Archive of Our Own ^beta

Diluc finds him on a roof in the middle of town, and at first glance, it is a familiar sight. He is reclining atop red shingles that cap nearly every building in Mondstadt, dressed in both pajamas and boots, his hair braided but windswept, like he’s been out here for a while. He doesn’t startle when Diluc lands on the same roof a few feet away.

“Hello, Pickle,” he says. Diluc blinks, because he expected him to be in a much worse mood than this. Kaeya turns to him and smiles like he anticipated as much. “Sit with me,” he offers. 

He had his sword close to his hand, but now he drags it to the other side of his body so Diluc can sit where he can see him. 

Diluc, with his hair loose and damp and curling around his shoulders and his jacket spattered with rain he’d failed to avoid entirely on his way into town, tucks himself by Kaeya’s side, a place he used to know well but feels strange now.

For all that this echoes a scene he remembers, so much of it is wrong—the place, the mood, the fact that Kaeya hasn’t put away his sword. They are not at home, not together, and he knows why, but that doesn’t make the tight feeling in his chest disappear; nor does the fact that Kaeya is clearly not distracted by something too heavy for him to help with, as was the reason for so many of his midnight trips up when they were young. And Diluc knows the world is dangerous, that Kaeya knows it just as well, but at least he carries his sword in a blessed and fiery pocket instead of out in the open; at least he has the heart to pretend like it’s not cruel sometimes. 

Everything feels a little bit like that these days. There are the ghosts of things he recognizes, but they are too different to say he still knows them.

“What are you doing out here?” Diluc asks. 

Kaeya shivers a bit in the coldness of the night and he fights off the ancient urge to give him his coat.

“What do you think?” he returns, but not meanly. He sounds like he’s waiting for something. When Diluc doesn’t answer, he says, “It’s raining outside the city.”

Diluc has no idea what he means by that. 

It’s like this now, sometimes, during the rare moments when they aren’t biting each other’s heads off in the bar. Just stilted, awkward small talk, like they barely know each other. 

“So?” 

“You’ll get caught in it on your way home,” he answers. 

His preoccupation with the rain doesn’t surprise Diluc, because he’s always been fussy about the weather. 

He remembers when Kaeya was young—when they both were—and he had craved sunlight in a way Diluc couldn’t understand. Even now, it’s not a feeling he can pretend to imagine; in the darkest winter in Snezhnaya and the lightless underground of domains, at least he had the memory of it to sustain him. (He wants to ask Kaeya how he can bear even a minute without it when he loves it so much, in a way only he can because he’s the only one who really knows it.)

Back then, Kaeya had insisted upon it in every way, even when it was too hot and miserable to bear and Diluc swore up and down it would return tomorrow. He still remembers Kaeya’s shock when he learned it could hurt him. 

He has to remind himself again and again that for Kaeya, all of those memories were firsts (and seconds and thirds and fourths), and it’s easy to forget that he didn’t always have it because he’s adjusted so well. And because it seems unfathomable that anyone—especially Kaeya, who loves the summer and the heat and the light more than anyone—could go so long without it. He knows the truth now, and yet the lie still dominates his memory so often, threatening to overtake it, because it is so neat and so pretty and so Kaeya.

“You’re thinking too loud,” he says mildly. “Stop it.” 

Diluc turns to him, and he cannot read anything beyond halfhearted annoyance on his face. He reminds him, “You used to say you wanted to live in town because of the weather.” 

Kaeya looks briefly taken aback, but his expression eventually shifts into a fond smile. “Wasn’t I spoiled?” he teases. Diluc frowns. 

“What do you mean?” 

“How presumptuous of me,” he explains, but not bitterly, “to think I’d get the sun without any rain.”

Diluc does not mention that is exactly what he gets living in the walls of Mond, nor that he appreciated the rain in a way only someone who lived for a long time without it could and that his dislike for it was far fairer than Diluc’s ever would be. 

