Chapter Text
“Kaeya,” a soft voice whispers against his ear. He sleepily waves a hand to shoo the sound and its speaker away.
He’s used to this already, but it still annoys him a little. Though it’s only been a few months with the Ragnvindrs, Diluc is fairly frequent in these nighttime visits, creeping into his room a little while after they’ve been sent to bed, long enough that the staff and Crepus stop listening for their footsteps but short enough Kaeya has only just fallen asleep.
A few seconds later, he hears his name again, this time much more urgently, “Kaeya.”
It is said with an impatience he doesn’t think he can avoid, even tonight, when it feels later than Diluc normally arrives, when sleep tugs at him with a reverence and comfort Diluc refuses to respect.
As Kaeya finally musters the energy to peek out from beneath heavy eyelids, he finds that the moonlight coming in through the window provides no clues to the time. That’s hardly a surprise, since dark clouds have covered the night sky for the last few nights—threatening a storm, according to some of the staff, staved off by a blessing, according to the rest.
He tries to avoid that discussion as much as he can.
“What time is it?” he asks, though the coldness of the end of the season has made his voice hoarse and hard to use.
It’s a strange thing to get used to, these periodic shifts in weather. Crepus has mentioned that it’s gentler here in Mondstadt than anywhere else and Kaeya tries to pretend that he’s felt it before.
He clears his throat.
“Nearly three,” Diluc answers. His eyes are bright with a smile Kaeya thinks it is much too early in the morning for.
“Go back to bed, Diluc,” Kaeya groans, then shoves his face into his pillow.
Diluc grabs the corner and shakes it a bit. “No, you have to get up.”
“It’s freezing,” Kaeya says, and curls into his blankets. Diluc sighs; Kaeya feels his head fall despondently onto the bed beside him. “I don’t want to move.”
He sighs again, louder this time, but Kaeya still ignores his pleas. After a moment, he straightens himself back out. “I need to show you something.”
“Then show me.”
“It’s not in here,” he says, “you have to come with me.”
Kaeya rolls his head so he can see Diluc again. He’s not sure if the view is reciprocal—if it’s light enough that Diluc can see him as well as he sees Diluc, or if his vision still retains that edge in the dark that his father said would probably fade with time.
He must’ve told Kaeya a dozen times before he left that there would be things he would lose, things he thought were so intrinsic to him that they could never be gone, but that they would become unpracticed and unneeded and, eventually, forgotten.
He swore he would teach it to him again, like he did when he was young, and while it wouldn’t be like it never left, because Kaeya was leaving and that was sure to leave a mark, he swore it would be home again.
But Kaeya has never been one to trust someone at their word, and so he grasps onto it desperately and pointlessly. He hopes with all the hope he has packed into his little body—an entire nation’s hope and he uses it for things so small and selfish—that it hasn’t faded yet.
“It’s urgent,” Diluc insists.
With Diluc, most things are.
Kaeya runs his tongue over his teeth. He clarifies, “An emergency?”
Diluc doesn’t answer for a while, and when he does, it’s quiet, “Kind of.” He thinks for a moment. “Not really.”
“Then can it wait until morning?”
Diluc curls his lip. “That’s what urgent means.” Kaeya frowns and Diluc continues, a little softer, “It might not be there in the morning.”
It’s enough to get Kaeya’s attention, to prompt him to slowly drag his head away from the pillow and properly wake up.
“Where will it go?” he asks, letting some of Diluc’s excitement make its way into his voice.
Mondstadt so far has been eager to change—transient and quick in ways Kaeya isn’t sure he can adapt to, ways he does anyway. He nearly appreciates it, for all that it frightens him, because his homeland always felt quietly stagnant, too stubborn and prideful for its own good, predictable and familiar but so unrelenting that it was suffocating. But remembering it like that fills him with a melancholy he can’t quite place, so he pushes it as far away as he can and then some.
