Work Text:
Following a recent festival in Mondstadt, the Cathedral's confessional box is overflowing with letters from citizens seeking guidance. Barbara, determined to fulfill her duties as Deaconess, stays up late to answer them all. She is running on pure caffeine and the last remaining willpower she's got, practically nodding off over the parchment.
Dahlia on the other hand usually avoids extra paperwork, but he can't bear to see Barbara overworking herself. So he slips into the archives, and brings a late-night snack: a fiery dish for himself and a spicy drink for her. He claims he's just there because he couldn't sleep, but his real goal is to share her burden.
"You're going to strain your eyes if you keep reading by a single candle, Deaconess."
Barbara blinks, rubbing her temples as Dahlia sets a tray on the wooden desk. "Dahlia? What are you doing here? It's past midnight."
"You're staying up late too, aren't you?" he teases, sliding into the chair opposite of her. He pushes her favorite spicy drink to her, "Drink. It's got a kick just how you like it. And don't look at me like that, Rosaria was complaining that I should keep you company so she doesn't have feel guilty for leaving you all by yourself."
Barbara smiles softly, holding the spicy drink. "Thank you, Dahlia... But you really didn't have to stay."
"I most likely did." Dahlia mumbles, pulling a massive stack of letters toward himself. "If I leave you alone, you'll start writing hour-long motivational speeches to a citizen who just wanted to know if it's a sin to accidentally feed a pigeon fowl."
"Ah... you're too observant for your own good." Barbara smiles weakly, sorting through papers, part of her feels a bit touched by his attention to her habits.
"How can I not be? When something interests me, I want to know all about it." Dahlia grins, but his face flushes when he realizes how that came across as him being interested in her.
"I mean... Gossip, totally gossip." He adds, leaning on his hand, suspiciously nervous.
Barbara giggles softly, finding his strange behavior endearing, even if she doesn't know why he acts so differently to her than with the other church members.
"Right." She says, her focus trailing back to the work in front of her.
As they sit across from each other, sorting through the letters, the two deacons' work methods show a unique contrast. Dahlia often gets overly invested in the citizens' messy love lives and juicy gossip, while Barbara, being the idol she is tries to draft deeply moral, encouraging responses.
Listen to this one." Dahlia chuckles, leaning back and waving an envelope. "Dear Sister, I accidentally told my neighbor I loved her when she handed me a turnip. Do I move to Liyue?"
"Mondstadt citizens are a special breed." Dahlia jokes, and they both break into quiet laughter.
Dahlia, be nice!" Barbara urges gently, "They sound genuinely stressed, What are you going to write back?"
"I'm going to tell them... Barbatos said they must buy her a whole basket of turnips and propose!" Dahlia laughs, kicking his feet.
"No, you are not!" Barbara snatches the pen from his hand, her fingers brushing his. "We're offering spiritual comfort and guidance, not orchestrating pranks!"
Dahlia catches her gaze, a lazy, amused smirk showing on his lips. "I don't know, Barbara. Sometimes an accidental confession is the only way people ever find out."
"Hmm..." Barbara goes silent, then nods. "I guess you're right, sometimes the best things are what we stumble into without planning on it."
During their quiet work, they pull out an anonymous letter. The writer confesses to having a massive, hopeless crush on "someone else working within the Church walls."
"Oh? Who could this be...? A fellow member if the clergy?" Barbara gasps slightly.
She innocently wonders aloud who it could be. But Dahlia goes completely stiff, because he recognizes the handwriting is his.
In a moment of vulnerability days prior, he had written his actual feelings down and tossed it into the box, forgetting he would eventually have to sort the mail with her.
"Wait. Dahlia..." Barbara's voice goes quietter. She looks from the anonymous letter to Dahlia, her eyes darting between the identical, elegant loops of the letters. "This handwriting kind of looks like yours-"
"IMPOSSIBLE!" Dahlia swats it out of her hand on impulse, flushed with embarrassment.
Barbara stares in shock, slowly reaching to pick the note up again. "Uh... okay?"
Dahlia panics, trying to backpedal. "I didn't mean to- sorry, I just... haha- I just wrote that letter when I was drunk after the tavern-"
"You... you like someone in the Cathedral?" Barbara asks, also slightly worried about how many drinks he let himself have before. "Who?"
"It's nothing important, it's just someone... y'knowww..." Dahlia trails off, waving a hand vaguely in the air, trying to sound casual and failing miserably. "Just... a person. Who works here. With hair... and a face."
