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I.
It begins, as most disasters do in Mondstadt, with Venti drunk.
Not drunk on wine, exactly, but on attention. On sunshine. On the eternal promise of a spring that never ends and the freedom to say absolutely anything to absolutely anyone without consequence—especially if they’re red-haired, glowering, and have arms like they could bench press the entirety of Angel’s Share (and probably have).
So naturally, he chooses Diluc.
The first time Venti flirts with Diluc, he does it with all the grace and subtlety of a falling lyre string snapping in the middle of a ballad. And he does it during Windblume, which means there are flowers everywhere. Poetry everywhere. Lovers everywhere.
And Diluc?
Stuck managing crowd control, because of course Kaeya claimed a migraine and Jean mysteriously developed a "diplomatic emergency" involving a bouquet of cursed dandelions.
Which is why Venti saunters up to him, barefoot and carrying a flower crown large enough to drown a hilichurl, smiling like he invented the concept of mischief.
“Master Diluc,” he says sweetly, “do you know what the Windblume means?”
Diluc, who is in the middle of trying to convince a gaggle of inebriated bards that no, they cannot dance on his tavern’s rooftop because “it enhances acoustics,” turns. He stares.
Venti tilts his head. “It’s not just about freedom, you know.”
“I’m working.”
“Oh, I know. I just thought you might need a break. Maybe some… companionship.” He flutters his lashes. “Maybe a drink. Maybe a long, meaningful conversation about the stars and whether or not they’d look better reflected in your eyes or mine.”
A pause.
Diluc blinks, like he’s trying to process a particularly bad wine review.
“I’m. Working.”
“Ah, tragic. A man married to duty. Very honorable. Very noble. Very… repressed.”
Venti leans in, wind teasing his hair into a halo, flower crown still in hand like some divine offering.
“Tell me, do you ever let yourself have fun, Master Diluc? Or are you always this deliciously broody?”
Diluc’s eye twitches.
The flower crown is summarily shoved onto his head with a level of ceremony that borders on war.
“There,” Venti declares, triumphant. “Now you’re festive.”
“Now I’m annoyed.”
“And so handsome when you’re annoyed!”
There is a beat of silence in which Diluc briefly contemplates whether it’s morally acceptable to set the Anemo Archon on fire.
Venti, completely unbothered, continues:
“I could write you a poem, you know. Something passionate. Something heart-wrenching. Something like—”
He throws out his arms, summoning a breeze so theatrical it flattens two nearby picnic tables:
“O crimson flame, thy scowl—my pyre!
Ignite me with thy churlish ire!
Burn my soul and break my wine,
Just please, dear sir, step on me fine—”
Diluc chokes.
Venti beams.
“—print,” he finishes, with a wink.
At this point, three flower vendors are taking notes. One is weeping. Another proposes that the verse be printed onto commemorative mugs.
Diluc, flaming from the neck up, turns sharply on his heel and storms off without another word.
Which means Venti wins.
Because he follows after him with a flourish and a flounce, calling:
“You didn’t say no!”
“Go away!”
“Is that a challenge? Because I do love those.”
“I will have you arrested.”
“You can’t arrest freedom, Diluc, it lives in the heart!”
“I have a cellar I will personally lock you in—”
“Promise?”
And just like that, the first time Venti flirts with Diluc ends in poetic threats, minor property damage, and one very smudged love sonnet left tucked into the tavern’s suggestion box, which reads, in increasingly incoherent handwriting:
you are not wine but you do things to my head
stop scowling and marry me maybe
(or just pour me a drink)
p.s. I’d let you age me in your barrel room xoxo – Venti
Diluc burns the note.
The flower crown stays on his mantle.
He swears it’s only because the staff insisted.
II.
The second time Venti flirts with Diluc, it is night.
Not just any night—but one of those indecently perfect Mondstadt evenings, where the sky melts into plum velvet, the stars are drunk on their own brilliance, and the wind carries just enough of a chill to make the prospect of warmth feel like an invitation. An invitation to something treasonous. Something cozy. Something slightly illegal, like drinking on the roof of a tavern one technically owns.
Which is exactly where Venti is.
Perched cross-legged on the slanted shingles of Angel’s Share, a bottle of Dandelion Wine in one hand, a half-tuned lyre in the other, and the entirety of his dignity scattered somewhere near the chimney.
Diluc, to his credit, does not scream when he finds him there.
