Chapter Text
The peaceful equilibrium of the joyous chatter in the warm tavern and the shivering cold emptiness inside Diluc all come crashing down when a knight bursts in through the door, chest plate rising and falling in sync with disheveled breaths. Mack – or Mike, or Miles, or whatever – fixes him with an erratic look and Diluc knows he is done for.
He waits for the man to speak, to say something. But dammit, the knight just keeps panting and panting, wringing for breaths; as if arriving at his destination would earn him that reward, without even delivering the message that justifies all the hurry in the first place.
Diluc, who is short of patience on a good day, is not the kind of person to toy with like this. Especially after bringing such a jarring halt to what had been shaping up to be a nice evening in Angel’s Share. He vaults over the counter until he is face-to-face with the knight. A shallow breath catches in his mouth.
A sudden itch finds itself in his fingers, a bitter taste in his mouth. He wants to shake the man. He wants to grab his arms so hard his knuckles turn white and shake him until he gets it together and finally speaks. In spite of the rage simmering under his skin, though, Diluc is not a violent man. Not in such company. He can refrain himself.
Nonetheless, the air of urgency inhabits every breath he takes now. It pains him to have to wait. Especially if the words he expects are the ones that will come.
“Speak, Knight of Favonius,” he spits. “What’s got you breaking down my tavern door at such a late hour?”
The knight gulps down one more breath before shakily meeting Diluc’s fiery eyes. He wobbles, shivers under the piercing flame in them.
Diluc watches hungrily as the man mouths the words, as if testing them on the tongue before immortalizing their content by speaking. Cold, icy dread flows in large chunks through Diluc’s veins as his eyes flit between the man and his tavern guests. Kaeya isn’t here tonight. He hasn’t been to the tavern in weeks. The two of them have grown accustomed to skillfully avoiding each other since their last spat. Archons, Diluc can’t even remember what it was about.
When the knight speaks at last, Diluc closes his eyes. Like a child believing it can’t be seen if it can’t see others. Diluc wants to keep his grief to himself. He assumes it’s grief he is going to be feeling.
Funny. He doesn’t feel anything at all, actually. One would think his limbs have fallen asleep with how numb they all are. Stiff and hard to move. When did his fingers become frostbitten?
No matter how hard he strains his ears, it’s as if they were filled with cotton. His mouth, too, but that doesn’t matter. He doesn’t need to speak. He just needs to listen. Needs to hear everything’s okay. That it’s just the Knights of Favonius being inefficient again, bothering him about unimportant matters.
Someone places a hand on his shoulder. It’s scorching and heavy and not comforting in the slightest.
He feels like he’s outside his body when the words “Kaeya” and “critical condition” finally reach him. It’s as if he’s having to wade through thick layers of fog to get back to himself.
Someone offers to lead him there. Where ‘there’ is, he has no idea.
He accepts.
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
Kaeya looks horrendous. Not in the clothing-too-tacky, nor in the smile-obnoxiously-cheeky way. No, this time it’s the blood, the limp body, the hole in the head.
Kaeya has a hole in his head.
Quite a large one, too. It’s not exactly a hole, though, as it doesn’t, like, go through his skull or anything. More like a ditch? A sizable rift in the skin, giving way to dark crimson, then to a lighter flesh-pink, and in the middle, Diluc is fairly certain he can see the ivory-white of a skull covered in reddish fluids.
For all the blood surrounding him, he’s pretty sure all of his has left his body by now. He looks down at his hands, pasty white, and for a second, he swears he can see blood on them, in the same pattern it had coated him the day his father died. But then he blinks, and the blood is gone.
His eyes return to Kaeya. Unconscious Kaeya with a colossal gash above his right temple.
Barbara is there, along with others, catalyst in hand. With every word she utters, Kaeya regains just a tiny bit of color.
Others are tending directly to the wound itself, hands steady in practiced motion. Diluc knows these people, trusts them, as fellow upstanding Mondstadt citizen. And yet, for the life of him, he can’t avert his eyes from their hands long enough to look at their face and attempt to recognize them.
They’re saving Kaeya. Their hands are all that matter right now.
Diluc didn’t hear Jean approaching but he feels her hands wrap around his lower arm and squeeze. She leans her head against his shoulder and whispers a soft reassurance, despite her own frown and trembling fingers.
“He’s going to be alright. We’ll make sure of that, you hear me, Master Diluc? Don’t worry.”
And Diluc doesn’t. He doesn’t worry. Or at least that’s what he tells himself. His heart is beating fast merely due to the gruesome sights. His breath is only picking up pace because the air is so stuffy in here and the crowd – the chaos – too big.
