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It’s April thirtieth. Diluc is nine years old.
It’s a joyously sunny afternoon. Crystalflies drift above the grapevines lazily outside, catching the light and sending a smattering of rainbow colors through the windows and onto the floor of the manor. Diluc grins gap-toothed when he blows out the candles on his cake and is met with a round of applause.
“What’d you wish for, ‘Luc?” Kaeya leans over his left shoulder, standing on his tip-toes in order to see over him at the cake — vanilla, smothered in buttercream and laden with halved strawberries. A lick of smoke curls from the blackened wicks. Adelinde stands proudly at the other end of the table. He’ll have to thank for for all her hard work later.
“He can’t tell you! That’ll make the wish not come true!” Pipes up Jean on his right, cradling her baby sister Barbara, who’s wagging a chubby finger at the cake and cooing around her pacifier.
“What? I’ve never heard of that!” Kaeya exclaims.
“It’s true. Birthday wishes are top-secret,” Daddy says from behind him. Diluc turns to look, and Daddy offers a wink.
Daddy usually looks tired, and is often grumpy, but today he looks… different. Full of energy and enthusiasm which Diluc doesn’t often see, and it’s a gift in and of itself.
In truth, Diluc hadn’t made a wish. As Daddy cuts into the cake and offers him an indulgent wedge, he feels like there’s nothing in the world that could make him happier.
It’s April thirtieth. Diluc is eighteen years old.
It was supposed to be exciting. He was supposed to be a man today. Father wouldn’t be here for most of it — a shipment he needed to personally see out, he explained — but it didn’t matter. He was disappointed, sure, but he wouldn’t let it ruin his birthday.
Diluc’s induction into adulthood, it turns out, is plunging the end of his claymore into Father’s body.
Clouds grow heavy in the sky, but he doesn’t notice. All he sees is red.
It’s April thirtieth. Diluc has been eighteen years old for twenty-two hours. He leaves Kaeya, rain-soaked and bleeding, in the mud. Clutched in his fist, Kaeya’s new Vision pulses with nervous Cryo. Diluc’s burns.
He runs inside the house. Kaeya will never call this place home again.
It’s April thirtieth. Diluc wakes with a pounding headache and a crick in his neck so sharp he feels like he’s been stepped on.
He peels his face off of his desk with a grimace, a sheet of parchment coming unstuck and fluttering down to meet the others. He vaguely remembers working his way through a pile of letters and invoices he’d let accumulate, having decided that right then was when he needed to deal with them. He hadn’t made it to bed last night — or the night before, for that matter. Dilic prides himself on his work ethic; he could not let it fail now.
He recalls how, as his quill had danced across paper, the lamplight cast its flickering shadow in the shape of monsters from his old life. His birthday is like the witching hour that allows those monsters to permeate the boundary between the real world and the nightmare realm he wishes he could leave behind.
But he’s learned to live with them. The past is the past — sometimes it comes to knock on the door, but rarely invites itself in.
There are better things to occupy oneself with than what can no longer be changed.
He blinks the sleep out of his eyes. It’s obnoxiously bright today. He cranes his aching neck to the window that looks out of his study onto the vineyard, but he doesn’t really see it.
It’s his birthday. It hadn’t quite set in before.
He groans and buries his face back in the pile of invoices. He does not want to do this right now.
He remembers one birthday, many years ago, that was this sunny. It makes his heart ache, but it’s the ache of an old wound, numb and bitter; an ache he’s used to. He pushes it to the back of his mind.
He’s almost fallen back asleep when a knock startles him upright. “Master Diluc?”
He grunts and pushes himself out of his chair, which promptly tips onto the ground. He curses, but chooses to neglect it. “Coming,” he says, and he bemoans how hoarse his voice sounds.
He swings open the door and there’s Adelinde, supporting a platter of tea and kartoffelpuffer in one hand. The smile on her face quickly turns into a look of disapproval as she scrutinizes him.
“Are those the clothes you wore yesterday?” Her eyes wander up and down his body. He feels sweat begin to form on the back of his neck.
He clears his throat. “I’m choosing to rewear them.”
