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“It looks like someone’s left you quite a few gifts,” says Kaeya, a shadow at her door.
Jean looks up. He’s standing: eyes shaded from the evening sunlight with the stack of papers he holds in his right hand, blue-tinted vision gleaming as he leans on the doorway with easy grace. His line of sight leads clearly to the open drawer of her desk, where red-ribboned packages lay in overflowing piles, and he raises his eyebrows in silent question as he approaches.
“Noelle’s work,” Jean says in way of explanation, leaning back in her chair. Her mouth tugs upwards slightly to mirror his own smile, and she pulls the drawer back fully as he grows close. He catches the pens that consequently slip off the edge of her desk — deposits them neatly next to the stacks of paperwork she’d been reviewing. “They’re leftover kieselstein cakes she’d made for Klee.”
“Leftovers,” Kaeya says, faintly dubious, mostly amused. ”All of these?”
“So she’d said.”
“And how many boxes did she give Klee?”
“Three,” admits Jean, which makes Kaeya laugh, or something close to laughing; there’s this sound that he makes like breathing, a soft puff of air on the exhale. His head ducks forward slightly. He’s nicked his left ear on something, she notes absentmindedly: there’s a pink scratch on it, a few dulled red dots. She tries to frown sternly at him, can’t quite manage it — he doesn’t begrudge her the effort, and taps the edge of his knuckle lightly against the sliver of exposed wood on her desk in return.
“Well,” he says, “If it had been more, you would’ve doubtless had even more incidents to review, Master Jean.”
The memory of the last time that Klee had overindulged in sweets makes Jean wince, though enough time has passed that she’s mostly inured — the sound of explosions had made her ears ring for days afterward, and from the amount of knights haggardly frequenting the infirmary, she hadn’t been the only one. But Amber and Sucrose had been sincerely repentant afterwards, Albedo had made it a point to monitor Klee’s sugar intake from then on, and Kaeya had added another rule onto one of Klee’s lists.
Nowadays, the Knights of Favonius know well enough to not sneak Klee sweets. Jean had considered giving a few more to her, just because Noelle had given her so many, but even so— “I can’t finish these by myself,” she says, casting a hapless eye over the veritable flood of carefully-wrapped cakes Noelle had given her. “Would you like some?”
“They’re not very large,” muses Kaeya thoughtfully, accepting the box she sets on the desk. It looks odd next to his gloves, the rose-patterned ribbon and the glittery lid: the pastry thuds softly against its confines as he picks it up, shifting his paperwork into the crevice of his right arm to examine it.
She catches a glimpse of something about Treasure Hoarders, which is his jurisdiction, though it’s not (strictly speaking) under the purview of a cavalry captain; it had fallen to her, when Varka had left, and then suddenly it hadn’t, when the reports came in under his name. She hadn’t told him to stop — he’d told her, I know I don’t have to.
“They’re dense,” Jean explains, glancing briefly at him. Her pen slots in her palm. “That’s why they’re named after rocks. You haven’t had them before?”
“I’ve heard of them,” says Kaeya. He leans back; she can feel the air of the room move with him, subtle. He shoots a glance at her, seeking wordless permission; she inclines her head, watching him, and the ribbon falls from the wrapping to reveal a round brown cake underneath. “Aren’t they for children?”
“For when you’re learning how to fly,” Jean answers, turning her attention to the paper in front of her. Amber’s handwriting, neat at the beginning of her form, begins to grow crooked at the end; the paper itself is faintly bumpy, like she’d filled it out against a stone wall. In a few areas, her handwriting is completely illegible. Jean frowns, rummaging around the haphazard mess around her: she’s certain she put the blank version somewhere around here. “It’s tradition to make them.”
He hums in acknowledgement. “I would have thought that Albedo would have wanted to make them for her.”
“It’s not a familial tradition,” says Jean distractedly. She pushes her hair out of her eyes with one hand. Where is it? Maybe under the menu Sara had asked her to review… “Usually, someone who can already fly makes them. Someone with a glider’s license,” she corrects, though the tradition on its own mentions no such thing; early Mondstadtians hadn’t accounted for things like paperwork and aerial safety. She’s not certain Albedo has one himself, though she’s never asked him. On the other hand, her suspicion that he uses a glider regardless has a little more surety to it. “It’s supposed to demonstrate a responsibility for that person.”
“In case they fall?”
“Not legally,” Jean automatically clarifies, who’d had to firmly mediate several heated arguments between residents and explain that local customs were not necessarily equivalent to declarations of government-recognized culpability. She opens another drawer, bending down to peruse the contents. “But yes. That’s why they’re so heavy; they’re meant to weigh you down.”
“That seems fairly counterintuitive,” says Kaeya, his voice slightly above her; she looks up, and he nudges a somewhat creased sheet of paper towards her. Outrider Equipment Registration Form.
