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Chapter Text

The Angel's Share is quiet tonight, but Kaeya has given up on the possibility that Diluc might close up early.

He does sometimes when it's this slow, judging the income he's losing against the Dawn Winery's obscene yearly profits and deciding where his own temper and distaste for alcohol and drunken behavior fit in the balance. Kaeya likes to think that now and then his own presence affects the equation too. Either by getting kicked out with the rest because he was a little too obnoxious on a night Diluc's temper was already short, or by getting held behind to 'help clean up,' which sometimes, after Diluc is done with him, actually happens.

If Kaeya was a better lover, he'd be angling for the second option.

Instead he's been trying to wind Diluc up all evening, angling for the first. Diluc hasn't hidden that he'd like Kaeya to stay past closing--he wouldn't have mentioned letting him sample a new Winery product after hours if he had meant anything else. Kaeya is well aware that he doesn't get those privileges as a child of the Dawn Winery any longer; he's also well aware that Diluc hadn't meant his phrasing as an innuendo, but he teases Diluc anyway, amplifying it to the small crowd for a drunken laugh and the pleasure of watching Diluc's mouth draw tight and his eyes narrow.

Diluc's temper is on too even a keel tonight, though, and he lets that pass with no more punishment than watering down Kaeya's next drink with sunsettia juice. The look in his eyes, hot and burning and devouring Kaeya every moment that no one else is looking, doesn't change. Kaeya had sent a couple of bastards into the path of the Darknight Hero last night; he suspects that Diluc has in mind a reward.

One that Kaeya should be grateful for. He is grateful. It's something like a blessing, after all those years of absence, for Diluc to want Kaeya to linger in his presence again, to talk with him in quiet privacy, to pin him under hot hands and a hot mouth and leave the invisible impressions of that heat upon him for hours afterwards.

It's just-

"This will be my last drink," Kaeya tells Diluc when he signals him for a refill. "I'm expecting company tonight."

He hates having to say it, when Diluc had extended the generosity of inviting him out loud and in public--if not for what the crowd, Kaeya's jokes aside, had thought. He hates having to say it when he wants that heat, the lasting impression of Diluc's touch, the reminder that if he's not forgiven, he at least isn't forgotten either, still able to occupy Diluc's thoughts. There isn't any other way to win that heat than to stay late and let Diluc reward him, or punish him, or whatever else Diluc intends it to be when he arranges Kaeya exactly as he wants him and takes him apart.

But he has other obligations, and Jean is usually harder to dissuade.

"I was about to cut you off anyway," Diluc says, turning away to pick up a glass, and Kaeya's stomach sinks. Then, unexpectedly, he glances over his shoulder, quick and impersonal to anyone else's eyes. "Come in the back and give me your opinion on that sample."

The lurch Kaeya feels at that is half relief. He doesn't care to examine what the other half may be.

"If I'm getting free samples, I suppose I don't need this," he says, sliding his refilled glass down the bar to where Rosaria has recently appeared at the end. She takes it without question or comment, and Kaeya stands and follows Diluc through the door behind the bar, shaking out his shoulders.

Beyond is the kitchen, closed down for the night. Diluc doesn't bother to go any further. He turns, catches Kaeya's wrist, and pulls him in, nipping at the line of his jaw and then pressing his mouth to Kaeya's neck. He kisses his way down, almost laughably tender, as he unfastens Kaeya's collar. Diluc won't kiss Kaeya full-on anymore--one of the privileges Kaeya had lost when he bared himself that awful night--but he'll do it anywhere but the mouth, always with that laughable tenderness against any unconcealed skin.

Now he pulls Kaeya's opened collar down, revealing skin that will be concealed in Kaeya's usual outfit, and bites down hard.

Kaeya clutches at Diluc's coat and groans, a shudder running through him, as Diluc's teeth sink in. He's going to have a bruise there--he has a bruise there already, from exactly this, and it's going to be worse tomorrow, fresh all over again. The mere thought is enough to make heat stir all through him, a shivery shadow of Diluc's own heat as he pushes Kaeya three steps back and against the wall.

The panic-thrill of being trapped is a remnant, an old echo of the years he'd lived in terror every time that Diluc had somehow learned what he was, and all that strength and fire was about to be turned on him in ways that belied the way that Diluc used to kiss. Diluc knows all that he is, now, and if he's not worth kissing any longer, he's still worth touching with the same forceful surety. Kaeya arches shamelessly into Diluc's gloved hands as he undoes Kaeya's belt and reaches into his pants to tug his undershirt free and get them beneath it.

Arches shamelessly into all the familiar, muscular warmth pressed against him, a hold just intimate to pretend is affection, as Diluc soothes the eternal bruise he's left with his tongue. It sends another shiver through him, the shadow-heat of his own arousal coiling in his gut.

Not strongly enough, not yet. Kaeya likes being the center of Diluc's focus like this, likes the sharp worrying of his teeth and the gentle pressure of his tongue and the bruises that never quite get a chance to fade, the one secret sign that he still has some shred of his big brother's attention. He likes Diluc's hands on him, the leather of his gloves against his skin, the heat that radiates through him, the weight of him looming close in something he can almost imagine an embrace. He just-

He's tired.