The thing is, he isn’t allowed to worry. Even if he wanted to. Not when the deep wound crying blood is so eerily similar to the thick red tears flowing out of the eye socket ruined by Diluc’s hands, by Diluc’s claymore, that fateful night years and years ago.
This is his fault. It is. It’s child’s play to deduce the enemy could get in a lucky hit only with help of Kaeya’s considerable blind spot. A blind spot that Diluc caused.
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
Kaeya is alright. He’s breathing and his heart is beating.
That’s enough for now.
Diluc trembles as he helps Kaeya into his childhood bed. It’s not unlike helping a drunken Kaeya home, except this is a lot gentler, tentatively careful hands folding the covers over the young man’s sleeping figure, calloused finger tucking a strand of hair out of his face.
It had to be cut, the hair, and it’s a mess, frankly. Choppy, short somewhere, while chin-length at other places, the iconic long streak in the back still intact.
Were Kaeya a man more vain and less injured, he’d surely fuss about it. Hit Diluc with a remark in that honey-sweet voice of his, or something along the line. Currently, however, he just lets himself be swallowed up by the large bed, unable to do much in his unconscious state.
Diluc deems that fine. Without Kaeya awake, he doesn’t have to acknowledge it’s the first time they’ve interacted in weeks, and the first time Kaeya has set foot inside the Winery in several months. If one could call getting carried into ‘setting foot in’.
The quiet is nice. Diluc likes the silence. The cicadas of the summer heat singing away while he listens to Kaeya’s breathing, watches over him in the night by candlelight.
He kneels by Kaeya’s bed and lets his face prop up against his arm laid on the mattress.
The hardwood floor is uncomfortable for his knees no matter how he sits. Diluc has been through worse, though. He can bear with it.
As the minutes go by slowly, Diluc doesn’t say anything. He might express his gratitude to the Archons inside his head, thinking it is quite a blessing Kaeya could be treated properly. But that is between him and the gods, and anyway, the jury is still out on whether Mondstadt even has an attentive Archon or not; can his prayers even be considered real if no one is there to witness them?
At some point, Kaeya’s ear starts leaking clear fluid. Diluc barely notices through eyes sticky with sleep and when he does, it’s only because the shine of the liquid reflects the tiny flame that remains of the candle on the nightstand.
He fishes his handkerchief out of his pocket to diligently wipe away the fluid.
It’s something he repeats twelve times that night.
Not like he minds. The action distracts him from choking on words he wants to tell Kaeya. He’s never been a smooth talker. There isn’t anything proper he can say. His thoughts are all over the place, anyway. He wouldn’t be able to string together anything coherent.
His fingers clasp Kaeya’s as he drifts off to sleep.
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
Kaeya wakes up two days later, much to the joy of Adelinde and the others.
Pupil blown wide, he stares at Diluc groggily. He opens his mouth just barely and lets out a hoarse whine before attempting what Diluc guesses is supposed to be speech. It comes out slurred and unintelligible.
Kaeya tears up. In frustration, Diluc assumes, so he drags his fingers through Kaeya’s hair soothingly, shushing him as he helps pour some water into the man’s mouth.
Finally, Kaeya manages something that sounds just a tiny bit like “why”. Diluc goes with it.
He explains how Kaeya got attacked; the injury; how they decided Kaeya should stay at the Winery for now because he needed someone to look after him and help him with things.
Kaeya looks at Diluc curiously and Diluc neither knows what he’s done to achieve that reaction, nor how he should fill the tense silence.
It’s obvious Kaeya hangs on his every word, grasping any grip he has on consciousness. And if it’s Diluc’s voice keeping him awake, then so be it.
So, when Kaeya’s eye is beginning to droop closed, Diluc continues, stroking a hand along Kaeya’s arm to get his attention. The easy display of affection scares him, but he tells himself it’s not an open show of emotion if it’s done to keep a person with an injured brain awake.
“You shouldn’t have gone out alone. You’re at a clear disadvantage, and-” Diluc halts in his reprimand, all energy draining out of him at once. “I apologize, by the way. For what I did that night. And ever since. I’m sorry, brother.”
For the first time since he’s seen Kaeya’s injury, the corner of his brother’s mouth twitches upwards into a smile. Diluc wants to interject that this is a no-smiling-matter, strictly serious, but seeing Kaeya happy makes the words get caught in his throat. It hits him how he might not have seen Kaeya smile again, had things gone slightly differently.
Suddenly, tears blur his vision as he desperately tries with his hands to get them out of his eyes before they begin to pour.
“I was so worried,” he whispers despite an embarrassing voice-crack at the end. “I’m so relieved to have you back.”
Kaeya wants to chirp back a response, but he can’t, his voice still disoriented and slow. Diluc thinks the tears and affectionate smirk are good enough placeholders for words for the time being, though.