“You’re supposed to have less every time,” says Jean, gratefully accepting it. The first parts are easy to fill out: name, position, date; so familiar as to be rote. “But at first, they’re given so they can’t be too far from you — with the stones in their stomach, the wind can’t carry them away.”
For a while, Kaeya doesn’t say anything. She looks up to see if he’s still there: and he is, standing a bit away from her desk — he has a habit of positioning himself so his covered eye is closer to her. It’s harder to read his face like that, but she thinks she’s gotten better at it, over the years, though there are times when she still can’t be certain what he’s thinking: what he wants to say.
Amber used to complain to her about it, the same way she complained about Eula and Albedo and even Lisa, once upon a time: people who smiled at her or challenged her to a duel or answered her questions with polite, carefully-detached understanding; people she couldn’t read as easily as they read her. I can never tell what he’s thinking! Lisa had pitched in, nostalgic — he used to be easier to read when he was younger, and Jean, holding a cup of tea in her hand, faintly bemused: isn’t he just the same?
It had been them who had grown closer to Kaeya over time, not him who had become easier to see; she’d started spotting him by the glint of his eye, now, rather than the glint of his earring, the flash of his blue hair. It wasn’t so much as what Kaeya said or didn’t say or wanted to say, but rather how he said it, she’d told Amber, where the reply had been but he says everything the exact same way, which Jean hadn’t disagreed with, but that had been the crux of it, really — that it wasn’t about her. She hadn’t been able to articulate that.
She says: “Kaeya?”
He startles a little at the sound of her voice. She sets the form down, reaching towards him: pauses, her hand hovering over the edge of her desk. Her body is tensed as if she’s about to stand. Her gaze tilts so she can see more of his face, not just him in profile; he moves with it, catches her head-on. The smile on his face doesn’t form on his features so much as it’s already there, absent-minded in its conception.
“Ah,” he says. “It’s nothing, Acting Grandmaster. I was just thinking.”
“It’s melting,” says Jean, slightly at a loss at what else to say. Kaeya blinks, looks down. His uncovered fingers glisten with melted chocolate, thick enough to begin to collect in globules; it’ll run down the crevices between his glove, she thinks, and snap stickily between his skin and the leather. Pauses, tries to think of a way to say this without it sounding — strange. Patronizing, maybe, like a scold.
It’s too late, though: Kaeya’s eaten it, his mouth creasing a little at the taste. Her fingers twitch.
“It’s good,” he says, half a beat later — his tongue swipes over his teeth behind his closed lips, a flash of weight underneath that smooth skin. His mouth quirks up at the corners; he glances at his left hand, still stained with sweetness. She can tell he’s thinking about licking it off. If Jean had napkins, she’d offer them: but she doesn’t, even accustomed as she is to eating in her office. It didn’t seem necessary before. Then — there’s a handkerchief in her coat. “Klee must have liked them.”
“She did,” Jean says. The color pouring in through the windows, previously a pale, warm gold, transforms into vivid molten orange. Her palms feel warm underneath her gloves; she pushes her chair back as she stands, her shadow rising, falling over Kaeya. “She asked Albedo if she could have them even after she learned how to fly.”
“What did he tell her?”
“Only if she was good.”
“Hm,” Kaeya says very deliberately, in the voice of someone thinking of sneaking treats to Klee.
Jean turns around; the guileless look he sports has already settled on his face by the time she’s looked at him. His features transform into curiosity. Her coat folds itself neatly over the shape of her arm: she crosses the room to him, the heels of her shoes tapping neatly against the floor. The edge of the hem bumps into Kaeya’s knee when she stops in front of him — draws itself back, like the tide against the shore.
“For your hand,” she says, and offers him the square of fabric.
It’s an austere piece of white fabric trimmed in pale gold, the classic monogram forsaken in favor of the Gunnhildr crest. Her mother’s choice. Frederica had the other half of the pair: she’d had it made when she knew she was having a daughter, the same way that her grandmother had commissioned one for her mother. Jean had asked her, before, why she hadn’t had their names embroidered on them — what if we get ours mixed up? — but her mother had looked at her, and she had understood it had been a silly question.
Kaeya takes it in hand: his clean one, bending forward so he doesn’t spill his things. His thumb rubs over the fabric; Jean steps back, instinctive, and turns her head slightly, resting her hand on the edge of her desk, her body still facing Kaeya. He’s holding it. From the corner of her peripheral vision, she see the work on her desk slightly (more) askew, a chocolate-stained thumbprint against the top page of the pile Kaeya’s carrying. The pen that Lisa got her for her birthday, embossed with golden flowers, hidden underneath the edge of a folder.
“It’s clean,” says Jean after a moment, guessing at the reason behind his hesitance.
Of all things, that’s what makes Kaeya laugh again, which is how she knows she got it wrong. He shakes his head a little with the motion, his earring swaying, and presses the fabric against the creases of his hands, the swell of his knuckles, the slope of his fingers. The empty box he’s still holding thuds against the metal detailing of his top.
“I know,” he says.