It's embarrassing. The most compelling man he's ever known has him pinned against a wall, hands under his shirt and mouth on his neck, and he's barely half-hard. The alcohol probably isn't helping, but he's drinking less lately, not more, and he knows it's not to blame tonight. It's just that tonight is the fifth night in a row, and this is on top of this morning, and twice last night, and knowing where he'll be in an hour, and... he's tired.

And if he tells Diluc he can't do this right now, Diluc will, quite rightfully, pull back and turn away and leave him to put himself together and slink out, and Kaeya won't be able to soak in his heat any longer.

Kaeya makes himself loosen his grip on Diluc's coat and slide one hand down, over his crotch, to squeeze gently. "I was promised a Winery sample," he whispers, leaning in to let the chill of his breath waft over Diluc's ear.

He feels Diluc shiver, too, and for a moment he thinks he's going to get away with it. Then Diluc pulls a hand free to grab his wrist, grip implacable, and twist his arm about to pin it against the wall. "No," is all he says, meeting Kaeya's eye long enough to glare, then nipping again at the bruised spot in wordless punishment.

"Well," Kaeya gasps, breathless with the crushing force of Diluc's grip, "you can't blame me for trying."

Diluc snorts. "Yes I can."

All the same, he tugs his jacket free of Kaeya's other hand and sinks down onto his knees. He's so damned elegant about it. Kaeya admires the economy of motion even as he dreads what comes next. He helps push his own pants down around his hips with his free hand, because it will look all the worse if he doesn't seem enthusiastic, and chuckles wryly as he reaches for the most convenient excuse.

"I might have had a first bottle of wine before I got here tonight," he lies, smooth and easy. "It's not-"

"It's fine," Diluc says, and leans in to swallow Kaeya's cock, half-hard or not.

Which is the best possible result: excuse accepted, Diluc's focus unshaken, and Kaeya muffling himself behind his hand as Diluc works ruthlessly to bring him fully to attention regardless of how drunk or tired or uneasy he might be. No one knows his body better than Diluc does. His brother had mapped it out, inch by inch, over countless youthful hours hidden under the Winery's vines, and has remapped all the changes with the same unwavering intensity in the months since they've drawn together again. He employs all that knowledge now; Kaeya's body doesn't have a choice.

All he can do once Diluc has him as he wants him is brace against the wall, shaking so hard that Diluc has to let go of his wrist to hold him by the hips, and drink in that beloved heat as Diluc has his way with him. The sounds he makes are mortifying, but Diluc answers the most humiliating with little grunts of satisfaction, as if they're markers of success. Kaeya has to bite down on his own gloved hand as he spills over into Diluc's mouth.

Diluc swallows around him and then pulls away, looking as pleased with himself as he might standing over some captured Fatuus. He's being merciful tonight; sometimes he occupies himself with seeing if he can bring Kaeya hard again, and still count it satisfactory if he simply wrings more horrible sounds out of him. Then again, Kaeya had told him he's expecting company.

Which Diluc does, indeed, seem to remember. He stands and leaves Kaeya to straighten out his clothes as he goes to dig through a cupboard. When he turns back, he has a bottle in his hand.

"I'll want Jean's opinion, too," he tells Kaeya, setting the bottle on the counter. "I think it may be suited to her tastes, but-" his mouth twists in the way it always does when he discusses alcohol in private, as the man and not the winery owner "-I'm not the best judge."

Still shaky enough to be fumbling with his belt buckle, Kaeya still has to smirk at that familiar expression. "Don't worry, Diluc. I'll be sure to provide an expert opinion."

"You mean Jean's, I presume." Diluc steps in, looming close, the heat of him enveloping Kaeya again for another precious moment as he knocks Kaeya's hands irritably away and fastens first his belt and then his collar himself. He nudges Kaeya's chin up to meet his eyes. "Don't drop it on the way there, or you'll be paying for it."

"In what currency?" Kaeya breathes, unable not to tease, letting his gaze linger on Diluc's lips.

Diluc snorts and steps back. "Mora," he tells Kaeya, and turns about, coat sweeping wide around him--he does that deliberately, Kaeya knows he does, because it doesn't happen when he's not trying--to stalk back out to the bar.

Kaeya leans against the wall and lets himself breathe for a long thirty seconds before he pushes away, scoops up the bottle, and takes himself out down the hall to the back door.

***

He gets home before Jean arrives at his apartment, though she had said she would be here by now. Her work, he knows, always seems to outgrow her so-careful schedule. There's a horrible, traitorous part of him, the same one that had tried to irritate Diluc into kicking him out, that half-hopes she'll be eaten by it tonight, and all he'll see of her is a quick apologetic knock on his window in two more hours to tell him that she's heading on home and she hopes he hasn't waited up.

If that happens, though, she will go on home, and he won't see her again until tomorrow at the Ordo, where she'll be professional, if friendly, and more careful than she ever used to be not to put a hand on his shoulder or catch at his arm. They had been much more careless when there was nothing to betray. Kaeya misses that sometimes. Having her in his bed, though, makes the absence of that casual cameradie worthwhile.