He merely says, with the hollow exhaustion of someone who has found this exact bard in this exact position four times this month:
“…You’re going to fall and crack your skull open.”
Venti grins, utterly unaffected by gravity, guilt, or godhood.
“Would you catch me if I did?”
“No.”
“Harsh.”
“Realistic.”
“Oh, come now, Master Diluc. You’re a man of honor. You’d never let a poor, helpless little bard fall to his death.”
“You’re not helpless.”
“You’re right,” Venti hums, rolling onto his back like a cat. “I’m devastatingly powerful. And also incredibly pretty.”
Diluc squints at him, arms crossed, posture stiff.
Venti stretches luxuriously, wine sloshing, shirt slipping off one pale shoulder like a scandal.
“I’m moonlit and mysterious. You should fall in love with me already. Most people do. Even Kaeya says I have a certain ‘chaotic appeal.’”
“That sounds like something Kaeya would say right before blaming you for arson.”
“Oh, he did. But it was romantic arson. Very poetic. Lots of metaphors. One of them involved peaches. Very illegal, very hot.”
Diluc takes a deep breath and contemplates hurling himself off the roof instead.
But Venti, already several verses deep into what is clearly a Very Stupid Plan™, is plucking tunelessly at his lyre and mumbling, “Alright, alright, hear me out. I wrote you something. Don’t interrupt.”
He clears his throat.
He grins.
He sings.
“There once was a man with red hair,
Who scowled like the world wasn’t fair,
But give him a drink,
And a wink-wink-wink,
And he’ll growl while I pull on his—”
“VENTI.”
“—shirt,” he finishes innocently. “Honestly, Master Diluc, your mind is filthy.”
There is a silence so thick it could be spooned into a goblet and aged ten years in the Dawn Winery cellar.
Venti breaks it by taking a swig of wine and sprawling dramatically over the rooftop like a swooning opera singer.
“I’m just saying,” he says to the stars, “if you ever wanted to kiss someone under the moonlight while defying social expectation and all laws of tavern safety… now would be the moment.”
Diluc stares at him.
Stares at the wine bottle.
Stares at the shingles that creak under Venti’s shifting weight.
“Get down.”
Venti kicks his legs.
“Come up.”
“No.”
“I’ll sing again.”
“You’ll fall.”
“You’ll miss me when I’m gone.”
Diluc lets out a sigh that could flatten mountains.
He climbs up.
It’s the stupidest decision he’s made in years.
He’s up there exactly three seconds before Venti wiggles closer like a particularly amorous raccoon and offers him the wine bottle with a grin that could cause revolutions.
“See? Isn’t this nice?”
“It’s stupid.”
“It’s romantic.”
“It’s trespassing.”
“I’m a god.”
“You’re a menace.”
“You’re blushing.”
“I’m going to push you off this roof.”
“Promise?”
The tension vibrates between them like an unplayed string.
The moon drips silver on Venti’s cheekbone.
Diluc does not kiss him.
But he does take the wine.
Venti leans against him like a sin.
They sit in silence for a while—Venti humming a melody that doesn’t exist yet, Diluc sipping the wine like it’s penance.
Until the trapdoor slams open below them and Kaeya’s voice rings out:
“Oh my Archons, I knew it! I knew you two were having a rooftop tryst! I owe Rosaria fifty mora—”
Diluc throws the bottle at him.
Kaeya yelps.
Venti giggles.
Diluc considers joining the Fatui.
III.
The third time Venti flirts with Diluc, it involves theft.
And rain.
And an unholy amount of sulking, which is not something Venti typically does. Venti is many things: windborne bard, god of freedom, collector of increasingly creative drinking debts—but a sulker? No. Pouting is for mortals. So is rejection. So is Diluc Ragnvindr, apparently.
Which is exactly the problem.
Because the first two flirtations had ended in flushed cheeks and mildly poetic threats, which was progress by Venti’s standards. But then Diluc stopped rising to the bait. No glares, no exasperated sighs, no death threats lovingly wrapped in sarcasm.
Just… silence.
And Venti—oh, he hates silence when it’s not his.
It starts like this:
Venti shows up at the Dawn Winery door in the middle of a storm.
Not a drizzle, not a sprinkle, but the kind of storm that’s practically an emotional statement—thunder like slammed doors, wind like shouted curses, and rain so aggressive it feels personal.
He is, for once, not drunk.
He is, however, soaked to the bone, hatless, barefoot, and carrying a perfectly ordinary apple pie.