That excuse isn’t congruent with his loose, frizzy hair; his day’s worth of stubble; or his probably bruise-deep eye bags. Adelinde narrows her eyes. “Right. I know you didn’t change for bed, Master Diluc. I figured you came to your study early this morning — but you never left, did you?”
Guilty as charged. She clearly doesn’t know he hadn’t slept the previous night either, and Diluc would like to keep it that way. He says, “Thank you for breakfast and tea, Adelinde. If you’ll excuse me, I have work I must return to.”
Adelinde sighs and shakes her head. “I don’t know why I bother with you. Always the workaholic; and on your birthday, no less.”
“Yes, it’s my birthday. It’s just like any other day of the year, no? My obligations do not halt because I was born today.”
They both know it’s not like any other day of the year, but neither of them say it. Adeelinde looks conflicted — like it’s not her place to tell him what to do, but motherly instinct yearns to nonetheless. What she does instead is hand him the platter and say, “Call for me if you need anything,” and with a swish of her skirt she’s gone.
Alone once again, he eyes the kartoffelpuffer warily, and the smell makes his stomach churn. It was a childhood favorite of his, once upon a time, and family tradition that he ate it on his birthday. Inextricably, he has no appetite; but vows to do his breakfast justice for Adelinde’s sake anyways. At his desk he pours himself a cup of tea and cuts a bite of the food. It’s positively flavorless and the tea is like warm water, but he knows that’s not on Adelinde. He hasn’t been able to taste anything in two days.
He turns back to his invoices.
Hours tick by. He struggles through his paperwork; goes into town to meet with a prospective business partner; et cetera, et cetera. He tries not to think, to just go through the motions of living because if he stops for even a second, he’ll lose his momentum. He can’t afford to do that.
He mostly succeeds. Mostly. If he thinks he sees Father in the corner of his eye, or the round-bellied merchant from Snezhnaya whose hand he shakes briefly looks like a Fatui Hydrogunner, those illusions are gone after a blink. His head feels like a balloon, trailing six feet behind the rest of his body and attached by a string. If he moves his eyes too quickly, his heart palpitates for a moment. He manages to keep himself on autopilot, saying things he won’t remember saying; and by the gods, that’s enough.
He does not think.
When the sun begins to sink low in the sky, he goes to the Angel’s Share.
Charles had offered to cover his shift tonight, given that it would be his birthday. Diluc refused, because as he told Adelinde, there was nothing about today which made him worthy of celebration. Some part of him regrets that now, the promise he made when he was running on more sleep, but it’s no matter. He’s a man of his word, damn it.
He fumbles with his keys. His eyes refuse to focus, but he unlocks the door after some difficulty and stumbles through the entryway. The bell jingles and it sounds like a shattering glass, and he flinches. He turns on the lights and he flinches. He starts putting down chairs and he flinches.
He does not think.
He does not think.
Customers trickle in slowly, which is a mercy on his throbbing head. Hardly anyone talks to him other than to order their drinks; and not even Venti is here tonight, thankfully. He knows he can’t handle Venti. None of them wish him happy birthday, because they don’t know to.
Time moves like lightning and is also agonizingly slow; he feels that he is in his body and watching it from the outside. He pours an expensive rice wine imported from Liyue for a patron and he does not think. He mixes a mocktail for a little girl with her father and he does not think.
Father…
He does not think.
The Angel’s Share is a major artery in Mondstadt; and as the city begins to fall asleep, the Tavern’s visitors become fewer, quieter, and drunker. He does not like drunkenness, but if it means he has an excuse to start kicking people out, he’ll take it. He yearns to be alone.
He’s endured for the last several hours. He bobs, weightless, in the current.
The bell above the door jingles. He starts, and realizes he’s been falling asleep upright against the bar. He follows dark pants and a white dress shirt up to a dark face framed by sleek, blue hair. His heart skips a beat — Kaeya doesn’t come every day, but of course he would today. Of course.
“We’re closing soon,” Diluc says. He reaches blindly for a wet glass and a rag to dry it with. “We” is just him; and his only customer now, he realizes, is Kaeya. Everyone else has blessedly left.