The bottle Diluc had sent with him is a temptation he doesn't dare indulge in. Not when his body has already tried so hard to betray him once this evening. He considers setting up a glass just for Jean, but he knows she'll expect to share it, and he knows the lack of a second will concern her. She might decide that he didn't actually want her company.

That's a disaster waiting to happen. Jean has offered twice already--when she first caught him looking at Diluc again, knowing what an idiot he was being and still unable not to, and later, when he came staggering home shellshocked by an unexpected encounter with the Darknight Hero and the selfish hope it had kindled--to step back and let Kaeya and Diluc resume what she seems to think could still be a romantic courtship. Kaeya is certain it isn't that she wants to leave. He knows what she looks like when she's throwing herself nobly upon a sword. He knows, too, how difficult it is to stop her when she decides such nobility is needed, and he can't afford to give her any hint that it might be.

Which isn't a line of thought he can keep going down at the moment. Terror can be arousing, but this particular sort isn't. Kaeya drops down onto the couch and puts his head between his knees.

He's still there when Jean's key rattles in the lock, though the nausea has passed, and he doesn't straighten quite fast enough for her to miss it. Jean steps through with her lovely mouth drawn up in a worried frown.

"Kaeya? Are you feeling all right? I can-" he has a brief, foolish fantasy of her saying something about medicine or soup or wrapping him up in extra blankets "-leave, if you'd like."

Because if he was ill, he would demur from any offer of care or treatment, and insist upon being left alone. Jean knows him too well to think he'd appreciate being imposed on, even out of concern. The fantasy is just that. Kaeya knows himself when he's sick too well to think that he'd appreciate it in reality.

Right now it still has some compelling force, but right now he isn't sick, and Jean looks worried, and if he doesn't say something quickly to defuse that she's going to leave.

"Haha, why wouldn't I be fine? Diluc sent me home with a nice gift for us and everything." He gestures casually at the bottle on the counter. "I was just stretching out some kinks. I might have strained myself a little earlier."

A bit of worry still lingers around the edges of Jean's smile, but he sees her relax as she buys the excuse. Kaeya has no idea what kind of sex she thinks he and Diluc are having, but she seems willing to believe that it's athletic. At least, it's served a couple of times before as a good explanation for misadventures with Treasure Hoarders.

"That's very kind of him, but I don't think it would be wise for me to indulge tonight. It's been a very long day."

"You were still in that meeting with the Investigation Team when I left. How long did it go?"

"Two more hours. The remains they found...." She sighs, her shoulders slumping. The dejection of it tells Kaeya that it's everything the Ordo has feared since the disappearances started.

"I imagine I'll hear it in tomorrow's briefing," he says quickly, rising and gesturing her towards the bedroom door. "Right now we're both supposed to be off-duty."

"We are," Jean says, contrite, and lets him guide her into the bedroom. She unfastens her cape and steps out of her boots, draping the first over one of the bedposts and nudging the other under the bed, then turns about to kiss him.

She'll kiss him, and ardently. Kaeya leans into her a little, just as eager, even if the press of her lean body against him isn't stirring all the hunger it should. Diluc had been ruthless. This is going to take a while; fortunately, Jean will put up with that.

Kaeya starts slowly, tugging the laces of her blouse first and sliding his hands in to stroke down along her back. She wraps her arms around him and presses even closer, still kissing him. Chuckling, Kaeya abandons trying to get her shirt off first and runs his hands down to cup her backside. He squeezes once before hooking a thumb in her belt and tugging the buckle around to where he can easily unfasten it.

He has her tights halfway down her thighs before she's willing to let go of him enough to actually get farther. Kaeya takes his time helping her undress, and takes generous liberties as he does so, fingers wandering places that make her blush.

"I want to see you, too," she says when she's bare before him, pink-cheeked at his openly appreciative regard.

Then she seizes her blouse from Kaeya's hands, starting to fold it with such unthinking precision that Kaeya has to laugh. She blushes harder.

"They'll be neater in the morning-"

"At some point, Jean, you need to bring over a few spare uniforms, so I can enjoy having your clothes all over my floor," Kaeya tells her. Even as he teases, though, he feels a wistful pang. It would be nice to have some of Jean's things here. Secure, the way it hasn't felt for a while.

The way it hasn't ever felt, if he was being honest--but Kaeya is very good at avoiding being honest, and it would break Jean's heart to hear that particular truth.

Jean, oblivious to anything but the teasing, smiles and shakes her head. "I don't see the appeal," she tells him, and continues to fold and stack her clothes neatly atop his dresser while Kaeya divests himself of his own apparel as slowly and showily as possible.

"You're the one with all the romance novels. Doesn't it show up there?"

"I think that's a bit like the trope of sex on the beach. It does sound romantic, but...."