Which is suspicious.
Diluc opens the door and blinks at the sight of the god of anemo looking like a half-drowned forest spirit who got mugged by the dessert menu.
“What do you want.”
“I brought you pie.”
A beat.
Diluc stares. “Why.”
“It’s a peace offering.”
“Why do we need peace.”
“Because you’ve been avoiding me!” Venti wails, stepping dramatically into the foyer, dripping puddles onto the rug with every step. “And I missed you, and also, I may have stolen your coat.”
“You— what?”
“Your long one. The red one. With the angry swoosh and the emotional shoulder pads. It’s very warm and smells like disappointment and pine. I look amazing in it.”
“Venti—”
“I’m keeping it.”
Diluc pinches the bridge of his nose.
“Do you want something?”
“Yes. A towel. A drink. Maybe a kiss, if you’re feeling generous.”
“Venti.”
“I’m only mostly joking.”
Diluc sighs the way only a man faced with a damp deity and a rapidly wilting pie can sigh.
He takes the pie. He does not slam the door in Venti’s face. This, in Venti’s books, is practically a confession of love.
Ten minutes later, Venti is dry, swaddled in a blanket, sipping something that smells suspiciously non-alcoholic, and watching Diluc slice the pie with surgeon-like precision.
“You’re being very domestic,” he says brightly. “I think I understand the appeal now. Stoic, brooding, probably secretly soft—classic romance novel material.”
“Don’t flirt with me just because you want pie.”
Venti gasps. “I am offended. I flirt with you because I enjoy it. The pie is incidental. Your scowl, however, is divine.”
Diluc doesn’t respond. He sets a slice in front of Venti like a peace treaty forged from apples and frustration.
Venti stares at it. Then stares at Diluc. Then quietly, with the dead seriousness of a monk on the verge of enlightenment, says:
“…Do you want to know what your coat sounds like?”
“No.”
“It sounds like ‘I never learned how to say I love you because I was too busy bottling my grief into fine cabernet and punching trauma in the throat.’”
Diluc nearly drops the pie cutter.
Venti leans forward.
“Do you want to know what you sound like?”
“Not particularly—”
“Like you’d kiss me once and then never speak of it again, and I’d be left wondering whether I hallucinated the whole thing in a fever dream induced by wine fumes and repressed yearning—”
“VENTI.”
“I’m just saying! You give emotional repression with a side of erotic tension, and frankly, it’s unfair to everyone in a twenty-foot radius—”
“Do you ever stop talking?”
“Only if you make me.”
The silence that follows is less like awkwardness and more like a very delicate glass being set on a very wobbly table: fragile, tense, and one misplaced breath from shattering.
Diluc does not say anything.
Venti doesn’t push, for once.
He leaves the next morning wearing the coat.
Diluc lets him.
Three days later, a song begins circulating through the taverns of Mondstadt. It has no official title, but drunkards have taken to calling it “The Red Song.”
He speaks like fire, looks like sin,
Keeps his love locked deep within,
But oh, when he walks, the shadows sigh,
And I would burn just for one eye—
Diluc pretends not to hear it.
Pretends not to notice the way it ends:
He never says it, never stays,
But gods, I’d be his all my days—
Kaeya brings it up exactly once over breakfast.
“So,” he says, too casually, “you and the bard.”
Diluc glares over his teacup.
Kaeya shrugs. “I’m just saying, if someone wrote me a song like that, I’d at least blush.”
Diluc does not blush.
He does, however, throw his coat into the laundry with far more gentleness than usual.
It still smells faintly of dandelions.
IV.
The fourth time Venti flirts with Diluc, it’s less of a “flirtation” and more of a sustained campaign of romantic terrorism.
Because Venti has had it. He has had it with the slow burn, the long glances, the way Diluc blushes just a little bit but then pretends nothing happened. He has had it with passive-aggressive poetry, with quietly returned coats, with songs that aren’t denied but also not acknowledged, with the noble silence of a man who seems to think unspoken longing is somehow sexy.
It is. But that’s beside the point.
Venti’s patience has limits. He is an archon, after all, not a saint.
So he escalates.
Which is how he ends up on Diluc’s bar counter at exactly 1:13 a.m., sprawled across it like a particularly unrepentant wine sprite, holding a bottle of Mondstadt’s 1675 vintage in one hand and reciting a dramatic spoken-word piece titled, “Ten Things I Would Do to Diluc Ragnvindr if the Church of Favonius Had No Moral Jurisdiction.”