Kaeya smiles. “I’ll make myself scarce soon, don’t worry.” He slides onto one of the barstools and rests his cheek on one hand. “One Death After Noon, if you will. On my tab.”
Diluc doesn’t say anything. He pours the drink and it shakes when he sets it down on the bar.
Kaeya hums and picks up the glass by the stem. he swirls the liquid inside and says, “You look positively terrible, Diluc.”
Diluc, not Master Diluc, because they’re alone. “That’s awfully rude,” Diluc mutters.
“I don’t mean to offend — It’s simply an observation. When was the last time you slept? Or ate?”
“You’d like to know.” It’s a non-answer and Kaeya doesn’t seem to like it.
“I just wish you would take care of yourself,” he sighs, and Archons does he sound like Adelinde. “Father wouldn’t want you to run yourself into the ground like this.”
Diluc hears the glass shatter on the floor.
The world stands still for a moment. Neither of them speak, move, or breathe.
“Don’t.” the voice he hears doesn’t sound like his own. “Do not invoke Father in such a way.”
Kaeya’s eye is blown wide in shock. “I’m… sorry,” he says. “Are… are you—?”
The room starts to spin, like he’s in the eye of a tornado. He stumbles into the bar and clutches it like a vice, trying to steady himself. Kaeya jumps up from his stool and comes around the bar and reaches for—
Diluc sees white. He throws a wild punch and he knows it lands because Kaeya wheels back with a cry.
Diluc doesn’t care. The world is moving but he is rooted in place; his blood roars in his ears like crashing waves. It’s all coming apart now, and as his breathing grows heavier he tries to gather himself together in his hands but he’s, he can’t, Father is—
Father is dead. Diluc killed him. He sinks to the floor and slaps a hand to his mouth.
He can’t, he can’t think, he won’t, he…
Colors whirl and shapes deconstruct. It’s raining, he’s covered in blood, Father’s eyes are vacant. “I’m sorry,” Diluc babbles, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”
he feels the weight of days without sleep crash onto his shoulders. He fucked up; He wasn’t going to think about it but it’s, It’s his birthday. He murdered his father. He murdered his brother, too, and—
“Diluc!” There are hands around his wrists and he shrieks and writhes like a spooked horse, but Kaeya is strong, and Kaeya…
He gasps and blinks and Kaeya’s there, pinning him to the wall behind the counter, his eye watery and a steady flow of blood coming out of his nose. “You need to calm down,” Kaeya pleads, and he sounds scared. Diluc’s lungs can’t expand fast enough.
“Father,” he sobs, his voice cracked and raw. Kaeya’s eye bores into his own. “F… Kaeya.”
“That’s right.” Kaeya’s arms stop shaking with the strain of holding Diluc. “Come on, get ahold of yourself, Brother. Deep breath in, yeah? With me?”
Diluc gulps and nods. Kaeya exaggerates a deep inhale, and Diluc tries his best to follow. Kaeya splays one of Diluc’s hands over his heart and Diluc feels it, thumping and alive, and with a part of him sandwiched between his brother’s chest and warm, calloused hand, something inside him breaks and breaks hard.
He throws himself into Kaeya’s chest and keens. Kaeya wraps his arms around him as he trembles.
Father used to hold him like this. He used to hold Kaeya like this, when they were young and didn’t hate each other.
Do they hate each other?
He realizes then how dry he’s felt, like a continent of hot desert mud that’s been breaking apart. He’s dry, and he thought his misery would dry up with it, but it only festered and burned inside him.
How stupid he’s been. How utterly, utterly stupid. He curls tighter into Kaeya and shudders.
“…Luc?”
Diluc groans and breathes in a lungful of musk — vanilla and cedar and something else, like ice crystals on the surface of Cider Lake. He gropes and finds a hand to grasp, and tries to struggle upright. If his head hurt before, it’s a whole lot worse now.
“Where is… what…?” His frontal lobe feels stuffed with cotton.
“You awake, Sleeping Beauty?” Asks Kaeya’s disembodied voice, with just a lilt of a tease. The world starts to make sense again.