But neither of them had enjoyed all the places the sand had ended up when he'd coaxed Jean into trying it. Kaeya makes a show of sheepishness at the memory as he tugs her down onto the bed, and it's sufficient to distract her from noticing that he's again only at half-mast. It's not as if the kiss hadn't been inspiring. He's just-

Tired. Again. Kaeya represses a sigh; even silent, Jean would feel the air move at her back. Which is where he places himself, pushing her onto her knees and settling his hands on her shoulders.

Jean sighs, when he begins to knead. Her shoulders and neck are painfully tight, cramped and knotted by the weight of her authority and the stresses of her position. Particularly heavy ones today, given what she'd implied about the Investigation report. Kaeya quickly dismisses that thought as unconducive to arousal.

Rubbing the tension out of Jean is, though, getting to run his hands over the taut muscles of her back and the powerful curves of her shoulder. Kaeya waits until all those hard lines have softened beneath his palms before he leans in and starts to nibble his way down her neck, cool kisses interspersed with tiny, harmless nips that will leave no bruise. His fingers wander their way around from back to front, and he cups her breasts and starts to toy with her nipples.

"Oh," Jean gasps, "Kaeya," and the satisfaction at that sound adds to the heat again coiling in his gut.

He traces one hand downward, over her belly and through the thick curls between her legs, to test matters. Jean is wet, but not dripping; she squirms against his fingers and puts her hand over his without immediately trying to urge him to slide them into her. Good. He has a little more time to wind that heat higher.

"I've got you," he whispers into her ear, and turns her about and pushes her down onto her back. She's relaxed enough now to have forgotten today's misfortunes; Kaeya's job is to keep her too preoccupied to remember. He settles down onto his elbows between her legs and proceeds to do exactly that.

Jean is sweetly responsive under his tongue, vocal in her pleasure, sliding her hands into his hair as she cries out his name. With his face between her thighs, Kaeya understands perfectly the appeal of Diluc's relentless approach. He tries to be gentler--Jean deserves it--but he makes sure to be just as thorough, winding her up until she's begging and pulling at his hair before he pushes her over.

He's winding himself up, too, one hand slid down between his legs, mortified even as he works himself hard to find that the tableau before him isn't enough. He's careful not to let Jean realize, propping himself back on both elbows by the time she's collected herself enough to sit up.

"Kaeya," she says, a scratchy note to her voice, and beckons him towards her.

He goes willingly into the kiss she's demanding, tugging her close and letting her taste herself in his mouth. Jean sinks into him with such languid ease that he can't feel anything but smug.

At last, though, she breaks the kiss. He presses another to the corner of her mouth, but she tugs back without engaging and rests her forehead against his. Her hand strokes down along his hip, and she cups him gently, sword-callused fingers light against the tender skin.

"Is this enough?"

Kaeya is smug all over again at having succeeded so thoroughly. Sometimes Jean does want to be fucked, anyway, and most of the time he doesn't mind, but tonight it would have been difficult to last long enough to satisfy her. He rocks his hips a little into her hand.

"Perfect," he tells her, honest and genuine, and then when she tightens her grip and he realizes how sensitive Diluc has left him, "ah- oil," and Jean giggles and lets go so he can flail for the bedside table. They're both giggling when she returns to her task, Kaeya a little sheepish, Jean in the charmed way she does when he does something foolish in the bedroom.

It's as charming a laugh as it is charmed; sometimes Kaeya does something foolish on purpose, just to hear it. He bends low and steals another kiss before he retreats to let her focus on her task.

Once she does so, she's as determined to do it well as she is anything else she sets her mind to. She wrings Kaeya's orgasm out of him as quickly as he'd expected, though clearly far faster than she had. Kaeya chuckles weakly and leans in to kiss her temple.

"You have no idea how hard it was not to come when you pulled my hair," he lies.

Jean blushes at that, as he'd hoped, and kisses him back on the jaw, and then apologetically finger-combs his hair as they're cleaning up as if that had been in any way a complaint. Kaeya leans into it anyway, and takes her up on it when she offers to braid it for him.

He braids hers in turn, sitting behind her in the bed, and lets himself kiss her neck one more time before they slide under the covers. Jean nestles close, cheek on his shoulder and one arm stretched over him. Kaeya slides an arm under her and tugs her a little closer. She's already asleep; she has the trick he doesn't of dropping off the moment her head hits the pillow.

Kaeya, for all the tired he is, has been for weeks now, can't fall asleep so easily. Every moment he's sleeping is a moment he's not enjoying this, treasuring it, storing up the memory against the day when memory may be all it is any longer. He's far too afraid that there may be a point where he's no longer able to make her, to make either of them, stay.

Chapter Text

Jean wakes in the small hours of the morning. She's not sure why, at first; then she feels her own heart hammering and remembers with far too much clarity the remains Albedo had shown her, and, just as distressing, his own quiet but palpable upset. It's difficult to set such things aside at the end of the day, and it wouldn't be the first time they have intruded into her dreams.

Beside her, Kaeya stirs awake as well. He never sleeps past Jean's waking, though sometimes she can send him back to sleep if she assures him and slips quickly enough away. Perhaps some extra drills this morning will do her good. Before she can roll out of bed, though, he puts a hand on her arm.

