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It isn’t often that Diluc finds Albedo in the tavern.
To be honest, he doesn’t know if the man even drinks.
They don’t talk much, either of them. Diluc knows that Albedo is a polite, intelligent man. He knows that he’s insanely good at his job. He knows that there is quite a lot wrong with him, but that he poses no danger to the city, and that he might be Kaeya’s favourite person even if he’s never said that out loud.
He knows that he has a little sister who will definitely blow up Teyvat one day, and that watching her with Kaeya makes him feel things that he pretends he doesn’t feel.
He knows a lot about Albedo because he watches him. But they don’t often speak.
Diluc makes a point to not speak to most of Kaeya’s friends.
It feels like crossing a line, to try and get to know any of them. He still speaks to Jean, but Jean had been his friend before she was ever Kaeya’s. He stays far from the rest of them—Rosaria, especially.
And Albedo—
Diluc stays far away from Albedo.
With their father gone, and with Diluc having stabbed a sword into what was left of their brotherhood—Albedo is the closest that Kaeya has to a family.
Kaeya does a good job of hiding it. He comes up with all kinds of plausible reasons to visit Albedo in Dragonspine, he spends an unhealthy amount of time holed up in the alchemist’s office. He loves Klee like his own sister, teaches her to be as big of a nuisance as he is himself, and he tags around with Albedo and Klee so often that they look, in Diluc’s head, like a perfect family.
A family that might accidentally—or purposefully—set the world on fire, but a family nonetheless.
It makes him want to stay as far from Albedo as possible.
He can’t risk infecting the life that Kaeya had managed to scrape back together for himself.
Albedo makes no effort to talk to him, either. He treats Diluc with quiet respect, but never says more to him than what’s absolutely necessary.
And the man very rarely comes to the tavern.
But he’s here today. It’s a celebration—the spirit of Windblume mixed with the relief of having defeated the monsters that threatened to overtake their city. There are quite a few knights here, some of them already drunk out of their minds. Kaeya is here as well, sitting at the back at a table with Rosaria, Venti, and the traveller. He’s smiling wide as they talk, and for once it’s genuine.
Diluc expects Albedo to join them, now that the man is here.
But instead, he settles right at the bar.
“Master Diluc,” he says politely.
“Chief Alchemist,” Diluc says, just as politely.
He waits patiently for Albedo to order, and then pours him his drink.
“Are you not joining the knights?” he asks.
Albedo shakes his head. “I’m fine here.”
Anyone else might have come up with an excuse, to explain why he was fine here instead of with his friends, but Albedo has always been a little odd so he offers nothing.
Diluc lets him be.
Albedo drinks slowly. He nurses his one glass in the time it takes Kaeya and his equally ridiculous friends to order another two bottles. Diluc is getting close to cutting them all off, but it’s been a long day.
It’s been a really long day.
Everyone deserves to let off some steam. To be stupid, for a night.
Especially Albedo.
He nods towards the man’s glass. “Is it not to your taste?”
Albedo blinks, like he’d forgotten where he was. “No, it’s good. I’m just not a heavy drinker.”
“Would you prefer something non-alcoholic?”
Albedo shakes his head. “This is good,” he repeats again.
Diluc decides to let him be again.
If he was anyone else—Charles, for instance—he might have asked Albedo what was wrong. It was very likely that something was wrong, for him to be here at all. For him to be staring into nothing like he didn’t know who he was. But it was also possible that it was just—him.
Albedo had always been a strange one.
It takes another half hour, and another bottle ordered by the insufferable group at the back, before Albedo finally decides to speak.
“How did you know I wasn’t guilty?”
Diluc looks up.
Albedo is watching him with the interest of a scientist. Like the talk of his trial, something that might have been traumatic for any normal person, was just one giant experiment to him.
Diluc glances to the back of the bar, and then back at Albedo. “Kaeya gave it away,” he admits.
Albedo nods slowly. “He does struggle to keep secrets from you.”
Diluc stiffens.
He’s always suspected that Albedo knew exactly what had transpired between the two of them. The man was too perceptive for his own good, and Kaeya was too exaggerated a liar to escape his sharp gaze.
There was no way that the alchemist didn’t know that Diluc had once tried to leave his brother for dead over a secret that he couldn’t handle.
Diluc ignores the implication and shakes his head. “He didn’t tell me anything.”
“He didn’t?”
“No. His performance in the courtroom gave it away.”
There’s a ghost of a smile on Albedo’s face. “It was rather out of character for him to lose a case.”
That—really wasn’t Diluc’s point, but it does stand. Kaeya had made no real attempt to clear Albedo’s guilt. He’d repeated over and over that the bodies hadn’t been found, had poked at Diluc once to ask him what he was doing wandering around his own house, and for the rest of the trial he’d just made a big deal of looking serious.
For a man as intelligent as him—it really was a rather pathetic performance.
“It was,” Diluc agrees, “But it was more out of character that he was so steady.”
Albedo looks at him in surprise.
It must sound insane to him.
Kaeya is known for being a steadfast leader. His calm and cheer during the most fucked up moments even make people suspect that he’s secretly crazy.
Being steady is what he’s known for.
And the Kaeya in the courtroom today hadn’t been the slightest bit afraid.
“Why shouldn’t he be steady?” Albedo asks, curious. “He’s always taken his work seriously.”
He shouldn’t have been steady, because—it was about Albedo.
The only person that Kaeya seems to let himself fully trust.
If Diluc is honest—when he saw Albedo outside the Dawn Winery burying human remains in the ground, his first thought was what the hell is going on, and his second thought was this might ruin Kaeya.