“That will give it away,” Diluc says. “I’ll get your boots.”
“It’s outside?”
“Mmm,” he hums noncommittally. “Anyway, hurry, because I don’t know how long it will last.”
“How long it will— Diluc, slow down.”
But he’s already standing up and scurrying around the room—dragging Kaeya’s shoes over from by the door and tearing away the covers on the bed with an evil little grin on his face.
“Diluc!” Kaeya hisses, and it takes everything in him not to shout and wake the whole house. “I told you it’s freezing in here!”
The smile on Diluc’s face softens a bit and he wraps the stolen blanket around Kaeya’s shoulders, depositing the corners in his hands.
“There,” he says. “Better?”
Kaeya frowns and takes the corners.
He’s still not exactly sure what to do with all the affection Diluc directs his way, all the tiny displays of fondness and care he’s so eager to give. It’s a little bit overwhelming, a little bit suffocating, but not quite unwelcome.
And Kaeya is— well, he likes Diluc well enough, but he’s not sure how he gives it away so freely.
He pushes himself off the bed to stand beside Diluc. “It’s fine.”
“Good,” he answers, and then he grabs Kaeya’s hand and pulls him away from the bed.
It’s only a short distance to the window, but every step feels like torture on his bare feet.
“Diluc,” he complains. “My feet are cold.”
“Just a minute,” he responds, a little strained. “Look, and then you can put your shoes on.”
So Kaeya, far too amenable to the Ragnvindr heir’s will for his own good, lets Diluc position him how he wants at the window, and after he pulls back the curtain, he looks.
It’s the same view as it always is, Crepus’ garden in the yard, the land giving itself up to him in a way Kaeya is beginning to understand, vines snaking up trellises flanking the house and wealthy with leaves even in the winter, a hidden stone path to guide his and Diluc’s many adventures, and yet something about it is different—
Darker, without the cluttered tapestry of stars overhead to cast everything in divine light. Speckled, with the little white flakes that fall from the sky and melt into water droplets when they find a surface to rest on.
“What is it?” Kaeya asks, breathless.
He asks so quietly that he’s not sure Diluc can even hear him, but he thinks he might know anyway, from stories and vocabulary lessons and glimpses of Dragonspine he’s gotten when he and Diluc ventured into the countryside in the afternoons while they were staying at the winery, but he’s never seen it so close.
Khaenri’ah didn’t have weather like this, and perhaps he should be more careful with his reactions, show a little bit less of the surprise he can’t help but feel on his face, but Diluc keeps all his strangeness close to his chest, as if he knows what it means that Kaeya offers it to him, and so he thinks it’s okay.
He pulls his hands away from Diluc’s and rests them on the windowsill, the glass cold where his knuckles brush up against it.
“It’s the first snow of the season,” Diluc answers, nearly as quiet, though Kaeya can still hear the grin that has not left his voice. He knows he can’t say much about it, not when a smile creeps over his own face, more subdued than Diluc’s but brimming with a wonder he loves and longs for.
In a brief moment of unrestrained curiosity, he pulls the window open all the way, letting an icy breeze shoot into the room. He has to pull his blanket tighter toward his chest so he doesn’t freeze over, and Diluc’s expression wavers a little when cold pricks their cheeks, but it sends a pulse of excitement through his heart.
He sees Diluc’s face out of the corner of his eye, full of excitement and surprise and a love Kaeya thinks he might one day have to return. He’s not sure how much Diluc sees in him, though, with his face full of awe but also apprehension, and Diluc only ever looks at him like he sees the awe.
That’s another thing he’s not really sure what to do with, the way he can see more with one eye looking than anyone else can with two. Not only in the dark, but right down to the heart of things, of people, in a way the citizens of Teyvat cannot seem to.
A blessing, his father called it—their keenness and their understanding—after a lot of prodding, and only because he didn’t have a better word to share with Kaeya. His voice was full of scorn and appreciation at the same time, nothing of the divine on his mind like it so often is with people here.