"Up before dawn?" The words are slurred and mumbling, and he moves sluggishly, struggling towards wakefulness. There's still time to go before he wakes entirely and ends up sharing her sorry state.

"A nightmare, I think," Jean whispers back. "I doubt I can fall back asleep, but I can leave you to do so."

His grip goes surprisingly tight on her arm. "Don't-" Between that urgent word and the next, his voice clears as if he himself had been startled awake by it, and his tone goes coaxing. "You need to be at your best this morning, don't you? Since you're closing in on your culprit."

"I have a plan already in mind, and I won't be physically involved unless it goes far awry."

"So you'll sit awake and drink too much coffee and brood over it? Or do shadow-drills for two hours and brood over it, then drink even more coffee to make up for it." Kaeya sits up, shaking his head. "If you can't go back to sleep, at least stay and let me distract you."

"I don't want to keep you up because of my nightmare."

"I'm already awake." He runs his hand up her arm. "Shouldn't we take advantage of it?"

It's not as if Kaeya is wrong about Jean's plans. There's nothing she can do until Albedo is back on duty, and while for this case he might permit her to disturb him and Klee's sleep, neither of them deserve that simply because she had a nightmare either. Kaeya's proposal is tempting, all the more so when he reaches down to fondle her breast. If he wants this, too....

Jean hadn't offered him all she could have last night, either, just let him please her and then given him no more than her hand. That decides her. Rolling over, she kisses him, slow and deep, letting her own hands wander on his skin as his does on hers. He slides one leg between hers, hitching his own hips against her thigh in silent encouragement to grind against him, and she does exactly that until he's panting into her mouth and she's flushed and hot with her desire.

Grinding off on each other is the sort of pleasant thing they might do of a morning before work, but she'd like to give Kaeya a bit more than that. She truly had shortchanged him last night. The thought of having him inside her appeals to her, too--Jean won't pretend that it isn't a pleasure to lie beneath him, moving exactly as she knows he likes while he does the same above.

She breaks the kiss and rolls towards the nightstand. "Lambskin," she says to his questioning noise.

"You don't have to," he says, his voice hoarse. "If you want more excitement, I'm happy to see if I can improve on last night."

"I'm happy to," Jean assures him, coming back with a lambskin in hand. She has potions she takes, but Kaeya is deeply anxious on this subject, and Jean has no reason not to indulge that anxiety and every reason to do so.

He tries to take the lambskin from her, but Jean tucks it against her chest and slips her hand under the hem of his nightgown. Grinding through two layers of fabric clearly hadn't been quite enough for him, despite his gentlemanly protests; she tucks his nightgown further up and braces herself on her elbow to duck down and apply her mouth. He rouses swiftly under that attention, making muffled noises into his hand, and she's soon able to slide the lambskin on and sit up to kiss him again.

Not for as long this time, though, not when she's tingling all over with arousal. Jean pulls away, kisses the corner of his mouth and then his neck--she can't see the bruise Diluc had left in the dark, but she knows it's there, and fights as always against the urge to call a breeze to whisk it away--then rolls onto her back and tugs him down between her legs.

"I'm ready," she promises him when he slides a hand between her legs to check.

"Well, then," he murmurs, breath cool against her cheek, and sinks into her, smooth and familiar and perfect.

Jean arches up into him, as eager as she's always been since the first time she pulled him down into bed and helped him slide a lambskin on. The only romance of his youth was Diluc, and her only romance at all had been her novels, so they'd had to slowly learn each other before they could truly please each other, but even then she had wanted his careful hands and uncertain mouth and clumsy entrance into her body. Now that he knows every inch of her, his knowledge and hers honed over three years of steady passion, there's no clumsiness and uncertainty, only desire and care.

In the dark, he's all soft whispers and clever hands and a familiar, beloved rhythm, Jean moving in answer to him and gasping his name between kisses. Sharing this act with Kaeya is everything her novels had ever promised her and more. All the other ways they please each other thrill her too, but it's this one that brings them closest, assuring her of the shared desire echoing between them.

Kaeya's breath hitches, and he stills for a moment, little tremors running through him that she can feel where her legs are wrapped around his hips. His hand, though, is firm as it seeks out her clit. Jean tugs slightly with her calves, encouraging him to move again, and he huffs something like a laugh.

"I don't know if you noticed, but it's dark in here," he teases. "I wouldn't have to stop if I could see what I was doing."

"I trust in your abilities, dark or not," Jean dares to tease back.

Snorting, he pinches her almost sharply, then starts again into his rhythm, this time with the familiar touch of his hand alongside. Jean reaches down to cover his fingers with hers, more for the chance to touch him than because he needs any guidance. He dips down to kiss her, and she cups the back of his head to hold him there.

The movement of his hips slows as he focuses harder on her, fingers moving and brushing and grinding at every angle and with every trick that he knows excites her most. Soon Jean is gasping again, into his mouth this time, and he makes a pleased noise and slows that effort to thrust more forcefully into her again. Jean shudders under him, rocked by each roll of his hips, until his thumb grinds down hard and she slips over the edge, and feels him groan as he follows her.