He and Kaeya aren’t on great terms, but Diluc still knows him well enough to know that losing another family would destroy him.
The guilt had eaten at him. Even as he approached Jean with what he’d seen, even as he sat in court to testify—a part of him kept thinking, this is going to kill him.
But he’d done it anyway. Because it was what needed to be done.
And he’d watched Kaeya the entire time, waiting for him to slip up. Kaeya always falls apart when he’s nervous. It isn’t easy to spot, but for someone like Diluc, it’s far too obvious.
For someone like Diluc, who had to carefully teach himself which of Kaeya’s expressions were real and which of them weren’t just so that he never repeated the mistake he made all those years ago—it’s too easy to read him.
The fear of losing Albedo should have made Kaeya terrified. The way he was when he lost Diluc.
But he looked like it was just another, albeit stressful, Tuesday.
He glances to the back of the bar, and catches Kaeya glancing back. They stare at each other for a moment, and then Diluc turns back to Albedo.
“Because it involved you,” he says simply.
Albedo looks surprised. “Me?”
“He—” Diluc hesitates. “He cares about you more than he admits. The trial should have shaken him up. But it didn’t.”
For a moment, Albedo just looks completely confused. But then some kind of realization seems to dawn.
There’s a softness in his eyes, the sort that Diluc only ever sees when he’s with Kaeya, or with Klee.
“That’s an angle that we didn’t consider,” he says, as if this is just something to keep in mind for the next time they have to have a fake trial and trick Diluc into being a witness.
As if he’s never doubted for a moment, just how much Kaeya cares for him.
He takes another sip of his drink.
“Well, it worked out in the end,” he says. “Thank you for all your help, Master Diluc. Especially at the gates. We couldn’t have made it without you.”
Diluc shakes his head.
He wants to deny it—but to be honest, they really couldn’t have done it without him.
If Diluc hadn’t stepped in to help defend the city, they might have been overrun by Lawachurls right now. The tavern would have been crushed under their feet, and half of them might be dead.
All because of their foolish, foolish strategy of leaving the most vulnerable area almost empty.
“The defense strategy,” Diluc starts. “Who came up with it?”
“The captains did,” Albedo says. “Was there something wrong?”
Yes, there was something wrong. There was actually quite a bit wrong.
“What was Kaeya doing on the bridge?”
Albedo suddenly looks amused.
“The monsters were from Dragonspine,” Diluc continues, exasperated. “Half of them were Frostarm Lawachurls. Most of the hilichurls had cryo shields. What did any of you expect him to do there?”
“Master Diluc,” Albedo says, leaning forward slightly as if to tell him a secret. “There’s something that most of us Knights have noticed.”
“And what might that be?”
“When Captain Kaeya faces a cryo opponent, a strange man with a pyro vision has a tendency to appear out of nowhere.”
Diluc stares at him. And stares.
The corner of Albedo’s mouth turns up.
“That was your plan,” Diluc realizes.
“It was the only way to ensure you ended up at the bridge instead of wandering around on your own. Kaeya may be one of our best fighters—but you’re right, he would have struggled against all those cryo shields alone.”
Diluc has just about had it with being played. He glances back at Kaeya, furious and a little insulted, and Kaeya somehow instantly notices his gaze and snaps to look at him again.
Diluc turns back.
“You say that Kaeya cares for me more than he admits,” Albedo says offhandedly. “But Master Diluc, you’re the same, aren’t you?”
“I don’t care for him,” Diluc says, more out of habit than anything else.
Albedo looks at him too seriously. “The only person who truly believes that,” he says, “is Kaeya himself.”
/
It takes hours before the celebrations end.
Most of the knights have left, forced to finish clean up. The rest of the patrons are starting to wander back home as well. Venti is sitting on top of one of the tables, absently playing tunes on his lyre.
Kaeya is still swirling his empty glass around, staring into space. He looks content, in the sort of way that he only looks when he’s heavily drunk.
It takes a while before he finally stands up, stretching out his limbs before he makes his way to Diluc.
“Long day, isn’t it, Master Diluc?” he says, as he drops a bunch of coins on the bar. It’s enough to cover the drinks of his friends as well.
“It has been, yes.”
Kaeya grins at him. “Maybe a certain vigilante can take the night off, hmm? Feels like we’ve cleared up enough crime for a month.”
Diluc snorts. “A certain vigilante might appreciate that.”
Kaeya grins wider.
He raises a hand in farewell before he turns to leave. Diluc watches him go quietly. He knows better than anyone how those shoulders will fall once he’s safely out of view. How the grin will fade and the performance will end and he’ll be just another man who had to scrape together a family to be with on Windblume.
“Captain Kaeya,” Diluc starts carefully. “Do you have a moment?”
Kaeya turns, surprised. “Oh? Do you need something?”
Diluc hesitates.
The simplest things are so hard to say.
But Kaeya is watching him carefully, with that twisted hope in his eyes, the sort he always directs at Diluc before he lets it die and replaces it with forced cheer.
“It’s Windblume,” Diluc says at last, forcing himself to not break eye contact. “Adelinde wanted to see you. Would you walk back with me?”
For a moment, Kaeya looks lost.
He stares at Diluc as if he expects him to pull the ground out from under his feet.
It probably doesn’t help that he’s well and truly drunk—he stares and stares and the blankness in his eyes makes Diluc’s stomach twist with guilt.
But then Kaeya smiles.
Cautious, hopeful.
“Of course,” he says. “Lead the way.”