He follows Kaeya’s words to the sky, where the dark clouds of a thunderstorm hang over the city but their rain never hits its walls. It is supposed to be a blessing, but when he looks at it like this, with everything he knows now, it just looks unnatural. 

He doesn’t know if it only seems that way to him, or if everyone in the city recognizes how wrong it is that the ground here is never wet from the rain. He wonders if they love it anyway. He wonders if Kaeya does. 

“Do you live nearby?” 

Kaeya doesn’t respond and when Diluc turns to look at him, he’s staring at him like he has been for a while. He makes no move to look away, but Diluc does. His eyebrows draw down before he glances back out at the city. 

He considers that perhaps this is none of his business. It is a strange thing to get used to, not being part of Kaeya’s life anymore. It was much easier to bear when he didn’t have to see him every day. 

“The apartment below us,” he answers, voice light in a very pointed way, turning his head back to the city. 

They lapse into silence, and Diluc can’t quite tell if it’s uncomfortable or not. 

“I know you didn’t come here to talk about the weather,” Kaeya says finally, “or where I live.” 

Diluc shoves down a quick retort about how he really wouldn’t mind talking about either of those things with Kaeya if it meant they could go without fighting for a little while, and instead protests, “You brought it up.”

Kaeya’s mouth pinches into a frown before smoothing out again. “I suppose I did.” He thinks for a moment. “Then I appreciate you indulging me.”

If they were younger, Diluc would ask what he means or call him strange or tackle him into a hug. A hug for Kaeya was always a difficult thing, suffocating and flighty at the same time, especially on nights like this. Diluc would wrap his arms around him and dig his face into his chest because he just wanted to understand him sometimes, but Kaeya made it so hard and said such scary things, and this was all he could do to remind him that he loved him. Then Kaeya, always so hesitant to promise his affection, would pat Diluc’s head but he wouldn’t push him off, and maybe, if he was hurting enough, he would even return it.

But time means that Kaeya is harder to understand, it makes friendly insults cutting, and it pushes them far apart. 

“So what is it?”

Diluc flicks his gaze over to him. He’s lounging too casually, like the answer is the last thing on his mind, like he already knows why Diluc is here. 

He tells him as much, “You know why I’m here.”

“I don’t,” he insists. When Diluc doesn’t respond, Kaeya pokes a finger into his leg. “Diluc,” he groans. “Tell me.”

Diluc sighs. He searches Kaeya’s face for a lie, but doesn’t find one. “What did Jean say?”

“That you wanted to talk. She didn’t say what it was about.” 

Kaeya is an expert at needling out information, so it is absolutely insufferable that he demands Diluc just tell him like this. He doesn’t know if he should be flattered that Kaeya trusts him enough to ask or offended that he doesn’t even bother trying. 

“She told me you turned down a promotion.”

“Ah,” Kaeya says. “Is that all?”

Diluc nods.

“And she sent you to try to convince me to take it?”

“No. I was…” he begins. He doesn’t know exactly. “I was curious.”

“Were you?” He raises an eyebrow. “It’s old news.” 

“She barely mentioned it a week ago.” 

“You heard about it a week ago,” Kaeya argues, as if he has any kind of sway over Mond’s gossip. “Anyway, it’s not a promotion. It’s a title change.”

“Cavalry Captain?” 

Kaeya runs his tongue over his teeth. “No.” 

He should be used to Kaeya’s hesitance with the truth by now, but it bothers him as much as it did when they were children and there really were secrets between them. 

But the roof was always a place for honesty—and even though Diluc knows now that so many conversations on nights like this were far from truthful, he hopes their rule still means something. 

“It’s Dawn Knight,” Kaeya admits after a long moment. 

“Oh,” Diluc says. It’s not what he expected (because that is a title that has been reserved for him since he was very young, that was promised to him from the moment he inherited his name, that was demanded when he was gifted the other), but at the same time, it doesn’t come out of nowhere, because it fits him. 