He'd pushed her harder than usual, bringing her to the edge faster than he usually does. Still, Jean feels content, not quite worn-out but far closer to sleep than she had been when she jerked awake. Maybe that was his goal. She lies there, caressing the lines of his body and enjoying his weight on top of her, until he rolls over and starts the motions of clean-up.

That is the one thing that differs from her novels; their authors write of the intimacy of intercourse, the shared desire, the mutual arousal and joint peak, but they almost never address the clean-up afterwards. Yet Jean is as eager to pull Kaeya in for kisses now, in the content and comfortable aftermath, as she is in moments of desire. These are slow and lazy, and somewhere amid them she drifts back off into sleep.

***

Next time, when she does wake, it is dawn. For a few sweet moments she lies there with Kaeya's head on her shoulder as he still breathes in the slow easy rhythms of sleep. Then she hears the slight change, feels the slight shift of tension, that means he's woken. Still, when she eases out from under him, he only opens his eye briefly to note her movement before closing it again.

He looks tired. Tired, and bruised; his nightgown has slid down his neck, baring again the mark that Diluc had left. Always leaves, patterns of bruises that never quite fade until they're renewed, like a secret collar beneath the real one. Jean resists again the urge to heal this one away.

It's her own impulse, her own worry. Kaeya likes it, or he would ask her; Kaeya likes everything else Diluc does, or he would stop dallying with him him. She hopes. She truly hopes. Kaeya looks at Diluc still the way he looks at her, like they're the centers of both his worlds, and she knows that he's been orbiting Diluc far longer. When they were children, Diluc's desires had always trumped his own, some game or activity Kaeya had looked forward to dismissed if Diluc wasn't interested or set aside if Diluc had something else he wanted them to do. Jean would like to think that all the ways Kaeya has changed since then include his willingness to bend to Diluc's whims.

But Jean looks at Kaeya looking at Diluc like he's still, all these years later, the center of his world, and she worries. There are things he does ask her to heal. Only last week he had come to her with a sprained wrist and a sheepish laugh, and Jean still can't think of how that could happen in their love-making unless--unless something happened, that shouldn't have. Yet Kaeya would tell her no more than to say, laughing, that Diluc didn't know his own strength.

She still remembers Kaeya's urgent, near-frantic, 'he didn't mean to,' the night he'd stumbled up to her on patrol with his hand over his eye and burns all down his face. It isn't that Diluc doesn't know his own strength. It's that in the depths of emotion, he's capable of forgetting it.

"Should I be getting up and joining you?" Kaeya asks, eye opening again.

"No," Jean quickly tells him, embarrassed to have lingered so long. "I only.... You're beautiful," she tells him, because it's true, and he deserves to hear it, and it may be an excuse but it isn't a lie.

Also because his cheeks darken to hear it, as they always do, and he gets the shy pleased look that Jean can only win from him in moments like these when he's already vulnerable. "So are you," he murmurs, smiling slow and warm.

Jean smiles back, trying to dismiss her worries. Then she turns to dress, and go from the bedroom, out to do her morning drills and ready herself for the day. There will be an arrest to make immediately after the briefing this morning, before anyone can hear enough to draw a mob in the streets before they get their suspect to the Ordo, and then the sad, solemn duty of returning the remains Albedo's team found to their families. She has enough to concern herself with without worrying about a relationship she has no place in.

Still, hours later, as she takes a moment out of her day to rest, she finds her gaze drawn to the exhaustion on Kaeya's face, concealed by his smile to anyone who doesn't know him well, and the curve of his neck where the collar hides the bruise she knows lies beneath. It isn't utterly unreasonable of her, she thinks, half-defensive, to worry about someone she loves.

***

The knights who gather in the Angel's Share tonight are more solemn than usual. Diluc knows why, though it had been suggested to him from several angles that the Darknight Hero's help was neither necessary nor desired on this case. Since the Knights have handled it with more efficiency than that with which they approach the Fatui, he's taken those suggestions.

He can admit to himself, if no one else, that there's more reason than just their efficiency. It seems more presumptuous to insert himself where Jean may not want him as the Darknight Hero when he's all too aware of how he's inserted himself into her private life. He hadn't had to take notice of Kaeya's gaze, nor encourage it, nor ask, that one moonless night--after all he's done to his brother--if he planned to do more than look.

That he hadn't known, at the time, that Jean shared his bed doesn't excuse him. He wonders still if he should have rescinded the question the moment that Kaeya, looking at him with a desperation that still overwhelms Diluc, had told him that it was one thing he wouldn't do behind her back. When he'd returned, it was with her knowledge, but that desperation surely had something to do with her assent. Kaeya doesn't lie as well as he thinks he does to the people who actually know him.

Kaeya isn't lying well now, though he makes a good show of it to the other knights, toasting Jean and Albedo and buying a round for the tavern. Aside from the toasts, he doesn't try to cozen them into a good mood, just to a few drinks and an early night. Their mood is infectious, and the Angel's Share has largely emptied out by an hour before midnight.