Perhaps that is why they cannot see things like Kaeya can, because they are touched by a divinity that means they don’t have to look, because their vision is clouded by it.
Sometimes he wishes Diluc could see a little better, could see the apprehension, too.
But the way Diluc looks at him—with all that love, so much that he’s bursting with it—it makes him want to be that person Diluc sees. It makes him want to forget he was someone before, forget he’s someone now , someone that the Ragnvindrs don’t quite know.
Kaeya so often finds himself wanting their ignorance and their unrestrained affections. The jealousy that wells up inside him is enough to make him hate them, but it never manages to take that step, just leaves him greedy and yearning. And he knows that something like this is too big to give up, that being rid of it would leave him wanting, it would leave him without a part of himself.
Diluc shifts away from him, then begins to nervously flit around the room, pulling open drawers and tossing their contents around.
“What are you looking for?” Kaeya asks.
“Your coat,” Diluc says. He slams a drawer. “You can’t wear your blanket outside.”
“You’ll wake everyone up like that,” Kaeya sighs, and Diluc closes the next drawer a bit quieter. “It’s on the back of the closet door.”
Back at his side, Diluc grins. “So do you want to check it out?”
“Yes,” he answers. He doesn’t want to wait another minute, but his joints still feel frozen.
“Okay.” Diluc gently guides Kaeya out of the way as he closes the window back up. The coldness from outside lingers even after. “Now you finish getting ready and meet us downstairs.”
“Us?” he echoes.
But Diluc doesn’t answer. He just says, “Don’t take too long.”
With that, he leaves Kaeya alone at the window. He spares one last long glance at the snowfall, quietly hoping it will last the journey downstairs, before shoving on his boots and coat and leaving his room.
Crepus and Diluc are waiting at the bottom of the stairs, both half dressed for the cold and half for bed. Diluc is eagerly hanging off his father’s arm while Crepus covers a yawn. He smiles a sleepy smile when he sees Kaeya, but it still makes his chest go warm. He holds out his free hand and Kaeya takes it.
“You two are so slow,” Diluc complains. He tugs a little on Crepus’ sleeve until they’re closer to the door. “Let’s go already.”
“Slow down, sunshine,” Crepus chastises gently. “There’s no need to rush.”
“It’ll melt,” Diluc argues, but Crepus bends down to fix a button on Kaeya’s coat.
He feels his cheeks flush. “I was in a hurry.”
Crepus rests a hand on his head when he finishes. “It will wait for us.”
True to Crepus’ word, it does.
Kaeya hesitates, when Diluc finally throws open the door and tumbles outside. He makes it to the edge of the porch without much fuss, but the step off it—it feels too big, like taking that step means crossing a line he can never return.
The harvest season is over. He’s known that for a while, since they all packed up their bags and moved out of the winery for the year. But somehow this feels more significant than that. Everything here is still so new, but he’s growing used to it and to hiding his surprise and his unease and everything else along with it.
Crepus’ hand is warm around his, especially against the cold chill in the air. It’s much too cold out here, even for Kaeya, who spent his childhood outside of the sun’s glow, colder than Mondstadt should be, the winds harsher and less welcoming than he has come to know.
He squeezes it, when he notices that Kaeya is falling a bit behind, but it’s Diluc who pulls him the rest of the way outside, who shows him how to catch snowflakes on his tongue, insists Kaeya did it even when he doesn’t taste anything, then explains all the things they can do when there is proper snow on the ground—go sledding and make snow angels and drink hot chocolate and tell each other ghost stories.
Crepus smiles softly and warns him not to get too loud, so Diluc’s chatter continues in exaggerated whispers.
It doesn’t take long for Diluc to yawn and rub his eye with the hand that’s not holding Kaeya’s, but he refuses to go inside when Crepus suggests it. Instead, they find a spot together on a bench just outside the house.