He is halfway through number six (which involves handcuffs, whipped cream, and an alarming reinterpretation of the winery’s fermentation barrels) when Diluc walks in.
And freezes.
And blinks.
And blinks again, in the very specific way people do when they’re trying to determine if they’re hallucinating a divine entity doing a one-man cabaret act on top of their business establishment.
“Venti.”
“Darling!” Venti purrs, unfazed. “What a coincidence. I was just talking about you.”
“I noticed.”
“I may have overindulged slightly.”
“You’re drinking from the bottle.”
“I’m themed.”
Diluc inhales through his nose like a man desperately clinging to the last shreds of composure, then says with admirable restraint:
“Get down from there.”
Venti raises an eyebrow. “Make me.”
And just like that, the fourth flirtation has begun.
Ten minutes later, Venti is seated normally on a barstool (grudgingly), wrapped in a blanket (begrudgingly), and watching Diluc wipe down the counter with the same precision he would use to dismantle a weapon.
“I’m beginning to think,” Venti says, “that you like cleaning more than you like me.”
Diluc doesn’t look up. “Cleaning makes things quiet.”
“And I make things loud?”
“You make things messy.”
Venti leans forward, chin in hand. “So you have been paying attention.”
A pause.
Diluc glances at him. “It’s hard not to.”
The silence that follows is loud in its own way. Not tense, this time. Not delicate. Just… waiting.
Venti breaks it, of course.
“I could be subtle, you know.”
“No, you couldn’t.”
“I could. I choose chaos. There’s a difference.”
Diluc raises an eyebrow.
Venti pouts. “Fine. Be that way. I’ll just write another ballad. Something tragic. Something forbidden. Something like—”
He throws an arm across his brow with operatic despair.
“He stares like a thunderstorm / He speaks like regret / I kissed his shadow once / and I haven’t recovered yet—”
“Stop.”
“I won’t.”
“Venti.”
“I’m going to haunt you, Master Diluc. I’m going to weave myself into your wine labels and your windowpanes and your cellar acoustics. You’ll open a bottle and it’ll whisper ‘date me, you coward’ and you’ll never know peace again—”
“Venti.”
“What?”
Diluc pauses.
He opens his mouth. Closes it. Opens it again.
And says, very carefully:
“…Is this about the letter?”
The world goes still.
Venti stares.
“You read it?”
Diluc glares. “You taped it to a bottle of Fire-Well Reserve and hand-delivered it with a bouquet of dandelions and a note that said ‘Open this when you’re finally ready to admit you have feelings, you flaming repressed vineyard beast.’”
“Oh,” Venti says brightly. “That letter.”
Diluc scrubs a hand down his face.
“Why are you like this?”
Venti leans closer, grin wide, voice soft and utterly sincere:
“Because it’s fun to fall for people who make it difficult.”
A long, long silence.
Then Diluc says, quietly, “It’s not that I don’t…”
Venti looks up.
Diluc is staring at the wine glass in front of him like it personally insulted his lineage.
“It’s not that I don’t feel something,” he says.
Venti holds his breath.
“I just don’t know what to do with it.”
“…Oh.”
Venti’s grin fades into something quieter. Realer.
He leans forward again—less dramatic this time, more human.
“You don’t have to do anything, Diluc.”
Diluc glances up.
“You just have to let yourself feel it.”
And maybe—maybe—something would’ve happened, right then.
But that’s when Kaeya walks in.
Soaking wet.
Dripping mud and menace.
And holding a bouquet of very illegal-looking Glaze Lilies.
“Did I miss the group confession?” he says dryly. “Should I sit down? Do we take turns?”
Diluc throws the wine bottle at him.
Again.
The lilies are later found repurposed as centerpieces in Angel’s Share.
The poem Venti recited becomes a local hit, although version five is toned down to remove all barrel-based metaphors.
Diluc keeps the letter.
He tucks it into the back of a drawer.
But he doesn’t burn it.
Not this time.
V.
The fifth time Venti flirts with Diluc, it’s not premeditated.
Which is unusual, because Venti is many things—bard, menace, part-time chaos gremlin, full-time disaster homosexual—but he’s never unprepared. He likes plans. He likes orchestrating elaborate schemes of emotional sabotage. He likes writing fourteen-line sonnets that rhyme “daddy issues” with “aged vintage tissue,” and then reading them aloud while perched atop tables in public.