A few guests, though, still linger. Diluc offers Rosaria a Misty Garden, unceremoniously cuts Nimrod off when he asks for a refill on his jug, and picks up Kaeya's half-finished fourth glass of Death After Noon to wipe the table under it with a rag. Kaeya looks tired, a shadow under his eye, a cast to his face that Diluc doesn't think is just from the Knights' current affairs.

"No company tonight?"

"Jean has a bit too much to do. I wasn't on the case, so I can't help her." Kaeya shrugs, then adds more quietly, "She didn't say it, but I imagine she wasn't in the mood, either."

Diluc bites back a too-demanding question about why Kaeya wouldn't, then, spend the night comforting her. It's not his business. What they have was built in his years of absence, and he has no right to interfere any further than he already has.

"It looks like I'll be closing early. Since that's your fault, you should stay and help clean up."

Kaeya glances up with a wry twist of a smile. "Once I've finished my Death After Noon."

Which he can in the time it will take to get Nimrod out the door. Diluc sets it down and goes to do exactly that.

Nimrod is always resistant, but likewise always so drunk as to easily be foisted off on Patton; Rosaria rolls her eyes at him and Kaeya, demands a Tart Brilliance to go, and then heads off into the night. Diluc has a reasonable idea of what her work is this evening, and while he intends to get some of his own done too, it serves him well to delay a few hours so that they don't end up at loggerheads. They work together now and then, but Rosaria doesn't care for doing it too often.

Kaeya stretches out the finishing of his drink until most of the cleaning is done, and then makes a show of hauling the day's rags back to the laundry bucket in the kitchen while Diluc sweeps. He's still there when Diluc finishes, loitering expectantly, but ducks away when Diluc reaches for him.

"Why not take this upstairs?" he asks, raising an eyebrow.

Diluc considers that. Sometimes there are expectations around that, whether it's his proposal or Kaeya's, but he's not entirely adverse to those. And sometimes Kaeya just wants to lie down, which isn't really an option in the kitchen. He nods.

"After you," Kaeya says with an elaborate little bow, as if he's being gentlemanly and not practical--Diluc keeps that door always locked--and follows him up to the second story.

The little room over the bar isn't meant as a full apartment. At various times it's been used as an overnight bunk for drivers from the Winery who mis-timed their delivery, a place for particularly drunk patrons to sleep off their wine, or very temporary housing for employees looking for another place to stay. Since he started bartending, Diluc has taken it over for his own purposes. It's helpful to have some place to store the accoutrements of his vigilante work.

It's also helpful to have some place to sleep on the nights when he's in the city, since he does need some rest even on the nights he does have objectives to accomplish. He hasn't bothered to dress it up; there's only a small cot, a locked chest under it for his equipment, and the small table and pair of chairs that someone had shoved in here ages ago and he hasn't bothered to remove.

Kaeya strips his cape and jacket off the moment they're inside, draping them over one of the chairs while Diluc locks the door behind them. His gloves go with the jacket, and Diluc deliberately looks away from the old tight scar on his left hand, the one he no longer wields a sword with, and presses his mouth to Kaeya's neck as he pushes him down onto the cot.

Straddling him, Diluc slides his hands under his loosened blouse and begins the familiar patterns that he knows will flush him with heat. Not Diluc's own, exactly, but close enough. Kaeya is so cold these days, and while it may be his Vision at work, it still leaves Diluc with the near-overwhelming urge to warm him up, to push heat into him until his skin is as warm as Diluc's own.

Which would be a disastrous conflict of Visions, and all too likely to leave accidental burns. Or worse, if Kaeya's Vision flared in response, as it very likely would. Its first awakened magic had been to shield Kaeya from Diluc's own Pyro, after all. So Diluc will settle for a more prosaic heat, Kaeya flushed under his hands and warm in his mouth.

He digs his teeth into the bruise at Kaeya's throat. Kaeya winces, then arches up into it before Diluc can pull away. It's unkind, Diluc knows, to press at that over and over, and yet--he already does that to all the other bruises, both of them do, and he can read the arching-in of Kaeya's body the way he can't always read his face, or his posture, or his tone anymore these days.

"Hah," Kaeya gasps, managing to pull Diluc's undershirt loose enough from his pants to get his own hands under it. "Why do you wear so many layers?"

"I could ask you the same thing," Diluc pulls away long enough to retort, then nips at his collarbone in punishment.

"Some of us aren't walking furnaces, you know."

"And some of us talk entirely too much."

Diluc works the bottom two buttons of Kaeya's blouse free and tugs it open so that he can get at one of his nipples. The yelp he wins sends a pulse of satisfaction through him, and he pushes Kaeya back onto the cot so that he can pin him down and focus more lavishly on them both. Kaeya's hands stutter on his own skin, another promising sign, and Diluc pulls them out from under his shirt and pins them to the cot so that he can concentrate without any distraction.

Only when Kaeya is whining and squirming under him does he move down, kissing his way along the planes of Kaeya's stomach--he's not eating nearly enough, not that Diluc can do anything about it--while he slides to his knees on the floor and unfastens Kaeya's belt. Kaeya, hands freed, strokes idly at his hair.