Hasn’t it always? Even when they were younger and pretending to be things they weren’t (or maybe they weren’t pretending; maybe they just didn’t realize yet), he’s always been that for people—bright and warm and friendly. 

And wasn’t he the one who pulled Diluc into the world? Who dragged him in by the sleeve and made him friends and made him smile and made him bright? Who made people like him because he liked them first? Hasn’t he always been the sun? 

He still remembers his shock when he learned Kaeya could hurt him.

“Yeah,” Kaeya returns vaguely. 

But it should be him. If he can’t be a Ragnvindr anymore, then perhaps he can have this. It deserves to be held by someone who is worthy of it, who passes on the legacy in a way Diluc never will—never could. It should be someone who knows what it means to herald the sun. 

He’s not even sure why he thinks it, because he hates the knights (hates his brother a little bit, too) and Kaeya is the worst of them—he’s unreliable and undisciplined and spends more time drinking and talking than doing his job. 

But then, he’d always told Diluc that he never really understood the heart of it, of what it meant to be a knight and a captain, so maybe he’s doing it right.

“I’m not coming back,” Diluc says. “You’re not replacing me.”

Kaeya narrows his eye. “You never had it.”

“I know. I don’t mean—”

“Diluc,” Kaeya interrupts, and his voice is cold and controlled. “I know what you meant. But I didn’t say no for you.” 

He’s not really sure if that’s true or not. For all Kaeya insisted that he stay out of the spotlight, he never shrank from it, he never said he didn’t like it. He’s always been in Diluc’s shadow, but seeing the way he shines so brightly now, it’s hard to imagine anything else. 

He doesn’t know if everyone else was wrong, or if they truly shifted—out of spite or survival or something else. He doesn’t know if he lost his brightness or if he never had it, if he dropped it and Kaeya picked it up somewhere along the way or if it was always Kaeya’s and he’d just borrowed it for a while. 

It doesn’t matter much anymore, though, because he holds it so much better than Diluc ever did. Diluc’s smile was bright, but it was never warm like his; he loved, but never like Kaeya does.

(He thinks that if he told Kaeya any of this, he would say something about how Teyvat’s nights really aren’t that dark at all. He wouldn't know if it was meant to be comforting or contrary.)

“Then you should take it,” Diluc says. “It fits you well.”

Kaeya purses his lips. After a moment, he says, “I don’t think it’s mine to take.” 

“Someone did. A lot of people did.” 

It is not a title that belongs to the Ragnvindrs, but it has been held by one for most of Mondstadt’s history, because the popularity of the nation’s primary winemaker is not a hard thing to achieve. A Dawn Knight without the Dawn Winery to endear them to people is certainly uncommon; it makes perfect sense that it’s Kaeya who does it—breaks the pattern without really breaking it at all.

“Forty-two percent of the nominations were over the age of seventy,” he recites. 

“Jean said you were popular with the elderly.”

Kaeya smirks. “You two talk about me?” 

“Shut up.”

“No, really,” he says. “I’m flattered!”

“You know you’re her favorite,” Diluc says. “She hardly stops talking about you.” Kaeya wrinkles his nose, but the smile doesn’t leave his face. “I can’t believe you're popular with old ladies. Why?”

“Why?” he repeats incredulously. “You’d know.” 

“What does that mean?”

Kaeya sighs, then snorts, then shakes his head. It puts a strange, twisting feeling in Diluc’s chest, because he hasn’t heard Kaeya giggle like that since they were kids, and a small part of him misses it like he misses nothing else and a larger part is annoyed he’s the butt of his joke. He says, “Exactly what you think it does.”

“I’ll push you off this roof, Kaeya, I'm not kidding.” He pinches his nose. “Really. Why?” 

Kaeya sits up beside him. “Oh, lots of reasons.” 

“Like what?”