“Definitely awake,” Diluc grumbles — he hadn’t realized he’d fallen asleep… or whatever that was. He parts with Kaeya’s middle and looks around; the Tavern is still empty, as far as he can tell from where they’re hidden away. As he fumbles, his hand lands in the wrong spot on the hardwood and he yelps, flipping it over to find a shard of glass embedded in his palm.
“Yeah, me too,” Kaeya says, still above him. “I’m pretty sure there’s some in my knees. I’ll clean it up later, don’t worry.”
“Your…” Diluc trails his eyes up to Kaeya’s face, landing in particular on his discolored, bloody nose, and if he focuses his eyes he thinks he sees it curving awkwardly in one direction. That’s right, he… “Shit. Archons, Kaeya, I’m—“
“Save it,” Kaeya says, almost nonchalantly. “I deserve to get punched in the face every now and then. It keeps me humble.”
“That’s stupid,” Diluc protests. “At least let me…” Do something, but he doesn’t know what. Clean his brother’s face? What if he hurts him? He doesn’t know how to splint a broken nose or anything, either…
“No, really, it’s fine.” Now he’s really waving him off. He chews on his split lip (wait, Diluc split his lip?) and goes to stand. Sure enough, a couple of glass shards unstick from his shins and a few… don’t.
“Mngh. Fuck, that’s… sorry.” Diluc has to look away. The guilt rolls over him in a wave of heat.
“Archons, do you ever stop apologizing? It’s out of character for you.” Kaeya bends down and offers him a hand, which he accepts gratefully.
“I haven’t been feeling very… in-character, as of late,” Diluc admits, the first time he’s said it to anyone. It feels good to get it off of himself. Strange and very foreign, but good.
Kaeya hums thoughtfully. “Is it about Father?”
His heart does a loop-de-loop inside his chest cavity. “Yeah,” he says dumbly.
“I know birthdays are hard for you.” He helps Diluc upright, and when Diluc threatens to tilt to the side, head spinning, Kaeya wraps an arm around his waist. Wordlessly, intuitively, like a telekinetic exchange. “I wish you weren’t so hard on yourself, though. And I mean what I said earlier — at risk of being punched again, Father wouldn’t have wanted that for you, either.”
Diluc knows he’s right. He knows, and yet he finds it hard to believe. He settles on, “Mm-hmm.” He realizes then how bone-deep-tired he must sound.
“It’s late,” says Kaeya softly, gently. Like Father, almost. “Let’t clean up that cut on your hand and get you to bed, yeah?”
“Winery’s far away,” Diluc thinks aloud. He hadn’t been planning to go to bed tonight, exactly, and had planned to stay in the city late in accordance with that.
“We’re not going to the Winery. We’re going to my apartment.”
Diluc freezes. They’re… “What?”
“Well, obviously.” Kaeya smiles reassuringly, the kind of smile you can see in someone’s mouth but not their eyes. “That’s the closest option. I’m certainly not lugging you out of the city by myself at this hour.”
“I haven’t...” Diluc gestures vaguely at the Tavern, “closed up yet.”
“That can wait for tomorrow. You’re not going to lift a finger until you get a good night’s sleep for once.”
And so he lets himself be dragged into the night, through winding streets and to Kaeya’s apartment. They’re not so far away, he realizes, which is awfully convenient given how Diluc can barely stand. Kaeya unlocks the door and they step into a cool, dark place, and Diluc has to resist the urge to immediately collapse.
Kaeya flicks on the lights, which illuminates a modest-looking living room that hardly looks lived in at all. The couch’s pillows are fluffed in a way that suggests they haven’t been laid on in ages and the book on the coffee table has a fine layer of dust on its surface; like it’s perpetually about to be read and never will be. If Diluc weren’t so tired, he’d feel a sort of… melancholy, being here; as if he had stepped into a memory he still isn’t quite able to recall.
“You can take the bed. I have some spare clothes you can borrow — also, please take a shower. You smell like a mitachurl.” Kaeya disentangles himself from Diluc and goes to the kitchen, grabbing a glass and filling it with water.
Choosing to ignore the slight, Diluc says, “Why am I taking the bed? It’s your bed.”
