Work Text:
Diluc crouches slowly, assessing before he touches anything. His eyes track the wound with grim precision.
“Don’t move,” he says, already stripping off his gloves. “You’ll make it bite.”
Kaeya exhales sharply through his teeth. “Charming.”
Diluc presses two fingers above the injury - firm, testing. Kaeya flinches despite himself.
“There,” Diluc murmurs. “You feel that pull?”
“Yes,” Kaeya snaps. “I feel everything.”
Diluc nods once, as if that answers something. He braces Kaeya properly then - one knee against Kaeya’s calf to stop reflexive movement, one hand anchoring his thigh, stabilizing.
“I’m going to widen it slightly,” Diluc says. “Just enough to see.”
Kaeya’s breath stutters. “I didn’t need to know that. You could have just lied.”
“I don’t about this,” Diluc replies.
He uses his thumb to steady the skin, fingers already slick despite how carefully he works. The wound parts under pressure, and Kaeya lets out a sharp, involuntary sound - not quite a cry, but close enough that it sticks in Diluc’s chest.
“There’s metal,” Diluc says quietly. “Jagged. About a half finger’s length in.”
Kaeya goes very still.
“That’s… a lot of description.”
“It’s hooked,” Diluc says, “ If we wait, it’ll tear every time you walk.”
Kaeya laughs, brittle and forced. “So the solution is now.”
Diluc meets his eye. “Yes.”
Kaeya swallows. “Then do it before I decide I hate you.”
Diluc doesn’t waste the permission.
He slides two fingers in, carefully following the angle of entry instead of forcing it. Kaeya’s hand shoots out, grabbing his sleeve hard.
The shard catches - Diluc feels it snag - and Kaeya cries out, body arching despite the brace. Diluc tightens his hold automatically, grounding rather than restraining.
“Look at me,” Diluc says, softer now. “Kaeya. Stay here.”
Kaeya’s vision blurs. The pain is sharp, invasive. His breath fractures.
“Diluc-”
“I know,” Diluc says. “I’ve got it.”
Kaeya shakes his head once, panic flashing from sheer sensation.
“Just finish it,” he gasps.
Diluc adjusts, twists just enough to free the barb, and pulls.
It comes out wet and red and wrong.
Diluc drops it immediately and clamps the cloth down hard before Kaeya can even process the absence.
The pain spikes, then changes. No longer ripping. No longer spreading.
Kaeya collapses back with a choked sob, chest heaving, hands shaking violently.
Diluc keeps pressure, steady and unrelenting. He doesn’t hesitate. He can’t. Only then does he realize his own pulse is racing, his breath shallow, fingers trembling now that the task is done.
“I’m sorry,” he says quietly.
Kaeya laughs weakly, tears streaking sideways into his hair. “I know you are. That’s the problem.”
Diluc finishes the dressing with care that borders on reverent. When he leans back, the Diluc doesn’t break during the act. He can’t afford to.
It happens after.
The bleeding is under control. Kaeya’s breathing is still uneven, but steadier now. There’s a strange pressure behind his eyes, like something pushing outward. His fingers are still curled. He flexes them once. Twice.
They’re red. Too red.
His stomach drops.
He remembers his own hands pressing into his side weeks ago. Checking. Re-checking. Digging into healing flesh just to make sure it was real. To narrow the world down to pain and nothing else.
Necessary harm. Controlled damage.
Detached focus, he thinks. That’s what this was.
That’s what they called it, too. The realization lands cold and hard.
He didn't hesitate. Not when Kaeya cried out. Not when his body fought him.
Once Diluc decides something is necessary, he closes the door on everything else - including the part that might ask whether the line has shifted.
His breath goes shallow and he presses his palms into the dirt, forcing sensation somewhere outside himself. Cold earth. Grit under his nails. Weight anchoring him.
This was different, he tells himself. I chose this. He’s safe.
But the ease of it - the way he can enter pain and stay there without flinching - that unsettles him.
“Diluc?” Kaeya’s voice cuts through.
Diluc looks up too quickly. The concern there almost unravels him.
“I’m fine,” he says automatically.
The words sit wrong in his mouth, but he forces himself to unclench his hands anyway, to slow his breathing. Because the wound was never the most dangerous thing here. It’s how easily he can disappear into necessity and call it control.