“It’s very hard to resist a beautiful young man with a Cryo Vision and an eyepatch—” he begins, knocking his shoulder into Diluc’s. 

“Kaeya.” 

“Fine.” He considers Diluc very seriously. “They make the best cookies in the world if they like you enough.”

“Better than Adelinde’s?”

He shrugs. “You said it.”

“She will kill you if she hears that.”

“No, she won’t,” Kaeya says easily. “Because I never said it.” 

Kaeya’s amusement eventually fizzles out and he looks up to the sky for a moment before looking back down; Diluc’s gaze remains inclined.

He thinks this conversation would be easier on him if it wasn’t on a night like tonight, where it’s darker than it normally is, with the stars blotted out by clouds and the sun a few hours away. 

They lost everything on a night like tonight and maybe that should be enough for Diluc to shrink from it, but it’s just that. It’s just a night. 

He hates that it’s still so difficult. 

Diluc presses his fingers together. He swallows. “Why did you say no?” 

He can feel Kaeya shift his weight onto his arms behind him. There is a very long moment of silence between them, and even though it is heavy, it is shared. 

He says, “They wanted me to bring them the sun.”

Diluc goes very still. Every breath feels heavier than the last.

Kaeya doesn’t look back, but Diluc can see how tired he is. He sees the exhaustion pulling at his features and he thinks of the sword at his hand and the words in his mouth and he wonders when the last time his brother felt safe was—if he’s ever felt safe, if he’s ever felt even a moment of reprieve. 

“Not just that—and not literally, probably. They wanted light or something. I don’t know. Maybe warmth.” He sighs. “It just hit too close to home.”

He doesn’t know how Kaeya does it, talk so easily about it, as if it’s the only story he’s ever known. Diluc knows it’s not, because he’s told a dozen—pirate, prince, aimless wanderer. Maybe he should know better because Kaeya’s only ever told him two. 

He told a lie, and years later, he told a truth. 

Diluc still has trouble wrapping his mind around it, because the first version is so permanently etched in.

His brother blows in with a storm and isn’t that magical. Found in a forest, dropped into their laps—it sounds like a fairytale. How did he ever believe it?

He knows that’s not the question because, in reality, it’s why he would ever doubt him. Because the story he knows—Kaeya, forgotten and alone, starry-eyed at everything new he sees (and everything he sees is new), wrapped in a cloak and waiting for their love—is so easy, so simple and glorious in its perfection, so dangerous in its appeal. 

(“I was sent to you in a box,” Kaeya said to him one day when they were still very young. Diluc had no idea what he meant by it. He thought maybe Kaeya was saying he was made for them and, in a way, he supposes he was.)

It doesn’t help dissuade him from the storybook fantasy he can’t stop believing, that the truth is just as fantastical. 

Kaeya told him once before that he was a fool for believing it. That his thoughts were too magical and that it was too perfect to trust. Diluc had asked how it could be anything but magic that he came out of a fairytale, even when the first one was interrupted. Kaeya had shrugged, like he didn’t think anything of it; he sighed, like he didn’t think anything of Diluc. 

And when Diluc insisted that he wasn’t being naïve like Kaeya was always so convinced he was, that telling him was like telling him he’d been raised from the dead, that it shook him to his core and now he knows things (they both know things) no one else can even fathom, Kaeya had laughed. He told him that’s how he knew Diluc was a child of Teyvat—and that’s why he was so easy to trick and that’s why no one suspected him and that’s why he loved it here so much, because he finally had people who could match him, who could dream like he could.

Diluc had cut him off after that, because Kaeya was more loose-lipped and scornful than he’d ever heard him. 

“Oh,” he says now. 

“What?” 

He looks at Kaeya and sees how young he still is and it makes him a little sick, how much has been asked of him—how good he is at it and the fact that Diluc is one of the people who ask so much of him and that he says yes every time. 

