerks away, wrenches his hand out of hers, shoves the selfish part of him back behind bars. Jean sucks in a shuddering breath and puts her hand against the wall as if to stabilize herself.
Kaeya wonders if Jean’s legs are shaking too.
He knows he should apologize. He knows it would be the right thing to do. But Kaeya is a sinner—and despite his better judgement, he can’t seem to find it in himself to feel sorry.
Jean’s eyes skim his figure, from head to toe and back up, gaze snagging on the unbuttoned V of his shirt. She opens her mouth. Kaeya leans in, almost involuntarily, waiting to hear what she’ll say.
And then someone in the ballroom yells and smashes a glass, prompting a roar from the crowd.
Jean winces and glances towards the door. “I should go back in,” she says. Kaeya can almost imagine a hint of regret in her voice.
He narrows his eyes at the door and grimaces as loud laughter filters through the cracks. Returning to the chaos of the party is not one of the top ten things he wants to do right now. But Jean straightens her clothes, fixes her hair, and pushes her shoulders back—and he knows he can’t let her go back in and face the vultures alone.
“If we must,” Kaeya says, setting his jaw. “Once more unto the breach?”
Jean laughs ruefully. “I suppose so. Are you coming with me?”
Kaeya offers her his arm and she takes it, fingers gentle against the inside of his elbow. “You know I’d follow you anywhere.”