“Please, you’re the one who looks like he hasn’t slept in years. I’ll be just fine on the couch.” He turns off the tap and comes back to the living room, and offers Diluc the glass. He realizes, then, that he hasn’t had anything to drink since this morning.
Diluc notices, again, the blood on Kaeya’s face. “I really am… sorry, about your nose.”
Kaeya sighs. “Okay, fine. I accept your apology. I’ll go to the Cathedral in the morning, if it placates you. Now go shower.”
He obeys.
As much as he hates to admit it, the water feels amazing, dousing his overworked body; a brief and wonderful respite from the exhaustion he imposes on himself. He tries to make it quick, as to not waste Kaeya’s hot water, but his hands are sluggish in his hair and he feels seconds away from succumbing to his weariness. The cut on his hand, he notices, has stopped bleeding; but what had dried on his skin makes the water run a gross orange-pink. He goes through the motions of what he thinks is acceptable effort in cleaning oneself, and steps out of the shower.
The mirror hasn’t quite fogged over, and for the first time in days he sees himself: unkept stubble, wiry brows, eye bags and crow’s feet. Kaeya was right; he really does look terrible. It’s a disgusting and fascinating thing from which he can’t look away. Is this what he’d been showing to the world?
He can’t look away.
He looks away.
Kaeya’s bedroom is across the hall from the bathroom. It’s small and not much more lived-in than anywhere else in his apartment, and on his neatly-folded bedsheets are some neatly-folded bed clothes. He examines a soft shirt and flannel pants, and puts them on. They smell like Kaeya too.
His brother’s still in the living room, in his bloodied day-clothes, but it seems he at least cleaned up his face. He hears Diluc’s footsteps and turns, and puts on that weird fake smile. There’s a first-aid kit on the table.
“Well, you certainly look more presentable. Let me see your hand, now.” He pats the spot on the couch next to him and Diluc obliges.
As Kaeya takes Diluc’s hand in both of his, poking and prodding with antiseptic, Diluc remembers the glass in Kaeya’s legs. “You got cut too,” he murmurs.
“I picked it out. Nothing to worry about.” Kaeya’s still got on that strange, grotesque smile, and Diluc snaps.
“Damn it, Kaeya, why are you doing this to yourself?”
Kaeya flinches. His breath catches in his throat. “Doing what, dear brother?”
Diluc snorts. “Pretending. Smiling in that disgusting way. Tending to the little cut on my hand and not your damn broken nose.” He laughs, crazed and exhausted. “I know how hard today is for you, too. Don’t lie to yourself, because I can see through it and it’s just— it’s just sad. The world doesn’t revolve around me, so stop acting like it.”
Kaeya sets down the cotton ball with a shaking hand. He hangs his head and chuckles, breathlessly, and it sounds broken. “I’m sorry, Diluc. I’m sorry I’ve… done this to you.”
…Done this to him? “What the hell does that mean?” He asks incredulously. “You didn’t do anything. None of this is your fault.” He grabs Kaeya’s shoulder and shakes it, shakes the words into him because he means them, goddamn it.
“That’s not true.”
“I don’t care what you tell yourself; I think it’s a load of shit.”
“I killed Father.”
“I killed Father! You had nothing to do with it!” He’s yelling now, his voice hoarse and wavering. “I killed him. That was me. Not you.” He feels his eyes well up with tears, again, and wonders how deep that well goes. “Don’t blame yourself for something you had nothing to do with.”
“He would’ve hated me if he knew.” Kaeya’s tears run freely. “He would’ve hated his, his stupid b-bastard Khaenri’ahn son.”
”Yeah? He would’ve hated me for kicking his stupid bastard Kharnri’ahn son out.” It’s so morbidly funny he laughs again. “He would’ve— would’ve killed me right back.”
Kaeya sobs and hiccups and giggles. “We’re pathetic. We’re really fucking pathetic, aren’t we?”
Diluc wraps himself around Kaeya as they cry. It feels warm and cold and wet and dry and inescapably, irreconcilably tragic.
Something buried within him, though, is relieved. For the first time in his life, someone is there to take some of the weight off his shoulders.
The clock chimes midnight. It’s May first. Diluc doesn’t have to be alone anymore.