Diluc wants to protect him from everything he hasn’t, but he doesn’t know that Kaeya has ever needed protecting.

“You’re not… You used to climb on the roof when you were upset.” 

Kaeya narrows his eye. Diluc can feel him get a little sharper. It’s something Diluc knows well, Kaeya’s sharp edges and sharper words, filed down for them, but not always—never always. “You want me to be upset?”

“No. No. I thought— I don’t know.” He sighs and all of Kaeya’s sudden sharpness softens. 

He says, “Okay.” And he sounds like he means it. 

They are both quiet for a moment, until Diluc clarifies, “I thought I could help you if you were upset.”

Kaeya holds his gaze. “I’m not.” Diluc doesn’t understand, because he is, even just hearing about it.

The last hope, to bring them the sun. Gods, he doesn’t know how Kaeya did it—does it. If it were Diluc, he would’ve buckled under the weight. He can keep secrets—he keeps many secrets and there is a reason he seeks them out—but he doesn’t know what he would do if he had to carry his own.

“How?” he asks Kaeya. There are a hundred things that question means. How he copes with the horrible loss rearing a hole in his chest. How he can stand the idleness when there are so many things that need to be done, and more that cannot be done. How he manages to stay so bright despite everything—the weight of expectations and the things Diluc has done to him (the things they’ve done to each other) and what he knows that no one else does. 

“How what?” Kaeya says gently. (How he can be so gentle with Diluc when Diluc has been so cruel to him.)

He explains, “I miss you more than anything.” He hears the flatness of his voice and he does not pray (he didn’t pray much before and he hasn’t prayed since Kaeya told him and he doesn’t pray now and certainly not about this) but he hopes that it does not make his words mean less. He explains, “I can’t hold it all.” And they may be out of sync but Kaeya knows him so well—knew him so well, and even though he has changed so much, this part hasn’t—so he hopes he hears what he means anyway.

He sighs like he knows. He sighs like he’s sad. (Because isn’t this what he came to Diluc about? About wanting him to really, truly see him? About helping him carry it, just some of it?)

Kaeya grabs his sleeve in his fist and pulls until Diluc’s head is in his lap. He runs his fingers through his hair, drier now thanks to Barbatos’ blessings. Diluc closes his eyes so he doesn’t have to see whatever expression is on his brother’s face.

“How what?” he says again. 

“How are you not miserable?” He frowns, because he knows he cannot ask Kaeya to read his mind like this, when he is clumsy and careless with his words, but he still wants it. 

He knows how Kaeya will respond because they are both too prideful, too rigid, too demanding in everything they say and everything they do—even Kaeya, who pretends that he’s not, who pretends that he’s adaptable. 

And maybe he is, because his world doesn’t shrink down like Diluc's does and always has. Or maybe he's not and his world is a lot smaller than it looks. Diluc knows there is a gaping hole where he once stood; it stands to reason there are more. 

But Kaeya asks, vastly more patiently than Diluc deserves, “What’s bothering you?”

Diluc watches the expression on Kaeya’s face very carefully, but he is just looking down at him like he genuinely wants to know. “I hate not being able to do anything.” He clasps his hands together over his chest. “I want to help. I changed so I could help.”

Kaeya says, his voice shaky and quiet and uncertain in a way he never is, “Me?”

“You,” he confirms, and it’s true, but not entirely. “Everyone. I thought if I was strong enough—”

“It’s not about strength.”

“I know,” he says. “But I thought it was and I don’t know what to do now.”

“You just,” Kaeya starts, but he falters. “You just hold it.”

“But—”

“No buts. You have to.” After a minute, he adds, “If they ask you, you have to.”

“Is that what you wanted?” Diluc says, and Kaeya’s face twists as soon as the words leave his lips. “When you told me?”

“Let’s not talk about this,” Kaeya says, and his voice is restrained in a way Diluc despises, but only barely.