But this time, he doesn't mean to.
It just… happens.
Mondstadt’s annual Grape Harvest Festival is a mess at the best of times—half celebration, half Dionysian free-for-all, complete with wine-themed games, poorly supervised children with grape-stained mouths, and adults drunk enough to consider interpretive vineyard dancing a valid artistic contribution.
Diluc, of course, is working.
Because of course he is.
Owner of the Dawn Winery, Patron Saint of Silent Brooding, Hero of Every Unfinished Romance Novel Sold In Mondstadt—he stands amidst barrels and bunting with a clipboard and the moral indignation of a man who has personally declared war on festivity.
Venti, meanwhile, has turned the festival into his personal mating dance.
Which is also a literal dance, because there is a stage, and he is on it.
Barefoot.
Playing a lyre.
Wearing a crown made of grapes.
He looks, in short, like a deity who accidentally wandered out of a vineyard and got adopted by a group of unhinged wine aunties. And they love him. Everyone loves him. He sings. He laughs. He makes three separate farmers cry with a ballad about the tragic short life of a squashed grape. He is glowing, golden, touched by wind and wine and warm sun.
And then he sees Diluc.
Off to the side. Watching.
Expression unreadable.
Hair blazing like firelight.
Shoulders tense, arms crossed, jaw tight.
Venti forgets what he was doing mid-verse.
And then does something profoundly stupid.
He jumps off the stage.
Right in the middle of a song.
People gasp. A child drops their grape popsicle.
Venti strolls directly up to Diluc, lyre slung across his back, hands behind him like a schoolboy with a secret. His smile is dangerous. And too bright. And a little drunk. But not on alcohol—on audacity.
“Master Diluc,” he says, with exaggerated reverence.
“Bard.”
“I have come,” Venti declares, “to tell you three things.”
“No.”
“One,” Venti continues anyway, “you look unfairly attractive when you’re angry. Which, frankly, is most of the time. So I’ve had a very good year.”
“Venti.”
“Two,” he says, stepping uncomfortably close, “the gods weep for your wine. It’s very good. I’ve been drunk on it for approximately four centuries. I plan to remain so.”
Diluc blinks. He looks like he’s calculating how long it would take to relocate to Liyue and change his name.
“And three,” Venti says, lowering his voice to something warmer, lower, infinitely more dangerous, “you should smile more. Not for me. Not for anyone. Just because the world gets quiet when you do. Like it’s listening.”
Diluc breathes in.
Doesn’t speak.
Venti waits.
And waits.
And—
“Are you done?” Diluc asks, voice low.
Venti shrugs. “Mostly.”
“Good.”
A pause.
Then: “You have a grape in your hair.”
Venti reaches up.
Pulls it out.
Grins.
“Do I get a prize?”
Diluc turns.
Begins to walk away.
Venti calls out after him: “I’ll take your heart in exchange! Or, if that’s not available, the barrel in your cellar labeled ‘not for Kaeya’—”
He doesn’t get a response.
He does, however, get a visitor that evening.
Venti is in Windrise, lying under the tree like he always does—shirt half-unbuttoned, one sandal missing, mumbling poetry into the stars.
And then Diluc appears.
Carrying a bottle.
And two glasses.
Venti sits up so fast he nearly dislocates his spine.
“You came.”
Diluc sits down beside him.
Wordless.
Opens the bottle.
Pours the wine.
Hands over a glass.
Still says nothing.
Venti sips.
Then glances sideways.
Diluc is watching the stars like they might judge him if he turns his head. Like he doesn’t want to look at Venti. Like if he does, he’ll be caught doing something real.
“You don’t have to flirt back,” Venti says softly. “You don’t owe me anything.”
Diluc doesn’t answer.
But a few moments later, Venti feels something warm brush his fingers.
Diluc’s hand.
Callused. Steady.
Not grasping.
Just... there.
Venti exhales.
And shuts up.
Which, for Venti, is a confession louder than any poem.
Back at the festival, the grape crown mysteriously disappears.
Rumor says it was taken by a mysterious red-haired man spotted sneaking off with it under his coat.
No one can confirm this.
But three days later, Kaeya finds it perched on the corner of the Angel’s Share’s second floor window.
Woven neatly.
Still stained purple.
Kaeya says nothing.
But he grins like he knows exactly what kind of chaos is coming next.
+1.
It is quiet.