Barbara doesn't say a word. She just leans forward slightly, her blue eyes wide, completely focused on him, waiting for him to say he's it's a joke or something.
Under the weight of her gaze, Dahlia's restraint completely crumbles. He lets out a defeated sigh, dropping his hands to the desk.
"Barbara..." he whispers, leaning closer to her as his hand reaches to twirl in her hair. "Look at the ink... how many times I accidentally wrote the first letter of your name on the back of this letter. It's you... It's always been you."
The archives go dead silent. Barbara stares in shy disbelief, her breath catches. The entire world seems to stop between them-
SLAM!
"There you two are." Rosaria grumbles, stepping into the room with a massive, soul-crushing stack of new documents balanced in one arm. She drops them onto the desk with a heavy thud, sending a cloud of dust into the air. "Sister Victoria told me to drop these off. Said I was 'slacking' and needed to do something productive, ugh."
Both Dahlia and Barbara jump in their seats, parting quickly as if nothing happened.
Dahlia immediately snatches the crush letter and shoves it into his pocket so fast. And Barbara abruptly stands up, knocking her chair back, and violently starts rearranging a stack of blank paper that was already perfectly straight.
"Wow... you two are acting weird." Rosaria comments, watching them behave like aliens.
"Nothing to declare here, Sister Rosaria!" Dahlia hums, sweeping with a broom. He starts sweeping towards her, pushing her out towards the door.
"Agh- hey- cut it out!" Rosaria groans, grabbing the broom and breaks it in half over her knee from pure frustration.
Barbara and Dahlia stare, gaining a newfound fear of her strength.
Rosaria sighs, slowly raising a single eyebrow, she leans her hip against the desk. "I don't know what you two are hiding, but I don't care to tell on either of you. But use a broom on me like that again, and I will flash freeze your popcorn Dahlia, and it won't taste good."
Dahlia gasps, getting on his knees. "Not the popcorn!! Fine, I apologize for trying to sweep you out."
"Good, now don't bother me again." Rosaria snaps her fingers, stopping at the door. "More letters by the way, don't forget."
She turns on her heel and leaves, the door clicking shut behind her.
Dahlia and Barbara slowly look back at each other, the tension returning, but this time, a tiny, nervous smile breaks across their faces.
"Dahlia, A broom, that's the best you could come up with?" Barbara laughs weakly.
"Hey, don't look at me, I pretty much saved us." Dahlia says, his playful confidence returning. "Think about it... If Rosaria spreads a rumor that we were getting too cozy together while working, I might just have to take responsibility."
"Because... I'm the one who broke the rules and confessed to my fellow Deaconess."
"You... you really meant it, didn't you?" Barbara whispers, now speaking more soft and vulnerable. She looks at him, searching his eyes. "It wasn't just the tavern drinks?"
His hand brushes against her cheek, surprisingly warm. "I'm completely sober now, and I'm still making the same confession aren't I? I love you... truly."
Se leans into his touch just a tiny bit, smiling. "One thing is for sure... you're great at keeping secrets, until now of course."
"Guilty as charged~" he whispers, winking. "That's why I was appointed as the Herald of Barbatos, I make a great secret keeper."
He suddenly leans down, and presses a soft, lingering kiss right to the corner of her lips. It’s sweet and feather-light, a faint spice from his lips.
When he pulls back, just an inch away, his eyes bright with mischief. "Let's make this a secret too, Barbara."
Barbara's hand flies to her mouth, her face practically radiating heat, but her eyes sparkle for him. "We... we still have that new stack of papers from Sister Victoria." She reminds him, her voice trembling with joy as she points a shaky finger at the massive pile Rosaria left behind.
"Right..." Dahlia chuckles, licking his lips. He steps back to his side of the desk but refuses to let go of her gaze. "Let's get to work then. But... only if I get to hold your hand under the desk."
As the clock strikes 3 AM, Barbara's exhaustion wins. Her head gently drops onto Dahlia's shoulder, fast asleep. Dahlia freezes, his heart racing in his chest. He carefully drapes his cloak over her, watching her sleep with a tenderness he usually hides behind sarcastic banter.
True to his word, Dahlia's left hand remains securely intertwined with Barbara's beneath the wooden desk, his thumb tracing her knuckles whenever she sighs from fatigue. They still have dozens of citizens' worries to answer, and Sister Victoria will undoubtedly have questions about their matching, sleep-deprived smiles come morning. But as Dahlia steals a glance at Barbara's tired but content sleeping expression at dawn, she looks completely at peace to him.