They must make a funny sight—all in their nice winter coats and boots and pajama pants, Kaeya snuggled in the middle of the two of them for warmth, with snow falling but melting before it reaches the ground.
“Are you awake?” Crepus asks in a low voice, soon after Diluc has decided to make Kaeya’s shoulder a pillow and his breathing has turned into soft snores.
“Mmm,” Kaeya answers, because he is, but he doesn’t think he will be for very long.
Crepus is quiet for a long moment before he continues. When he does, it is quieter than it was before, like he knows somehow that this is a secret that must be kept between them. “Have you seen this before?”
There is something sharp there, knowledgeable in a way Kaeya knows well, and yet none of his suspicion is directed against Kaeya.
It’s unclear, sometimes, how much Crepus knows about him and his life before. Sometimes it feels like he can see right through him, and other times remind him how good a liar he can be.
He thinks, on occasion, that Crepus’ vision is a little clearer than most of the people in Teyvat’s, unburdened by the same things that cloud their sight—not entirely, because if it was, he doesn’t think he’d be allowed to stay, but enough that he sees through some of Kaeya’s secrets.
“Not really,” he says, and swallows down some of the nerves that creep into his voice.
Crepus hums in response.
“What do you think of it?” he says after a minute. His voice sounds different than before, less calculating but not gone entirely, losing it by the syllable.
“It’s pretty.”
“This is Diluc’s favorite time of year.”
Diluc shifts when he hears his name, and Kaeya shivers at the loss of heat. “Not yours?”
“Well, I get a better night’s sleep in the summer,” Crepus answers. Kaeya snorts. “But it’s beautiful.”
He can’t help but agree, even if his hands are icy where they fit into Diluc’s and the wind feels more bitter than it normally does.
It’s times like this when he wishes Mondstadt moved a bit slower, when he hates how quick it is to change, even though that is part of why he’s grown to like it so much. He knows how unfair of him it is to hate it for that, when he knows how fallible and adaptable this land of wind and song is and that’s all he wanted Khaenri’ah to be when it was so adamant about sending him away.
He likes to be here, he wants to be here, in this moment with Crepus and Diluc, who treat him like a son and a brother even though it will be a long time until he is either to them, unburdened by a past he grieves and a future he fears. He wants to be happy here.
And he is—happy, here. It’s a mournful kind of happiness, too big for him to hold in his body so it presses up against the sides so eagerly that it hurts him, accompanied by guilt just starting to ferment.
It wasn’t like that with his father, where every bit of love was precious, because they knew how finite it was, where every smile was treasured and rare, because they only got so many.
He wishes his father were here to see this with him, to tell him how to feel about it, to be the one to smile at Kaeya’s delight. He wonders if his father feels as alone as he does now, if he had the same awful, uncertain love in his heart that Kaeya knows so well, and that is why he was always so careful around him. The thought makes his chest ache and, like most things, he pushes it away.
Mostly, he wishes it could all hurt a little less.
There is a strange comfort in the way Crepus rests his hand on his arm, familiar in a way that makes him sick with shame but also makes him feel like he’s found something he’s been looking for a long time. It is gentle, and he leans into the touch, chasing the warmth even though Diluc is on fire beside him, and he suddenly realizes how tired he still is.
“It will only last for a while longer,” he says. “We’ll be lucky to see it in the morning.”
“Oh,” Kaeya says, but his eyes are already closed and he has seen the last of the snow for tonight already.
“Chin up,” he says. “Next time it snows, we’ll make time to go visit it.”
“Promise?”
“I do.” Kaeya rests his head on his shoulder. He will fall asleep any second now, but he tries to stave it off for Crepus. “Hey, sweetheart?”
“Hmm?”
“I’m glad I got to see it with you.”
Kaeya presses a little closer into him, still trying to capture all the warmth he promises, and mumbles something like, “Me, too.”