There was a time when he never would have done that. He was less bold then, more anxious for instruction; he knew not to touch Diluc without explicit permission. Sometimes Diluc misses that. But he doesn't get easy command of Kaeya any more, doesn't have his unwavering obedience and trust. He set all of that alight years ago, assuming it was ever even real.

"Stay there," he tells Kaeya, hoping that in this he will obey, and sits back on his heels.

One of Kaeya's boots, than another, so that he can strip him out of his pants entirely, and then he has to unlock his chest to pull out the weapon oil. When he stands, Kaeya is spread before him, flushed down to his chest, breathing hard, his eye wide and the pupil blown nearly into a circle. He's half-hard again; Diluc wonders if he should have served him the fourth Death After Noon at all. Then again, he can't be sure he would have stayed without it. He can work with the situation.

Dipping his fingers into the oil, Diluc kneels again between Kaeya's dangling legs, sets the bottle aside well under the bed where it can't be accidentally kicked, and slides a slick finger up behind Kaeya's balls. Kaeya hisses at first contact, then folds his legs up immediately, heels braced on the edge of the bed, cupping himself to give Diluc better access.

Diluc had guessed right about why he'd wanted to take this upstairs. The satisfaction of that is nearly as strong as the satisfaction at how Kaeya shivers when he slides a finger inside.

Working his way gently in there, Diluc nudges his fingers away from his cock and takes it into his mouth. It's far from the first time he's had to bring Kaeya to full attention, and as long as he keeps drinking, won't be the last. Though he looks weary today, and from more than the Knights' dramatic case; that could be a factor, too. Fortunate that he was amenable to distraction.

It takes little time to have Kaeya squirming under his attentions, whining and whimpering behind his hand. Diluc knows where that habit had come from--they'd both been aware that Father couldn't know exactly what brotherly activities his sons engaged in, out in the vines--but he wishes often that Kaeya had become bolder in this respect too. He sounds amazing even muffled, and the more so the few times Diluc has coaxed him into more volume.

This time, though, Kaeya keeps his hand over his mouth even as Diluc brings him over, moaning sweetly into his own palm. Diluc swallows him down and then slows his pace, teasing Kaeya with his tongue as he softens, dragging more choked noises out of him as he fucks him steadily with his fingers, other hand on his thigh to keep him from wriggling free as he squirms.

"Hah- fuck, Diluc-" Kaeya bats at his hair until Diluc, mildly irritated, stops. "You could fuck me if you wanted, you know."

Diluc considers that, just as he'd considered coming upstairs in the first place. He wouldn't have agreed to that first suggestion if he hadn't wanted it to be put on the table, and he does consider it, rubbing idly between his legs to test his own interest--but no. Much as he wants to give Kaeya what he asks for, he can tell his arousal will turn sour if he tries, and he's not willing to force himself through it tonight.

He doesn't want to just say no, though, not when he'd accepted the suggestion of coming upstairs in the first place. It's not Kaeya's fault that Diluc is so alienated from his own body that the idea of turning desire to action revolts him.

"Hold on," he tells Kaeya, pulling his hand free and delighting in the whine that gets him. He casts about briefly--there's so little in this room--then spots the spare candles stacked beside the one lit one on the shelf beside the door. Good enough.

Kaeya's eye goes wide as Diluc turns back about and kneels down with one, and he huffs out a laugh. "Not quite what I meant, but I suppose-"

Diluc can tell he's winding up for a pun. He forgoes more oil to push the blunt end immediately in, interrupting whatever Kaeya was going to say; he much prefers the groan Kaeya gives voice to.

"It will do," Diluc finishes for him, and starts up a rhythm as he takes his cock into his mouth again.

It takes far longer than he expects to bring him back to full arousal, given how eager Kaeya had been for penetration, but eventually Diluc draws a second orgasm from him and has the pleasure of watching him fall apart, shaking and whimpering, all over again in his cot. Kaeya lies there gasping afterwards, legs fallen open, eye closed and fingers wound tight into the sheets. Diluc steals admiring glances as he cleans up. This is one of his favorite looks on Kaeya.

At last, though, all the clean-up is done, Kaeya has caught his breath, and through the window the moon is rising high. "I have work to do," he tells Kaeya reluctantly.

Kaeya looks up, eye gleaming with interest. "Oh? Anything that could use an extra hand? Off the books, of course."

Diluc looks down at him, still sprawled across the cot, and feels a wave of perverse desire. Not to drag him out across the rooftops and fight by his side again, blood running hot, though there are nights that has its appeal. But no; tonight he wants to linger here and lie alongside him, or, if he must go, to ask-

What? That he be here when Diluc comes back? In an uncomfortable bed, too narrow for two, so that the man who once tried to kill him can press close to his side? Diluc doubts Kaeya would be able to sleep peacefully beside him. And given the shadow under his eye, he clearly needs the rest.

"No," he tells Kaeya. "Go home. You look tired."

Then he turns, before he can give into temptation, and climbs out of the window and into the night.