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Twenty-three years.
Twenty-three years is a long time for someone to be alive, Kaeya thinks. Especially having suffered the way he has.
By his first birthday, he had been heralded as the key to saving their forsaken nation.
By his seventh birthday, his mother had driven a blade through her own heart.
By his tenth birthday, his father had abandoned him in a place called Mondstadt in the pouring rain with empty words of a chance and an only hope.
By his twelfth birthday, he had found a place to call home and a people to call his family.
By his fourteenth birthday, he, an outlander, had been accepted into the ranks of the Knights of Favonius after passing the entrance exam with flying colors.
By his eighteenth birthday, he was alone all over again.
And now, five years later, the date is the thirtieth of November once more. Kaeya is twenty-three now, and yet he feels no reason to celebrate. After all, the age of twenty-three only means one thing to him—twenty-three years he wishes more than anything he could undo.
Twenty-three years of pain and hurt and regret.
Twenty-three years of standing up, only to be knocked back down again and again.
Twenty-three years of loving, only for the people he’s loved to walk out on him again and again.
Twenty-three years out of how many more? How many more years must he suffer through before being graced with death’s loving embrace, welcoming and long-awaited?
Twenty-three years too long has Kaeya lived. And, to be quite honest, he doesn’t really have any desire to make it to his twenty-fourth.
So he curls up on his couch with a glass of wine in hand because hell, he might as well speed up the process, no?
As he sips his wine and loses himself in his own internal musings, a soft knock sounds at the door. Kaeya tenses immediately, setting down his glass and drawing a knife concealed in his sleeve. It’s three o’clock in the morning, after all, and if experience has taught Kaeya anything, it’s that nothing good ever happens past midnight.
The visitor knocks again. Tying his eyepatch over his right eye, Kaeya reluctantly creeps over to the door, blade held out in front of him. After squinting through the one-way peephole he put in three summers ago, the knife falls from Kaeya’s left hand and clatters to the floor as he opens the door and locks eyes with the last person he would have ever expected to be visiting him ever, let alone at three in the morning.
In the foyer stands another man of twenty-three cursed with the misfortune of aging too fast; one whom Kaeya had once called his brother.
Diluc raises his eyes from the cobblestones beneath his feet to meet Kaeya’s gaze. “Hey.”
Kaeya blinks, still in shock. “Hey.”
“Can I come in?”
Hastily recovering his composure, Kaeya gestures inside, inviting Diluc into his house. After removing his shoes at the entrance, Diluc immediately walks over to the coffee table, takes Kaeya’s wine glass, and dumps its contents down the sink.
“Diluc, I was drinking that!”
“That’s exactly the problem.”
Kaeya folds his arms across his chest and glares. “Look, if you’re just here to micromanage me, then you might as well leave. I’m twenty-three; I can take care of myself.”
“You just turned twenty-three”—Diluc casts a glance over at the clock on the wall—“three hours ago.”
Diluc’s statement gives Kaeya pause. He knows it’s stupid, but—
“You remembered,” he breathes.
“Remembered what?”
“That it’s my birthday.”
“Why the hell would I forget your—Kaeya, why do you think I’m here?”
Kaeya shrugs. “I dunno, I figured you needed something. Why else would you be gracing me with your presence at this ungodly hour?”
Diluc sighs heavily. “Kaeya, I’m here because it’s your birthday, and I knew for a fact that if I didn’t show up then you would be sitting awake on your couch, drinking and lamenting your birth.”
Kaeya opens his mouth to protest, but Diluc cuts him off with a raised eyebrow. “Am I wrong?”
“No,” Kaeya admits quietly.
“That’s what I thought.” Still in Kaeya’s kitchen, Diluc yanks the dead flowers out of the vase sitting on the island and unceremoniously tosses them in the garbage. He dumps the dirty water down the sink, refills it, and places a single branch of white orchids in the vase.
The flower’s meaning is not lost on Kaeya. I miss you, they say, and as much as Kaeya wishes he could dismiss it as pure coincidence, he knows his estranged brother well enough to know that Diluc knows a great deal about flower arrangements. Meaning he knew exactly what he was doing.
As per usual, Kaeya does not remark on it. When it comes to Diluc, he’s learned that some things are better left unsaid.
“Kaeya, which one’s your medicine cabinet?” Diluc asks, breaking Kaeya from his reverie.
“Third from the right.”
Diluc opens the cabinet Kaeya referenced and mutters something under his breath before emptying the entire cabinet’s contents. “I’m taking these,” he announces.
“Wha—‘Luc, come on!”
“Your medicine cabinet is a liquor cabinet, Kaeya.”
“Yeah, and isn’t medicine supposed to make you feel better?”
“Kaeya.”
Kaeya looks away guiltily. “I know I don’t always have the most…healthy ways of coping—”
“I don’t want to hear your pathetic excuses, Kaeya,” Diluc interrupts, his tone clipped. “How many times have I told you to take care of yourself?”
“Diluc—”
“I don’t want to hear it,” Diluc snaps. A tense silence fills the air around them. Diluc’s eyes soften. “Kaeya, listen.”
Kaeya raises an eyebrow, still on the defensive but silently inviting Diluc to continue.
“You—” Diluc hesitates as he struggles to find the right words. “I’m worried about you.”
Kaeya blinks. Now that’s certainly not what he had expected to hear.
“I see you constantly working yourself to migraines, I see you trying to function on little more than cat naps, I see you swapping meals for a bottle of vodka—Kae, you’re scaring me.”
Kaeya stares at his feet, furiously blinking back tears. He hasn’t let himself cry since the man standing across the room from him taught him firsthand what the smell of burnt flesh tastes like on his tongue five years ago, and he isn’t about to start now.
“I’m tired of this,” Kaeya mumbles. “I’m tired of pretending like I don’t know you. I’m tired of pretending like we didn’t share a childhood together. I’m tired of—” Kaeya blinks once, and the tears finally fall down his face, fresh and shining like stars in the pale moonlight. “I’m tired of pretending like I don’t miss you. Like I don’t still love you.”
Diluc takes a step forward. Kaeya flinches. Diluc’s eyes widen. “Kaeya?”
“I thought you were gonna hit me.”
Shaking as he desperately struggles to fight back his tears, Diluc wraps his arms around Kaeya in a protective embrace. “Archons—I would never hurt you, Kaeya,” Diluc whispers. “Never again.”
Kaeya’s breath trembles slightly as if he wants to say something. “I like the flowers,” he says eventually, knowing Diluc will understand what he’s really trying to say.
Diluc smiles softly against his brother’s hair. “Happy birthday, Kaeya.”