Not the absence-of-noise kind of quiet, but the sharp, strange stillness of something about to happen. A soft, unnatural hush that wraps around the rafters of Angel’s Share like a warning bell muffled in velvet.
Venti feels it before he sees it. Feels it like a chill that isn’t cold. Like a premonition stitched into the bones of the floorboards. Something is different. Diluc is different.
He turns around.
And there he is.
It’s late.
The tavern is empty.
Everyone is gone.
Everyone but them.
Diluc stands in the doorway of the back room, not in his usual stiff, “I am a pillar of Mondstadt’s economic infrastructure” pose—but loose, almost relaxed. He’s not wearing his gloves. His sleeves are rolled up. His hair is tied back.
He looks tired.
He looks dangerous.
He looks like he’s made of wine-dark promises and things no god has ever earned.
Venti sets down his glass.
He doesn’t speak.
And for once, he doesn’t smile.
Diluc walks to the bar.
His boots are quiet. Not a single creak.
He stops directly in front of Venti, who tilts his head—soft, curious.
“You’re looking at me like you’re about to throw me out,” Venti murmurs.
“I’m not,” Diluc says.
Pause.
“You’re looking at me like I’m about to burn your tavern down.”
“I’ve stopped minding the mess.”
That catches Venti off guard. His breath stutters.
Diluc leans in.
One hand on the counter.
The other—reaching.
Not for a weapon.
Not for a wine bottle.
For him.
Fingers against Venti’s jaw.
Thumb brushing his cheekbone.
Careful. Reverent.
Real.
“You flirt,” Diluc says, “like it’s a game. Like it’s safe.”
Venti’s voice is barely audible. “Isn’t it?”
“No.”
His thumb grazes the corner of Venti’s mouth.
“It’s not safe at all.”
And then he kisses him.
It is not gentle.
It is not chaste.
It is not the kiss of a man who isn’t sure.
It’s the kiss of someone who has waited.
Of someone who has fought himself, fought this, and lost in the most glorious, ruinous way possible.
Their mouths meet like they were always meant to. Like poetry and fire and wine. Like wind rushing into flame.
Venti gasps into it.
Diluc swallows the sound.
The hand on Venti’s jaw tightens. Not cruel. Just hungry. Just real. His other arm wraps around Venti’s waist and pulls. Lifts him effortlessly onto the bar counter. Venti’s legs part around him like instinct, like worship, like finally.
His hands are in Diluc’s hair. Tugging. Twisting. Pulling him closer even though they’re already pressed together like sin and salvation.
He tastes like red wine and restraint snapped in half.
Like patience wasted.
Like yes.
They break only when Venti pulls back gasping, lips swollen, pupils blown wide.
“Wh—what the hell was that?” he manages to whisper, dazed.
Diluc’s eyes are darker than Venti has ever seen them.
His voice is a rasp. A confession.
“That was me flirting.”
Venti stares.
Then laughs—a startled, wild, breathless noise that tips over into something shaken and sincere.
“I—okay,” he breathes, “okay, I admit it. You win. You win, alright?”
Diluc lifts an eyebrow. “Win what?”
“My heart, apparently,” Venti says, grinning and flushed and a little hysterical, “and also—maybe a minor aneurysm—you bastard, you can’t just do that—”
Diluc kisses him again.
This one is slower.
Deeper.
Like the first sip of something forbidden and aged and finally, finally uncorked.
They stay like that for a long time.
Not talking.
Not moving.
Just breathing.
Sharing air.
Sharing everything.
Outside, the wind rises.
It lifts the fallen leaves.
It dances through the cracks in the shutters.
It plays a melody no one hears—
except the boy who once became a god for love,
and the man who never believed he deserved it.
Later, when Venti eventually climbs off the bar—legs shaking, hair wild, lips bitten—he mutters something like, “I’m going to write a song about this,” and Diluc, looking dazed and suspiciously fond, replies:
“You’d better make it flattering.”
“Oh,” Venti says, smirking like a sunrise, “you have no idea.”
And that night, from the highest window of Angel’s Share, a single line of music drifts into the air.
The wind was never meant to stay,
But even gods need somewhere soft to land.
And Diluc, flame-wrought and iron-willed and quietly, so stupidly in love, listens from his room.
And does not sleep.
And does not try to.
---
BONUS:
Outside the tavern, Kaeya sips from a wine bottle and mutters:
“Finally.”
Then flips a coin into the air, catches it, and adds:
“Took five full flirtations and divine intervention, but we got there, folks.”