“To just hold it?” he continues, even though he can feel Kaeya drawing himself back with each word. He feels like he’ll be blown away if a too-strong gust of wind passes them by. And he would run right now, or probably just smoothly slip away, if Diluc wasn’t anchoring him to the roof. 

Or maybe he wouldn’t, because he doesn’t run from his problems like Diluc does. Maybe he would stay right here, with Diluc, because he wants to. 

Diluc says, “That’s it?”

He knows it’s not, because he asked something more of him that night, but Diluc said no. The only person who had ever asked him to help, asked him to do more than be there and be quiet, and he said no.

He would say yes, if Kaeya asked him again. 

But he doesn’t. He says, “Not tonight, Diluc.”

If Kaeya had his way—and he always does—they would never talk about it. 

Diluc reminds him, “You brought it up.”

“I know,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

At some point, Kaeya stopped running his fingers through Diluc’s hair, but they are still twisted in it. Diluc reaches up and finds them, then brings Kaeya’s hand down to where he can hold it easier. 

They are both very quiet and very still for a long time. 

Eventually, Kaeya says, “This is where I first tried pancakes. The shop across the street.”

Diluc flicks his gaze up and there is the smallest hint of a smile on his face. He is briefly tempted to ask if that’s why Kaeya chose this building, but he knows it’s not, because every inch of Mondstadt holds a first for him so this isn’t anything special. 

“I remember that,” Diluc says.

“You couldn’t believe I’d never tried them before,” he explains, even though Diluc already knows, and his voice is light and sentimental. “And when I said I liked them—not even that, just that they were fine—you just kept piling yours onto my plate.”

“It was the first thing I saw you eat that you didn’t hate,” he insists. “You always said you liked things but you made these faces—”

“I did not make faces.”

“You did.” There is a pit in his stomach because even the sweetest memories between them are bitter and painful now. “Gods, you were so obvious.”

Kaeya breathes out slowly. “Yeah.”

He tries to ignore the horrible, aching pain in his chest, but he only manages for a moment before it becomes too overwhelming to forget. 

“I can’t believe I never knew.”

When Kaeya looks down at him, he is still smiling, but it is a little sad. He makes a vague noise and then says, “It made it easy to love you.”

It’s not quite what Diluc needs to hear. It’s not at all what he normally says. It might make it worse. 

“How can you remember me so fondly?” he says, but Kaeya doesn’t answer.

And it’s unfair to ask, because he remembers Kaeya the same way: warm and loving and there in a way Kaeya never really was, because he was always pulling himself away, even when Diluc could see that wasn’t what he wanted. And knowing why now— it hurts to think about.

Kaeya asks, “Are you remembering?” 

“Yes,” Diluc answers.

“I thought I told you to stop,” he says softly. 

He doesn’t think he can. When Kaeya is with him, everything they had together presses up against his thoughts in a way it doesn’t when he’s alone. It threatens to overtake his vision, his reason—if he’s really careless, his words. 

Kaeya looks at him like he knows what he’s thinking about.

“Diluc,” he insists, squeezing his hand. 

Diluc’s eyebrows knit together. “I’m sorry, too.” 

Kaeya swallows and turns his gaze away. “Why don’t you come inside?” 

“Kaeya…” Diluc says, but he’s not sure what more there is to say after that. He purses his lips. He should say no, probably, because they are still so awful to each other most of the time. 

“You’ve never seen my apartment before,” he continues, unburdened, “and I know you’re dying to tell me how badly I decorated.”

He shouldn’t let himself want them after everything, and he shouldn’t let Kaeya want it either. Especially when they’ll hate each other again the next time they see each other.

Kaeya sighs, loud and dramatic. “Come on, I’ll make you hot chocolate.” 

But moments like this, when maybe things don’t have to be horrible—when they don’t have to be horrible—he thinks maybe they can have it for a while. 

“Yeah,” Diluc says. “Okay.”